Solitary Confinement Rate In US Prisons Many Times The Global Average


Overview

The US has four percent of the world’s population - and over 20% of all prisoners in the world.

Right now it has locked up 664 per hundred thousand. The closest any other western country comes is 129 in the UK. The rate in Italy is 89. 

While this is finally being pushed down a bit, not least for cost, the total in solitary confinement in recent years has gone spiraling through the roof. Over 80,000 right now.

Any prison superintendent can order it; in almost all other countries it requires the Minister of Justice (as in Italy) or at minimum some senior judge. 

A couple of cases we’ve paid attention to are now shaking up public awareness of this.

  • One was Alex Murdaugh in South Carolina, just convicted of killing his wife and son, who might “for his own protection” be in solitary for the rest of his life.

  • The other is Bryan Kohberger in Idaho, suspected killer of four students now awaiting trial, who “for his own protection” probably faces the same.

Solitary in the US not only means zero interaction with any other human being. It also means no TV, no books, and lights on at all times.

As the BBC video explains, American prisoners might face staring at the walls for 30-40 years, and a complete mental breakdown more likely than not.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/16/23 at 01:41 PM in Hoaxes Sollecito etc

Comments

Obviously the anti-Italy windbag who was frogmarched out of the FBI and Pepperdine University told all of us this?

And the elected windbag of a judge who was officially reprimanded for beating the ears of presidents and chose not to run for another term?

And the FBI profiler who has admitted he has mental issues and has not written a book or article all by himself for 20 years?

And the crackpot junior fur salesman in outer Chicago who ran a number of crackpot anti-Italy sites?

And of course the supreme windbag, Amanda Knox herself?

Or perhaps not.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/19/23 at 03:01 PM | #

It’s surely impossible to conceive of a more massive systems reset than that finally effected in the remarkable “Everything Everywhere All At Once” movie.

Search for the magic bullet that will finally set the resolution in motion occupies most of the film, as Joy and Deidre and Gong Gong keep piling on the pressure, but a few thousand Evelyns with several Waymonds finally nail it. 😊

Pretty humane. Kind of the opposite of the neoliberalism models that have turned the US and UK into countries with mostly quite poor people and stuffed their harsh prisons quite needlessly. Everything bagels…

(Neoliberalism is not to be confused with liberalism, of course, which is a pretty successful development model. The title “neoliberalism” is part of its great con job.)

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/23 at 10:15 AM | #

Of course Queen Elizabeth attempted an Evelyn, across party lines and whole countries, and King Charles seems inclined to that third way also.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/comments/correctly_framing_queen_elizabeth_1

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php/comments/correctly_framing_queen_elizabeth_2

How Charles put down the neoliberal poodle Liz Truss when she popped up at the palace was pretty funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRoxNbUPips

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/23 at 10:49 AM | #

Here’s Chami’s comment from the previous thread - he seems to be seeing things on the same lines (as usual!)

There is an article on Sunak in one of our newspapers that I read online:

https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-incidental-prime-minister/cid/1921881

what is happening to all of us?

What is happening to all of us? Hmmm… failed systems resets? One example being Brexit?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/23 at 12:02 PM | #

In “Everything Everywhere” Evelyn and Waymond were doing most of the fast thinking that got them there. Not made explicit, but, as in REALLY fast thinking…

Although it is impossible to precisely calculate, it is postulated that the human brain operates at 1 exaFLOP, which is equivalent to a billion billion calculations per second.

And it stores the equivalent of 2.5 million laptops with 1 gigabyte hard drives. Lotta laptops. Also, thoughts seem to travel within the brain faster than the speed of light. The physics is far from fully understood, but may be that of the seriously weird “particle entanglement”.

https://tinyurl.com/47kpv87m

That’s the same as the presumed physics of multiverses, so Evelyn had kind of a head start. 😊 The movie we see had some minutes snipped out of it. I sure look forward to the director’s cut.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/20/23 at 12:23 PM | #

Talking of Everything Bagels, this might blow your mind

If/when you watch the “Everything Everywhere” movie, pay special attention to the Inland Revenue offices set where maybe a majority of the filming took place.

The Wang office and apartment and Alphaworld scenes were shot in siderooms there, and also the great struggle on the stairs near the end.

Back in 2008 the company that build that space and used it as part of their HQ was the Countrywide mortgage giant.

For a decade Countrywide was the main originator and promoter of the enormously risky subprime mortgages. (Prime in effect means lowest risk.)

Much of Wall Street was buying and cutting and bundling those mortgages, supposedly to reduce the known risk.

Most insiders KNEW how risky they were (I did; I was blogging on it at the time) but there was a pervasive “I wont be the last one out the door if there is a collapse” syndrome.

It was the collapse of those bundled scam mortgages - a lack of buyers - that brought the world economy to its knees, caused millions to lose their homes, and led to the collapse of the Loehman Brothers and Bear Stearns banks.

Direct losses were two trillion dollars (see Wikipedia) but cost to global growth was at least ten.

In the UK, what began in that room led to economic damage and so the loss of the Labor Party to the neoconservatives, and so to Brexit down the road.

What began in that room also paved the way to Donald Trump’s political arc. Many of those who supported him were damaged by what began in the Countrywide HQ you see in the film.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/23/23 at 04:09 PM | #

Hi All!
Last night at 10pm here in the UK was a programme on Channnel 5, The Murder of Meredith Kercher.  It was a new documentary and 2 hours long.
However it was the usual case of very superficial investigation.  Moore, Burleigh and Sollecito were given a lot of airtime.
Regarding the knife taken from Sollecito’s flat Moore said, “the FBI would have bagged everything from that drawer”. As if they’d need to analyse the spoons, forks and dinner knives!
Of the knife taken from Sollecito’s drawer the narrator said “a great deal of blood would have been found on the knife after a murder. There was just a small trace so it must be contamination”. 
Kate Mansey from the Mirror newspaper recounted how she’d met Sollecito and he’d told her “I knew her. I found the body”!
It just brings home how important it is to read deeply about things before making judgements.  I suspect it’d cost too much money and bother to do that!

Posted by DavidB on 03/29/23 at 06:10 AM | #

Yes, I watched some of it but becoming exasperated (and after much swearing at the set) I switched it off and went to bed. As you say, very superficial and slanted. I really wish the likes of Mignini and Comodi would have the sense not to contribute to these sort of programmes.

As I did not see the end I suppose it concluded that Guede was the sole perpetrator? Perhaps you could kindly confirm.

PS. The focus was more on Sollecito than Knox and Sollecito is beginning to look like Jack Palance nowadays and every bit as creepy as Jack’s (a great actor) portrayals of Count Dracula and various other spine tingling characters.

Posted by James Raper on 03/29/23 at 11:08 AM | #

JR, Yes, Guede was the culprit according to Burleigh and Windbag, who featured even more towards the end of the doc.
I completely agree with you and also about Sollecito. He’s convinced himself that he didn’t do it.

Posted by DavidB on 03/29/23 at 07:21 PM | #

.
Hi guys. Tips are very welcome as always!

This “report” is actually not new, perhaps Channel 5 forgot to mention that? We carried this post on it back in August of last year, and James added a remark.

https://tinyurl.com/2p8mws85

Behind this “report” was the notorious CBS 48 Hours team here in New York, on which we have had dozens of posts, starting with Ciolino back in 2008. We’ve had dozens of posts on Burleigh and Steve Moore as well.

The CBS 48 Hours group has personal ties to Calabria (hmmm), and to the Seattle gang that includes lawyer Ann Bremner, ex judge Michael Heavey, and film producer Tom Wright - who funded a scholarship at her school in Knox’s name to many parents’ disgust.

They are all of them in it for themselves, mainly wanting gigs on TV and huge speaker fees ($10,000 and above) ; none of them really give a damn about Sollecito or Knox.  Way back in 2009 they organized a hatefest at a West Seattle seafood restaurant as described in this post.

https://tinyurl.com/57pdcc88

Knox keeps very well away from all of them as she’d be unable to look them in the eye; her parents fought off Steve Moore with a stick when he appointed himself as her security guard.

I’ve a subscription for Paramount Plus, and I watched this “report” eight months ago. A superficial hatchet job with nothing new as one would expect.

Dr Mignini and Dr Comodi learned to keep mum back then; they have fallen into no traps since,  and as Krissy showed Dr Mignini gives precisely that crowd a very hard time in his book.

https://tinyurl.com/3e7u74jv

Paramount Global (former Viacom/CBS/Paramount-Plus/Showtime/Channel 5) is struggling to survive, and its market capitalization is a mere $14 billion or so today - it’s component bits have been valued at many times that in the past.

It might with Netflix (which has also plunged) and several other groups be one of the apex targets for our press releases soon.

We await only (1) for the completing of navigation on the new pages here, a ton of work, and (2) clear signals about a publisher for GM’s book, and a possible visit by him here (to NYC).

Everybody will be welcome here then of course.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/30/23 at 10:51 AM | #

And in Italy? Long, serious, in-depth presentations of Dr Mignini’s book to all the legal/justice power-brokers in Italy are the current phase. Upper reaches of government are already in the know.

We are respecting this somewhat below-the-radar building of force. It is becoming a model for how corrective action in these situations should work. In due course it will move to the US.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/31/23 at 08:53 AM | #

Re: solitary confinement. Lights on at all times seems to me to violate the Geneva Convention?

Re: the so-called “new” documentary. Thanks for all the heads up. Sounds stupid, as usual. Such a sad saga. Needless loss of Meredith’s life, due to a pack of high, stupid young people (as I believe as is my constitutional right).

Re: EEAAO comments. Thanks for the analysis of the Countrywide debacle. What’s Inland Revenue? I haven’t seen the movie yet.

Posted by Earthling on 04/10/23 at 03:43 PM | #
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