next time a local prosecutor or politico gets up on his high horse about "enforcing morality" you might want to discuss the following with this highly moral individual.....
a nugget from the newsroom:
"Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many households have some prison connection.
The so-called prison ZIP codes have more in common than large populations of felons or children who grow up visiting their mothers and fathers in jail. These neighborhoods are also public health disaster areas and epicenters of blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS. Infection rates in these areas are many times higher than in neighborhoods short distances away.
No one can say how many infections begin in prison. But the proportion could be high given the enormous concentrations of disease behind bars and the risky behaviors that inmates commonly practice. They carve tattoos in themselves using contaminated tools borrowed from other inmates.
They inject themselves with drugs using dirty syringes.
The most common source of infection could easily be risky, unprotected sex, which, despite denials by prison officials, is clearly a regular occurrence behind bars. A recent study of male inmates in several prisons, for example, found that more than 40 percent had participated in sexual encounters with another man. Most of these inmates, by the way, viewed themselves as heterosexual and planned to resume sex with women once they got out of prison.
Prison systems in Canada and Europe have tried to cut down infection by making condoms available to inmates. Prompted by research showing that sterile syringes slow the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users, several countries have actually moved programs that supply clean needles right into the prisons.
Public health officials who favor needle exchanges in the United States are fully aware that this country has just emerged from a presidential election that witnessed heightened activism by conservative Christians. Indeed, even nonreligious Americans would prefer to see prisons shut off the flow of illegal drugs and provide addicts with treatment instead of syringes.
The condom issue, however, seems somehow less explosive. But as of now, condoms are banned or unavailable in 48 of 50 state prison systems, on the theory that distributing them would condone illicit sex. When confronted with public health data from abroad, American prison officials have blithely suggested that all the fuss is overblown - because there is little sex to speak of in jail.
Congress seemed comfortable with this fiction until 2001, when the Human Rights Watch organization issued a grisly report titled "No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons." The study suggested that rape accompanied by horrific violence was a regular aspect of American prison life. Based partly on the accounts of more than 200 prisoners in nearly 40 states, the report told of prison officials who stood by while sexual predators raped fellow inmates and sometimes sold them - as sex slaves - to gangs and other inmates."
How could these rapes, etc. be happening if these fellows are locked in their cells? Who's (stupid) idea was it to have communal eating areas and exercise yards? It seems to me we need to fix the actual bug rather than make a hack to work around the problem.
24x7x365 lock down will solve all the problems you mentioned and doubtless reduce return visits as well.
prisons are functioning as hot zones, area with a high concentration of infectious diseases... the guy comes out and sleeps with women, they sleep with some more guys, they sleep with some more women.. is it reasonable to assume that the US prison population is acting as a significant reservoir of infectious diseases that put the rest of us as risk? The people who manage the prisons refuse to supply prisoners with condoms. That drives up the rate of infection. The current administration doesn't seem to have much interest in prevention. They're hoping that abstinence counseling will change the behavior in the general population. Think that'll work in the prison population ? Don't count on it. Lesson: mismanagement of US prisons placing the rest of us at higher risk. Currently, 25% of the southern african population infected with HIV. Every fourth person. 2% of the carribbean population has HIV infection. The 6 degrees of seperation theory as that anyone is connected to anyone else by a maximum of six human links. That became the title of a popular play. Was wondering if we're six degrees separated from our prison population.
You'd need about four times the prison cells. Plus, locking them down is damn expensive in terms of personnel and attention. Have an extra half-trillion dollars per year to start?
ultimately, we're the ones who pay for this prison policy with our health... unless of course there's a politcal faction that secretly hopes that fear of HIV will force us into long term monogamy... and they will "make examples" of those who won't fit the mold.
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