I have been catching up on a number of articles that I missed over the past few weeks because I have been and continue to be so busy. I am going to try the synthesize a few of the ones that really jumped out at me.

While reading an article at NorthJersey.com about the terrible conditions at the Passaic County Jail, I was particularly struck by some of the comments. Here is a small sample of them:

NJ Dissident writes: When you make jail nicer to live in, you get more people committing crimes to enjoy the free food, medical attention and lodging. Pity the taxpayer who gets robbed, raped, beaten, stabbed or killed by these all purpose menaces, not the scum criminal. If our jails get too overcrowded, have a lottery where the winner gets the gas chamber. With the system as it is, the rate of recidivism will only soar costing everyone more money and you still won’t be safe. These places would serve us better if they ran like the Roach Motel. Garbage checks in, but it don’t check out.

Teacher’s Daughter writes: Why should jail be comfortable? It is meant to be punitive. I would venture a guess and say most of those complaining about no AC in the summer don’t even have it at home. “3 hots and a cot” at taxpayers’ expense. What’s the deterrent here?

Boriqua935 writes: Ahh poor criminals are not happy in jail. Well don’t commit crimes. Our soldiers fight a war in desert heat and they did not commit any crimes. The liberals in this country are destroying it and please don’t come with “they are human and have rights.” Spend the money on those who obey the law, are productive people in our society and feed the animals in jail dog food.

According to these three commenters, people in jail don’t deserve to be treated with ANY dignity. They accuse those in jail of being subhuman and yet their own comments belie their own inhumanity. I find it interesting as well that people in this country are so ignorant about the criminal legal system that they do not distinguish between being in jail (where you are usually being held PRE-ADJUDICATION) and being a prisoner. This does not of course mean that people in jail ought to be treated “better” than those in prison but it strikes me as interesting to ask how these comments would be different if the ones writing them understood that difference.

The article that they were commenting on deserves to be read in its own right. Staff writer Richard Cowen exposes the current deplorable conditions of the Passaic County Jail which was sued by the ACLU in 2008:

At the Passaic County Jail, prisoners are jammed together in tiny cells, there aren’t enough showers and the new ventilation system covers only half of the building.

And that’s despite major improvements already made at the jail as a result of a class-action suit inmates filed two years ago.

Although the current inmate population of 1,000 men and women is roughly half of what it was in 2005, a tour of the jail last week revealed that crowding remains a serious problem:

* Four-by-8-foot cells, built to house a single inmate, routinely have three prisoners in them.

* Dormitory spaces that house up to 48 inmates are so crowded that some inmates sleep within a few yards of the commode.

* There is no dining room, so inmates eat all of their meals in their living quarters.

* There are no day rooms, so there’s nowhere to sit, and except for a television flickering in the corner, there’s nothing to do but stand around.

* Most of the cellblocks have no air conditioning. To compensate for the lack of fresh air, jail guards point high-powered fans on the inmates standing behind bars. Ice chests are scattered around for inmates to keep their drinks cold. Temperatures got so hot over the summer that several cellblocks had to be closed and the inmates moved, creating more crowding in some parts of the jail.

Most of these deficiencies were noted in the annual inspection by the state Department of Corrections, completed in May. They are largely the same conditions that led the American Civil Liberties Union and the Seton Hall University Law School’s Center for Social Justice to file suit on behalf of eight inmates in September 2008. The lawsuit said conditions at the time were “an affront to human decency.”

At the time of the suit, the jail population was hovering around 1,700 inmates — nearly twice the original capacity of 896 and currently rated 954. The population explosion was due largely to Passaic County’s practice of accepting inmates from the federal and state prison systems as a way to generate revenue.

On another note, an e-mail from the Real Costs of Prisons over the weekend reminded me of a story that I had planned to blog about last month. I first caught the story at commondreams.org.

Inmates of the Pitchess Detention Center, watch your step. If you get out of line, you may get blasted with an invisible heat ray

The jail’s energy weapon is a small-scale version of the Active Denial System, the experimental crowd control device that the U.S. military brought to Afghanistan — and then quickly shipped back home, after questions mounted about the wisdom of blasting locals with a beam that momentarily puts them in agony. The pain weapon seemed at odds with the military’s efforts to appear more humane and measured in the eyes of the Afghan populace.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department not only found those concerns overblown; they used the military’s long-standing reluctance to zap Afghans as fodder for the plan to zap Pitchess’ prisoners. “I already had contacts at [Active Denial maker] Raytheon who were reeling from the short-sided, self-serving cowardice of people who were more interested in saving face than saving lives, and leveraged it right into getting it into our jails,” former LASD Cmdr. Charles “Sid” Heal tells Danger Room.

The Associated Press has covered the story as well.  Reporter Thomas Watkins focuses particularly on the fact that the ACLU considers this weapon to be an instrument of torture:

A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is “tantamount to torture.”

The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the technology has been deployed in such a capacity.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca’s decision in a letter sent Thursday, saying that the technology amounts to a ray gun at a county jail. The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel.

It is remotely controlled by an operator in a separate room who lines up targets with a joystick.

The ACLU said the weapon was “tantamount to torture,” noting that early military versions resulted in five airmen suffering lasting burns. It requested a meeting with Baca, who declined the invitation.

The sheriff unveiled the device last week and said it would be installed in the dorm of a jail in north Los Angeles County. It is far less powerful than the military version and has various safeguards in place, including a three-second limit to each beam of heat.

The natural response when blasted — to leap out the way — would be helpful in bringing difficult inmates under control and quelling riots, the sheriff said.

A device that left military personnel with “lasting burns” is treated by the sheriff as though it is no more than a pin-prick. Cruel and usual punishment indeed.