(no subject)
May. 7th, 2004 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noahgibbs*sigh*
I grew up in a prison town. Some of the people I grew up with, and some that I knew very well, are now prison guards. About a third of the town works for the Texas Department of Corrections. So, stastically, of course I know a bunch of people who work at the prison. Everybody who grew up there does.
That means I also knew a lot of adults who had worked at the prison. Or families that did. I knew what the town was like. And long after leaving I even realized that not every town was like that. Talking to prison guards out here in California, prison guards who don't live among their own, showed me that. That let me see the differences, and see them just as clearly as can be. Stand a prison guard next to a plumber and it's not long before you know which is which.
So if you say to me, "take a bunch of good, solid American citizens, and set them to watching people who have been accused of horrendous crimes. Then ask them to do awful things to them to make them confess. Will they do it?"... I'd say, "yeah. They'll do it." And if you ask me, "even if you just accuse the people, and you don't prove they'd done anything?", I'd say, "what does that have to do with anything? It's not like the people torturing them know. I'm not even sure that they care, though I hope they do."
So if you were to ask me about the current scandal in the Iraqi prisons, I'd say, "what? This surprises you?"
The people defending them, the people who say, "but look at what other awful stuff <other person with olive skin> has done"... They're really making the same mistake as the people in the prisons who do awful things to the prisoners. They're forgetting that there are innocent people as well as guilty people there. That we accused those people, but we've proven nothing, and some of those accusations are wrong.
But it's hard to prove that. Because some of those accusations are right. Some of those prisoners, in one way or another, deserve that awful treatment. So the question is, how many innocent people do you torture and kill because they're standing near guilty people?
Traditionally, in this country, our judges like to say "none". Or "no more than we have to". But traditionally the citizens say something else. We may not have invented the lynch mob in this country, but we're certainly long-time fans of it. We've always had enough space that we can run people out of town on a rail, or make it clear they're not wanted, and if they stay around and get lynched, well... They didn't take the hint, so obviously they had it coming. If they were innocent, they'd have run off and started again somewhere else. For that matter, if they were guilty they'd have done the same thing.
We forget that there's not room to run away in some places. Not even if we make it clear the people we hate aren't wanted.
A small community might be one of those places. More crowded nations might be.
But a prison cell certainly is.
I grew up in a prison town. Some of the people I grew up with, and some that I knew very well, are now prison guards. About a third of the town works for the Texas Department of Corrections. So, stastically, of course I know a bunch of people who work at the prison. Everybody who grew up there does.
That means I also knew a lot of adults who had worked at the prison. Or families that did. I knew what the town was like. And long after leaving I even realized that not every town was like that. Talking to prison guards out here in California, prison guards who don't live among their own, showed me that. That let me see the differences, and see them just as clearly as can be. Stand a prison guard next to a plumber and it's not long before you know which is which.
So if you say to me, "take a bunch of good, solid American citizens, and set them to watching people who have been accused of horrendous crimes. Then ask them to do awful things to them to make them confess. Will they do it?"... I'd say, "yeah. They'll do it." And if you ask me, "even if you just accuse the people, and you don't prove they'd done anything?", I'd say, "what does that have to do with anything? It's not like the people torturing them know. I'm not even sure that they care, though I hope they do."
So if you were to ask me about the current scandal in the Iraqi prisons, I'd say, "what? This surprises you?"
The people defending them, the people who say, "but look at what other awful stuff <other person with olive skin> has done"... They're really making the same mistake as the people in the prisons who do awful things to the prisoners. They're forgetting that there are innocent people as well as guilty people there. That we accused those people, but we've proven nothing, and some of those accusations are wrong.
But it's hard to prove that. Because some of those accusations are right. Some of those prisoners, in one way or another, deserve that awful treatment. So the question is, how many innocent people do you torture and kill because they're standing near guilty people?
Traditionally, in this country, our judges like to say "none". Or "no more than we have to". But traditionally the citizens say something else. We may not have invented the lynch mob in this country, but we're certainly long-time fans of it. We've always had enough space that we can run people out of town on a rail, or make it clear they're not wanted, and if they stay around and get lynched, well... They didn't take the hint, so obviously they had it coming. If they were innocent, they'd have run off and started again somewhere else. For that matter, if they were guilty they'd have done the same thing.
We forget that there's not room to run away in some places. Not even if we make it clear the people we hate aren't wanted.
A small community might be one of those places. More crowded nations might be.
But a prison cell certainly is.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-07 01:34 pm (UTC)I'm sure some of them were. But no, it just becomes a matter of doing awful things to them to keep them in line. To keep order, as it were.
I was very impressed with 'The Green Mile', but it was hard for me to identify with. Tom Hanks' character was unlikely to be able to maintain even that degree of compassion in that position. It just doesn't seem to work that way. None of the guards portrayed seemed to be as on-edge or as (reasonably) paranoid as the actual article.
To a degree
Date: 2004-05-07 02:51 pm (UTC)This is neither the first nor the last time this sort of behavior occurred in an occupied nation. That doesn't excuse it, it doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make things easier for either the prisoners or the sheep who allowed these things to happen.
Digging down into the dregs of my memory, I seem to recall a psychological experiment done at Standford in the 60s or 70s. The researcher involved randomly assigned half of the students to be "prisoners" and half to be "guards". Six days into the experiment (I think) the professor halted the project. The guards had started beating the prisoners, and the professor decided that the project was too dangerous.
As an optimist, I generally see the good in folks. While I know I will rebound and feel good about humanity again, at the moment my belief in human nature stands in crisis.