Re: Guest Post: In Solitary Confinement

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Solitary confinement is seriously fucked up.


Posted by: Rance | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 8:41 AM
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There's a scenario in the online Continuing Research Education Credit training thing for behavioral research about research on prisoners that includes this cheering caution: "Incentives to take part in research should be appropriate to the research setting and subject population. Prison cultures and prison structures are such that incentives that might seem trivial in the outside world could carry great significance within a prison. For example, a researcher offered women photographs of themselves and their visiting children that would be taken and framed by a professional photographer. In a prison environment, where women are deprived of their children and do not have cameras that particular form of compensation might be an undue influence."

Maybe the people doing this project read that and had the same reaction I did, namely -- oh god, forget the study and just get a grant for giving them the photos.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 8:46 AM
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Here's an idea: Let's just give all women pictures of their children if they want, not as a form of compensation. Jeesh.

I'm curious about research efforts to get people out of solitary confinement. Which would cost money. And no one really seems to care. So... seems unlikely, but I haven't looked into the issue further than reading articles about it.


Posted by: Rance | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 8:55 AM
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I see you had the same reaction I did too!


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:02 AM
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And please get the children photos of their moms, preferably not just the mugshots with the background edited but even that is better than nothing. Jesus fuck, it's so sad to me that no one in the world seems to have a photo of Mara before she entered care as a two-year-old. Nia's grandma gave us a whole batch I'm getting copied and it makes me so sad and sappy just to watch her have the same smile from the early days to now, but this stuff is so little and so big at the same time and why does our culture have to keep glorifying being so awful to people all the time?


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:09 AM
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Perfect timing for this post -- I watched The House I Live In last night and was just feeling angry and depressed about incarceration in America (though I thought the documentary covered similar ground to, and was less informative than hearing Michelle Alexander speak earlier).


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:17 AM
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Have I mentioned how awful the response from the students at Heebie U, to Michelle Alexander, was? It left me wanting to change jobs. I was furious.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:29 AM
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7: You did, and I'm still so sad about that. There was an outreach program here where local religious leaders read the book and talked about racism and poverty and what their congregations can do to welcome and support current and former inmates and apparently that was powerful and at least somewhat effective.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:31 AM
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Fortunately, it's the same time of year, only this year the speaker is David Brooks. I did not think the potential blog fodder was actually worth attending.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:32 AM
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Heartbreaking. I wonder whether having physical photos is going to be less and less common for poor folks. It's easier to take photos than before (since I think nearly everyone has a phone with a camera) but so much harder and more expensive to get decent looking hard copies and to have reliable data backup.


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:44 AM
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10: Backup is a real problem, but at least here in the city, drugstores with photo-processing (which is most of them) have a vast and expanding array of ways to get digital images, including from phones, and prints are in the $0.25 range. The quality probably isn't wonderful, but is it really much worse than film snapshots used to be?


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 10:01 AM
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11: In my immediate neighborhood (stupidly wealthy near-DC), no one handles photo printing from either film or digital, but maybe that's not typical. The grocery stores that look like they might have once done it have repurposed the store space. I don't think quality is a big hurdle, but it seems here that it would be kind of hard to find somewhere to walk in and print a photo from a phone for cheap. Maybe I'm just in the wrong place or not looking hard enough. At any rate, I'm sort of imagining someone with a phone full of pictures, no real reason to print them, then their phone breaks or gets stolen or lost and everything of a kid's first year or two is gone. I suspect even middle class friends of mine would be in the same boat if a computer failed.


Posted by: ydnew | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 10:28 AM
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I think that CVSs still do photo printing. At least the ones I use in Virginia do it still.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 11:13 AM
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We print photos at CVS all the time, because we are middlebrow. You go to this webpage upload your files, and then pick up the hard copies along with your toothpaste.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 11:24 AM
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It's not comprehensive backup, but emailed photographs are stored on a server that the unskilled can access (your sent-mail folder). Staples and other office supply places maintain printers, I think Walgreen's and CVS do also in stores that are large enough.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 11:37 AM
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in thailand and indonesia there are a ton of internet cafes (for obvious reasons), and both these places and sort of convenience/staples shops will print photos off your phone or (usually) camera. I've never used it but it's clearly something people need. I think actually that way, way more people in the developing world have cameras than ever before, since they have phones. they never had film cameras or landlines so...


Posted by: alameida | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 9:39 PM
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If you don't plan ahead but you have a niftyphone, CVS will allow you to walk in and bluetooth a picture off your phone. Also, solitary confinement is fucking awful.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 09-18-13 11:18 PM
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At any rate, I'm sort of imagining someone with a phone full of pictures, no real reason to print them, then their phone breaks or gets stolen or lost and everything of a kid's first year or two is gone. I suspect even middle class friends of mine would be in the same boat if a computer failed.

Yup. Preserving digital images is my job, but I'm pretty sure if I lost my main PC [in a way where I couldn't just pull a disk out and get the files off] I'd be screwed, too, for most things that aren't on flickr or facebook.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-19-13 12:41 AM
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