Another angle on torture

[jimnyc]

Forget that it's not legally called torture. I'm speaking of supermax prisons. Of course there is no intent to extract information from these prisoners either. There are quite a few of these supermax prisons in the US.

These prisoners are in permanent lockdown. These prisoners are all housed by themselves. They MAY get out of their cell for up to an hour per day. Some may not even see daylight. They live in a 7'x12' box for the rest of their lives. Food delivered to the cell, not even a dining room. These nice rooms are soundproof, so that they can't contact one another.

Not everyone of course, but I've heard from folks in the past, saying it's better to put certain criminals in prison for life, instead of killing them, as it would be torture.

Sitting in one of these cells, for life. Go in young and stay till you die. If you're 25 and you die at 75, that's 50 years. Most of us couldn't last a week in such an environment. That would be 2,600 weeks for this guy.

Not declared torture or illegal of course. Go to every prison in America. I would bet that 99% of the prisoners would take being waterboarded over their current sentences. In other words, they would rather be "tortured" that be in a prison cell.

[Elessar]

Some of those felons are so vile they should go to Indiana and be executed,
not housed in Colorado

[DLT]

Forget that it's not legally called torture. I'm speaking of supermax prisons. Of course there is no intent to extract information from these prisoners either. There are quite a few of these supermax prisons in the US.

These prisoners are in permanent lockdown. These prisoners are all housed by themselves. They MAY get out of their cell for up to an hour per day. Some may not even see daylight. They live in a 7'x12' box for the rest of their lives. Food delivered to the cell, not even a dining room. These nice rooms are soundproof, so that they can't contact one another.

Not everyone of course, but I've heard from folks in the past, saying it's better to put certain criminals in prison for life, instead of killing them, as it would be torture.

Sitting in one of these cells, for life. Go in young and stay till you die. If you're 25 and you die at 75, that's 50 years. Most of us couldn't last a week in such an environment. That would be 2,600 weeks for this guy.

Not declared torture or illegal of course. Go to every prison in America. I would bet that 99% of the prisoners would take being waterboarded over their current sentences. In other words, they would rather be "tortured" that be in a prison cell.

And if I were in charge....I would be more than happy to give them what they wanted/preferred....if they had any information that I needed in order to save additional lives. Alas, that situation is probably very rare among regular prisoners (ie not terrorist suspects).