Desegregating California Prisons
I didn't know it, but California has maintained a measure of segregation in its prison systems. A recent U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation illegal, so California is changing it. I liked this quote from the civil rights plaintiff's attorney who brought the case:
"We will start to create an environment where it will be less dangerous in prison for everyone because racism will start to dissipate," said Bert Deixler, an attorney for Johnson.
By integrating prisons, "the power of racial classification and racism will start to die," Deixler said.
"People will come into contact in a more reasonable way with people of a different race and will not feel so threatened or so angry with those people."
This guy is quoting from a multi-cultural handbook and, though there's some truth to what he says in other areas of society, prison is a hotbed of racism, and trying to create a melting pot isn't going to erase it. Nothing will. The prison system--an experiment of the nineteenth century that brought us other great ideas, like eugenics--is a travesty and needs a drastic overhauling. It's arguable that whole idea of "prisons" needs to be abandoned in favor of more traditional types of punishment (e.g., corporal). Though I'm not prepared to endorse that position, I think it merits discussion.
By the way, consistent with Title IX and efforts to mix women and men in dormitories, I think they need to desegregate the gender of prisons. They should put males and females together. If women can be cops, why can't women be in men's prisons? If woman are basically men, they'll get along fine. What could possibly go wrong with such an egalitarian arrangement?
