January 17, 2002

8:39 AM

Porn and pizzakeep inmates happy over New Year's. Typically New Year's Eve is a somewhat rowdy event at this prison with inmates starting fires and refusing to go back to their cells. So this year, some employees struck a deal with the inmates to show porn and have pizza at New Year's provided they don't cause any trouble.

Now that word has got out to higher authorities and an investigation is in place. And heads will roll...
posted by PWA_BadBoy (23 comments total)

Link via [H]ardOCP.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 8:40 AM on January 17, 2002

NO MORE PORN PIZZA PRISONS!
posted by thirteen at 8:54 AM on January 17, 2002

Maybe it was Prisoners of Lust.
posted by waxpancake at 8:56 AM on January 17, 2002

Free porn and pizza... how can I get a room at this hotel?
posted by spilon at 9:13 AM on January 17, 2002

Free porn and pizza... how can I get a room at this hotel?

Oh for christ's sake, let's not start with the "prisons are too easy" crap. I condemn anyone thinking that to watch an entire season of "Oz" in one sitting. Or if that's too much for you, I recommend you try out the experience of 3 days of non-stop anal gang rape, raped while prison guards look on and laugh knowing this will teach you to write pesky letters to the editor critical of prison conditions, raped until you bleed so hard and profusely that you have to be rushed to the hospital to prevent serious internal organ damage. Not to mention the AIDS. Tori Amos ain't got nothing on these guys! HA HA PRISONS ARE FUNNY FUN PLACES OF FUN! Man, I wish I were in prison. It's not fair they reserve prisons just for the bad guys!

Aaaaaanyway, wrt to the porn/pizza.... Investigation? How about a commendation... this doesn't violate civil rights, and it's a workable solution to a problem, and we should applaud guards' creativity in keeping the peace. Porn does NOT cause people to be violent sex offenders, although the one qualm I'd have is that they should have found a way to prevent the sex offenders from getting the same movie (maybe show them a mainstream movie instead).
posted by hincandenza at 10:09 AM on January 17, 2002

I recommend you try out the experience of 3 days of non-stop anal gang rape, raped while prison guards look on and laugh knowing this will teach you to write pesky letters to the editor critical of prison conditions, raped until you bleed so hard and profusely that you have to be rushed to the hospital to prevent serious internal organ damage.

I followed your recommendation, and now I'm a little upset. It was horrible! Why would you recommend this?

Good lord, chill out.
posted by Skot at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2002

I think the relevant quotes are,

"It was totally inappropriate behaviour, completely inappropriate within a correctional environment and it is something that we are taking extremely seriously."

"If this is how we are maintaining order in prisons. . . . Let's get the cart behind the horse again. It is not the prisoners who should be running the institution."

in which case I think disciplinary action is highly appropriate. The nature of the material shown to the inmates as part of the deal is fodder for a separate discussion, but that a deal was made in the first place justifies disciplinary action. The guards who made the deal effectively said to the inmates, "Hey, you've got us by the balls!"
posted by MonkeyMeat at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2002

watch an entire season of "Oz" in one sitting.

i can't watch an entire episode in one sitting. it's not that prison is so terrible, just the show. bleh.

the experience of 3 days of non-stop anal gang rape, raped while prison guards look on and laugh knowing ... blah blah .... raped until you ...blah... hospital ...blah... organ damage.

i think i have that video in my collection.
posted by tolkhan at 10:32 AM on January 17, 2002

blah blah.... blah blah...

Jeez, nice to know that prison rape really is a laughing matter. What wonderful compassionate people post here. Hey, did I mention the other day I was walking down the street and this chick with big tits in a slinky red dress was walking towards me? I grabbed her, forced her in an alley, and shoved my cock down her throat until she gagged and puked on my rancid semen. That was funny, too. Hee-larious...

Monkeymeat: Agreed, the choice of material isn't that big of an issue. However, I think the fact that the guards made a deal for New Year's is in itself not a problem; if it becomes a routine thing, where prisoners start becoming unmanageable to get more concessions, the guards would need to crack down. But once a year? I bet every one of the guards who wasn't dealing with rowdy inmates and putting out fires- literally and figuratively- thinks it was worth the trade off for the holiday season to pass without incident. I like to tout higher principles, but I also recognize that you've got to let people closest to a situation have some control in managing it. The guards made a decision that pragmatically may have been the best one, even if some desk-bound administrators are having a conniption fit about it.
posted by hincandenza at 10:43 AM on January 17, 2002

While I don't think that the porn/pizza party was necessarily a good idea also, I do believe that prisons should be places where positive influences from outside the grounds have a chance to make their way inside. Tai Chi and Yoga classes, and other educational opportunities can make a difference in peoples' behavior while in prison, and after they are released.

Likewise, involving people who are incarcerated in programs like Habitat for Humanity, or translating books into braille can help prisoners build self esteem, positive work habits, and a sense of responsibility, as well giving them something important to do.
posted by bragadocchio at 10:54 AM on January 17, 2002

rancid semen.

it's prolly better to store it in the freezer until yr ready to use it. just don't try and thaw it in the microwave, hold it under warm (not hot) running water.
posted by danOstuporStar at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2002

let's not start with the "prisons are too easy" crap. I condemn anyone thinking that to watch an entire season of "Oz" in one sitting.

Yes, because the best way to analyze this issue (conceptualize the purposes of the criminal justice system, analyze those goals, and then determine the just level of punishment for a given crime) is to watch a television show (because Oz is "gritty!" and "realistic!") and then react on emotion.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Because I despise snarkiness for snarkiness' sake, here are (more explicitely) my two points: 1) Don't swallow as factual everything they show on TV, even if the pundits tell you to. 2) THINK about issues, don't FEEL about them. If you have a reasonable proposal for reducing the amount (the sickening amount, because any amount of sexual assualt is sickening) of sexual assualt in prisons while simultaneously keeping control of a population where the violent criminals vastly outnumber the guards, then pass it on. We all want to hear about it. And if you have a cogent argument about the justice of assigning certain punishments for certain crimes, then please, speak up. But self-righteous outrage does no one any good.
posted by gd779 at 11:11 AM on January 17, 2002

Self-righteous outrage, of course, doesn't actually contribute to prison rape, whereas widespread public ignorance of the problem arguably does.
posted by sudama at 11:20 AM on January 17, 2002

I thought that this--
I followed your recommendation, and now I'm a little upset. It was horrible! Why would you recommend this?

was the funniest thing I've read today until I scrolled down and read this--
Hey, did I mention the other day I was walking down the street and this chick with big tits in a slinky red dress was walking towards me? I grabbed her, forced her in an alley, and shoved my cock down her throat until she gagged and puked on my rancid semen.

That's an excellent method of getting your point across. Bravo...
posted by ColdChef at 11:23 AM on January 17, 2002

They could have gotten all the prisoners drunk enough that they would get whiskey dick...and then make the porn-watching into a contest!
posted by hellinskira at 12:23 PM on January 17, 2002

While I don't think that the porn/pizza party was necessarily a good idea also, I do believe that prisons should be places where positive influences from outside the grounds have a chance to make their way inside.

What's wrong with porn? Who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to decide what's positive and what's not?
posted by VeGiTo at 2:30 PM on January 17, 2002

blah blah.... blah blah...

Jeez, nice to know that prison rape really is a laughing matter.

'blah' is the equivalent of <snip>. i didn't see a need to quote the entire passage, just enough to indicate which passage i was referring to. isn't 'ha' or 'har' usually used to indicate laughter?
posted by tolkhan at 2:37 PM on January 17, 2002

hincandenza - I'm with ya. Sex offenders are different than the other convicts. How 'bout they get a Pizza Hut pie and a Disney flick instead.
Interesting parallel, My girlfreind used to work at VA hospital on a locked psyche ward. They decided to have a movie night and what flick did they pick-"Predator." The reactions were, shall we say, interesting. Here's hoping the prison doesn't show "Caged Heat."
posted by jonmc at 2:46 PM on January 17, 2002

Never mind that the characters on Oz, like criminals in the real world did something to result in their incarceration.
posted by owillis at 2:52 PM on January 17, 2002

Having a pizza feed and showing a flick in order to have a calm night isn't that much different to a parent promising a child a toy if they're well-behaved during the Saturday grocery shopping outing. Bribary and rewarding are standard to a lot of folks.

Now, if those baddies had thrown their pizza crusts at the screen and started pulling each other's hair ... well then, a timeout would have been in order.
posted by cyniczny at 3:15 PM on January 17, 2002

The problem with showing porn is that some of those prisoners were violent sex offenders. Who knows what kind of effects that might have on them. Maybe nothing, or maybe it might set them off. In any case, it probably wasn't a great idea.

And as someone said before, letting prisoners use violence and intolerable behaviour as a bargaining chip should not be allowed. Sure we may be far away from the situation, but it's absolutely no reason to let the prisoners get away with this. Prison is prison. You lose many of your rights when you get there. And you don't reward prisoners who threaten to do bad things by giving them back freedoms that they used to have.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 3:33 PM on January 17, 2002

I don't think the prisoners set up this deal, I think the guards did- in response to a bad situation the year before. From my reading of the article, it didn't imply that the prisoners staged a riot the week before to get porn and pizza, only that the guards- much like parents or teachers- offered in effect a pre-emptive bribe to the prison population to ensure a peaceful holiday season. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the holiday season is for a variety of reasons a tough time in prison, for inmates and guards alike. Should the prisoner's take this as a cue to begin agitating for more porn and pizza (hell, I agitate for that everyday, and I'm a free man), then the guards should clamp down on that without bribes or rewards.

This isn't "coddling" the prisoners, any more than the requisite "prisoner's watching the movie starring a pretty girl" scene in prison films like "Sullivan's Travels", "Shawshank Redemption" or the classic car-wash sequence in Cool Hand Luke suggest those prisoners live a lifestyle of non-stop debauchery and leisure. The porn and pizza are akin to the extra bowl of soup enjoyed by Ivan Denisovich, not a snapshot from "A day in the life of John "Buttman" Stagliano".

owillis (et al): The problem with so casually dismissing real or fictional prisoners as "having done something to be in prison" is that prison rape can hardly be considered a fair punishment (by "fair", I mean one lacking the "cruel" or "unusual" aspects outlined in that Consti-whatsit thingiemabob people love to ignore) for someone who might be serving a 3-month or 6-month stint for petty larceny, or a first-time offender in for mere possession of marijuana, or even being held until trial after mass arrests of demonstrators at an anti-WTO rally.

As sudama noted, this widespread ignorance, mockery (such as Leno and other comedians making cheap "drop the soap" gags), or tacit approval of prison rape is both hypocritical and dangerous; my extreme, dare-I-call-it satirical description of a man raping a woman so nonchalantly would certainly not merit approval or applause, yet somehow the far-more-violent prison rape is still humorous or perfectly acceptable to many people, include yourselves. Unlike date rape, prisoners who are raped lack counseling and medical services, any chance to escape that or future rapes (in prison, rape can become a fact of life, a permanent fixture in one's prison term as a ready-to-use human toilet for every filthy or infected convict with 15" biceps) or even seek help during or after the fact (since it's not uncommon for the prison guards- the only authority figures inmates ever see- to be the ones to intentionally put inmates into cells with known rapists in the first place).
posted by hincandenza at 4:03 PM on January 17, 2002

What's wrong with porn? Who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to decide what's positive and what's not?

I hope that's not what those guards said to their commanding officer. I can see them apologizing and maybe keeping their jobs if they promise never to do something like that again.

But, I wrote that I didn't think that the party was a good idea. I also wrote that positive influences should have a chance to make their way into the prison. I didn't write that pornography was bad. Maybe you misunderstood me. Whatever value judgment I was making was based upon the guards' behaviors, and not the content of the film they showed.

As to my right to decide what is positive or not, I think that I do have that right, or should I say responsibility. Ethics, morality, and responsibility all involve making value judgments. You can't live amongst other people and not be forced to think about what is positive, and what is negative. The unauthorized attempt at behavior modification on the part of these guards was dehumanizing and irresponsible.
posted by bragadocchio at 5:47 PM on January 17, 2002