At least 41 people have died in the Lone Star State’s unairconditioned prisons due to heat-related or unknown conditions this summer, according to the Texas Tribune.
Even so, it’s hard to firmly establish how many have succumbed to heat-related illness, according to observers. That’s because TDCJ’s official stance is that no inmates have died of heat exhaustion since 2012 — the same year the agency began to be bombarded with wrongful death lawsuits from inmates’ families, the Tribune reports.
41 people have died
That’s 41 too many. Jesus fucking Christ, America.
41 victims of negligent homicide at the hands of the state.
Wow! That’s going to save the state of Texas so much money! It’s expensive to house people against their will for enjoying forbidden plants in their own homes. 🙄
what? naw, they have to meet the quota, they’ll just arrest some other poors
Forty. Freaking. One. Why has this country not been in an uproar since the first one? Why did we wait until this many? This is the first I’ve heard about it. Doesn’t surprise me at all, but I had no idea this was happening.
Forty one!!
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If you think this is on accident, then you don’t understand Texas #fascism.
I love that someone always downvotes the GOP being called out as fascist but will never argue the point.
They’re absolutely fascists. Their enemies are the same as the Nazis: sexual, ethnic, and religious minorities & leftists. They want to dominate an oppressive monoculture that harkens back to a fictional past. Anyone denying that they’re fascists either doesn’t understand what that means or is lying.
I love that someone always downvotes the GOP being called out as fascist but will never argue the point.
Great thing about Kbin is you can see who that is. Just going to say I see one or two names fairly regularly.
Edit: LOL, unsurprisingly the same guy upvoted this comment from HazDaz.
Look, incel, not everyone who disagrees with you politically is a “Nazi.”
This comment is gold.
Also, love the “men’s rights” shit they post. It all makes sense.
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Indeed. Also ultra nationalism, religiosity, authoritarianism, …
Most people don’t think of the meaning of fascist beyond a generic pejorative.
Arguably (IMO) there are far too many established uses of the word for anyone to “Well ackshully…” about it. :-)
You think fascists care about what some academic considers fascism?
No? Is this a trick question?
Our society is diseased.
I agree with you and have studied this from my role as an intelligence official and former interrogator. The lawyer who prosecuted the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials stated that the real problem wasn’t the evil but the apathy of the masses that allowed a few evil people to do big evil things.
The fact of the matter is that human reactions to certain information are well known from our centuries of study of propaganda and marketing and psychology. At this point it is easy for the government to manipulate messaging so that the people are misled enough to allow evil.
It is the simple stuff and even smart people are influenced by it over time. It is a well studied phenomenon. No one is immune. For example, Trump saying that he has the most transparent government ever while specifically taking away rights and doing things in secret.
The propaganda tool has been efficient for our governments, especially since the advent of the internet. Also, keep in mind that roughly half of the population has a two-digit IQ. Some people will never admit that they are dumb and therefore will never admit that they have been deceived.
The fact that US citizens are scared to stand up to their government because the government police will abuse them shows where we are as a society. We are deeply fascist and the illusion of democracy hasn’t been functioning in Congress for quite a while. The illusion of the checks and balances has worn thin as well.
So I agree with you. Our society is diseased. But it’s not necessarily the faults of the individuals.
Texans don’t seem to care about hard-working people getting heat-exhaustion to begin with, let alone prisoners.
Wait, is “unairconditioned” actually a word?
There is no rule dictating what is and what isn’t a word.
Language is an ever changing object.
Was an idea communicated by expressing the sound? It’s a word.
You didn’t do this, but some people so firmly cling to the idea of rules (which as we have covered, do not exist) that they will feign ignorance at the introduction of an unfamiliar presentation. I find it odd.
This could lead into a topic about how everything around us, society similarly, has no rules. It’s just a collection of ideas stacked haphazardly, any of it can be changed by any one of us. But I will stop there.
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Not for nothin, but…The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” So since you can die fron heat exhaustion, it probably is a cruel and unusual punishment.
No no no, you’re wrong! See, it says “cruel AND unusual” and since death is a common result from overheating, it is not unusual and therefore can’t be “cruel AND unusual” thus doesn’t violate the eighth amendment!
(Yes, some of them believe this unironically.)
But if they were supposed to die there, then they would have been sentenced to death by heat exhaustion. Which I’m pretty sure would be considered cruel and unusual.
I don’t think it’s fair to just tack on additional punishment after sentencing.
Some of them are wrongly convicted, all of them are human beings under the states care. Should those under state care be subjected to cruel and unusual, extrajudicial punishment up to and including death by heat exhaustion?
The end of reddit days I began realizing it’s very easy to block people like you.
Bye!
Yep, I’ve become much freer with blocking. OTOH I worry that if we all do it the assholes will just think “wow no one is arguing with me, so they all must agree!” (When in reality the rest of us have just declined to be exposed to their bullshit.)
wow no one is arguing with me, so they all must agree!
The same shallow gene pool also likes to spout “All these downvotes must mean I’m right!”
They must have edited their comment because the one I see now is fairly innocuous.
The original comment was removed, and Lemmy shifted these onto an unrelated one.
Prison is meant to rehabilitate, not punish. If you’re punishing, you’re not helping society. If you just care about causing pain, what value add is that?
Unfortunately, her in texas, unless you bow to the dictatorship (GOP) you are not allowed to be rehabilitated. Unless you think sitting in a pod of 24+ other prisoners in a space that might be comfortable for 4 people as a home, is rehabilitation.
Texas doesn’t care about anything but $$ to the point they will cut their nose off to spite their face. This state is so contradictory to human rights
Schadenfreude is the point, I guess
Prison is meant to rehabilitate, not punish.
Is it? Not being sarcastic. In my country that’s what prisons are supposed to be to. But does it say somewhere in the USA “law” (quotes because I’m not sure that’s the proper word to use here) that states that rehabilitation is the goal of prisons?
I mean, probably not, but it’s otherwise useless, plus it makes an argument for cruel and unusual punishment. Any other desire from sentencing is simply perverted in my mind.
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What the fuck do you know about prison, son?
And for the falsely imprisoned? Kinda a shit way to go.
Imagine trying to take the moral high ground after stroking it to prison torture.
Conservatism is a cancer on society.
Edit: it should be noted that the OP of this thread got removed, so Lemmy dropped these angry comments onto another user’s thread.
Oh, that makes a lot more sense because the comment I see these replies attached to is both fairly innocuous and entirely unrelated to what the responses are talking about. I thought they had just edited the original comment.
Kbin doesn’t do that. Just says deleted by moderator.
Haha, so edgy, much outrage.
Why people think America is full of primitive cavemen.
It may be prison, but those inmates are still human.
Even death row inmates get to die in less cruel ways than being effectively boiled alive.
Their punishment was their isolation from society and its luxuries, any further suffering purposefully/neglectfully introduced by the prison is cruel and unnecessary.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Do you think only rapists and murderers go to prison you empty headed creep? Cool your bloodlust and try to value human dignity.
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Deplorables
It wasn’t a compliment but you lean into anyway.
Imagine defending rapists and murders.
Not a single one of the replies to your comment could be accurately described this way.
Imagine thinking people stop being entitled to basic decency just because they are in prison. For that matter, imagine thinking no one but rapists and murderers goes to prison.
