I definitely get your point, oceankat. Prison rape is indeed not funny. And, unfortunately, prison rape is indeed endemic to our maximum security prisons.

And yet, I am one of the "guilty" bloggers who recently
discussed the prison rape of Madoff within the context of justice being served.

It is not humor for which this was introduced in my blog. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that prison rape is too often overlooked and ignored merely because it occurs only within the most marginalized group of prisoners - the poor, often minority members of society who have never been presented with an opportunity to learn civil behavior. These miscreants are warehoused in our maximum security prisons as a way of avoiding our own responsibilities, and prison rape is only one dehumanizing reality that is allowed to occur as a means of creating certainty among the ruling class that these prisoners are subhuman - that they are somehow less worthy of consideration than us more "civil" members of society.

The subtext to my blog is an expression of the fact that there exists two levels of justice in our court system and the "reformatories." Most generally, white collar criminals such as Madoff will never suffer the indignities and the torture we deal to our prisoners in our maximum security prisons. In fact, most of the real high rollers among this criminal crowd will never have to suffer even the trials most of us face trying to keep our heads above water financially on a moderate income. I recall, in fact, that Charles Keating himself did his time in a Club Fed prison, after which he was soon jetting about the country in his personal jet presenting highly paid talks to businessmen, presumably about ways in which to avoid discovery when engaged in the affairs of "business."

All indications are that Madoff and his family expect the same kind of treatment for poor ol' Bernie. He certainly doesn't deseve to be treated like a common criminal after all, eh? My blog was an attempt to outline that he deserves absolutely no more consideration in his incarceration than those prisoners - the "common criminals," if you will - who are given the very least regard by society. And as part of that, I would certainly not go to any extreme in attempting to save Bernie from the threat and the reality of prison rape that we so conveniently overlook (and thus sanction) otherwise for the most powerless members of our prison community.

The bottom line? Bernie deserves Leavenworth (or some such maximum security prison) in all its filth and decrepitude, as surely as anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be sentenced to live there for purpose of their "reformation." For better or worse, prison rape and other gross indignities are part of the punishment "meted out by the system" within these walls. And there is no way to justify the extension of special considerations to ensure that Bernie avoids any of it. He ain't any better than anyone else in the house.

I have always been outraged by our casual attitude about the known problem of prison rape. I'm equally outraged about the fact that prisoners run a sub-cultural "government" in prisons, that gangs are permitted to thrive in prisons, and that prison guards, at least in Calfornia, are among the highest paid civil "servants" we have. In short, prisons are another layer of our society.

In my opinion any prisoner who experiences cruelty from other prisoners has been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, and should therefore be released. If we can't care for prisoners we should give up our vicarious and cruel lust for excessively punishing those convicted of crimes.

Madoff is a criminal, but he did not kill anyone, physically assault anyone, kidnap anyone, commit treason, or, in fact commit any violent crime of any kind. The anger and lust for revenge against him is only because he harmed a lot of wealthy people, and wealthy people drive our culture. Our culture needs to spend time with a shrink.

"This is particularly shocking and disgusting to me on what is mostly a liberal site with mostly liberal bloggers and commenters"

- I find no contradiction between prison rape jokes and their use by bloggers, both liberal and conservative.

Pitchfork populism always gets down to the level of prison rape jokes because it is driven the arrogant and condescending self-righteousness of a "moral majority" of the day.

You're right of course and I don't disagree with the thrust of your post at all but I don't think all the joking and laughing is merely derisive. We laugh at all kinds of things we fear whether the nightmarish conditions in prisons that lead to rape, sexual slavery and so on or death generally. So, to a degree, while inappropriate, I think the genuine terror at the thought of rape and all forms of abuse that occur in prisons provides the impetus for this. Of course, some joking of this kind is not coming from this origin and is simply callous and grotesque.

As for the conditions in prison, well... our society obviously cares little for what happens to people when sent to prison. Lots of politicians get a great deal of mileage out of making sure that prisons are as harsh and hellish as possible. It's a formula that has worked for a long, long time and woe be to the legislator or Governor who should be so foolish as to suggest improving prison conditions!

As a whole, we assume it will never happen to us or anyone we care about and that if we are honest we tend to believe that everyone who gets locked up is "bad" and that we are "better" people than they are. The assumption is they "deserve" whatever may happen to them in prison. That is, of course, until we actually give it any thought such as when they consider whether a skinny young man, perhaps 18 or 19 who has been locked up for say, 5 years, for selling a little weed on the street really deserves the physical and sexual abuse he is likely to be subject to in almost every state prison. Anyone with any sense at all understands that the punishment for many people get locked up in prison for is more of a crime than the original crime in such a case. In most of these cases too, the people imprisoned are sent away primarily because they are poor and neither they nor their famlies could afford any legal counsel or if they cold afford an attorney couldn't afford one worth paying. Affluent young dope dealers in the suburbs almost never get convicted of the crime they are originally charged with and it is extremely rare that they spend any time at all in jail.

Our system is not only harsh, but is biased in favor of those with money which is not news to anyone, but the degree to which this is true is so extreme and obvious when you are in a criminal court most people would be shocked if they understood the role money plays on the judicial outcome of any given criminal case.

I had a student once (about 5 or 6 years ago) who was so badly abused sexually and physically during his three years in prison that he came out with severe mental illness as a result of that relentless, severe trauma. He was actually a very sweet and gentle young man who had dropped out of high school and, like millions of other poor young men without much education and few marketable skills, had gotten arrested with enough weed to land him in prison for "possession with intent to distribute" which is a felony carrying much stiffer penalties than misdemeanor possession. The threshold amount distinguishing simple possession from possession with intent to distribute is right around an ounce. I forget if he was actually selling or not but it doesn't really matter. Once he got out and was on papers, Lawrence tried very hard to cope in the world. He was a very hard worker, pleasant to be around, very naive, trusting and kind. Everyone liked this young man. But in the end he simply couldn't escape the horrors that were inflicted upon him while in prison and that haunted him daily. At his funeral, his grandfather told me that he was found with a smile on his face after he finally succeeded in taking his own life with a handgun turned on himself and fired three times into his own abdomen on the front porch of where he stayed. His grandfather took that to mean he had finally found relief. I wish that such endings were rare. They are not.

I just dropped in to make a point. Prison rape is a joke in just about every single criminal drama on tv.

Why do we laugh at the misfortunes of others?

The powerless. Sleepin and Oleeb really hit the nail on the head without any of my help. I blog a lot about prisons in this country.

Good Post.