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Making art can be a kind of escape, and it's hard to think of a place that begs louder for escape than death row. For inmates facing the death penalty, art offers a way to define their own identity and assert their existence to an audience far beyond the confines of their cell and long after their execution.
The relationship between prison and creative pursuit is long and strong. Writing has historically been the go-to creative outlet for prisoners, as it can be achieved with minimal resources and the product can be hidden or secreted in and out of cells. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago from the forced labour camps of the former Soviet Union. Martin Luther King Jr wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Alabama. And, in a sign of how art and form evolve with time, US rapper Gucci Mane even recorded some verses of his 2010 album Burrprint 2 over the phone from prison.
In prisons in the US, Europe and Australia, visual art classes and resources are now available to more inmates than ever before. These programmes have been shown to have a positive influence on the immediate and long-term behaviour of prisoners – though often the resources allocated to them are scarce. When these aren't available, innovation often prevails, with paints made from crushed sweets or instant coffee.
[...] "Generally, but more extremely on death row, part of the incarceration process involves stripping away your identity as a human being," [Margot] Ravenscroft says. "The expression of art is a way of redressing that dehumanisation and identifying yourself as an individual and as a member of society."
Source: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170126-the-death-row-inmates-who-make-art
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 30 2017, @04:42PM
No, my subject line isn't talking about the death penalty, but rather our current "death row" system whereby prisoners spend decades anticipating that any day a new government official could decide to "speed things up" and then decide to kill you after a long wait.
If the death penalty itself isn't "cruel and unusual," the system of an arbitrarily changing execution date that could always be postponed years or decades into the future at the whim of the government is.
When I was younger, I used to be a mild proponent of the death penalty. I was never a strong supporter, but I at least thought it could be justified in some circumstances. But setting aside philosophical issues about whether it is "just" or not, the other problems with it now far outweigh any perceived benefit. Its status as a deterrent is questionable (from many, many studies), it doesn't "save money" over lifelong incarceration by the state, and given that the entire rest of the civilized world has basically given it up, we're stuck with only hacking together some drug cocktail that might screw things up or misleading our drug suppliers about what we're going to do with the drugs.
But most importantly, we KNOW for a fact that we've executed innocent people. I am nowhere near confident enough in the system to believe it can determine guilt with sufficient accuracy to order someone to his/her death. Many states have come to recognize this, so even if they have a "death row," many governments have suspended executions indefinitely.
So why do we continue to carry on this farce that is "death row" anyway?
[Actually, I know this answer to this question, and it has nothing to do with justice or ethics, but with politics. What's the equivalent of "security theatre" for serious violent crime? Except in this case we have people stuck in the TSA line to Hell for decades.]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday January 30 2017, @07:48PM
.... prisoners spend decades anticipating that any day a new government official could decide to "speed things up" and then decide to kill you after a long wait.... the system of an arbitrarily changing execution date that could always be postponed years or decades into the future .....
Then change your system. If you are the USA, I don't understand what the long wait is for. Until the UK abolished the death penalty, it was carried out about a week after sentence.
problems with it now far outweigh any perceived benefit. Its status as a deterrent is questionable (from many, many studies)
No-one executed ever commits again.
it doesn't "save money" over lifelong incarceration by the state
I don't know who is doing these sums, but hanging them a week after sentence (as was in the UK) did not cost much. The rope could even be re-used if you want to save a few more pennies (although it was not in later years, AFAIK).
As for "lifelong incarceration", if only. But there are always psychiatrists who want to experiment, and perhaps write a learned paper afterward and get professional plaudits, by letting killers free again. There are several cases in the UK of killers killing again after being freed. Freeing them is against the promise and public understanding at the time of abolition in the UK.
But most importantly, we KNOW for a fact that we've executed innocent people.
We know that we have imprisoned innocent people too; so should we ban prisons? Even if they are freed, years (probably the best years) of their lives have been wasted.
Back in the UK, shortly before abolition certain death sentences were passed that were so stupid that you can believe that they were deliberately to get public opinion against capital punishment :-. Derek Bentley, already in the hands of the police but hanged because an accomplice of his then shot a policeman; Ruth Ellis, a neurotic woman who shot her cheating bastard lover. There was never enough discretion in the application of the death sentence in the UK; it should not have been an "automatic" sentence for murder, but if it is then the execution should be got on with.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 30 2017, @08:45PM
Then change your system. If you are the USA, I don't understand what the long wait is for. Until the UK abolished the death penalty, it was carried out about a week after sentence.
First off, most crimes are prosecuted in the U.S. under state laws, which means there are at least 51 different justice systems to deal with.
And well, there is the appeals process. Surely if we allow other sentences to be appealed, we should also allow death sentences to be? Part of the problem there is that the court system is hopelessly backlogged in the U.S., too. This is a larger systemic problem.
But the larger issue is what I mentioned, i.e., that many states [wikipedia.org] have placed ALL death sentences in a kind of "legal limbo" due to various concerns. Others have convoluted appeals processes that drag on for decades. Others (notably Texas) seem to "fast-track" as many as possible. The kind of inconsistency shown by the legal system across the U.S. with this issue already is rather concerning.
We know that we have imprisoned innocent people too; so should we ban prisons? Even if they are freed, years (probably the best years) of their lives have been wasted.
Yes, I made a similar argument in my youthful days too when debating the death penalty opponents. The reasoning now seems incredibly flawed to me -- a miscarriage of justice is not made better by killing someone. If they want to kill themselves because of a wrongful conviction and imprisonment, that would be their choice. Simply because the justice system sometimes makes egregious errors is not a justification for the state executing people.
The simple fact is that a wrongful conviction has a CHANCE of being overturned and the person gets a CHANCE at perhaps living out the rest of his/her life. You're right that you can never restore those lost years to someone, but -- whatever side of the death penalty debate one is on -- I think it's rather disingenuous to argue there isn't something a BIT more permanent about execution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30 2017, @10:36PM
Apparently the English have forsaken the ideas of Blackstone: Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Benjamin Franklin picked up on this theme and made it 100 guilty persons. It was codified into American Common Law in the 18th century. Despots and authoritarians flip it on their head, however, using their ends to justify their means.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday January 30 2017, @10:22PM
It also isn't much of a punishment, sitting in a nice clean quiet room with so much free time they can sit around painting. Frankly I think they ought to give them life on the "hoe squad" which for those that don't know the max prison in our state they work their asses from sun up to sun down 6 days a week, they are growing their own food, they are sewing their own outfits, they are busting their asses from dawn to dusk. I've seen an episode of Cops where a guy drove across the state line in a car that was ON FIRE with 3 wheels gone and when the cops asked him why he was willing to risk burning to death just to get across the state line? He didn't want to be on the hoe squad and happily confessed to some crimes he did in the neighboring state. THAT is how hard they work 'em.
That said if you are gonna execute them? Just go back to the firing squad. Its quick, no risk of it going wrong,hell you wouldn't even need anybody to actually pull the trigger anymore as you could just have some laser sighted barrels controlled by a computer program. With the electric chair and drugs too many things can go wrong, but 5 rifle caliber rounds to the heart? Yeah your ass is dead before the smoke clears the barrel.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.