Discussion for article #226155
Where’s Stephen King when you need him?
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Kyrie eleison
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Words fail.
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It was Another Time in America. A Golden Era. One that the Republican Party wants to take us back to, when Things Were Simple, regulations were lax and unenforced, and questions went both unasked and “answers” were few and far between.
Imagine, if you will, a Santorum America, with abominations in charge like Huckabee &/or Cruz &/or Gomert &/or Bachmann &/or Palin &/or … the list is hideously long.
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I got around to reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” a couple of years ago and, except for the embarassing Galt-like lecture about colonization at the end, it was a far more sophisticated book than I was expecting. One of the things that most impressed me was the way she built a growing sense of menace into her description of Tom’s journey from New Orleans to LeGree’s plantation, deep, deep in the bayou, far from the nearest town or other plantation. She conveys perfectly how even a few miles of isolation meant to a complete loss of what little protection the law and public opinion gave slaves. Her point is that just a few miles of distance equated to complete lawlessness, a journey to a place where there were no limits on what those with power could do to you.
And that’s what you had here. This place was isolated in a way people today cannot understand… Population density was lower–in Florida’s case, insanely lower, the roads were bad. No phones, no Internet, no nosy reporters with TV cameras, no communication with the outside world at all except through censored and monitored letters, no way to check the records of job applicants.
Of course the place was a magnet for brutal sadistic thugs and pedophiles, and this in an age when casual brutality was the norm–especially in the South–and sexual abuse by authority figures and “respectable” people was hidden beneath a veil of willful blindness. And there were these boys, all deemed disposable and irredeemable detritus. Kill one accidentally in the course of “disciplining” him? Bury him in the graveyard and tell his parents he died of the flu. Murder one to keep him from talking about sexual abuse? Toss him into a shallow unmarked grave and tell the parents you have no record of his ever having been there.
Jesus wept, what a nightmare. What an absolute horrific nightmare.
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Imagine. . . The place closed in 2011. That is one long “Golden Era”. My heart breaks for these families.
We are not so far removed today. We have a private prison system that is demanding prisoners in order to thrive. We have created a market for imprisoning our citizens.
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Sleepers is worth a watch.
This goes on in Arizona even today. Arizona’s unregulated “boot camps” were notorious in the 1990’s when California used to send their minor children to Arizona for minor infractions. Some of them were murdered there. And no one ever paid for the horrible abuse and murders of these children.
Think I’m exaggerating? Think again. http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/arizona-boys-ranch
This particular nightmare was finally ended after the horrible, tragic abuse and death of one of the children was investigated by the Los Angeles Times in one of the most consequential pieces of investigative journalism in the newspaper’s history. Before that, the deaths and horrible abuse of California children in Arizona fell on deaf ears by politicians, who, in their profound cowardice, allowed these children to be shipped to Arizona and abused and murdered for fear of being called “soft on crime.” And it was a policy of William Jefferson Clinton to encourage these unregulated “boot camps” to deal with wayward young teens on a national level. It was one of the biggest moral outrages of the Clinton Presidency.
Nobody ever paid a price for the deaths of these young kids, and Arizona is still notorious for their unregulated facilities dealing with young offenders. Thank the merciful Good Lord that California doesn’t send their youth there any more, but it is heart-breaking to know that even now Arizona can be a death camp for children, every bit as bad as Florida.
Edit – you can read about the death of Nicholaus Contrarez here, if you have the heart to do it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholaus_Contreraz
The day before he died, he was quoted as saying "Lord, help me, I need help, I need help..."
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I’m supposed to believe that Clinton knowingly and with malice encouraged this.
Sorry. No can do.
You also don’t bring up the judge in PA who sent kids to the slammer for minor infractions.
He, at least, was stopped and sent to the slammer, too.
On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison as a result of his conviction.[36] He is currently being held at the Federal Correctional Institution, Pekin, a federal prison in Illinois which holds minimum and medium security inmates. He is scheduled for release in 2035, when he will be 85 years old—at his age, effectively a life sentence.[37] He appealed his conviction to the Third Circuit and it was rejected on July 25, 2013.[38]
Yes, it’s wiki. Works for me.
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I did not say, and you did not read in my post, anywhere that William Jefferson Clinton “knowingly” and “with malice” encouraged the torture and murder of young teens in “boot camps.” Reading comprehension is your friend!
However, it was Clinton’s POLICY to establish “boot camps” for youthful “offenders” and this was the result of his policies. He was a big advocate for children’s “boot camps” and it was during his presidency that the “boot camp” movement was funded and expanded nationally. It was one of his biggest failings, and I am and was a supporter of William Jefferson Clinton. Sorry if it offends you. but it is historical fact.
Clinton said he anticipates signing legislation that will put up to 100,000 new police officers on the streets, authorize the building of more prisons, banning assault weapons and setting up boot camps to keep youthful offenders from becoming hardened criminals. http://articles.latimes.com/1993-11-28/news/mn-61791_1_crime-legislation
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act
Another provision of the Act authorized the hiring of 100,000 more police officers, initiate “boot camps” for delinquent minors, and allocated a substantial amount of money to build new prisons.
And side note, why the hell would I bring up the Pennsylvania case? I am well aware of it of course, and it just goes to demonstrate that these abhorrent practices still happen in this country. And people are as indifferent to abuses now as they were during the Clinton years.
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Boot camps were/are not a bad idea. People have been shipped off to the military for a long time to make “men of them.” Didn’t always work, of course.
This was early in his presidency. As always, the devil is in the details.
BTW, this was legislated by Congress. Why don’t you hold them responsible?
The threat of “being sent to Marianna” wasn’t often heard when I was growing up in the panhandle, but when an adult explained that a “juvenile delinquent” you were acquainted with had been sent there, you’d likely never see that guy again. I never knew specifically what went on there because the guys who did come back never talked about it, but it was supposed to be a very brutal place. Just the possibility of being sent to Marianna kept a few of us in line.
NC
Alas, and these were “the good old days” to many.
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In a Republican world, this would be the norm…privately operated, for profit.
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Point 1: The military is not the same thing as unregulated “boot camps,” especially for-profit boot camps that proliferated in hellholes like Arizona during the 1990s. There is utterly no equivalence there.
Point 2: I hold Clinton and every cowardly politician responsible for the torture and deaths of these youths – as I noted here:[quote=“TomBlue, post:9, topic:8204”]
. Before that, the deaths and horrible abuse of California children in Arizona fell on deaf ears by politicians, who, in their profound cowardice</b?, allowed these children to be shipped to Arizona and abused and murdered for fear of being called “soft on crime.”
[/quote]
Point 3: William Jefferson Clinton supported sending children to “boot camps” from the time of his first presidential campaign – he promoted them in his 1992 acceptance speech to the DNC – and the vast majority of Congress, including Democrats, and the majority of politicians of both parties around the country, strongly supported, and passed and enforced legislation creating and expanding these programs across the country even when it became clear that the abuses were so horrific that children were being tortured and murdered.
The stories I linked to above made national news in 1998 and 1999 while Clinton was still president.
Yes, I hold Pete Wilson responsible, I hold the State of California responsible, and I hold William Jefferson Clinton responsible for the cowardly and studied indifference that resulted in the death of Nicholaus Contrarez and so many others. I will not give Clinton nor any other cowardly politician a pass. It was one of the great failings of his presidency. It is a blot and a shame on his presidency. He asked for it. He promoted it. Even when it was known that abuses were widespread.
You can’t smooth that over and ignore it ever happened.
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I’m going to be very insensitive here and ask why stories like this are more often than not about the South. Up here in librul New York, we call people who do things like that serial killers. What are they called down there? Administrators?