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Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason.

But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out...

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The immediately worst thing to read about for me was his time in the court basement cell. Are they denying people medical care? Broken wrist, diabetes? What? Shouldn't they be in a hospital?

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

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The immediately worst thing to read about for me was his time in the court basement cell. Are they denying people medical care? Broken wrist, diabetes? What? Shouldn't they be in a hospital?

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At this point I mostly just consider that par for the course. Heck, in California, a prison doctor actually was sterilizing the women without their consent. Hundreds of them.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/11/19422681-lawmakers-call-for
-investigation-into-sterilization-of-female-inmates?lite

You'll notice that the wrist in question was probably broken by the police.

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Dr. James Heinrich, a prison OB-GYN who referred women prisoners for the surgery, told CIR the money spent sterilizing inmates was minimal “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children – as they procreated more.”

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Hmm. Can't tell if the judge was particularly harsh on the guy because there was a vested interest to disprove the suggestion of racism in the system, or as an extension of typical authoritarian punishment doled out to subversives once they are subject to "justice."

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It all goes from predictable to stupefying when they actually refuse to arrest him repeatedly.

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Heck, in California, a prison doctor actually was sterilizing the women without their consent. Hundreds of them.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/11/19422681-lawmakers-call-for
-investigation-into-sterilization-of-female-inmates?lite

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So when Michael Bloomberg brings his money to your community to get candidates he favors elected, remember the enduring, not so subtle racism of the police department and judicial system of the city he runs.

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Jesus... It sounds like the women were pressured into having those procedures, not strapped down and forcibly sterilised. Still, fucking creepy, the clearly stated motivations of those trying to sterilise them.

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Originally posted by kpo:
Yes, but what was the manner of the coercion? Was it just a good sales pitch, that it would be in the woman's interest? Was it some sort of offer of favourable prison treatment?

The legal requirements for duress are quite tight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duress

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It sounds like the women were pressured into having those procedures, not strapped down

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Originally posted by Geezer:
So when Michael Bloomberg brings his money to your community to get candidates he favors elected, remember the enduring, not so subtle racism of the police department and judicial system of the city he runs.


"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

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Originally posted by kpo:
Yes, but what was the manner of the coercion? Was it just a good sales pitch, that it would be in the woman's interest? Was it some sort of offer of favourable prison treatment?

The legal requirements for duress are quite tight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duress

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It sounds like the women were pressured into having those procedures, not strapped down

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Did you read the whole article? One of the inmates claims that she was strapped down for a C-section and partially sedated when they tried talking her into it.

They were asking people for consent to sterilize during labour and childbirth, which is illegal because the emotional stress of the situation can affect judgement. Many of them were also pressured during C-section surgery, which can be life and death and which patients may have been afraid to refuse as they may have believed the doctors would withhold proper care.

On a linked article on the same site, another inmate describes how they used emotional manipulation referring to her other five children about how the woman was a "bad mother" if she didn't do it, with some rather unlovely suggestions about getting CPS involved.

Not to mention, they're PRISONERS and subject to the doctors and guards. So even if none of the above happened... Of course it was coercion and non-consensual.

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Byte, your cut-off point for consent comes much, much before mine.

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Though we might just have to agree to disagree on this point. So I wouldn't say these women were 'forcibly' sterilised

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Guy should lose his medical license at least.

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Use of force does not constitute the entire spectrum of non-consent.

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And if you think emotional manipulation along the lines of threatening to take away someone's kids is not duress, then I don't even know what the fuck.

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The spectrum of non-consent for me, is doing something to someone:

a) forcibly, against their will
b) without their knowledge, or understanding

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Originally posted by Storymark:
Once again Mr. "Non-Partisan" takes an actually non-partisan article, and the only comment he can make is to attack the left, making it partisan.

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You're missing a big one. Coercion

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Requirements[edit]
For duress to qualify as a defense, four requirements must be met:[1]
The threat must be of serious bodily harm or death
The threatened harm must be greater than the harm caused by the crime
The threat must be immediate and inescapable
The defendant must have become involved in the situation through no fault of his or her own

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The threat must be of serious bodily harm or death

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The threatened harm must be greater than the harm caused by the crime

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The threat must be immediate and inescapable

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The defendant must have become involved in the situation through no fault of his or her own

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Originally posted by kpo:
Byte, take the case of the woman who they warned might be reported to CPS. That's only a threat that the children *might* be taken away - it's dependent on other factors. So it doesn't meet criterion 3: 'The threat must be immediate and inescapable'. If the children are not living in squalor, then the mother should be ok. If the children *are* - then criterion 4 is not met, that the woman has 'become involved in the situation through no fault of his or her own'.

The allegations are definitely disgusting coercive behaviour, and are 'coercion' by the dictionary definition of the word, but the way I read the law they don't meet the legal standard, which seems to be the equivalent of having a gun to your head.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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I find it astounding you see no criminal element in this.

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"Coercion" is the name of a criminal offense in several US states.
In Oregon, for instance, the law reads:[2]
§ 163.275 Coercion
(1) A person commits the crime of coercion when the person compels or induces another person to engage in conduct from which the other person has a legal right to abstain, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which the other person has a legal right to engage, by means of instilling in the other person a fear that, if the other person refrains from the conduct compelled or induced or engages in conduct contrary to the compulsion or inducement, the actor or another will:
(a) Unlawfully cause physical injury to some person;
(b) Unlawfully cause damage to property;
(c) Engage in conduct constituting a crime;
(d) Falsely accuse some person of a crime or cause criminal charges to be instituted against the person;
(e) Cause or continue a strike, boycott or other collective action injurious to some persons business, except that such a threat is not deemed coercive when the act or omission compelled is for the benefit of the group in whose interest the actor purports to act;
(f) Testify falsely or provide false information or withhold testimony or information with respect to anothers legal claim or defense; or
(g) Unlawfully use or abuse the persons position as a public servant by performing some act within or related to official duties, or by failing or refusing to perform an official duty, in such manner as to affect some person adversely.

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Originally posted by kpo:

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Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason.

But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out...

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Fascinating article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/i-got-myself-arres
ted-so-i-could-look-inside-the-justice-system/282360/]