{"id":1426,"date":"2004-05-14T11:35:05","date_gmt":"2004-05-14T15:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/05\/14\/prison-abuse\/"},"modified":"2004-05-14T11:35:05","modified_gmt":"2004-05-14T15:35:05","slug":"prison-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/05\/14\/prison-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a329'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, several years ago, in another incarnation, I was a political worker.&nbsp; That is, I worked as a legislative aide in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sen.ca.gov\">California State Senate<\/a>.&nbsp;<br \/>\nI carried bills for my boss on all sorts of topics.&nbsp; I also took<br \/>\nsome public policy classes via Cal State Sacramento, and one of the<br \/>\nassignments was to write a case study of a California public policy<br \/>\nissue.&nbsp; I focused upon a bill that would have allowed journalists<br \/>\nsome access to prisoners in the state system, but which came at least<br \/>\npartially in response to documented abuse allegations like the ones we<br \/>\nare seeing in Abu Ghraib right now.<\/p>\n<p>You can find my case study here (<a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/gems\/natep\/casestudyfinal.pdf\">sb434case<\/a>).&nbsp; Please be aware that this case appeared in substantially different form in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.igs.berkeley.edu\/publications\/detailbooks\/makinggovtwork.html\">a book published by IGS Press<\/a>, and they hold the copyright to that version.<\/p>\n<p>When we get over the outrage of what happened to the prisoners at Abu<br \/>\nGhraib (and unlike the massively blind James Inhofe, Republican senator<br \/>\nfrom Oklahoma, we must be outraged, not outraged that people are<br \/>\ngetting outraged over the foul treatment of &#8220;bad guys&#8221;), we will have<br \/>\nto begin addressing the oversight of militarily run prisons, especially<br \/>\nin occupied territories.&nbsp; This is too important to leave just to<br \/>\nthe executive branch of the government, as we&#8217;ve done so far.&nbsp;<br \/>\nCongress and the courts must be involved.&nbsp; The system is only<br \/>\ndesigned to work if the whole system is involved; if we cut off pieces<br \/>\nof the system, like the judiciary and the legislature, from their<br \/>\nnecessary oversight activities, we risk the creation of a republican<br \/>\nempire, such as Rome enjoyed in the days of the early Caesars.<\/p>\n<p>So take my case as a thought-provocation piece, and I will stew more on<br \/>\nthe parallels between the late Roman republic\/early Roman empire and<br \/>\nmodern America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, several years ago, in another incarnation, I was a political worker.&nbsp; That is, I worked as a legislative aide in the California State Senate.&nbsp; I carried bills for my boss on all sorts of topics.&nbsp; I also took some public policy classes via Cal State Sacramento, and one of the assignments was to write [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-n0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}