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    kingwolfAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:07pm

    Not the same state, but you get the idea. Fuck this shit.

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      ThisGuyAgainSMHkingwolf
      6/13/16 7:26pm

      So you’re saying criminals should not be in jail?

      Can’t just post a picture of some girl holding up a sign with limited information, and expect people to take her side automatically. What did she do to get into jail? If it was for pot, then fine she should be let go. If it’s for murdering her children, should we let her go?

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      kingwolfThisGuyAgainSMH
      6/13/16 7:46pm

      I can tell you’re not very smart. The point is that we spend more on keeping people in prison than we spend on education. The whole prison system needs reform. Prison is supposed to be about reforming criminals into better citizens. Too often we see the opposite effect. We see people that were imprisoned for non-violent crimes such as drug possession getting mixed up with worse prisoners. Prisons are the greatest recruitment centers for gangs.

      The privatization of prisons was a bad idea. I mean, look at all this money it costs us. And they can’t afford fucking A/C? We have A/C in schools. What the fuck do you think these prisons are spending all this extra money on? Answer: The owners hoard it for themselves.

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    aranelAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:17pm

    Reminder to those who live further north: Air-conditioning is a luxury [that no one wants to live without] in, say, northern Illinois. It’s a necessity in Louisiana.

    This is like not providing heat in a Minnesota winter.

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      Ookiaranel
      6/13/16 7:49pm

      Adding on to this reminder. With the kind of humidity Louisiana has, summer nights do not cool off. It could stay 75-80 in the middle of the night easily and regularly.

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      PrettyPrettyBunniPrincessOoki
      6/13/16 9:05pm

      As a Californian, when I moved to Virginia, this was the biggest shock. Even when it’s crazy hot during the day, it’s cool in the evening and at night. In the south there is absolutely no relief. One of the reasons I move back....

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    septembergrrlAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:25pm

    Added stupidity of this: The guards and other prison employees must feel the heat too, and are no doubt prone to dehydration, heat exhaustion, and all those other fun things that go with spending eight hours a day in 88-degree heat. So they were so eager to keep prisoners miserable, they spent a million dollars to screw over their own employees.

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      AnglKatseptembergrrl
      6/13/16 7:30pm

      I have a family member that works in a prison in the deep south but a different state. The AC regularly breaks down in the summer, and she spends her entire day literally dripping with sweat in 85+ degree rooms with no air flow. They will “fix” it and it happens again. I think they care as little about their employees as they do the prisoners.

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      H2SO4AnglKat
      6/13/16 8:01pm

      Time to find a different job......

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    CaliforlifeAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:06pm

    White men denying air livable air cooling to black men and other poor folk. . Seems about right.

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      Flying SquidCaliforlife
      6/13/16 7:09pm

      And locking them in a prison named after a place in the land their ancestors were kidnapped from.

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      CaliforlifeFlying Squid
      6/13/16 7:12pm

      Every time I see that fucking prison name.. an angel loses it wings.

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    HowManyRoadsAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:13pm

    Three different people who each committed crimes that ended in each of them being sentenced to death and put on the same death row at the same time each have conditions that make them prone to heat-related illness?

    Get a panel of objective doctors to confirm this thing - the most outlandish thing ever written in human history - and I’ll buy the A/C myself

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      AnglKatHowManyRoads
      6/13/16 7:31pm

      I would be inventing diseases too if it meant escaping from torture.

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      jezbannedHowManyRoads
      6/13/16 7:37pm

      Nothing in the article says they got on death row at the same time. It is not particularly crazy that 3 inmates out of a population of about 80 on death row would have conditions that make exposure to heat a problem:

      All three inmates suffer from hypertension. Ball, 60, is a diabetic; Code, 57 has hepatitis; and Magee, 35, is treated medically for depression. Because of these ailments, all three are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the suit said.

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    Kris-the-Needlessly-DefiantAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:12pm

    I mean, those prisoners are already getting the ultimate consequence for their actions. Now the state is actually spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure that they can still slap a bit of legal torture onto their sentences? Oh The South, I’ll just never understand you.

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      Johanna DarklightKris-the-Needlessly-Defiant
      6/13/16 7:39pm

      You’re assuming this is about justice and not just revenge.

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      kingwolfKris-the-Needlessly-Defiant
      6/13/16 8:08pm

      It has more to do with private prison owners saving money.

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    HaHaYouFoolAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:27pm

    Look, it’s not about making prison nice and comfortable for murderers, or whatever. It’s about the rest of us out here. Society. Are we the kind of people that will make another human being suffer when we have the ability to alleviate that suffering, simply because we cannot be bothered? Or because we’re that fucking cheap? What kind of people does that make us? Not very good, I would say. Criminal, you might say.

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      FartCannonOnlineHaHaYouFool
      6/13/16 8:50pm

      I think that the past few years have shown we are exactly the kind of people who would do this.

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    ThatFatScatCatAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 7:11pm
    Louisiana’s attorneys argue that the consequences would reverberate far beyond Angola’s prison walls, spawning more lawsuits from prisoners across the country demanding air-conditioned cells.

    “If we provide a non life threatening environment for these prisoners, then we’ll have to make sure ALL the prisoners EVERYWHERE don’t die of heat stroke. Can’t have that, now. No siree.”

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      0nceUp0nATimeThatFatScatCat
      6/14/16 10:17am

      Well, this would be a massive expense. Not only installing the systems in sometimes-crumbling buildings which weren’t made for it (including asbestos abatement, etc.) but also the cost of running and maintaining the systems. If air conditioning is deemed a human right, the state is facing a huge expense in every prison across the US.

      Correctional systems often have painfully thin budget as it is. People resent paying taxes for taking care of inmates and already bitch about the “luxurious” accommodations in prison.

      If you wanna criticize private prisons for putting profits over people, you’ll get no argument from me. They “save” money on corrections by paying the guards shit wages and no benefits.

      But state-run prisons are at the mercy of legislators who set their budgets, politicians who like to pound the podium and shout on television about how they’re tough on crime, but will barely allow the correction system the budget to function. They don’t care if the inmates are packed in like sardines, and they’re actually pleased if the inmates have miserable conditions. “Prison should be miserable!” The last thing they want to do is raise taxes on their constituents and tell them it was to put air conditioning in prisons. So, if this becomes a human right, the budget will come out of some other source. They’ll cut the quality of food, or programming, or recreation - something.

      The only way this will change is for people to write their legislators and let them know they’re willing to pay higher taxes to fix the conditions in prisons.

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      ThatFatScatCat0nceUp0nATime
      6/14/16 11:29am

      You’re absolutely right, on all accounts. Thanks for the thoughtful reply, sir or madam.

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    ILikeThunderstormsAnna Merlan
    6/13/16 8:27pm

    First of all, fuck the death penalty for all the usual reasons (barbaric, not applied fairly, innocent people get executed STILL, fails as a deterrent, more expensive than life imprisonment), but this is just shit icing on an awful cake. PRISONERS ARE HUMAN BEINGS, TOO, AND DESERVE TO HAVE LIVABLE CONDITIONS IN THEIR CELLS.

    Come on, this isn’t the Crusades, we should be better than this.

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      tivoniAnna Merlan
      6/13/16 8:28pm

      The prison is privately owned/operated, but the state pays for the legal defense - not private company anything, but if they are forced to provide AC it would cut into the company profits

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        Zabellativoni
        6/13/16 9:45pm

        That would explain it, actually. Good financial sense.

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