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Adam
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http://www.physorg.com/news126279826.html
Nearly a month after a published study on increasing U.S. prison population revealed more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars, two University of Michigan professors are aiming to elevate the public debate on prison reform.
The timing, they say, should coincide with the intensely debated presidential campaign, where the growing prison population topic should be considered along with the economy and Iraq War.
"This is an invisible subject," said U-M professor Buzz Alexander. "It's a crisis and no one is really talking about it."
In late February, the Pew Center on the States reported that about 2.3 million people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons, and local jails. Last year, population grew by 25,000. After three decades of growth, prison population has tripled. The results, according to Alexander and U-M professor Jeffrey Morenoff, show an alarming and widening gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged.
"The current system is destroying the life-course of those incarcerated, and not providing them with ways to become part of the American economic and cultural fabric," said Alexander, professor of English and founder of the Prison Creative Arts Project, which inspires inmates to express themselves through the arts.
"We are not making active efforts to rehabilitate people in prison," Morenoff said. "The rehabilitation ideal died in the 1970s and 1980s. But there are examples of rehab programs in and outside prison that are successful and lower rates of recidivism. The criminal justice system hasn't caught up with the social science."
Each U-M professor has his own way of drawing attention to what they both consider as a national crisis that goes unnoticed and hardly discussed. For Alexander, it's through engaging prisoners to create and participate in the arts; for Morenoff, it's through extensive research into the causes of recidivism rates.
Since 1990, Alexander has worked with state prisoners, offering workshops on visual and performing arts. The 13th annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners runs through April 9. The exhibit is held at the Duderstadt Studio Gallery on U-M's North Campus.
For instance, one in 36 adult Hispanic men, one in 15 black adult men; and one in nine black men ages 20 to 34 are behind bars. While rates of violent crimes has fallen by 25 percent over the last 20 years, prison population has tripled. Overall, the U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation. Second is China, with 1.5 million people in behind bars.
While there appears a public need to make sure people are punished for crimes, the financial cost to incarcerate are staggering. Morenoff estimates that it costs $25,000-$30,000 per year (in public money) to incarcerate each prisoner. That cost increases significantly with older prisoners and those who need medical care.
"Right now, we have punishment for the sake of deterrence, and making examples of people," Morenoff said. "But the deep-seated reason is that people feel that justice is being served.
"You would think that sending more people to prison would lower crime rates, but there is some evidence, albeit controversial, that communities which send more people to prison have higher crimes rates," he said. "Incarceration can deplete communities of their assets and disrupt their social fabric, which can actually increase crimes rates.
"It's still an open question." |
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Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:50 pm |
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Dave Starr
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quote:
Adam schreef:
"Right now, we have punishment for the sake of deterrence, and making examples of people," Morenoff said. "But the deep-seated reason is that people feel that justice is being served.
DS - It's not justice to punish someone for doing a crime? Everything has a price; do the crime, do the time.
"You would think that sending more people to prison would lower crime rates, but there is some evidence, albeit controversial, that communities which send more people to prison have higher crimes rates," he said. "Incarceration can deplete communities of their assets and disrupt their social fabric, which can actually increase crimes rates.
DS - When did felons become "community assets"? Getting criminals off the streets disrupts our social fabric? Morenoff must have fallen out of his ivory tower & bumped his head.
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_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:11 am |
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twotap
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no smoking, no weight benchs, no porno flicks or mags, No TV, Bologna sandwichs for lunch. Jeez maybe after a few months of this they will rearange their lives so they dont come back.
You probably know him as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” a name given to him years ago by the media. It’s a name he certainly has earned as head of the nation’s third largest Sheriff’s Office which employs over 3000 people. But even before he became Sheriff in 1993, Joe Arpaio was one tough lawman. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1953, and as a Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, NV, police officer for almost five years, Arpaio went on to build a federal law enforcement career and a reputation for fighting crime and drug trafficking around the world.
He began his career as a federal narcotics agent, establishing a stellar record in infiltrating drug organizations from Turkey to the Middle East to Mexico, Central, and South America to cities around the U.S. His expertise and success led him to top management positions around the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He concluded his remarkable 32-year federal career as head of the DEA for Arizona.
In 1992 Arpaio successfully campaigned to become the Sheriff of Maricopa County. Since then he has been reelected to an unprecedented four 4-year terms. During his tenure as Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arpaio has consistently earned extraordinarily high public approval ratings.
With over four decades experience in law enforcement, Arpaio knows what the public wants, “The public is my boss,” he says, “so I serve the public.” He has served them well by establishing several unique programs.
Arpaio has over 10,000 inmates in his jail system. In August, 1993, he started the nation’s largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story that has attracted the attention of government officials, presidential candidates, and media worldwide.
Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.
Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs about 15 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.
Another program Arpaio is very wellknown for is the pink under shorts he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. The same is true for the Sheriff’s handcuffs. When they started disappearing, he ordered pink handcuffs as a replacement. And later, when the Sheriff learned the calming, psychological effects of the color pink—sheets, towels, socks— everything inmates wear, except for the old-fashioned black and white striped uniform, were dyed pink.
Arpaio has started another controversial program, the website WWW.MCSO.org, so that all those arrested (about 300 per day) are recorded on the Sheriff’s website as they are booked and processed into jail. Just under a million hits daily come into the website, making it one of the most visible law enforcement sites on the World Wide Web.
In addition to these tough measures, the Sheriff has launched rehabilitative programs like “Hard Knocks High,” the only accredited high school under a Sheriff in an American jail, and ALPHA, an anti-substance-abuse program that has greatly reduced recidivism.
As chief law enforcement officer for the county, Arpaio continues to reduce crime with hard-hitting enforcement methods. His deputies and detectives have solved several high-profile murder cases, including nine child murders. The posse, whose ranks have increased to 3,000 members under Arpaio, is the nation’s largest volunteer posse. Posse men and women help in search and rescue and other traditional police work as well as in special operations like rounding up deadbeat parents, fighting prostitution, patrolling malls during holidays, and investigating animal cruelty complaints. The posse’s contributions are invaluable and essentially free to taxpayers.
No wonder Sheriff Arpaio has been profiled in over 2,000 U.S. and foreign newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs. His leadership and the excellent work of his staff have catapulted the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office into the ranks of elite law enforcement agencies.
On a personal note, Sheriff Arpaio and his wife Ava have been married for over 48 years and have two children, both residing in the Phoenix area. The Arpaios have four grandchildren.
Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of Maricopa County.
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And of course the heart of the matter.
(CNN) -- An Atlanta, Georgia, judge who ordered white lawyers out of his courtroom so he could lecture African-American defendants called that decision a "mistake" Tuesday night.
Judge Marvin Arrington says he is fed up with the defendants he keeps seeing in his courtroom.
"In retrospect, it was a mistake," Judge Marvin Arrington told CNN. "Because my sheriff said to me, 'Judge, that message should be given to everybody' --
'Don't violate the law, make something out of yourself, go to school, find a role model, somebody that will help you advance your life.'"
And there in a nutshell is the answer to the rising prison population.TT
Arrington, who is African-American, is a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes the city of Atlanta.
He said he got fed up seeing a parade of young black defendants shuffle into his courtroom and decided to address them one day last week -- out of the earshot of white lawyers.
"I came out and saw the defendants, and it was about 99.9 percent Afro-Americans," Arrington told CNN affiliate WSB-TV of Atlanta, "and at some point in time, I excused some lawyers -- most of them white -- and said to the young people in here, 'What in the world are you doing with your lives?'"
The judge thought his message would make a greater impact if he delivered it to a black-only audience, he said. Watch judge talk about decision to lecture black defendants »
"I didn't want them to think I was talking down to them; trying to embarrass them or insult them; be derogatory toward them, and I was just saying, 'Please get yourself together,'" Arrington said.
In his Tuesday night appearance on CNN, Arrington told Anderson Cooper that that seeing the same faces walk in and out of his courtroom year after year takes its toll.
"I ask them all the the time, 'What progress are we making with you?' And sometime they cannot answer," he said.
He said he would open his court doors to everyone on Thursday and "I am going to give the same identical speech: 'You've got to do better.'" E-mail to a friend |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:46 am |
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Demeralda
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| He's an evil fascist. His "excellent" work consists of cruel and unusual punishment. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:45 am |
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Dave Starr
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| The judge in Atlanta? |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:50 am |
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twotap
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quote:
He's an evil fascist. His "excellent" work consists of cruel and unusual punishment.
Ya but that pink underwear should bring out their femnin side. 
Actually whats the cruel and unusual part?  I dont see it.
You talking cruel and unusual how about the people on the outside who have to try and exist alongside these low lifes while they are trying to score their next drug of choice or looking for the next guliable lady to impregnate and than abandon. Or the victim of one of their robberys or muggins who have to try and put their lives back together. Oh ya liberal compassion for these clowns it warms your heart. Go Sheriff joe. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:56 am |
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Demeralda
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Non sequitur. You're suggesting that because I think they are treated cruelly that I somehow condone the crimes they have committed. That is not the case. I personally feel it's cruel and unusual to keep someone imprisoned in a desert in over 100 degree heat (and cold nights), without shelter, and without proper food. 15 cents a day for food? Yeah right -- that's just cruel.
Two wrongs don't make a right. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:36 am |
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twotap
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Ya but what about the pink undies?  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:38 am |
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Ted Jankowski
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Can someone tell me what he has done that is cruel and unususal?
Sorry I must be dense. We are not talking about Torture? Color of Underwear or uniforms is not cruel.
Living in Tents is not cruel.
Having to grow your own food is not cruel.
Eating Bologna, while it being everyday. Doesn't constitute cruel. If so I guess I was tortured most of my childhood. Since my family didn't have a lot and lived on a budget.
What that he has done could be construde that way? |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:41 am |
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twotap
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[quote]Living in Tents is not cruel.
Having to grow your own food is not cruel.
Eating Bologna, while it being everyday. Doesn't constitute cruel
.[
Well its cruel to the bleeding hearts among us.
Ah what the hell lets just ask the taxpayers of Arizona to foot the bill for a high rise luxury type incarceration condo and not cause these folks any discomfort while they pay their debt to society. Color Tv , gourmet meals, a weight room so they can bulk up and the next time they mug some MF they can stomp em so bad they wont be able to identify shit. No problem since they are already paying for thousands of illegals education, housing, health care, food whats a few more tax dollars. |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:09 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Demeralda schreef:
Non sequitur. You're suggesting that because I think they are treated cruelly that I somehow condone the crimes they have committed. That is not the case. I personally feel it's cruel and unusual to keep someone imprisoned in a desert in over 100 degree heat (and cold nights), without shelter, and without proper food. 15 cents a day for food? Yeah right -- that's just cruel.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
They have shelter - tents. Good enough for our troops, good enough for cons.
Also, that 15 cents is the cost of lunch, not all meals.
Of course, with a massive tax increase, they could build an air conditioned palace with big screen HDTV's in every cell, and serve the prisoners gourmet meals. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:20 am |
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Demeralda
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I'm done with you guys for today. You're pissing me off. Why do you think what I am saying is that they should enjoy LUXURY?! Can't you make a point EVER without resorting to some ridiculous, over-the-top example that doesn't even match what I've said?
Unbelievable!
Keeping people in over 100 degree heat is cruel. It's also cruel to our troops. Fifteen cents a meal is cruel. YES IT IS TORTURE. And moreover, it's just revenge, and that's what you guys really like, isn't it?
I don't give a crap about what they wear, as long as it's some protection from the elements. But again, that is solely to humiliate them.
You guys are so frickin Draconian, hey, why don't we return to public stocks? Crowds can come up, throw food and refuse at them? Spit at them?
Have fun at the Inquisition.
Last edited by Demeralda on Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:31 am |
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Adam Ford
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:10 pm |
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Adam Ford
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quote:
twotap schreef:
no smoking, no weight benchs, no porno flicks or mags, No TV, Bologna sandwichs for lunch. Jeez maybe after a few months of this they will rearange their lives so they dont come back.
On the other extreme is Bluefields, Nicaragua.
"Outside the Bluefields prison, two maximum security prisoners have been brought out to the street - no handcuffs - and told to cut the grass with huge machetes. These prisoners are each serving a 30-year term for murder, but they hardly work and instead idly chat with pedestrians, occasionally whack the grass but usually just watch the girls and life go by.
Most of the guards are inside a classroom studying Nicaraguan history with their classmates, the inmates. For the more hands-on prisoners, a workshop churns out jewellery, crafted chairs and green and yellow Rasta-style beanies."
"Law enforcement in Bluefields is practically invisible "I just had a Swiss tourist tell me that when she went to the supermarket they tried to sell her cocaine," says Orozco."
Given the massive amount of cocaine in town, violence is surprisingly rare. Gunfights are nearly unheard of and most of the town seems to lounge around or play baseball all day and then erupt into a frenzy of energy by late afternoon, fuelled by Flor de Cana, a Nicaraguan rum, fresh fish, an endless supply of native oysters, and "the white lobster".
Full article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=272&objectid=10491443&pnum=0
Catch of the day: Cocaine
5:00AM Saturday February 09, 2008
By Jonathan Franklin
A Nicaraguan town owes its existence to cocaine tossed overboard by traffickers fleeing US Coast Guard patrols. Photo / Richard Robinson
At first glance, Bluefields in Nicaragua looks like any other rum-soaked, Rastafarian-packed, hammock-infested Caribbean paradise. But Bluefields has a secret.
People here don't have to work. Every week, sometimes every day, 35kg sacks of cocaine drift in from the sea. The economy of this entire town of 50,000 tranquil souls is addicted to cocaine.
Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation. Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the area extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very fast fishing boats.
The US military calls them "go fast boats", which is a bureaucratic way of describing these mini-water-rockets. Typically these 12m boats have 800 horsepower of outboard motors bolted to the stern. A Porsche 911 Turbo, by comparison, has 485 horsepower.
While they are very fast, they are also very visible to the array of radars set up by roaming US spy planes, Coastguard cutters and helicopters which regularly monitor the speeding cocaine traffickers.
When the Americans get close, the traffickers toss the cocaine overboard, both to eliminate evidence and lighten their load in an escape attempt.
"They throw most of it off," says a Lt Commander in the US Coastguard. "I have been on four interdictions and we have confiscated about 6000 pounds [2720kg] of cocaine, and I'd say equal that much was dumped into the ocean."
Those bales of cocaine float, and the currents bring them west right into the chain of islands, beaches and cays which make up the huge lagoons that surround Bluefields on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast.
"There are no jobs here, unemployment is 85 per cent," says Moises Arana, who was mayor of Bluefields from 2001 to 2005.
"It is sad to say, but the drugs have made contributions. Look at the beautiful houses, those mansions come from drugs. We had a women come into the local electronics store with a milk bucket stuffed full of cash. She was this little Miskito [native] woman and she had $80,000."
Hujo Sugo, a historian of Bluefields, says the floating coke has created a new local hobby.
"People here now go beachcombing for miles, they walk until they find packets. Even the lobster fisherman now go out with the pretence of fishing but really they are looking for la langosta blanca - the white lobster."
Given the remote setting and lack of infrastructure, there are few roads, few cars and the biggest shop in Bluefields sells nothing more sophisticated than a washing machine or TV set.
So what do the locals do with all this cocaine? They sell it to travelling buyers who cruise the coast, disguised as used clothes vendors.
"We know there are small shop owners who do this," says Yorlene Orozco, the local judge. "We are talking about people without a profession, no home, no job. One day later they have a new car, go to the casino and are building a home that costs I don't know how many thousands of dollars."
Law enforcement in Bluefields is practically invisible "I just had a Swiss tourist tell me that when she went to the supermarket they tried to sell her cocaine," says Orozco.
The police and Navy have few resources and less trust from the local public. Bluefields is effectively an anarchist nation - no Government, no organised institutions and the rules are made by community groups.
Given the massive amount of cocaine in town, violence is surprisingly rare. Gunfights are nearly unheard of and most of the town seems to lounge around or play baseball all day and then erupt into a frenzy of energy by late afternoon, fuelled by Flor de Cana, a Nicaraguan rum, fresh fish, an endless supply of native oysters, and "the white lobster".
"Down by Monkey Point, a family found an entire boat ... they stashed it and bought up houses all over town. It was 57 sacks [about 1995kg]," says Jah Boon, a local Rasta man. "Those people have money and still have coke buried in them hills. It is another way of having money in the bank."
At a local price of $3500 per kg, the typical 35kg sack nets a cash sale price of $122,500, which by all accounts is spent immediately.
"Last time bags and bags washed up, everyone [felt like] a millionaire, but that money does not last." explains Helen, who runs a university research institute in Bluefields. Asked how the locals unload their cash, she said: "Beer, beer, beer. You should see the amount they drink here. Go to the pier and see how much alcohol goes out to the islands."
"When the drugs come in, everyone is happy, the banks, the stores, everyone has cash."
Arana, the former mayor, recalled one month when the village bought 28,000 cases of beer.
With literally tonnes of cocaine buried in the hills, stashed in yards and piled up around town, why doesn't the Colombian mafia storm into these remote communities and repossess their coke bales by coercion or brute force?
"Hell no," says Peter, a local businessman. "The Miskito [local Indians] are guerrillas. They have been through war. They have AK-47s and up."
The US Drug Enforcement Agency, in a report to Congress, noted: "A unique historical situation and civil conflicts have left Nicaragua with a tradition of armed rural groups and institutionalised violence that greatly complicates counter-drug enforcement."
For hundreds of years, the local Miskito Indians have fished this stretch of the Caribbean. They are master sailors, capable and brave. They endured hurricanes and storms back when GPS still meant "God Please Save me".
Many of their 4000 small fishing boats are still wooden canoes with sails made of coloured plastic, hand-sewn and fragile. But the pros have gone Japanese and switched to the 200-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor, a six-cylinder beast that is the region's connection to the world.
Because the Miskito often live in isolated communities, they maintain their own rules, independence and traditions, including the belief that whatever treasures arrive in a river or from the sea are gifts, blessed by God and to be enjoyed and shared. That includes the Caribbean lobster and the white Colombian variety.
The cocaine business is reshaping the face of these Indian communities. Tasbapauni Beach is now nicknamed "Little Miami", because so much cocaine washes up on its long shoreline that it has fuelled a construction boom. Luxurious oceanfront condos protected by security guards now sit side by side with wooden fishing shacks.
"If shit washes up on your shore it belongs to that family. Every family owns their turf," said a Miskito fisherman.
But when a fisherman finds white lobster the entire village shares the treasure, with a percentage going to the community, a smaller percentage to the church and the majority split among the crew of the small boat that found the loot.
"It is like a municipal tax," says Sergio Leon, a local reporter who has been writing about the drug situation in Bluefields for many years. "The schools and churches are not built by the Government, that money comes from the fishermen and their finds."
Drug money has been used to build a school and replace the church roof. "The pastors here get mad when they don't get their cut from the find," says Francisco a court official. "If a member of the congregation has found 15kg, the church calculates 15 times $3500, that's $52,500, and at 10 per cent they are saying: where's the $5250?"
At night, Bluefields wakes up. The locals wander down to Midnight Dream, a reggae bar that locals have nicknamed Baghdad Ranch because of the surreal nature of its party scene. Young black men wear baseball hats, NBA sleeveless shirts and Nike Air sneakers. They are bedecked in gold chains.
My new drinking buddy says: "I got protection," and lifts his Houston Rockets NBA shirt to show off the butt of a pistol. "You won't get thieved here."
Tribal music echoes from across the bay while darkened skiffs navigate the shallow waters. Half-sunken boats dot the horizon. Blown in by Hurricane Joan in 1988, these rusty wrecks are now used as guide buoys for captains entering the pier and as mini-apartments by locals.
The waiter offers carne de tortuga - a grilled slice of endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtle. While locals insist they only slaughter the older specimens, that did little to ease my sensation that here in Bluefields pleasure trumps morality.
When the lyrics scream out "I feel so high, I can touch the sky", practically on cue the three girls at the next table pile coke on the back of their ebony hands and snort openly, laughing. Then they start the maypole dance the traditional fertility festival for this month, May, which has evolved into a wickedly sexy dirty-dancing routine. A stunning line of 1.8m black women swirl on the dance floor. A Rasta man stumbles by, his nose white, clumps of coke stuck in his beard.
This party is all paid for by the white lobster, which sells for $5 a gram. "Those guys over at that table, they are Miskito, they found seven bags," explains the waiter with the hint of jealousy usually reserved for lottery winners. "He will buy a couple of ranches, two boats and have someone else fish for him."
As the night progresses, the winners slowly disappear behind a wall of Tona beer bottles. No one ever seems to get tired.
* For the well-being of individuals, some names and locations have been changed in this report.
Humble town living in the slow lane
Bluefields is a humble town. Electricity is sporadic: the main generator has been under repair for nine months.
Residents remain so isolated from Central America they speak English and feel closer to Kingston than the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. To get here the traveller must fly a 25-year-old plane that looks like a fat pigeon and doesn't fly much faster. The outside of the fuselage is tagged with instructions on how to rescue victims after a crash "Cut Here for Easy Entry".
Even today, the Nicaraguan central government classifies Bluefields as an "Autonomous Area", meaning the government pretty much ignores the region.
At the local casino the payoffs are far less if the bet is placed in Nicaraguan currency, the cordoba. A roulette win, for example, pays 30-1 if the bet is in cordoba and 36-1 if the original bet was made in dollars.
"We don't even use the Nicaraguan currency here, to the South we use the colon (from Costa Rica), in the North we use the lempira (Honduran) and everywhere else it is the dollar," said Eugenio, a local fisherman.
"We only see politicians when there is an election - or a hurricane."
The daily schedule rarely changes in Bluefields. The light comes up at 5am though there aren't a whole lot of people who notice the town is in slow motion. Streams of children in pressed blue and white uniforms amble off to the Moravian school, their mothers and grandmothers spreading the scent of fresh coconut bread through the village.
The shops sell rum, bananas, sneakers and baseball hats. A man sits by his store, cuts the calluses off his feet with a small knife, then immediately slices into a fresh coconut. The loudest noise is the shriek of a magpie or the yap of a dog.
Snagging shrimp and trapping lobster are the principal - maybe the only form - of legitimate work in Bluefields. But by all reasonable observations, work itself is barely considered legitimate.
Why not just enjoy nature's bounty? With so much fresh fish, coconut, bananas and mangoes, the idea of sweating or long-term planning seems foreign. Especially when the daily heat shoots into the upper 90s, and a two-block walk leaves you drenched in sweat. About the only work tool needed in Bluefields is a Yamaha outboard motor. Everyone who wants to search for white lobster has a V6 Yamaha 200 horsepower engine. Often these machines are racked up side by side on the back of a 25-foot fishing canoe so the lightweight wooden or fibreglass craft can practically fly.
By noon, the streets are filled with men playing cards, laying their bets on a card table, and sitting on stools made out of used Yamaha or Johnson outboard motors. On the streets, one man walks around with a bag of white powder the size of a golf ball, dipping his fingers in like he was snacking on popcorn or chips. Casual to an extreme, he strolls up to his friends who dip in for a snack.
Outside the Bluefields prison, two maximum security prisoners have been brought out to the street - no handcuffs - and told to cut the grass with huge machetes. These prisoners are each serving a 30-year term for murder, but they hardly work and instead idly chat with pedestrians, occasionally whack the grass but usually just watch the girls and life go by.
Most of the guards are inside a classroom studying Nicaraguan history with their classmates, the inmates. For the more hands-on prisoners, a workshop churns out jewellery, crafted chairs and green and yellow Rasta-style beanies. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:28 pm |
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twotap
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[quote]But again, that is solely to humiliate them. [/quoteWell we sure wouldnt want to do that would we.  |
_________________
"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:37 pm |
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