Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Guys, do you remember
Speaker 3: daytime TV talk shows?
Speaker 4: Why do I ever bring back daytime TV talk shows?
Speaker 5: That's what I say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what were your favorites?
Speaker 4: I'm joking really, I just have a very distinct memory
Speaker 4: of watching I think it was Morey No, I think
Speaker 4: it was Jerry Springer. But maybe I mentioned this on
Speaker 4: the show before. When I was probably in my late
Speaker 4: early teens, like twelve thirteen, I.
Speaker 5: Saw this thing.
Speaker 4: There was a segment where it was this like white
Speaker 4: supremacist family like being interviewed on Jerry Springer and they
Speaker 4: were just using the most hateful, like despicable language, and
Speaker 4: it was just on TV.
Speaker 3: And I was just shocked by that and it.
Speaker 5: Sticks with me to this day.
Speaker 4: It said some really terrible things, and I was like,
Speaker 4: this is okay, this is what we're allowing to be
Speaker 4: the source of, like chair throwing kind of escavations.
Speaker 3: This is TV. And one of those hosts later attained
Speaker 3: political power based kind of on the talk shows.
Speaker 5: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think Jerry Sprinker.
Speaker 5: Well, no, wasn't he. I think he was does before?
Speaker 5: Oh was before?
Speaker 3: I think he got a talk show off politics, exact
Speaker 3: revolving doors.
Speaker 2: Oh and you know doctor Oz made himself a fancy
Speaker 2: little closet in the new administration.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, our old friend doctor at Oz.
Speaker 3: We wish him a great several weeks in positions. Is
Speaker 3: he in the physics given the turnaround?
Speaker 2: Is he really he's running Medicaid Medicare I believe? Is this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got confirmed, but it was in the wind
Speaker 3: for a while.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, boys, no matter how flat you make
Speaker 2: a pancake, there's always two sides.
Speaker 3: That's doctor Phil, and that reminds us of folks like
Speaker 3: Sally Jesse, Raphael Mari Povich. Yeah, Jerry Springer, of course,
Speaker 3: doctor Phil. These television stations in the United States were
Speaker 3: absolutely riddled with daytime talk shows. In the era that
Speaker 3: halcyon time of the nineteen nineties to the early two thousands,
Speaker 3: and they were so prolific that they created their own
Speaker 3: sort of internal genres. And one of the internal genres
Speaker 3: in addition to look at these white supremacists DA Who's
Speaker 3: was the idea of finding bad kids and setting them straight,
Speaker 3: setting them straight by scaring them, just like the like
Speaker 3: a more intensive version of the program some public schools
Speaker 3: still do where you take kids to talk to prisoners
Speaker 3: and they yell at JL right, yeah, yeah, don't make
Speaker 3: my misteake. Stamp fraud is not for winners.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, since yeah, exactly, we've seen relative actually very
Speaker 2: recent reenactments of that lampooning of that on Saturday Night
Speaker 2: Live when I think it was on the twenty fifth
Speaker 2: anniversary special, they did another one of their Scared Straight sketches.
Speaker 2: It was also Keenan and other people go through and
Speaker 2: do that very thing we're talking about.
Speaker 4: It was also in arreested development, I think, where Jeffrey
Speaker 4: Tambor's character who's incarcerated, he does a scared straight thing.
Speaker 5: Like and to some kids.
Speaker 3: We we be remiss to not point out the legendary
Speaker 3: Key and Peel they have a fantastic sketch of a
Speaker 3: this is all comedy. They have a fantastic sketch of
Speaker 3: a recovering criminal who goes to speak at a public
Speaker 3: assembly or the assembly at a school, and no spoilers,
Speaker 3: somewhat embellishes his story. What we're telling you today, what
Speaker 3: we're exploring today, fellow conspiracy realist, is not embellishment. It
Speaker 3: is true that a rogues gallery of daytime talk TV
Speaker 3: crews and producers. They made a lot of money by
Speaker 3: appearing to take kids on the wrong path and giving
Speaker 3: them life changing lessons about the consequences of their actions,
Speaker 3: shaping them up into sober buy the books five by
Speaker 3: five future citizen assets of the United States. This was
Speaker 3: I think the TV talk show part. I see that
Speaker 3: as a watershed moment for all sorts of terrible things
Speaker 3: because it really pushed the American public to approve of
Speaker 3: tonight's subject, shock incarceration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. But there were real programs like
Speaker 2: that through juvenile correction systems that would be like go
Speaker 2: to a school and talk. I mean, that was a
Speaker 2: real thing. It wasn't just in the realm of you know,
Speaker 2: show it on TV or you know, show it off
Speaker 2: on a talk show. This was a real thing, This
Speaker 2: concept of scaring the crap out of kids.
Speaker 3: It still is a real thing even as we record
Speaker 3: this evening. Let's pause for a small word from our sponsors,
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna dive into the concept. Hey, fellow
Speaker 3: veterans in the crowd, do you like boot camp? What
Speaker 3: if it was for kids? Here are the facts, all right,
Speaker 3: Shock Incarceration short SI. You can read about it in
Speaker 3: all sorts of research that we had to read. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff on OJP dot gov regarding this.
Speaker 3: It's on paper it sounds really good. It's both compassionate
Speaker 3: while still being tough on crime, an alternative to traditional
Speaker 3: imprisonment in the US penal system. It's usually meant for nonviolent,
Speaker 3: first time offenders, and they're often young. Now, as we'll see,
Speaker 3: it goes state by state. There's also there have been
Speaker 3: federal programs, but they're the vibe they all have is
Speaker 3: that they're modeled after military programs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: I actually have been working for the last year or
Speaker 4: so on a podcast about this within the main subject
Speaker 4: as a guy who went through this program, and the
Speaker 4: podcast is an a bursive creativity called chock incarceration and
Speaker 4: it comes out in June. So there's definitely an inside
Speaker 4: perspective on somebody that went through one of these programs
Speaker 4: of the very vision that's for adults, like in the
Speaker 4: US penal system, that you were mentioning them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's go ahead at the top just address
Speaker 2: the name, because that name is shocking. It is, if
Speaker 2: you will, when you hear shock incarceration, it summons thoughts,
Speaker 2: at least in my mind, of alternative methods for controlling
Speaker 2: someone's let's say, mental health issues in the day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, well, it does evoke that kind of imagery.
Speaker 3: Shock is a shock is definitely a choice wise.
Speaker 2: Makes you think of shock troopers maybe if you if
Speaker 2: you're aware of that at all, electricity, Yes, it just
Speaker 2: feels it's got that visceral tone to it that when
Speaker 2: you hear it, it sounds like it's something worse than
Speaker 2: being sent being just incarcerated. Oh you're getting shock incarcerated.
Speaker 5: Crap.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so what what is the difference just between
Speaker 2: being incarcerated or going through shock incarceration?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Right? So proponents will tell you it is somewhat of
Speaker 3: a Goldielocks zone. You are put in the military kind
Speaker 3: of you're putting a military themed thing. So the again,
Speaker 3: on paper, the requirements are less restrictive than actual facts.
Speaker 3: Prison shout out to Lure and Vogelbam. We always love
Speaker 3: crediting a good cats phrase, but it's still more rigorous
Speaker 3: than something like simple probation, wherein perhaps you take a
Speaker 3: driving course or a substance abuse or an anger management course,
Speaker 3: and then you check in, you know, once a month
Speaker 3: with a probation officer. So it's between those. The term
Speaker 3: that DOJ often uses is intermediate sanction. This is a
Speaker 3: very old idea per the Department of Justice. The first
Speaker 3: programs of this nature they surfaced in Oklahoma and in
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to Know's home state of
Speaker 3: Georgia way back in nineteen eighty three. So in a
Speaker 3: very real sense, Nolan Matt, this has been around for
Speaker 3: the entirety of you guys left.
Speaker 5: Well, and it's like a goal.
Speaker 4: You know, you could look at it as a get
Speaker 4: out of jail free card, like it could be pitched
Speaker 4: that way, or it's like, okay, you could be getting
Speaker 4: a four year sentence for some sort of high level
Speaker 4: drug offense, though non violent but instead you could do
Speaker 4: this really really just three months, three months or one
Speaker 4: days three or months or one hundred and eighty days
Speaker 4: of the most unpleasant conditions you could possibly imagine. And hey,
Speaker 4: you might learn something too, you know. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: a very bar again basically, I mean it is in
Speaker 4: a form of like you know, trying to offer an alternative.
Speaker 3: It's an intervention.
Speaker 2: There you go, yes, yes, And we'll talk about how
Speaker 2: it differs in some of the states. There are a
Speaker 2: few examples we'll tell you about from Missouri where that number,
Speaker 2: that three months number goes down to one hundred days,
Speaker 2: to thirty days, to fifteen days, to even two days
Speaker 2: in prison, with the same concept of you're gonna spend
Speaker 2: a tiny bit of time in prison to understand what
Speaker 2: you could get yourself into if you continue down the path,
Speaker 2: you know, as some mentor talking to you or something. Sure,
Speaker 2: but again it's all part of some form of sentencing
Speaker 2: that is modified.
Speaker 3: Modified, yes, not always meaning improved, although that is what
Speaker 3: they're going for. Yeah, and you know this is not unfamiliar.
Speaker 3: We could say the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Extended cinematic universe could have one hell of a video
Speaker 3: called One Night in gen Pop. But these, yeah, these
Speaker 3: programs exist. They didn't come out of whole cloth either.
Speaker 3: The idea is you're going to scare Usually the way
Speaker 3: they pitch it is you scare kids straight, but really
Speaker 3: they mean nonviolent first time offenders, and you do so
Speaker 3: with aggressive training rehabilitation programs. The better ones will have
Speaker 3: substance abuse education, psychological treatment, counseling, career development, what we
Speaker 3: call community reintegration. Stuff That sounds great. I mean, let's
Speaker 3: be honest, folks, We've all seen kids headed down the
Speaker 3: wrong path toward a criminal adulthood and no judgment, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist, some of us in the audience tonight have
Speaker 3: been that kid. The scary thing is, I think everybody,
Speaker 3: everybody in this country knows the US justice system or
Speaker 3: penal system is broken. It has a terrible track record, right.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows that going to prison can sometimes be like
Speaker 3: going to crime university. Recidivism is off the charts. So
Speaker 3: the logic there does feel sound. Getting to kids early,
Speaker 3: or getting to a nonviolent first time offender early because
Speaker 3: of one mistake, it can maybe save that individual and
Speaker 3: save the country overall a lot of heartbreak it's kind
Speaker 3: of like, you know, investing in community is not politically popular,
Speaker 3: but it is one of the best long term investments
Speaker 3: a government can make. The Hope Scholarship, by the way,
Speaker 3: I always think of it this way, I'm when I'm
Speaker 3: talking with folks. The Hope Scholarship, in a very real way,
Speaker 3: saved a lot of people from getting their radios stolen
Speaker 3: from their cars because it gave people an alternative to crime.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, yeah, no, it stopped me from stealing radios. Sure,
Speaker 2: how I got into GSU.
Speaker 3: People still steal radios. I guess it's hard.
Speaker 2: Out.
Speaker 3: Well, they steal radios, but now they're just phones.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 3: So in some states, I guess technically, in a lot
Speaker 3: of states in the US, enrollment in an SI program
Speaker 3: is sort of voluntary. Like you were saying, no, it's
Speaker 3: a way to avoid a harsher sentence. You can get
Speaker 3: sentenced to shock incarceration by a judge the same way
Speaker 3: you get sentenced to prison. But I believe check me here, guys.
Speaker 3: I believe that the accused or the defendant does always
Speaker 3: technically have the right to say no, I don't want
Speaker 3: ninety days in this boot camp. Send me to prison
Speaker 3: for four years. I think they technically have the right
Speaker 3: to refuse that intermediate sanctuar.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it is weird because it is the thing
Speaker 2: that comes during the sentencing part of a trial. Right,
Speaker 2: So it's after a jury has or a judge has
Speaker 2: found a defendant guilty. This is when the even even
Speaker 2: the possibility of some kind of modified shock detention or
Speaker 2: incarceration is available. There are a couple of specific things
Speaker 2: we can get into, like one in Missouri that I
Speaker 2: think would illustrate this a little bit. But my understanding
Speaker 2: is that the defendant, when being sentenced, has to essentially
Speaker 2: agree to it. Like you have to say yes, I
Speaker 2: will do that, and then I will you spend however
Speaker 2: many years or months on probation after this shock thing ends.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's correct. That's exactly what we're saying. We've
Speaker 3: got this. We've got a lot of rights in this country,
Speaker 3: as we record on Monday, April fourteenth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that will age. We've got a
Speaker 3: lot of rights in this country. In a courtroom that
Speaker 3: a lot of people are not aware of, and think
Speaker 3: about it, you're at a tremendously stressful moment of your life.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of there's so many old powerful here.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of a thing used to see a
Speaker 3: lot back in you know, the forties or the fifties,
Speaker 3: where they would say you can go to prison, or
Speaker 3: you can enroll in the army and make something of yourself,
Speaker 3: or you know, the worst case, you can try to
Speaker 3: get out of the country and join the French Foreign Legion. Hey,
Speaker 3: there you go, our it's a big dream of ours.
Speaker 3: If this podcast stuff doesn't work out, and I can't
Speaker 3: wait to hear are French foreign llegiate monikers right to
Speaker 3: us if you ever joined the French Foreign Legion, I would.
Speaker 2: Love to hear that. In Missouri there were situations where
Speaker 2: shocked attention was part of the plea deal that was
Speaker 2: given the defendants. So it was that kind of if
Speaker 2: you agree to this as you plead guilty of this
Speaker 2: crime that we say you've committed, then you know you
Speaker 2: only spend thirty days in jail and then spend two
Speaker 2: years on probation.
Speaker 3: And it sounds good, but we have to realize there's
Speaker 3: some devious devil in the detail stuff there, right, because
Speaker 3: first off, you're admitting to a crime that you may
Speaker 3: not have committed right, or you don't have the financial
Speaker 3: wherewithal to get something aside from a public defender. We
Speaker 3: say that with great affection for public defenders, but their cases,
Speaker 3: their case loads are harrowing. They're overwhelmed. Right, It's very difficult,
Speaker 3: and money does move the justice system. So you're given
Speaker 3: a choice, like you were saying, Matt, that sounds way better.
Speaker 3: All I have to do is say, yeah, fine, I
Speaker 3: am guilty of whatever, right, and in doing so, I
Speaker 3: can get just ninety days or thirty days or one
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty days versus a four or five or
Speaker 3: ten year prison sentence. Sign me up, I can do
Speaker 3: push ups. I'll make it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is like a partial NOL kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Contendre, which is when you don't say that you're guilty,
Speaker 3: but you say no. Look at Tidre is going ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is kind of weird. I think
Speaker 2: I pled. I've done that before when I got into
Speaker 2: a car accident when I was a very young kid,
Speaker 2: because it was that kind of thing where I've never
Speaker 2: done anything wrong before. But now now I find myself
Speaker 2: in court because I got into an accident and Okay,
Speaker 2: plead this thing you get out of it in a
Speaker 2: different kind of way. But in this case, I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a little bit it's not exactly the same,
Speaker 2: but it does function in the same way. Where it
Speaker 2: is it is as though you got in trouble and
Speaker 2: it is on your record in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: but it is not the same as spending years in
Speaker 2: prison for something.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. One of the big one of the big
Speaker 3: pulls that people use when they're arguing in favor of
Speaker 3: this is to say that, uh, it will not interfere
Speaker 3: with future job prospects as deeply and damaging Lee, I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's word as as you know prison
Speaker 3: time will be. And I love I just whisper second
Speaker 3: this because I love that we have nolo contendre. It's
Speaker 3: technically illegal plea in the US justice system because it's
Speaker 3: one hundred percent like being in a long term relationship
Speaker 3: and deciding not to argue. Jess, Okay, yeah, fine.
Speaker 2: Fine, I did it. Sure, whatever it's my fault.
Speaker 3: Will go to whatever restaurant you want, damn. So that is, uh,
Speaker 3: we're we're providing some levity because we need to have
Speaker 3: this put simply shocking carceration is legal. Uh, it's a
Speaker 3: messy bag of badgers. It's a sloppy bull of spaghetti.
Speaker 3: Because states will have different requirements and metrics and oversight
Speaker 3: or lack of oversight, and there are also federal programs.
Speaker 3: It is correctional boot camp, and when it works, it
Speaker 3: does work. We want to be clear about that. You
Speaker 3: can find multiple accounts. You might know some people. You
Speaker 3: might be a person who went through this, and you
Speaker 3: might credit a lot of your modern success to that experience.
Speaker 3: It's just like that old trope we all heard of
Speaker 3: the bad kid getting sent off to military school, right,
Speaker 3: and later he becomes a general the hollow threat.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, maybe except when it's not and then they
Speaker 4: become a general. But I swear every time I bring
Speaker 4: this topic up and talk to people about this podcast
Speaker 4: that I've been working on, the first question they ask
Speaker 4: is I'm sorry, what and is that that's legal? And yeah,
Speaker 4: it is legal. I mean it's shocking, pun totally intended.
Speaker 4: When you hear about this and think that it seems
Speaker 4: like such a weird kind of cruel workaround, like almost
Speaker 4: like humiliating in a way. I don't know, it's very
Speaker 4: very interesting, very much So I mean, here's the issue.
Speaker 4: These programs when they spread, you could almost call it
Speaker 4: in some ways, the social dynamic in the zeitgeist is
Speaker 4: similar to a moral panic, right like the Satanic panic.
Speaker 4: People were saying, Hey, we gotta you know, crime is
Speaker 4: through the roof, We gotta nip this in the bud.
Speaker 4: So these programs are tough on crime, but they're still compassionate, again,
Speaker 4: a phrase we'll go back to pretty often. However, to
Speaker 4: your point in all these programs are not without controversy.
Speaker 4: Want to give a shout out to an adjacent show.
Speaker 4: If you're interested in this idea of scaring kids straight
Speaker 4: and what can go wrong, please check out Camp Hell.
Speaker 4: It is a show in our network exploring the Anawaki
Speaker 4: treatment Center for emotionally disturbed youth in Douglasville, Georgia. And
Speaker 4: just like these SI boot camps, there's a troubling lack
Speaker 4: of transparency and accountability in a lot of these programs.
Speaker 2: And Annawaki or Camp Hell, that show hosted by Josh
Speaker 2: than Is. It's a fascinating case because that place, that
Speaker 2: physical rehabilitation camp out or wilderness camp as they called it,
Speaker 2: has been around since the nineteen sixties, and it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of a thing that you could
Speaker 2: send quote troubled youth to as part of sentencing that
Speaker 2: was occurring in Georgia. People get sentenced there. It was
Speaker 2: also happening. They had camps at Florida and a couple
Speaker 2: other places New Mexico, and they these would be like
Speaker 2: work camps basically where you would be put to hard
Speaker 2: labor and then go, you know, sleep in a bunk somewhere.
Speaker 2: In that case, just if you do end up going
Speaker 2: down the route and listening to camp, there was a
Speaker 2: whole lot of child sexual abuse and other stuff going
Speaker 2: on at all of the camps. Actually they were run
Speaker 2: by the people who ran in Awaki.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not a story that's appropriate for maybe the
Speaker 3: kiddos in the crowd, but it is a story that
Speaker 3: needs to be told, and we're proud that it's out
Speaker 3: there in the world. And you know that illustrates another point, Matt.
Speaker 3: Not all of these camps, these SI facilities are created equally.
Speaker 3: Some are more therapeutic or rehabilitative. Others seem to focus
Speaker 3: entirely on harsh physical exercise discipline, doing drills over and
Speaker 3: over and over again, because you can't call them choreography
Speaker 3: in the military. You have to call them drills, sort
Speaker 3: of like how a G. I. Joe is an action
Speaker 3: figure and not a doll anyway, So there are few dependable,
Speaker 3: robust statistics on how we would measure a success rate,
Speaker 3: how we would measure the effects of recidivism, how many
Speaker 3: institutions are open, or the numbers of deaths that occur
Speaker 3: at these facilities. That's right, deaths. Some are out in
Speaker 3: the open and have been admitted. Some have been explained
Speaker 3: away through nebulous things like undiagnosed medical condition or overdose.
Speaker 3: Some are we maintain simply covered up. So what do
Speaker 3: you say, guys, you want to take a word from
Speaker 3: our sponsors and then dive in.
Speaker 5: Sounds good.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. There are immensely troubling statistics
Speaker 3: and there are tendencies to paint with a broad brush.
Speaker 3: So to be quite clear, when we say first time
Speaker 3: non violent offenders, yes, folks in the specific boot camps
Speaker 3: are typically under the age of thirty. They're not all children.
Speaker 3: And again, all these things are not created equally. So
Speaker 3: for instance, you might spend a weekend in jail, right,
Speaker 3: which is way different from being carted off to a
Speaker 3: place for a summer, for sure. So why are these
Speaker 3: statistics troubling when we talk about statistics.
Speaker 2: Well, the statistics that I've been looking at for this
Speaker 2: are really focused on recidivism. Right, So, if a first
Speaker 2: time offender goes through this shock detention program shock incarceration,
Speaker 2: do they have the same chance of returning back to
Speaker 2: prison at some point as somebody who went through a
Speaker 2: regular what they would call just being incarcerated. Right, That's
Speaker 2: what everybody seems to be focused on. And as we
Speaker 2: dive into some of the numbers here, we find that
Speaker 2: the recidivism rates officially, at least in states like Missouri
Speaker 2: a couple of other places, the rates are just a
Speaker 2: tiny bit lower than regular old incarceration going to prison
Speaker 2: for years.
Speaker 4: Well, and the problem is it's it's just not particularly transparent.
Speaker 4: I mean, there aren't any very robust statistics at all
Speaker 4: about how many of these boot camps exist in.
Speaker 5: The United States.
Speaker 4: And this, to your point, Matt, is a function of
Speaker 4: the kind of amorphous state by state legislation and paired
Speaker 4: with the you know, kind of I don't know, not
Speaker 4: particularly streamline federal version of the programs.
Speaker 2: M and so if you jump to Missouri, they you can.
Speaker 2: The New York University Law Review talked about this way
Speaker 2: back in eight you guys, and they were looking at
Speaker 2: recidivism rates at that time of the shock programs that
Speaker 2: exist specifically for DWI offenders. And so they took DWI offenders,
Speaker 2: which make up six point seven percent of all of
Speaker 2: the quote offender population in Missouri, and when they looked
Speaker 2: at the recidivism rates of all of those people in
Speaker 2: that population, they found that a standard prison year term
Speaker 2: four years, had roughly a thirty one percent recidivism rate,
Speaker 2: but the one hundred and twenty day shock program had
Speaker 2: about a twenty three point six percent recidivism rate, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, lowered by five percent roughly or something. Which
Speaker 2: is that you know, is that statistically different?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean.
Speaker 4: Statistics about incarceration and about you know, rehabilitation. I guess
Speaker 4: the integration back into societies have seemed to me to
Speaker 4: always struggle with, you know, truly being able to pull
Speaker 4: out the reality of the situation out of those numbers,
Speaker 4: just because of so many kind of intervening factors that
Speaker 4: aren't a parent, that aren't kind of readily apparent I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 3: It just seems to me. No, yeah, yeah, I agree
Speaker 3: with you know, like this sounds. Look, we're not casting
Speaker 3: aspersion on whomever wrote the report in Missouri. The question
Speaker 3: Matt you're having is is this statistically significant? And what
Speaker 3: you're saying no, is yeah, it's difficult to tell because
Speaker 3: of all those intervening variables. And this goes to our
Speaker 3: further point that there are, like the headline word here
Speaker 3: is overall there are no genuine statistics and metrics available
Speaker 3: for these programs. Overall. You will find state by state stuff.
Speaker 3: Missouri's one example. I've been very deep into the Florida
Speaker 3: Horrors and New York state as well. They're like, you
Speaker 3: can find examples of this everywhere, but what you cannot
Speaker 3: find is an overall robust, objective view of the forest.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because it does not exist.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're right. But one thing I wanted to bring
Speaker 2: up with this, guys, is that that same study that
Speaker 2: I was looking at, or a review, I suppose it
Speaker 2: found that the recidivism rate of those who just received
Speaker 2: probation and received no prison sentence had a recidivism rate
Speaker 2: of around eighteen point four percent. So like that to me,
Speaker 2: is significantly lower.
Speaker 4: But the question then becomes too, is is that because
Speaker 4: this was someone who made a single mistake and got
Speaker 4: caught and it really spooked them, And that's sort of
Speaker 4: the scenario. I mean, does that imply like low level
Speaker 4: offenses in general are going to likely lead to a
Speaker 4: lower recidivism, right, because it seems like there's.
Speaker 5: A line, there's an endog to these I think kind
Speaker 5: of actions.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I think it applies most apparently it
Speaker 3: implies the importance of environment community. So if if someone
Speaker 3: has some cannabis and they get too much cannabis or whatever,
Speaker 3: because that's another state by state bag of badgers, and
Speaker 3: they get locked up, then they are put in an
Speaker 3: environment that they are not accustomed to, right, and an
Speaker 3: environment that prioritizes and rewards different things, things that are
Speaker 3: not prioritized and rewarded in a civilian community. So I
Speaker 3: would argue, if you have someone on probation instead of
Speaker 3: in jail, they still are able to see their family,
Speaker 3: They're still able to sleep safely at night, I'll say it,
Speaker 3: They're able to stay a part of society, hold down
Speaker 3: a job, sure, And this I think is a primary difference. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously We're not saying everybody should get on probation other
Speaker 3: than Luigi Mangioni. We do know a great deal of
Speaker 3: people forced in these SI shock incarceration programs will tend
Speaker 3: to be described as ethnic minorities in this country, and
Speaker 3: it's important to remember, you know, we get a little
Speaker 3: more US centric that i'd like on this show, but
Speaker 3: it's important to remember that things like shock incarceration exist
Speaker 3: the world round. They are in programs like this or
Speaker 3: multiple countries, but the US in particular seems to there's
Speaker 3: a question for you guys, why in like twenty ten,
Speaker 3: some of the most recent stats we have, why in
Speaker 3: twenty ten we're eighty percent of the inmates or enrollees
Speaker 3: in these programs considered ethnic minorities. I think it's a
Speaker 3: knock on result of the justice system targeting minorities in
Speaker 3: the first place.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, well, yeah, And it's also like.
Speaker 4: It's a similar situation to maybe the way it once was,
Speaker 4: and I'm not speaking to maybe there's been changes in
Speaker 4: this and it seems like that's likely, but where like
Speaker 4: the army was only an option for less privileged folks
Speaker 4: or like, and that would ultimately some statistically speaking, boil
Speaker 4: down to being identified as ethnic minorities, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's an interesting conundrum because yeah.
Speaker 3: And i'd like people, you know, I'm going to just
Speaker 3: throw this pop up soapbox real quick. I would like
Speaker 3: the Americans to start describing ourselves in terms of the
Speaker 3: financial minority or the financial majority, because I think the
Speaker 3: class war is real.
Speaker 4: And I agree, And I only even bring in the
Speaker 4: race element is because of the way the statistics work
Speaker 4: and the way that these things are described, you know,
Speaker 4: in these kinds of studies and in news soundbites. You know,
Speaker 4: I mean, over the years especially, it seems like.
Speaker 5: I'm with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, because you're right, it is. Yes,
Speaker 4: it is a haves and have nots situation. And then
Speaker 4: it's also about opportunity versus you know, lack of opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you said, environment, right, Because people are people
Speaker 3: all the world around. Is how their power systems treat
Speaker 3: them that makes all the difference. I love that we're
Speaker 3: talking history here because we need to understand how the
Speaker 3: US got to this situation in the first place. As
Speaker 3: we noted at the top, the modern version of these
Speaker 3: programs begins in the nineteen eighties here in Georgia and
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma. And it doesn't come from nothing. It comes
Speaker 3: as a response to a crisis, very much an act
Speaker 3: now situation. Yeah, one hundred percent. So when these programs
Speaker 3: begin in the nineteen eighties, the authorities are at a
Speaker 3: crossroads or at what George Bush would have called a
Speaker 3: decision point. Due to the War on Crime, there's been
Speaker 3: a phenomenal growth in the prison industry and a phenomenal
Speaker 3: growth in the number of people getting convicted. So if
Speaker 3: you are a if you are a court of law,
Speaker 3: wherever you may be, your prison systems are severely overcrowded.
Speaker 3: If you are pushing people toward probation, right, which to
Speaker 3: that earlier point is an awesome intervention, then you're seeing
Speaker 3: so many people assigned to probation that probation officers are
Speaker 3: barely able to touch base, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: They're like, hey, here's a three minute phone call or whatever.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and there are even versions of probation that
Speaker 2: are unsupervised that basically just say, hey, if you get
Speaker 2: in trouble again, it's jail time. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're on probation. But you know, nobody's going to be
Speaker 2: checking in on you.
Speaker 3: Ever, Yeah, honor system probation. Just try not to be
Speaker 3: a criminal for the next year.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a thing, especially for younger for some of vendors.
Speaker 3: Sure, especially if they have a good case of a
Speaker 3: like a solid community, they seem to have supportive family structure,
Speaker 3: things like that. There are a lot of there are
Speaker 3: a lot of we call them intervening variables earlier, but
Speaker 3: maybe we could call them soft variables because sometimes it
Speaker 3: comes it comes down to the judge.
Speaker 4: Well in their opinion, is there a statistic for supportive
Speaker 4: mom and dad?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like, how does that not really translate to to you know,
Speaker 4: to this kind of the way is the way of
Speaker 4: pie charting things out?
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, because back in the day it was
Speaker 3: supposed to be like a nuclear family, and they treated
Speaker 3: children or single parents as though they were inherently somehow inferior,
Speaker 3: which could not be further from the truth.
Speaker 2: Let's go to another thing we were talking about, guys.
Speaker 2: So this concept of in the nineteen eighties, there's an
Speaker 2: influx of prisoners, largely due to the War on drugs,
Speaker 2: that thing that we've talked about many a time there,
Speaker 2: especially under President Reagan's I was gonna say rain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, war on crime going all the way back to LBJs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly exactly. But this is the same time
Speaker 2: that the private prison system gets really big, right, or
Speaker 2: because it's the private prison system, I didn't realize it
Speaker 2: goes back to California in the freaking eighteen hundreds. But
Speaker 2: private prisons become a big deal because there's so many inmates,
Speaker 2: people who are potential inmates, who are on their way
Speaker 2: to prison, but there's no place to house them. So
Speaker 2: then corporations come in and say, oh, well, we'll make
Speaker 2: some money.
Speaker 3: Here, so we have we see there a financial incentive,
Speaker 3: and it's one that haunts the United States in the
Speaker 3: modern day. Right, A third party private entity comes along
Speaker 3: and says, oh, you guys are looking kind of busy.
Speaker 3: You know, we can we can help out with this
Speaker 3: for a very reasonable percentage.
Speaker 5: The not much different than the way prison contracts work.
Speaker 3: It's one hundred percent exactly the way person contracts work. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree with you. And so these authorities are saying,
Speaker 3: how do we The language they use over and over
Speaker 3: in the eighties is manage how do we manage offenders?
Speaker 3: Do we send more people to prison and just you know,
Speaker 3: keep throwing money into the coffers of private prison industries
Speaker 3: and entities. Do we try to spend more money on
Speaker 3: probation programs. Neither option, it turns out, is a good
Speaker 3: fit for this ground swell of juvenile first time offenders
Speaker 3: in particular. And we have to make another point. We're
Speaker 3: talking off Mike about this. It's an ugly point people
Speaker 3: don't always want to hear, but at this juncture, the
Speaker 3: boffins and the eggheads and the DOJ folks realized that
Speaker 3: many young offenders had parents who were or had been incarcerated,
Speaker 3: and from there, from the perspective of researchers and authorities,
Speaker 3: this prompts a great concern about what they would call
Speaker 3: intergenerational criminality. So they're searching for new ways to get
Speaker 3: in front of this right to stop what they see
Speaker 3: as dangerous patterns over time, and they look at what
Speaker 3: they would call intermediate sanctions. This is stuff like intensive
Speaker 3: community supervision, right, hands on probation right or house arrest.
Speaker 3: Did you guys ever know anyone on house arrest.
Speaker 4: Never got to see one of those ankle bracelets?
Speaker 5: Those are pretty cool.
Speaker 4: The stuff of lore now I think, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: very much real, But no, I never did know anybody directly.
Speaker 4: I know people who have been through like halfway house
Speaker 4: type systems or like mandatory you know, rehabilitation like for
Speaker 4: you know, drug abuse and stuff like that, which they
Speaker 4: probably get you know, paid like as contractors as well,
Speaker 4: those types of facilities. Then that can also be a
Speaker 4: term of one's release, as being spending a certain amount
Speaker 4: of time in a you know, an environment like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, residential community.
Speaker 2: And a lot of these shock programs even have stuff
Speaker 2: that is essentially rehabilitation programs built into them, right, especially
Speaker 2: for again DWI offenders in some states. For it's not
Speaker 2: perfect at all, my god, it's not perfect. Well we
Speaker 2: can talk about that more, but those systems are in
Speaker 2: there as a way. Again, it gets so muddy because
Speaker 2: there are those kind of systems, those vocational systems that
Speaker 2: we were talking about at the top of this right,
Speaker 2: trying to help especially younger people or people who are
Speaker 2: just who appear to be off the right path, get
Speaker 2: them to a job, get them off drugs, get them
Speaker 2: the help that they would receive in a place that
Speaker 2: is not prison. But it's being done through the prison system.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, the idea being that you don't hit day
Speaker 3: ninety one and just get a Greyhound ticket off to
Speaker 3: the wild yonder. You have some kind of infrastructure to
Speaker 3: support and indeed guide you right toward assimilation, because a
Speaker 3: lot of this is about assimilation into society. And so
Speaker 3: at this time, at this juncture in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: out of all the stuff they're evaluating, the house arrest probation,
Speaker 3: the like you said, NOL, the halfway house approaches, boot camps,
Speaker 3: these SI programs, they take the lead because they're comparatively
Speaker 3: inexpensive and the optics feel right for the time, I'll
Speaker 3: say it once again, ostensibly compassionate, yet's still tough on crime, right,
Speaker 3: And it's really feeding into that powerful trope that the
Speaker 3: electorate loves, which is send this bad person to the military.
Speaker 3: That will straighten them out. They'll learn discipline, they'll march
Speaker 3: in time and in step. And the problem is sometimes
Speaker 3: a thing can sound like a really good idea without
Speaker 3: actually being a good idea at all. Georgia and Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: oh man, they make so much news when they have
Speaker 3: this stuff in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's teach these recidivous and responsibility make them valuable
Speaker 4: members of the community. It's also like so sort of
Speaker 4: a good pr move for the complaints or the criticism.
Speaker 5: That there is no rehabilitation in prison. This is like
Speaker 5: an answer to that, right.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Look, see, we're actually teaching them values, We're teaching them how.
Speaker 5: To work hard and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: On this episode of Doctor Phil, the drill instructor speaks
Speaker 3: to bad Barbie or whatever.
Speaker 5: You mentioned it once at the top Bend.
Speaker 4: But I guess a lot of these types of situations
Speaker 4: were depicted on some of these daytime shows, and they
Speaker 4: had these little recurring bits where they would send the
Speaker 4: bad kids to the boot camp or military school and
Speaker 4: then march them back out at the end, do the
Speaker 4: before and after kind of treatment, right.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah, Yeah, you'll love to see it if
Speaker 3: you're a TV producer. By nineteen ninety nine, multiple other
Speaker 3: states are in the game. They're following the lead in
Speaker 3: Georgia and Oklahoma. There are more than fifty boot camps established.
Speaker 3: They house round a little more than four thousand, five
Speaker 3: hundred juveniles specifically. That doesn't count all first time non
Speaker 3: violent offenders. Again, some who maybe is maybe in their twenties.
Speaker 3: That doesn't count the federal programs that are on the way.
Speaker 3: It's just it's a little more than a decade in.
Speaker 3: And the proponents are loving this. They argue there are
Speaker 3: statistically significant reduction rates when it comes to recidivism, but
Speaker 3: it's already an open secret that these places can be dangerous,
Speaker 3: even deadly. So I suggest we take a pause for
Speaker 3: a word from our sponsors and get into the abuse,
Speaker 3: the controversies, the deaths.
Speaker 4: And we're back, and we promised some examples of how
Speaker 4: these types of programs can go horribly wrong despite the
Speaker 4: on paper best intentions of it all and the optics
Speaker 4: that we were talking about about, how no, look, this
Speaker 4: is a great program that's helping, you know, rehabilitate people,
Speaker 4: teach them skills, teach them discipline, and then reintegrate them
Speaker 4: back in soocide and we're so good at it that
Speaker 4: we can accomplish what would a normal prison sentence of
Speaker 4: four years.
Speaker 5: We're going to get that done in ninety days, you know.
Speaker 3: And also, as a way of saying, this is better.
Speaker 4: Than the alternative, long term incarceration is just yielding more
Speaker 4: repeat offenders.
Speaker 5: This is different.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm laughing because when you said that, Noel,
Speaker 3: I'm picturing a DOJ report called we're so good at this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, we did a good job.
Speaker 3: We did a good job, five stars to us, So
Speaker 3: you're you're absolutely nailing it. Man. These camps are based
Speaker 3: on military tactics, and any of our friends, neighbors, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realists who have had the privilege of attending one
Speaker 3: of our fine nations military intake programs, you know they're
Speaker 3: designed to break you down, like they're not designed to
Speaker 3: make you feel great about yourself on the first day.
Speaker 3: These programs, these SI shock incarceration programs, aren't that different.
Speaker 3: Anybody who's been to boot camp knows the first day
Speaker 3: sucks by design. It sucks so hard. The drill instructors,
Speaker 3: oh we don't call them guards, right, they're instructors. They
Speaker 3: confront you as a as a first day inmate of
Speaker 3: one of these SI programs. You're given rapid orders about
Speaker 3: how you can speak, when you can speak, what are
Speaker 3: the rules, how do you talk to the instructors? How
Speaker 3: do you standard attention?
Speaker 5: No you're doing that wrong.
Speaker 3: No, you're doing that wrong. No, you're doing that Wrong's
Speaker 3: it's a gish gallop kind of thing where they're just
Speaker 3: yelling at you gallop. It's a rhetorical device, gish. It's
Speaker 3: a rhetorical device that help you spot someone who is
Speaker 3: bad at arguing or arguing in bad faith. Because it's
Speaker 3: where it might be familiar to some opponents of the
Speaker 3: current administration. It's where you say a bunch of crazy
Speaker 3: shit and and you say so much that you try
Speaker 3: to shock and awe just it's like using a flash
Speaker 3: pod in Monster Hunter Wild. You know that it's got
Speaker 3: what's going on. I don't know which way is up.
Speaker 3: But it's designed in these SI programs, especially that first day,
Speaker 3: it's designed so that you will mess up, so that
Speaker 3: you will not be able to successfully get things correct.
Speaker 3: And this is co ed stuff. Men will have their
Speaker 3: head shaved, women will get, you know, a short military haircut,
Speaker 3: and it is meant to intimidate you. It is meant
Speaker 3: to frighten you, to scare you straight. The situation does
Speaker 3: not improve as time passes. Do we want to talk
Speaker 3: about like a typical day, so we get a sense
Speaker 3: of what life is like for these folks in SI programs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're in one of the military versions of
Speaker 2: these types of programs. You get up before dawn, you
Speaker 2: get dressed, you clean your quarters, You march around, usually
Speaker 2: as an exercise, but also as you know, the discipline stuff.
Speaker 2: You spend several hours doing all kinds of other exercises
Speaker 2: like calisthenics.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, right, and I believe during breakfast there's
Speaker 4: no talking aloud. There's some pretty specific guidelines around communicating
Speaker 4: with fellow cadets.
Speaker 5: I guess you could call them from there.
Speaker 4: You got about six to eight hours of actual hard labor,
Speaker 4: physical labor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like what people would experience at campaign awaki.
Speaker 2: This is very similar like building things. You might go out,
Speaker 2: you might be constructing. It's usually instructing something in camp
Speaker 2: an Awakei's case, it was constructing something on the camp,
Speaker 2: like around the lake, or something that will eventually be
Speaker 2: used by all of your other fellow people.
Speaker 3: Well that, yeah, that's weirdly enough, that's the positive end
Speaker 3: of the spectrum. Public improvement or work that actually matters, right,
Speaker 3: like cleaning state parks, or if you're ever driving on
Speaker 3: a road in the US and you see people maybe
Speaker 3: wearing the orange vest right picking up trash on the
Speaker 3: side of the highway, spoiler, they're not always volunteers moved
Speaker 3: by a sense of public good or the tragedy of
Speaker 3: the commons. These would be called public improvements in state
Speaker 3: parks and cleaning highways. On a negative note, this kind
Speaker 3: of public improvement labor has been repeatedly cited as modern slavery.
Speaker 3: It's a story for another day, And I propose we
Speaker 3: do a future episode on inmate rights in America for sure.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, it comes up plenty in terms of just
Speaker 4: regular conversation around the prison system. We talked actually recently,
Speaker 4: we talked about the fire fighting program there in California
Speaker 4: and how and we got some really excellent correspondents from
Speaker 4: folks on the inside of that saying, yeah, this is
Speaker 4: a positive thing. This can be a way of really
Speaker 4: changing my life and turning you know, learning a thing
Speaker 4: and contributing.
Speaker 3: But then there's the flip side of it, which can
Speaker 3: be yeah, sketch slavery. My favorite, I love you that
Speaker 3: you mentioned that. No, h my favorite, My favorite piece
Speaker 3: of correspondence we received from that is still our fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist who described himself as an exotic landscaper.
Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah that one, Yeah, that was great. Well,
Speaker 2: when we made Anna Waki, we talked to several folks
Speaker 2: who who could not say more positive things about their
Speaker 2: time at the camp and doing the hard labor, and
Speaker 2: how it was the most positive thing they'd ever experienced
Speaker 2: in their life because of where they came from. So
Speaker 2: not exclusively because of where they came from, but because
Speaker 2: they said it was a positive experience overall for them.
Speaker 2: So it is one of those things like it sometimes
Speaker 2: is both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it turns out that humans are individuals, so applying
Speaker 3: the same brute force broadbrush tactics to people will not
Speaker 3: yield the same results across the board. That's true. And
Speaker 3: if we're following the day here, we'll fast forward. Like
Speaker 3: we said, they're working until call it late afternoon. Late
Speaker 3: afternoon comes, you are doing more exercises, drills, you're rehearsing
Speaker 3: ceremonies because sometimes there's a graduation ceremony and your family's
Speaker 3: invited to attend. And then again, like we said earlier,
Speaker 3: you march in step to dinner. No conversation at dinner.
Speaker 3: By the way, after you eat, a lot of places
Speaker 3: will have the I keep saying, kids, I know that's
Speaker 3: not the entirety of the demographic here. But a lot
Speaker 3: of these folks are to they are teens. They attend,
Speaker 3: if they go to a good one, they attend rehab
Speaker 3: programs until about twenty one hundred and at that point
Speaker 3: at nine pm Local. At that point they have a
Speaker 3: brief period of time to do everything they can to
Speaker 3: get ready for tomorrow. This is rinse and repeat, And
Speaker 3: during all of these days they are quite possibly abused
Speaker 3: for the entire time. Like the guards, we get to
Speaker 3: notable cases. There's a great piece from a great series
Speaker 3: of pieces by a journalist called Carrie Blakeinger. She writes
Speaker 3: in particular about the Lakeview Shock Incarceration correctional facility there
Speaker 3: in New York, and she writes a lot about shock
Speaker 3: incarceration in New York State overall. And she has some
Speaker 3: harrowing stuff when she's talking. When she's writing about c
Speaker 3: there are saxby Smith's time in an SI facility. Maybe
Speaker 3: we could just pull a few quotes to give people
Speaker 3: the way of the land here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the guards are known as instructors, like you mentioned,
Speaker 4: are known to be verbally abusive, at the very least
Speaker 4: psychologically abusive, as Carrie Blankinger puts it, writing about Miss
Speaker 4: Saxby Smith's time and the lake Viewshock Incarceration Correctional Facility
Speaker 4: for NBC. Guards taunted prisoners, calling them junkies and bad mothers,
Speaker 4: and made prisoners wear embarrassing signs. See there's the humiliation stuff.
Speaker 4: Comes in and eat food off the floor. What is
Speaker 4: this guantanamo? Sometimes prisoners spent hours moving log piles or
Speaker 4: cleaning sidewalks with toothbrushes full little jackets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's pause there, because this is the psyop aspect
Speaker 3: of it. When you make people, when you force people
Speaker 3: to labor, and you force them to do so with
Speaker 3: the clear recognition that what they are doing does not
Speaker 3: matter and is meaningless and useless. This is a time
Speaker 3: tested torture tactic.
Speaker 5: No question about it. And she goes on.
Speaker 4: Once Saxby Smith said, a woman got caught passing a note,
Speaker 4: so guards made her whole dorm walk in circles holding
Speaker 4: mattresses on their heads for ten hours until their scalps bled.
Speaker 5: Let that sink in. Just the humiliation of all of
Speaker 5: this is what strikes me.
Speaker 4: This is like some sadistic hazing type stuff, not just
Speaker 4: traditional military drills. And we know mazing occurs in the military,
Speaker 4: but this seems like out in the open.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it just I wanna bore us with personal
Speaker 3: anecdotes because it's incredibly dangerous and damaging to engage in
Speaker 3: that tactic, useless work, useless force labor. It's it's a
Speaker 3: thing that still happens. And to your point, Noel, it
Speaker 3: is part it can be part of military hazing. Uh,
Speaker 3: it can be part of all sorts of organizations. And this,
Speaker 3: as you were saying, this does not sound rehabilitative. This
Speaker 3: does not sound like someone sitting down and saying I'm
Speaker 3: gonna give you some tough love to help you get
Speaker 3: on you know, the quote unquote right path. This is
Speaker 3: pretty beat me here, Andrew, this is pretty evil, is
Speaker 3: it not?
Speaker 5: I would say it very much is apologies.
Speaker 3: I sound like I'm yelling.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: Sorry, Yeah, I mean it's wild.
Speaker 4: This is a Marquis de Sade level, Like what is
Speaker 4: that film Solo where there's a certain it's apparently not
Speaker 4: for the faint of heart. I actually haven't seen it,
Speaker 4: but it is a Passolini film that depicts a very
Speaker 4: military like, kind of regimented form of absolute humiliation and abuse.
Speaker 3: It sounds like this, it's just a boring, it's unclean, it's.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a messed up individual or several individuals
Speaker 2: who are power hungry who are operating at that one facility.
Speaker 2: That's what sounds like to me, and it makes me
Speaker 2: wonder how much of that goes on? Are there other
Speaker 2: instances of stuff like this happening?
Speaker 5: Are the right?
Speaker 3: Sorry, I mean no, no, I think I think that's
Speaker 3: a good I think that's a good step back toward
Speaker 3: a middle ground, right, because it may not be the
Speaker 3: it may not. We're not saying everybody involved in this
Speaker 3: stuff is a villain, obviously, and we hope that as
Speaker 3: a parent. But to that point about bad faith actors
Speaker 3: finding an environment where they can successfully function as predators.
Speaker 3: You see that in religion, You of course see that
Speaker 3: in government, you see that in you see that in
Speaker 3: friend groups, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, we talked about so many different versions of
Speaker 2: that where people find their way in where especially if
Speaker 2: they're young, people that are vulnerable, those individuals will make
Speaker 2: their way.
Speaker 3: Rehab facilities another great example. And so that's why I
Speaker 3: think it's quite important that we pointed out the necessity
Speaker 3: of metrics or robust studies, which don't really exist for
Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff. And when we're talking about
Speaker 3: these cases, even people who say it changed their life
Speaker 3: for the better, they do recall exactly what you are describing.
Speaker 3: No name calling, humiliation, emotional up to physical abuse by
Speaker 3: correction staff. And by physical abuse, yes, we mean some
Speaker 3: of the worst stuff you can imagine happening to a person,
Speaker 3: acts that would be considered violent crimes on the outside.
Speaker 3: Just to snapshot New York State alone, in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: there were reports of sexual assault carried out by one
Speaker 3: of the instructors. Right, no, we call them instructors right now, charge, Okay, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 3: This triggered a series of sexual abuse allegations across not
Speaker 3: just Lakeview, but the entirety of New York State. Fast
Speaker 3: forward twenty seventeen. An officer there at Lakeview, James Bean Junior,
Speaker 3: is charged with the sexual assault of an inmate at
Speaker 3: the facility, and the allegations keep coming as recently as
Speaker 3: twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: A federal law suit against Lakeview cited five separate incidents
Speaker 4: in which a female inmate was sexually assaulted and a
Speaker 4: correction officer attempted to cover the whole thing up, hide
Speaker 4: all evidence. That the attack took place, and in multiple
Speaker 4: cases this behavior exhibited by instructors or guards seemed to
Speaker 4: have add to actual deaths of.
Speaker 3: Inmates that were, you know, incarcerated in these programs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Jamel McIntosh was assigned to lake View's intensive alcohol and
Speaker 3: substance abuse treatment program, found dead in his cell in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. The case continues, and this occurred after the
Speaker 3: infamous case of Martin Lee Anderson. This is a kid.
Speaker 3: That is why the kid part is important to us here.
Speaker 3: This is a fourteen year old from Florida dies while
Speaker 3: incarcerated in Panama City, Florida at the Bay County Boots Camp.
Speaker 3: The death of Martin Lee Anderson create a like moves
Speaker 3: public sentiment. The public used to be for these things,
Speaker 3: Now they're increasingly against it because children are dying there, right,
Speaker 3: and there are not many things a fourteen year old
Speaker 3: should or can do that would qualify them to be
Speaker 3: murdered by the state, agreed for sure. And this, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's so much more. Each of those is an episode
Speaker 3: on its own, But maybe we talked about the implications
Speaker 3: and the future as we wrap up this EFT.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, let's quickly talk about when this gets instituted
Speaker 2: as part of sentencing. Because there's some weird I don't
Speaker 2: know why. My search history is all about Missouri. I
Speaker 2: found most of the cases that I could find, like
Speaker 2: specific cases where shocked detention was used coming out of Missouri.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I have no idea why. But here
Speaker 2: are a bunch of examples. A forty two year old
Speaker 2: woman that was she pled guilty to two different assault charges,
Speaker 2: and she was sentenced to one hundred and twenty days
Speaker 2: of shock detention. And this takes place in a prisons
Speaker 2: so like in a Coal county jail there in Missouri.
Speaker 2: So it's just a whole it's a whole different system
Speaker 2: I think they have in Missouri. I don't know if
Speaker 2: they send people to a specific place like Lakeview like these,
Speaker 2: but they do appear to, at least during sentencing, to
Speaker 2: be sent to a county jail. There's another person, a
Speaker 2: forty year old man who broke parole and he got
Speaker 2: sentenced to one hundred and twenty days of shock incarceration
Speaker 2: there in Missouri in Sheridan County, so undred and twenty days.
Speaker 2: And then you've got a child who was texting and
Speaker 2: driving she caused a fatal crash killed a woman driving
Speaker 2: her car while her grandchild was in the back, and
Speaker 2: she spent She officially got sentenced to two days of
Speaker 2: shock time in a jail, which, again, like I don't
Speaker 2: understand how that works. I don't understand why it's so different.
Speaker 2: But there is one major notable case that I think
Speaker 2: we should talk about because how does shock and car
Speaker 2: ration actually help this situation. You can do a quick
Speaker 2: Google search if you're you know, if you're able to
Speaker 2: right now for Phi Gamma Delta. This is a fraternity
Speaker 2: at the University of Missouri. They have chapters all over
Speaker 2: the place, but the specific one at the University of
Speaker 2: Missouri was doing some hazing as they do. As they
Speaker 2: had a new group of people who were pledging to
Speaker 2: come in. And this young man, Danny Santouli that's how
Speaker 2: you say his name. He was nineteen years old. The
Speaker 2: frat guys there who were in charge of that specific fraternity,
Speaker 2: Fi Gamma Delta, instituted a thing where everybody had to
Speaker 2: drink as much alcohol as they could. Danny drank a
Speaker 2: whole bunch. He got alcohol poisoning, passed out, and then
Speaker 2: stopped breathing while he was there after fraternity, somebody calls
Speaker 2: nine to one one, he gets picked up. He's undergoing
Speaker 2: cardiac arrest on his way to the hospital, gets there,
Speaker 2: he ends up having severe brain damage. He loses the
Speaker 2: ability to walk and talk and is forever you know.
Speaker 2: Oh and also he loses sight because of this alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 2: So the reason why I'm bringing up is because the
Speaker 2: sentencing that was twenty twenty one, by the way, when
Speaker 2: that happened, the sentencing for the kids, I mean they're
Speaker 2: mostly kids or very young men, right, who are there
Speaker 2: at this fraternity doing this hazing. Many of them they
Speaker 2: got plea deals, several of them for fifteen days in jail,
Speaker 2: at least one for thirty days in jail. But again
Speaker 2: it's through these shock detention programs, so it's not just
Speaker 2: going to jail for thirty days. It's whatever this shock
Speaker 2: treatment program is. But how does that fix these fraternity
Speaker 2: brothers who just made a bunch of other mostly young
Speaker 2: men their age, to drink a bunch I guess just
Speaker 2: it's it. It's a weird gray area to me, I
Speaker 2: don't understand how it actually helps.
Speaker 4: No, it's for kicks sick twisted kicks man that's what
Speaker 4: it feels to me. Gosh, like, that's there's no excuse
Speaker 4: for any that's just there's no world in which that
Speaker 4: is going to yield positive results. Can you imagine too,
Speaker 4: if these people were, like, you know, predisposed or even
Speaker 4: had struggled with substance abuse addiction problems.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so cruel.
Speaker 3: I just can't. I mean, yeah, I think it. Just
Speaker 3: to interject here, one of the things that that really
Speaker 3: sticks out here is the question of who does it help?
Speaker 3: And that's really where the conspiracy hinges on. Is it
Speaker 3: meant to help the public? Is it meant to help
Speaker 3: the the inmates or the people who are even Oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, we didn't mention this. In a lot
Speaker 3: of these places, folks who need psychological medication or even
Speaker 3: just basic physical medication for diabetes or whatnot are denied
Speaker 3: that medication. That's a known problem in the system. If
Speaker 3: we were to look at the money and ask ourselves,
Speaker 3: qui bono, who benefits, then we would see that the
Speaker 3: people who tend to benefit the most are the politicians
Speaker 3: pushing for these programs because they're fantastic for reelection, or
Speaker 3: they were up until about two thousand oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, well and just dude, yes, absolutely, Just
Speaker 2: to put a tiny bit more context on that fraternity case,
Speaker 2: most of the things that people were being charged for
Speaker 2: were misdemeanors, which hold a maximum of thirty days in
Speaker 2: the shock incarceration for a misdemeanor. So it does make
Speaker 2: me wonder just about like, thirty days in jail for
Speaker 2: a misdemeanor. Doesn't that feel I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that feels like much like too much or not.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know.
Speaker 3: It's a long month, man, it feels like it to me, especially.
Speaker 2: If they're undergoing the stuff that we're talking about that
Speaker 2: goes on a lakeview, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and multiple other places. While this practice has been
Speaker 3: newly re examined, we know that multiple states have pulled
Speaker 3: away from advocating for shock incarceration. The research that exists
Speaker 3: simply does not support the notion that shock programs work measurably,
Speaker 3: predictably better than, as we said earlier, regular prison. Instead,
Speaker 3: studies show the combative style of counseling that these programs
Speaker 3: rely on is pretty ineffective. It reminds me of the
Speaker 3: great in a way. It reminds me of that great
Speaker 3: controversy where a psychological patient died while they were trying
Speaker 3: to like reenact their birth. Yeah, you know about where
Speaker 3: they like hold you down under a blanket and you
Speaker 3: have to struggle to be born. Is that is that's
Speaker 3: the sort of team building exercise.
Speaker 5: What is that about?
Speaker 3: Well, a result in the death of someone. We'll follow up.
Speaker 3: We'll follow up in the next episode just to just
Speaker 3: to cite that specifically. But this, this is the thing.
Speaker 3: It's still it's based on troops. Right, We're gonna scare
Speaker 3: you straight, We're gonna put you in the military, give
Speaker 3: you some structure. Troops are powerful, and it does sound
Speaker 3: great for reelection campaigns, but in this case, it appears
Speaker 3: being tough on crime all too often means an excuse
Speaker 3: to be a monster that feels like the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. We want to hear your opinions.
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Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three
Speaker 2: three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. When you call in,
Speaker 2: give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
Speaker 2: we can use your name and message on the air. Guys,
Speaker 2: really quickly before I jump off here, there's one thing
Speaker 2: I forgot to mention about the whole Danny situation. There's
Speaker 2: a new bill in Missouri called Danny's Law, and the
Speaker 2: father of Danny just spoke at the Missouri State House
Speaker 2: of Representatives to push for this Danny's Law. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: I think you'll like it. Let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: Maybe it is. The concept is to protect anyone who
Speaker 2: is in a situation who then calls nine to one
Speaker 2: one to get assistance for somebody, especially in a hazing situation.
Speaker 2: It protects the person who finally raises a hand and says, hey,
Speaker 2: something wrong, something's going wrong here.
Speaker 3: So similar to like a Good Samaritan law.
Speaker 2: Very similar. I think it's specifically for university hazing and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. Anyway, give us a call, Tell
Speaker 2: tell us what you think. Maybe you don't want to
Speaker 2: give us a call, Maybe you want to send us
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned email.
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