Oregon seems to have a rather generous criminal code. Caley Mason, 22, tried to murder a man by slitting his throat at a Taco Bill. She then fled the scene and left 48-year-old Jason Luczkow to die with an 8-inch gash across his face and throat. He survived with the help of 100 stitches. Her boyfriend was also arrested. Mason however was given just seven years after pleading guilty to second-degree assault. I fail to see the justice in that sentence for the victim.
Mason was apparently upset that her ranting at the staff was interrupted by Luczkow who told her to “zip it.” Mason, wearing a yellow wig, was yelling at the staff for taking too long. After Luczkow intervened, Mason left and then returned with a knife to try to kill him. She then sped off in a silver Kia Soul with her boyfriend and two young children – ages 2 and 4 – in the car.
Her boyfriend, Phillip Thomas, was arrested for tampering with physical evidence. Mason’s wig was found by police down his pants.
At the time of the attack, she was under state supervision for an armed robbery in Maryland. She was originally charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon. Yet, the prosecutors agreed to a seven-year sentence in an attack that could have easily taken the life of this man.
Do you think seven years is an adequate sentence for such a crime?
Semper aliquid novi ex Oregonam adferre. Oregon’s public officials tolerate the tacit paramilitary occupation of parts of Portland by an armed extremist group. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all that an attack clearly intended to sever the victim’s jugular vein and/or carotid artery is prosecuted as second degree assault, and not attempted murder. That the attacker went to her car to retrieve the lethal weapon she used indicated it was done with at least some premeditation, and entirely with depraved indifference to the victim’s right to live.
Paul C. Schulte reminds us of Quaker attempts to influence prison policy. Mostly these were improvements over the conditions in English gaols. However, solitary confinement is a bad idea, promoting only insanity. So I am repeatedly told.
David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me thirty-eight citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after forty-five weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – As you will see David, the Quakers did their improvements in American jails, although they did complain mightily about English gaols. This article is from MotherJones and shows that we are going back to the Quaker or Philadelphia Model with many of our super-max prisons.
CRIME AND JUSTICE
MARCH 3, 2009
Solitary Confinement: A Brief History
From Quaker logic to America’s first electric chair, a quick tour of prisons past.
BROOKE SHELBY BIGGS
Bio
Photo by Adam Shemper
Prisons were a relatively new concept in the early 1800s. Punishment for crimes had been a matter for communities until then. Some took the Hammurabian approach of an eye for an eye, and public hangings in town squares were the price for murder, rape, or even horse thievery. As a more nuanced judicial system evolved, civic leaders sought a more civilized method of punishment, and even began entertaining the idea of rehabilitation.
In 1790, Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia (built in 1773, but expanded later under a state act) was built by the Quakers and was the first institution in the United States designed to punish and rehabilitate criminals. It is considered the birthplace of the modern prison system. Newgate Prison in New York City followed shortly after, in 1797, and was joined 19 years later by the larger Auburn Prison, built in western New York state. All three were perhaps naive experiments in the very new concept of modern penology. They all began as, essentially, warehouses of torture. The gallows and stocks were moved inside, but little else changed. Those who survived generally came out as better-trained thieves and killers.
Between Philadelphia and New York, a schism in philosophies emerged: The Philadelphia system used isolation and total silence as a means to control, punish, and rehabilitate inmates; the Auburn or “congregate” system—although still requiring total silence—permitted inmates to mingle, but only while working at hard labor. At Walnut Street, each cell block had 16 one-man cells. In the wing known as the “Penitentiary House,” inmates spent all day every day in their cells. Felons would serve their entire sentences in isolation, not just as punishment, but as an opportunity to seek forgiveness from God. It was a revolutionary idea—no penal method had ever before considered that criminals might be reformed. In 1829, Quakers and Anglicans expanded on the idea born at Walnut Street, constructing a prison called Eastern State Penitentiary, which was made up entirely of solitary cells along corridors that radiated out from a central guard area. At Eastern State, every day of every sentence was carried out primarily in solitude, though the law required the warden to visit each prisoner daily and prisoners were able to see reverends and guards. The theory had it that the solitude would bring penitence; thus the prison—now abandoned—gave our language the term “penitentiary.”
Ironically, solitary confinement had been conceived by the Quakers
and Anglicans as humane reform of a penal system with overcrowded
jails, squalid conditions, brutal labor chain gangs, stockades, public
humiliation, and systemic hopelessness. Instead, it drove many men mad.
The Auburn system, conversely, gave birth to America’s first
maximum-security prison, known as Sing Sing. Built on the Hudson River
30 miles north of New York City, it spawned the phrase “sent up the
river,” meaning doomed. Although far different from Walnut Street,
Eastern State, and Auburn, in that inmates were permitted to speak to
one another, in many ways it was the most brutal prison ever built.
Various means of torture—being strung upside down with arms and legs
trussed, or fitted with a bowl at the neck and having it gradually
filled with dripping water from a tank above until the mouth and nose
were submerged—replaced isolation and silence. Sing Sing also held the
distinction of being home to America’s first electric chair.
Europe’s eyes were on the curious competing theories at Sing Sing
and Eastern State. A celebrity at the time, Charles Dickens visited
Eastern State to have a look for himself at this radical new social
invention. Rather than impressed, he was shocked at the state of the
sensory-deprived, ashen inmates with wild eyes he observed. He wrote
that they were “dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible
despair…The first man…answered…with a strange kind of
pause…fell into a strange stare as if he had forgotten something…”
Of another prisoner, Dickens wrote, “Why does he stare at his hands and
pick the flesh open…and raise his eyes for an instant…to those bare
walls?”
“The system here, is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary
confinement,” Dickens concluded. “I believe it…to be cruel and
wrong…I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the
brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”
In the late 1800s, the Supreme Court of the United States began
looking at growing clinical evidence emanating from Europe that showed
that the psychological effects of solitary were in fact dire. In
Germany, which had emulated the isolationist Pennsylvania model,
doctors had documented a spike in psychosis among inmates. In 1890, the
High Court condemned the use of long-term solitary confinement, noting
“a considerable number of prisoners…fell into a semi-fatuous
condition…and others became violently insane.”
Prisons built after this period—including Angola—were designed more
as secure dormitories for captive laborers, as envisioned in the Auburn
system. Inmates were required to work together at prison industries,
which not only kept them occupied; it helped the institutions support
themselves. Sing Sing, for example was built on a mine and constructed
entirely of the rock beneath it by inmate labor.
Eastern State was a grand failure, and it was closed in 1971, 100
years after the concept of total isolation was abandoned. But what it
revealed about the torturous effects of solitary may have made the
practice attractive to those less concerned with rehabilitation and
more interested in retribution. Solitary in the 20th century became a
purely punitive tool used to break the spirits of inmates considered
disruptive, violent, or disobedient. But even the most retributive
wardens have rarely used it for more than brief periods. After all, a
broken spirit theoretically eliminates danger; a broken mind creates
it.
But in the past 25 years, the penal pendulum has swung back toward
the practices—absent the theories—that governed the “Philadelphia
system” invented at Eastern State. We no longer seem to have faith in
the “penitent” part of “penitentiary,” and our “corrections” system no
longer “corrects” anti-social behavior but inevitably breeds it. It can
be argued that today, almost all maximum-security prisoners in America
are kept in a kind of solitary for a large portion of their sentences.
The advent of “supermax” and “control unit” prisons in the early 1970s
has led to the construction of pod-based prisons and “security housing
units” in which all inmates are isolated one to a cell for most of
every day. They are generally allowed out for an hour each day for
exercise or a shower, and are permitted limited personal possessions
and visits. Many of the newer prisons enforce the “solitary” aspect by
keeping some prisoners in soundproof cells, so they cannot even talk or
shout at one another. The lack of regular human contact is still
considered inhumane by many rights advocates who have taken to the
state legislatures and courts to challenge its constitutionality.
Ironically, one of the loudest advocate groups is the National
Coalition to Stop Control Unit Prisons—a project of the American
Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group
I doubt that 7 years, or even more, will modify her behavior. Prison has not done well in turning out adequate citizens. It also does nothing for restorative justice.
Unfortunately I have no positive suggestions to make.
David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me thirty-eight citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after forty-five weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – are you speaking from personal experience? I can believe it in your case.
I listen to the faculty from Psychology and also Criminal Justice. Further, the Religious Society of Friends has long history with prisons, beginning with personal experience.
David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me thirty-eight citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after forty-five weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – I find it hard to believe you listened to anyone and didn’t the Society of Friends prisons depend on solitary and complete silence?
For a historian you certainly are ignorant. The Quakers didn’t have gaols, just inhabited.
David Benson is the God Emperor of Making Stuff Up and owes me thirty-eight citations (one from the OED, one from the town ordinances and two from the Old Testament), an equation and the source of a quotation, after forty-five weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. –
Pennsylvania system
PENOLOGY
See Article History
Alternative Title: separate system
Pennsylvania system, penal method based on the principle that solitary confinement fosters penitence and encourages reformation. The idea was advocated by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, whose most active members were Quakers. In 1829 the Eastern State Penitentiary, on Cherry Hill in Philadelphia, applied this so-called separate philosophy. Prisoners were kept in solitary confinement in cells 16 feet high, nearly 12 feet long, and 7.5 feet wide (4.9 by 3.7 by 2.3 m). An exercise yard, completely enclosed to prevent contact among prisoners, was attached to each cell. Prisoners saw no one except institution officers and an occasional visitor. Solitary penitence, however, was soon modified to include the performance of work such as shoemaking or weaving. The Pennsylvania system spread until it predominated in European prisons. Critics in the United States argued that it was too costly and had deleterious effects on the minds of the prisoners. The Pennsylvania system was superseded in the United States by the Auburn system.
(emphasis mine)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pennsylvania-system#targetText=The%20idea%20was%20advocated%20by,this%20so%2Dcalled%20separate%20philosophy.
Buck V Bell is my suggestion.
Huh?
“Buck v. Bell”, Wikipedia, the free eneyclopedio
“Buck v. Bell, is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health of the state” did not violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell.”
Welcome to the socialists State of Oregon. Very little done in the name of Government or Justice makes sense here.
This was total trash from start to finish. Attempted murder for interfering with a single mother yelling at fast food employees, her wig down her boyfriend’s pants, and her young children there, absorbing the scene. I love the Madea movies, and am quite sure that Tyler Perry could have made a diamond out of this sow’s ear, whipping this no account into shape.
7 years is an egregious miscarriage of justice. This was attempted murder. She almost took this man away from his parents and loved ones, forever…over fast food. It was negligent parenting. She not only tried to murder someone while out with her young kids, but she clearly did not care about how the repercussions of her actions would affect them. Any fool would understand they would go to jail over this, which means the kids just lost their mother, slattern though she may be. Meanwhile, there is likely no soft landing for them. The foster care system is just one cog in the wheel that provides fatherless children a meager upbringing and education, and feeds them into the criminal justice system.
This is one example of the high risks that face innocent children born into single mother homes, without the support of their fathers. What kind of values do these children have any hope to learn? I doubt that a fine, upstanding church woman went on a rampage over greasy fast food. Where was the father? Did he fight to try to get custody, or abandon them to this woman’s indifferent care? Was he any better?
The kids always get the short end of the stick.
At least she pled guilty so she has that going for her…
Dysregulation of cells and uncontrolled rapid growth characterize cancer
Few today bother to self-regulate their behaviors making our culture a cancer.
People would rather “have it my way” than live a self-regulated life.
Mens sana in corpore sano
Estovir, if someone does not believe in God, then why would they be good? Why abstain from a single action that would bring pleasure, revenge, profit, if there was any chance of getting away with it? What is the point of decent behavior if you could avoid consequences? Why develop a conscience at all?
A Godless society is not a good one.
if someone does not believe in God, then why would they be good?
If someone believes in God, then why would they be bad? Our constitution was written for a society with a majority of God-fearing people, why was it necessary, if it was a good one? Because the founding fathers were wise enough to know that in all of human history, man has never been able to resist the temptations of their sinful nature.
A Godless society is not a good one.
I would say a society that does not believe in natural rights is destined for failure. A Godless society and a God-fearing society can both believe we have rights that no government provides or can legitimately take away. And both have proven destructive to that principle, primarily because they are ignorant of history.
Hi Karen
There are scientific principles which bear considering when it comes to human behaviors. Goodness can result when they are followed. Setting medical maladies and the Cardinal Sins aside like gluttony, sloth and wrath, Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, particularly his Third Law , are helpful
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
I take that to mean that there are consequences to our actions so comport yourself accordingly
Hammurabi‘s Code comes to mind especially “lex talionis,” aka “an eye for an eye.”
Entropy is a principle in physics that states the universe tends towards random disorder.
I take that to mean I should conduct myself in an orderly fashion otherwise I will be part of that colossal mess of randomness which results in confusion, injury, harm to the environment, and harm to self, e.g. obesity is a great example of entropy gone unchecked.
I especially like Le Chatelier’s Principle from Chemistry: when a system at equilibrium is disturbed, the system shifts in order to achieve equilibrium again
Le Chatelier has wide application to many fields including economics, physics, radiology, pharmacology, and others
All of these principles are wonderful laws to which humans should abide to avoid the obvious: repercussions, disorder, deterioration in place of homeostasis. I agree that godlessness leads to perdition. The Old Testament is a wonder collection of writings where the Jews time and time again turn away from God, and then seek His help when they are in a state of entropy.
Will Americans follow the example of the Old Testament Jews and return to God? I dont think so.
I always have hope for individuals but I tend to be rather cynical towards large populations
Thanks for the interaction!
pax
Will Americans follow the example of the Old Testament Jews and return to God? I dont think so.
Agreed. That’s a 5000 year leap too far.
because they fear consequence from righteous humans who will exact retribution, while God remains silent. that’s why
God isn’t silent. God speaks in many ways. Are we listening?
The temptation of man to place himself at the center of all things (pride) has been the cause of many civilizations to collapse….
we are there
In Nietzsche’s word, Heidegger explains how although materialism and naturalism “killed” God, to paraphrase Nietzsche’s words in Zarathustra (“God is dead– we have killed him”) (not a statement of atheism but a statement that science etc had destroyed God’s place in our culture.)
But Heidegger in explaining those words, said the “Throne of God” remains ever present for us in the very structure of our language and culture and technology, we are stuck measuring it constantly, even as we believe that throne is evidently empty, and so yet ir remains significant as ever, as the West slides deeper into nihilism. Or sometehing like that if I remember it correctly.
Nietzsche’s attempt to re-valorize polytheistic values, and escape dualism, had failed.
Heidegger’s philosophical project, was not to rehabilitate Christianity either, but he endeavored o put existence itself (Dasein, “being there”) at the heart of philosophy, instead of the sort of measurement and logic that he said Socrates had “started the whole Western world down the road on until it ended up with materialism, naturalism.
Or something like that.
I’m not sure Heidegger was any more successful than Nietzsche. But, between the two of them, they sure did give the left a lot to think about, who decided to use them as an excuse for every sort of base power-lusting and bad behavior they ever desired.
As I have been reading Heidegger slowly for a long time, finding value but not understanding it. I can’t help but feel like there is a lot more buried in it, that the academic philosophers who can comprehend it fully, would wish to deny to us.
I won’t hold my breath for any priests let alone bishops to explain it either. Sorry Estovir but the leadership of the Church is as corrupt as any of the other institutions of the West at this point or so it seems.
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Mr. Kurtz,
If you have not watched/listened to these lectures, you may enjoy them:
2017 Personality 11: Existentialism: Nietzsche Dostoevsky & Kierkegaard — Dr. Jordan Peterson
2017 Personality 12: Phenomenology: Heidegger, Binswanger, Boss — Dr. Jordan Peterson
Plus, can you believe that person is only 22 years old??? Darn, but she looks 60.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Ridiculous sentence. This was attempted murder. But black women aka “The Democratic Party Base” are good about throwing fits inside fast food places, Chuck E Cheeses, and Waffle Houses. They do not have much impulse control. Tommy Sotomayor is always doing videos on this topic. The fun starts at 3:08 into the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QH_C1mWmro
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter..
It’s the Left Coast. Apparently, they enjoy criminals there.
7 years does seem a little light.
Is Luczkow white? If so she should get extra time for a hate crime
Luczkow is about as polish as it gets. Have you seen a lot of black folks with Polish names running around? I havent.
At the time of the attack, she was under state supervision for an armed robbery in Maryland.
Armed robbery in Maryland = state supervision in Oregon? Hmm? 7 years for attempted murder, a la cartel (ISIS) style? Clearly I haven’t seen all the facts in this case, but what has happened to our justice system? Seems our states need to have a security of rights rating posted so law-abiding people can know what risk they are taking upon entry.
“At the time of the attack, she was under state supervision for an armed robbery in Maryland.”
“She then sped off in a silver Kia Soul with her boyfriend and two young children – ages 2 and 4 – in the car.”
Why does she still have custody of her 2 children? Either that, or those are his kids.
No, they are probably hers. We see a lot of this kind of thing at Penelope’s office. Truth is, about half the black mothers out there should have their children taken from them, but there ain’t enough foster families in the Universe. It is a shame and a horror how most black kids are raised by these ghettopotami. They only have them for attention, and welfare benefits. 77% illegitimate. But, they are the base of the Democratic Party!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It may have a ‘generous criminal code’, but what’s more notable is that it has biased and unserious judges. The judiciary in this country is a scandal, and one manifestation of that is the girl’s discount in criminal sentencing. (Look up “Mary Winkler” for an egregious example; that case was in Tennessee).
Did you catch how the name of the judge responsible for this travesty was omitted from the report. One reason we have such lousy judges is that the newspapers cover for them. The papers are also the great advocate of ‘landmark rulings’ which take discretion away from elected officials. Our journalists are as disgusting as our judges.
Do you pay for a newspaper subscription? How many people do you know who subscribe? Newspapers have been suffering from huge revenue losses; many newspapers have folded. Local news coverage has suffered.
Sticking three words in the article, “Judge Worthless Incompetus” is not going to injure them financially. They’re protecting the judge from public wrath.
“Do you think seven years is an adequate sentence for such a crime?”
Nope.
Lock her up and throw away the key.
From the article posted by Jonathan:
According to prosecutors, Mason was on state supervision for an armed robbery conviction in Maryland after sticking up a pizza deliveryman at her home. She will likely face more prison back east when she’s completed her sentence in Oregon, where she in ineligible for early release.
“In the meantime,” Luczkow said, “I guess she gets to enjoy the scenery here for a few years.”
Yet more black on black violent crime. 3 blacks killed by other blacks this weekend in the housing project near us. Just another example of how whitey causes all of this sorrow, just ask any Dimocrap
Passing reparations will solve all of this
I doubt there are many blacks walking around with Slavic names like “Luczkow”.
That’s why she’s laughing in her mug shot; she knows that Oregon’s criminal justice system is a joke. But at least she’ll be off the street for seven years. If she had committed the same crime in notoriously lenient Washington, D.C., she likely would have been sentenced to an anger management course and probation.
Same in Philly with our DA Krasner. He’s been doing deals where the suspects plead down to practically nothing.
Not off the street for 7 years. She will be released early.