glassbooth is a useful tool for sorting through the primary presidential candidates. it works in two steps: first, you tell glassbooth what issues matter to you. glassbooth then generates a poll around your issues and matches you to candidates who think (or claim to think) along your lines. this is a decent way to do an end-run around the cult of personality garbage that comes with mass media democracy.

my highest match (94%) was kucinich. progressive environmental policy? check. universal health care? check. equal rights? check. totally unelectable? check.

speaking of unelectable - can't believe huckabee won iowa. don't evangelicals have jobs? who bussed them to caucus? frankly, i'd like to see a california proposition for secession.

glassbooth

I am beginning to get my head around the prison-industrial complex a bit now that my brother is in the belly of the beast.

First off - it is not easy to figure out where exactly he is at any given time. According to Colorado DOC, there's an online locater for inmates once they've been processed through intake and assigned to their initial* facility. Prior to intake, however, inmates are usually in county jails waiting for processing. The county does not let inmates or their families know if they intend to transfer the inmate to another facility in the same (or different) county. Incoming mail is sorted and examined for contraband, and can delay mail delivery to inmates for over a week. If an inmate is transfered during this time, his or her mail is not forwarded.

Contact between the inmate and family/friends is limited to plate-glass teleconferencing or video conferences. Phone calls by the inmate are routed through the DOC (county doesn't always allow outgoing calls) and are placed collect at high rates. It's difficult to coordinate phone calls between the inside and outside as well.

I understand the need for security and surveillance in contact between the inmate and the outside world. However, it also seems like mitigating factors should be considered - the nature of the crime, previous or current involvement with organized crime, etc. I figure that two factors must come into play:
1. treating all inmates the same cuts down on accusations of bias, and
2. it allows for the isolation and institutionalization of the inmates - getting them into "the system," where the DOC becomes very much home, and contact with the outside world is anomalous and foreign.

I haven't heard from him directly since before sentencing, but family tells me that he's adjusting - reading, working out, sobering up, etc. I know any real rehabilitation will have to come of his own will and desire - the prison system hardly even pays lip service to rehab, especially in a red state. He has no shortage of will; it is simply a matter of direction.

* I say initial because it is very rare for an inmate to spend any real length of time at a particular facility. Ostensibly this is because of security measures (preventing networking - particularly by gangs), but it also serves the purpose of keeping inmates uncomfortable and insecure in their environment.