K
The aff focuses on the wrong problem and gets coopted to make the
prison system stronger—they make prisons look better while leaving
in place the larger neoliberal structures that sustain the prisonindustrial complex
Heitzeg, 14 – Ph.D, professor of sociology and director of the critical studies of race/ethnicity program at St. Catherine
University (Nancy A., 12/18. “The Perils of Criminal Justice "Reform" and the Promise of Abolition.” http://www.truthout.org/news/item/28087-the-perils-of-criminal-justice-reform-and-the-promise-of-abolition)
as we traverse what Kilgore aptly calls the Contradictory Road of “Reforming” Mass
Incarceration, let’s question, too, the legitimacy of well-meaning classically
liberal models of “corrections” and “reform.” These models can do their own sort of damage. Early
But
this year right about the time that Angela Davis issued her words of warning – I was reminded of this again at a panel hosted by the
Minneapolis League of Women Voters, Interrupting the Prison Pipeline: Partnerships, Prevention, Advocacy, Intervention. The
panel included a host of well-connected Minneapolis political, nonprofit and faith-based “leaders.” And despite the claims of
“interrupting” in the title,
the primary focus was in providing services to those already
incarcerated or to ex-offenders in the form of increased employment opportunities via Ban the Box legislation, expanded
voting rights for probationers, and more Second Chances. And of course we are for that. But where was discussion
about prevention, alternatives to the criminal legal system, dismantling the
school to prison pipeline, and the impetus for the first chances? Here’s the truth:
Minnesota, a couple of anomalies not withstanding, is a Blue state. Minneapolis an even bluer city. The state has one of the lowest
incarceration rates in the nation (with fewer people in prison in the entire state than the two largest maximum security prisons in
the U.S.. combined), and a Department of Corrections that advertizes its’ “bold set of reforms that created one of the best
correctional systems in the nation.” Still, the racial disparities are staggering, with Blacks and American Indians dramatically overrepresented, and more than 100,000 on probation/community supervision, a rate, that while declining, is near the top of the nation.
Minnesota runs a kinder gentler correctional industrial complex, where
mostly “nice” white liberals control vast percentages of select populations
(read: Black, Latino, Hmong, East African and American Indian) through racial profiling, community
supervision/probation, and by offering an array of “re-entry’ services to those released from our
prisons. The entire endeavor is funded and blessed by a complex web that
includes Hennepin County government services, the local nonprofit industrial
complex, including an array of powerful statewide foundations, “socially
responsible” corporations, interfaith coalitions, and elite research think
tanks of the University of Minnesota. It is an obvious improvement over mass incarceration or raw “Right on Crime”
profiteering, but it is still a nearly impenetrable economic web that creates and
sustains a huge employment sector. These interests insure that the system
is always needed, and no issue is ever “solved”, that any grassroots groups
that wants funding must jettison the more radical aspects of their agenda,
and that innovative community-centered models, such as restorative
justice, are immediately co-opted and institutionalized. Ultimately, we must
So
question this too, and in fact, question the entire enterprise known as
“criminal justice.” If the “best” practices still produce an excessive and
unnecessary vortex of raced, classed, gendered social control, then
alternatives to this must be envisioned as well. We must ask again, with Angela Davis: So, the question
is: How does one address the needs of prisoners by instituting reforms that
are not going to create a stronger prison system? Now there are something like two-and-a-half
million people behind bars, if one counts all of the various aspects of what we call the prison-industrial complex, including military
prisons, jails in Indian country, state and federal prisons, county jails, immigrant detention facilities—which constitute the fastestgrowing sector of the prison-industrial complex. Yeah, so how—the question is: How do we respond to the needs of those who are
begin a process of decarceration
inside, and at the same time
that will allow us to end this reliance on
imprisonment as a default method of addressing—not addressing, really—major social problems? And the answer – Abolition.
Social inequality produces a background of structural violence
that makes conflict and environmental collapse inevitable
Szentes ‘8
Tamás Szentes, a Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest. “Globalisation and prospects of the world society”
4/22/08 http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf
It’ s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace countries cannot
develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the
world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful countries, --arms race and militarisation have not ended with
the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction and misusing enormous
many “invisible wars” are suffered by the poor and
oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty, unemployment,
homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and
oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the denial or
regular infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc., and last but not least,
in the degradation of human environment, which means that --the “war against Nature”, i.e. the
resources badly needed for development, --
disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our environment, is still
Behind global terrorism and “invisible wars” we
find striking international and intrasociety inequities and distorted
development patterns , which tend to generate social as well as international
tensions , thus paving the way for unrest and “visible” wars. It is a commonplace now that
going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life.
peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace between and within societies involve not only - though, of
course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but also a systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of
“invisible wars”, of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities, exploitation and
oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and
the world bringing about equal rights and opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous cooperation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate system of proportional
representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict
management, and thus also a global governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of
peace is indivisible in both time and space. It
cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and cannot be safeguarded in one part of
the world when some others suffer visible or invisible wars. Thus, peace requires,
accelerating globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world,
indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal opportunities for sustainable development.
“Sustainability of development” (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only
and reduced to the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with
no ecological balance can be ensured,
unless the deep international development gap and intra-society
inequalities are substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any
overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However,
“zero-sum-games”, in which one can gain at the expense of others, but, instead, the “negative-sum-games” tend to predominate, in
which everybody must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly, losses. Therefore, the actual question is not about “sustainability
of development” but rather about the “sustainability of human life”, i.e. survival of mankind – because of ecological imbalance and
globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk de la Rive Box was the president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the
state and future of development studies. We agreed that development studies are not any more restricted to the case of
underdeveloped countries, as the developed ones (as well as the former “socialist” countries) are also facing development problems,
such as those of structural and institutional (and even system-) transformation, requirements of changes in development patterns,
and concerns about natural environment. While all these are true, today I would dare say that besides (or even instead of)
“development studies” we must speak about and make “survival studies”. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical,
we live in an almost permanent crisis of the world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also
The narrow-minded, election-oriented,
selfish behaviour motivated by thirst for power and wealth, which still characterise the
political leadership almost all over the world, paves the way for the final, last catastrophe . One cannot
socio-psychological, behavioural, cultural and political aspects.
doubt, of course, that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the world in the last century. Such as
decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some former fascist or authoritarian
states, institutionalisation of welfare policies in several countries, rise of international organisations and new forums for
negotiations, conflict management and cooperation, institutionalisation of international assistance programmes by multilateral
agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of sovereignty and democracy also on international level, collapse of the
militarised Soviet bloc and system-change3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few.
Nevertheless, the crisis of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of bifurcation that necessarily puts
Under the circumstances
provided by rapidly progressing science and technological revolutions,
human society cannot survive unless such profound intra-society and
international inequalities prevailing today are soon eliminated. Like a single
an end to the present tendencies, either by the final catastrophe or a common solution.
spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew' divided into two parts: the rich, privileged, wellfed, well-educated, on the
one hand, and the poor, deprived, starving, sick and uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to
be “negative-sum-games”) can hardly be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society. Because of global
interdependencies, the apparent winner becomes also a loser. The real choice for the world society is between negative- and positivesum-games: i.e. between, on the one hand, continuation of visible and “invisible wars”, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the
other, transformation of the world order by demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or terminological camouflage can
conceal this real dilemma any more, which is to be faced not in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming years,
because of global terrorism soon having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to irreversible changes in natural
environment.
The alternative articulates a “counter-conduct” – voting neg pushes
towards a cooperative conduct that organizes individuals around a
collectively shared commons – affirming this conduct creates a new
heuristic that de-couples government from the demand for
competition and production
Dardot & Laval 13
(Pierre Dardot, philosopher and specialist in Hegel and Marx, Christian Laval, professor of sociology at the Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre La
Defense, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, pgs. 318-321)
This indicates to what extent we must take on board in our own way the main lesson of neo-liberalism:
be constructed . The
the subject is always to
whole question is then how to articulate subjectivation with
resistance to power. Now, precisely this issue is at the heart of all of Foucault’s thought. However, as Jeffrey T. Nealon has recently shown, part of the North
American secondary literature has, on the contrary, stressed the alleged break between Foucault’s research on power and that of his last period on the history of subjectivity.55 According to the
‘Foucault consensus’, as Nealon aptly dubs it, the successive impasses of the initial neo-structuralism, and then of the totalizing analysis of panoptical power, led the ‘last Foucault’ to set aside
the issue of power and concern himself exclusively with the aesthetic invention of a style of existence bereft of any political dimension. Furthermore, if we follow this de-politicizing reading of
Foucault, the aestheticization of ethics anticipated the neo-liberal mutation precisely by making self-invention a new norm. In reality, far from being oblivious of one another, the issues of power
and the subject were always closely articulated, even in the last work on modes of subjectivation. If one concept played a decisive role in this respect, it was ‘counter-conduct’, as developed in
the lecture of 1 March 1978.56 This lecture was largely focused on the crisis of the pastorate. It involved identifying the specificity of the ‘revolts’ or
‘forms of
resistance of conduct’ that are the correlate of the pastoral mode of power. If such forms of resistance are said to be ‘of
conduct’, it is because they are forms of resistance to power as conduct and, as such, are themselves forms of
conduct opposed to this ‘power-conduct’ . The term ‘conduct’ in fact admits of two
meanings: an activity that consists in conducting others, or ‘conduction’ ; and
the way one conducts oneself under the influence of this activity of
conduction.57 The idea of ‘counter-conduct’ therefore has the advantage of
directly signifying a ‘struggle against the procedures implemented for
conducting others’, unlike the term ‘misconduct’, which only refers to the
passive sense of the word.58 Through ‘counter-conduct’, people seek both to
escape conduction by others and to define a way of conducting themselves
towards others .¶ What relevance might this observation have for a reflection on
resistance to neo-liberal governmentality? It will be said that the concept is introduced in the context of an
analysis of the pastorate, not government. Governmentality, at least in its specifically neo-liberal form,
precisely makes conducting others through their conduct towards themselves its
real goal. The peculiarity of this conduct towards oneself, conducting oneself as a personal
enterprise, is that it immediately and directly induces a certain conduct
towards others: competition with others , regarded as so many personal enterprises. Consequently, counter-conduct as a form of
resistance to this governmentality must correspond to a conduct that is indivisibly a conduct towards oneself and a conduct towards others. One cannot struggle against such an indirect mode of
conduction by appealing for rebellion against an authority that supposedly operates through compulsion external to individuals. If ‘politics is nothing more and nothing less than that which is
born with resistance to governmentality, the first revolt, the first confrontation’,59 it means that ethics and politics are absolutely inseparable.¶ To the subjectivation-subjection represented by
To neo-liberal governmentality as a
specific way of conducting the conduct of others, we must therefore oppose a no
less specific double refusal: a refusal to conduct oneself towards oneself as a
personal enterprise and a refusal to conduct oneself towards others in
accordance with the norm of competition . As such, the double refusal is not ‘passive disobedience’.60 For, if it
is true that the personal enterprise’s relationship to the self immediately and
directly determines a certain kind of relationship to others – generalized
competition – conversely, the refusal to function as a personal enterprise, which
is self-distance and a refusal to line up in the race for performance, can only
practically occur on condition of establishing cooperative relations with others ,
sharing and pooling . In fact, where would be the sense in a self-distance severed
from any cooperative practice? At worst, a cynicism tinged with contempt for those who are dupes. At best, simulation or double dealing, possibly
dictated by a wholly justified concern for self-preservation, but ultimately exhausting for the subject. Certainly not a counter-conduct. All the more so in that such a game
could lead the subject, for want of anything better, to take refuge in a
ultra-subjectivation, we must oppose a subjectivation by forms of counter-conduct.
compensatory identity , which at least has the advantage of some stability by contrast with the imperative of indefinite self-
Far from threatening the neo-liberal order, fixation with identity ,
whatever its nature, looks like a fall-back position for subjects weary of themselves, for all
those who have abandoned the race or been excluded from it from the outset. Worse, it recreates the logic of
competition at the level of relations between ‘little communities’. Far from
being valuable in itself, independently of any articulation with politics, individual subjectivation is
bound up at its very core with collective subjectivation. In this sense, sheer aestheticization of
ethics is a pure and simple abandonment of a genuinely ethical attitude. The invention of new forms of
existence can only be a collective act , attributable to the multiplication and
intensification of cooperative counter-conduct . A collective refusal to ‘work more’, if only local, is a good example of an
transcendence.
attitude that can pave the way for such forms of counter-conduct. In effect, it breaks what André Gorz quite rightly called the ‘structural complicity’ that binds the worker to capital, in as much as
The
genealogy of neo-liberalism attempted in this book teaches us that the new global
rationality is in no wise an inevitable fate shackling humanity. Unlike Hegelian Reason, it is not the
reason of human history. It is itself wholly historical – that is, relative to strictly singular
conditions that cannot legitimately be regarded as untranscendable. The main thing is to
‘earning money’, ever more money, is the decisive goal for both. It makes an initial breach in the ‘immanent constraint of the “ever more”, “ever more rapidly”‘.61¶
understand that nothing can release us from the task of promoting a different rationality. That is why the belief that the financial crisis by itself sounds the death-knell of neo-liberal capitalism is
the worst of beliefs. It is possibly a source of pleasure to those who think they are witnessing reality running ahead of their desires, without them having to move their little finger. It certainly
comforts those for whom it is an opportunity to celebrate their own past ‘clairvoyance’. At bottom, it is the least acceptable form of intellectual and political abdication. Neo-liberalism is not
falling like a ‘ripe fruit’ on account of its internal contradictions; and traders will not be its undreamed-of ‘gravediggers’ despite themselves. Marx had already made the point powerfully: ‘History
There are only human beings who act in given conditions and seek
through their action to open up a future for themselves . It is up to us to enable
a new sense of possibility to blaze a trail. The government of human beings can be aligned
with horizons other than those of maximizing performance, unlimited
production and generalized control. It can sustain itself with self-government
does nothing’.62
that opens onto different relations with others than that of competition between
‘self-enterprising actors’ . The practices
of ‘communization’ of knowledge,
mutual aid and cooperative work can delineate the features of a different
world reason. Such an alternative reason cannot be better designated than
by the term reason of the commons .
PTX
Obama’s push on the iran deal is key to preventing a veto override
French and Wheaton 7/30, Writers for Politico (7-30-2015, Lauren French and Sarah Wheaton, POLITICO,
"Obama gets personal with Dems on Iran", http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/barack-obama-personal-white-house-meetingdemocrats-iran-nuclear-deal-120824.html) EWimsatt
It was a side of President Barack Obama many of the 20 House Democrats who gathered in the White House’s Blue Room
Wednesday night hadn’t seen before: engaged, direct, even a little bit personal.
Obama dived into his pitch on the Iran nuclear deal, demonstrating his
command of the nuances as lawmakers peppered him with questions. But the
president who has infamously shied away from hardball politics when it comes to selling his policies also made abundantly clear he’s
making an exception to secure what would be the biggest foreign policy triumph of his two terms.
e told the lawmakers they “owe me” the chance to persuade them to
support the nonproliferation agreement, according to multiple members in
attendance. He repeated comments made to lawmakers last week that they would not get a pass on the Iran bill — that he
H
wants, and expects, their support.
This is the most intense I’ve ever seen him,” Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, who supports the deal,
said.
“
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said Obama told the lawmakers: “This is very important and you should vote on your
real convictions, not based on politics.”
The president’s focus on marshaling enough Democratic votes to sustain a veto
of legislation disapproving of the nuclear deal is evident. He blew past a deadline to say goodnight to his daughters, Sasha
and Malia, in order to keep taking questions from lawmakers on the ins and outs of the deal. The majority of House Democrats had
gone to the White House earlier Wednesday, but roughly 20 returned to hear from Obama and a handful of Cabinet secretaries.
Lawmakers say this is the most invested in winning over lawmakers on a
policy priority they’ve seen Obama during his seven years in office. He’s
pitching Democrats on a variety of fronts: sending emissaries to Capitol Hill for briefings,
inviting lawmakers on golf outings and spending hours personally calling
and meeting with lawmakers to answer questions about the agreement.
He is very engaged on this issue … and it was probably one of the most remarkable moments I’ve had in Congress,” said California
Rep. Jackie Speier. “We were sitting in the Blue Room … and the president spent almost two hours with us and answered every
question with specifics, clarity and — I think — persuasion.”
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a strong supporter of the deal, organized the Wednesday night meetings at the White House. They
occurred on the eve of lawmakers’ departure from Washington for their long summer recess, when they’re expected to face heavy
pressure to oppose the Iran accord.
Obama, of course, has become well known for avoiding the grueling task of
building relationships with lawmakers, which many in Congress used to
being stroked and cajoled have taken as a snub. The lack of outreach has
even hurt the president in the past. This year, Democrats bucked the White House on major trade
legislation and a bill giving Congress a say on the Iran deal. In the past, congressional Democrats have been at odds with Obama on
budget and tax deals he’s hatched with Republicans.
But it appears, at this late date, that the White House has learned the value of including lawmakers early, Democrats said.
He’s working this differently than I’ve ever seen him work
anything and I think it’s making a difference,” said one Democrat, who requested anonymity.
“It’s a different White House.
Obama asked Democrats who plan to support the deal to go public early, a message that lawmakers have heard repeatedly from their
pro-deal colleagues. Many are following that advice. Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee, who attended the White House briefings, announced
Thursday that he would vote to push the deal forward.
Republicans are united in opposition to the Iran deal and will likely pass a resolution registering their opposition when Congress
returns from its summer recess in September. Obama has pledged to veto that measure, meaning it will likely fall on House
Democrats to sustain that veto. Senate Democrats could also provide the votes to preserve the Iran agreement, but that conference is
more skeptical than its counterpart in the House, where senior staffers already predict they have the votes to back Obama.
I’m confident [we have the votes] because of the nature of the agreement,”
Pelosi said Thursday. “It’s really pretty exciting. It’s probably one of the most important endeavors members will be engaged
“
in. It’s your vote that they are going to be held accountable for.”
Obama will push prison reform- Prioritizing prison overhaul and
criminal justice
Tau 7/14 (Byron Tau: A reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Washington, D.C. bureau, where he covers the White House
and politics, “Obama Decries ‘Mass Incarceration’ in Call for Prisons Overhaul,” 7/14/15, http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamadecries-mass-incarceration-in-call-for-prisons-overhaul-1436917797, Accessed: 7/16/15, RRR)
President Barack Obama called for changes to national prison policy on
Tuesday, broadening a second-term push to tackle what he decries as
systemic problems in the criminal-justice system.¶ “Mass incarceration
makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it,” the president
said at the NAACP’s annual convention in Philadelphia.¶ Among other measures, the president said he had ordered Attorney General
The social science shows that an
environment like that is often more likely to make inmates more alienated,
more hostile, potentially more violent,” Mr. Obama said. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so
Loretta Lynch to review the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons.¶ “
many people alone in tiny cells for 23 hours a day, for months—sometimes for years—at a time? That is not going to make us safer.”¶
The president’s remarks came as he prepares for a visit Thursday to the medium-security El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in
Mr. Obama has placed
criminal-justice and prison overhauls among the top issues of his final
years in office. This week, he ordered 46 drug offenders released as part of a
broader review of federal drug sentences.
Oklahoma, where he vowed on Tuesday to “shine a spotlight” on these issues.¶
Courts link to politics- Obama nomination means he’ll take the blame
Samuel 9
(Terence Samuel, Deputy Editor– The Root and Senior Correspondent - Prospect, “Obama's Honeymoon Nears Its End”,
American Prospect, 5/29, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=obamas_honeymoon_nears_its_end)
This week, Barack Obama named his first nominee to the Supreme Court, then headed west to Las Vegas and Los
Angeles to raise money for Democrats in the 2010 midterms. Taken together, these two seemingly disparate acts mark the end of a certain period of
innocence in the Obama administration: The "blame Bush" phase of the Obama administration is over, and the prolonged honeymoon that the
president has enjoyed with the country and the media will soon come to an end as well. Obama is no longer just the inheritor of Bush's mess. This
is now his presidency in his own right. The chance to choose a Supreme Court justice is such a sui
generis exercise of executive power -- it so powerfully underscores the vast and unique powers of a
president -- that blame-shifting has become a less effective political strategy, and less becoming as well.
Obama's political maturation will be hastened by the impending ideological fight that is now virtually a
guarantee for Supreme Court nominations. Old wounds will be opened, and old animosities will be triggered as the process moves
along. Already we see the effect in the polls. While Obama himself remains incredibly popular, only 47 percent of Americans think his
choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an excellent or good choice for the Court, according to the latest Gallup poll. The stimulus package scored better
than that. The prospect of a new justice really seems to force people to reconsider their culture warrior allegiances in the context of the party in
power. This month, after news of Justice David Souter's retirement, a Gallup poll showed that more Americans considered themselves against
abortion rights than in favor: 51 percent to 42 percent. Those number were almost exactly reversed a year ago when Bush was in office and Obama
was on the verge of wrapping up the Democratic nomination. "This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life
since Gallup began asking this question in 1995," according to the polling organization. Is this the same country that elected Obama? Yes, but with
his overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, the public may be sending preemptory signals that they are not
interested in a huge swing on some of these cultural issues that tend to explode during nomination
hearings. Even though Obama will win the Sotomayor fight, her confirmation is likely to leave him less
popular in the end because it will involve contentious issues -- questions of race and gender politics like
affirmative action and abortion -- that he managed to avoid or at least finesse through his campaign and
during his presidency so far.
Failure will spur prolif and war with Iran – the plan tanks Obama’s
ability to hold off Congress
Beauchamp 14 (Zack – B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University and an M.Sc in International
Relations from the London School of Economics, former editor of TP Ideas and a reporter for ThinkProgress.org. He previously
contributed to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily Beast, and has also written for Foreign Policy and Tablet magazines,
now writes for Vox , “How the new GOP majority could destroy Obama's nuclear deal with Iran,”
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/6/7164283/iran-nuclear-deal-congress,)
There is one foreign policy issue on which the GOP's takeover of the Senate could have huge ramifications, and beyond just the US:
Republicans are likely to try to torpedo President Obama's ongoing efforts to
reach a nuclear deal with Iran. And they just might pull it off. November 24 is the latest deadline
for a final agreement between the United States and Iran over the latter's nuclear program. That'll likely be extended, but it's a
reminder that the negotiations could soon come to a head.
Throughout his presidency,
Obama has
prioritized these negotiations ; he likely doesn't want to leave office without having made a deal. But if
Congress doesn't like the deal, or just wants to see Obama lose, it has the
power to torpedo it by imposing new sanctions on Iran. Previously, Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid used procedural powers to stop this from happening and save the nuclear talks. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell may not be so kind, and he may have the votes to destroy an Iran deal. If he
tries, we could see one of the most important legislative fight s of Obama's
presidency. Why Congress can bully Obama on Iran sanctions At their most basic level, the international negotiations over
Iran's nuclear program (they include several other nations, but the US is the biggest player) are a tit-for-tat deal. If Iran agrees to
place a series of verifiable limits on its nuclear development, then the United States and the world will relax their painful economic
and diplomatic sanctions on Tehran. "The regime of economic sanctions against Iran is arguably the most complex the United States
and the international community have ever imposed on a rogue state," the Congressional Research Service's Dianne Rennack writes.
To underscore the point, Rennack's four-page report is accompanied by a list of every US sanction on Iran that goes on for 23 full
pages. The US's sanctions are a joint Congressional-executive production. Congress puts strict limits on Iran's ability to export oil
and do business with American companies, but it gives the president the power to waive sanctions if he thinks it's in the American
national interest. "In the collection of laws that are the statutory basis for the U.S. economic sanctions regime on Iran," Rennack
The key point here
is that Congress gave Obama that power — which means they can take it
back. "You could see a bill in place that makes it harder for the
writes, "the President retains, in varying degrees, the authority to tighten and relax restrictions."
administration to suspend sanctions," Ken Sofer, the Associate Director for
National Security and International Policy at the Center for American
Progress (where I worked for a little under two years, though not with Sofer directly), says. "You could also see a bill that says
the president can't agree to a deal unless it includes the following things or [a bill] forcing a congressional vote on any deal."
Imposing new sanctions on Iran wouldn't just stifle Obama's ability to
remove existing sanctions, it would undermine Obama's authority to
negotiate with Iran at all, sending the message to Tehran that Obama is not
worth dealing with because he can't control his own foreign policy. So if
Obama wants to make a deal with Iran, he needs Congress to play ball . But it's not clear
that Mitch McConnell's Senate wants to. Congress could easily use its authority to kill an Iran deal To understand why the new
Senate is such a big deal for congressional action on sanctions, we have to jump back a year. In November 2013, the Obama
administration struck an interim deal with Iran called the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). As part of the JPOA, the US agreed to
limited, temporary sanctions relief in exchange for Iran limiting nuclear program components like uranium production.
Congressional Republicans, by and large, hate the JPOA deal. Arguing that the deal didn't place sufficiently serious limits on Iran's
nuclear growth, the House passed new sanctions on Iran in December. (There is also a line of argument, though often less explicit,
that the Iranian government cannot be trusted with any deal at all, and that US policy should focus on coercing Iran into submission
or unseating the Iranian government entirely.) Senate Republicans, joined by more hawkish Democrats, had the votes to pass a
similar bill. But in February, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid killed new Iran sanctions, using the Majority Leader's power to
block consideration of the sanctions legislation to prevent a vote. McConnell blasted Reid's move. "There is no excuse for muzzling
the Congress on an issue of this importance to our own national security," he said. So now that McConnell holds the majority
leader's gavel, it will remove that procedural roadblock that stood between Obama and new Iran sanctions. To be clear, it's far from
guaranteed that Obama will be able to reach a deal with Iran at all; negotiations could fall apart long before they reach the point of
congressional involvement. But if he does reach a deal, and Congress doesn't like the terms, then they'll be able to kill it by passing
make no mistake
— imposing new sanctions or limiting Obama's authority to waive the
current ones would kill any deal. If Iran can't expect Obama to follow
through on his promises to relax sanctions, it has zero incentive to limit its
nuclear program . "If Congress adopts sanctions," Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told Time last December, "the
entire deal is dead." Moreover, it could fracture the international movement to sanction Iran. The U nited S tates is
far from Iran's biggest trading partner, so it depends on international
cooperation in order to ensure the sanctions bite. If it looks like the US
won't abide by the terms of a deal, the broad-based international sanctions
regime could collapse . Europe, particularly, might decide that going along with the sanctions is no longer worthwhile.
new sanctions legislation, or preventing Obama from temporarily waiving the ones on the books. And
"Our ability to coerce Iran is largely based on whether or not the international community thinks that we are the ones that are being
constructive and [Iranians] are the ones that being obstructive," Sofer says. "If they don't believe that, then the international
It's true that Obama
could veto any Congressional efforts to blow up an Iran deal with sanctions.
But a two-thirds vote could override any veto — and, according to Sofer, an override
is entirely within the realm of possibility. "There are plenty of Democrats that will probably side with
Republicans if they try to push a harder line on Iran," Sofer says. For a variety of reasons, including deep
sanctions regime falls apart." This could be one of the biggest fights of Obama's last term
skepticism of Iran's intentions and strong Democratic support for Israel, whose government opposes the negotiations,
Congressional Democrats are not as open to making a deal with Iran as
Obama is. Many will likely defect to the GOP side out of principle. The real
fight, Sofer says, will be among the Democrats — those who are willing to take
the administration's side in theory, but don't necessarily think a deal with
Iran is legislative priority number one, and maybe don't want to open
themselves up to the political risk. These Democrats "can make it harder:
you can filibuster, if you're Obama you can veto — you can make it impossible for a full bill to be
But it'd be a really tough battle, one that would
consume a lot of energy and lobbying effort that Democrats might prefer to spend
pushing on other issues. "I'm not really sure they're going to be willing to take on a fight about an Iran sanctions bill,"
passed out of Congress on Iran," Sofer says.
Sofer concludes. "I'm not really sure that the Democrats who support [a deal] are really fully behind it enough that they'll be willing
to give up leverage on, you know, unemployment insurance or immigration status — these bigger issues for most Democrats." So
if
the new Republican Senate prioritizes destroying an Iran deal, Obama will
have to fight very hard to keep it — without necessarily being able to count on
his own party for support. And the stakes are enormous: if Iran's nuclear
program isn't stopped peacefully, then the most likely outcomes are either Iran
going nuclear, or war with Iran .
The administration believes a deal with Iran
is their only way to avoid this horrible choice. That's why it's been one of the
administration's top priorities since day one. It's also why this could become one of the biggest legislative fights
of Obama's last two years.
Nuke war
Stevens 13 (Philip Stevens, associate editor and chief political commentator for the Financial Times, Nov 14 2013, “The four
big truths that are shaping the Iran talks,” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af170df6-4d1c-11e3-bf32-00144feabdc0.html)
six-power negotiations with Tehran
to curb Iran’s nuclear programme may yet succeed or fail. But wrangling between the US and France
The who-said-what game about last weekend’s talks in Geneva has become a distraction. The
on the terms of an acceptable deal should not allow the trees to obscure the forest. The organising facts shaping the negotiations have not changed.¶ The first of these is that
Tehran’s acquisition of a bomb would be more than dangerous for the Middle East and for wider
international security. It would most likely set off a nuclear arms race that would
see Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt signing up to the nuclear club . The nuclear
n on- p roliferation t reaty would be shattered. A future regional conflict could
draw Israel into launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. This is not a region obviously
susceptible to cold war disciplines of deterrence .¶ The second ineluctable reality is that
Iran has mastered the nuclear cycle. How far it is from building a bomb remains a subject of debate. Different intelligence
agencies give different answers. These depend in part on what the spooks actually know and in part on what their political masters want others to hear. The progress of an
Iranian warhead programme is one of the known unknowns that have often wreaked havoc in this part of the world.¶ Israel points to an imminent threat. European agencies are
more relaxed, suggesting Tehran is still two years or so away from a weapon. Western diplomats broadly agree that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not taken a definitive decision to
step over the line. What Iran has been seeking is what diplomats call a breakout capability – the capacity to dash to a bomb before the international community could effectively
mobilise against it.¶ The third fact – and this one is hard for many to swallow – is that neither a negotiated settlement nor the air strikes long favoured by Benjamin Netanyahu,
Israel’s prime minister, can offer the rest of the world a watertight insurance policy.¶ It should be possible to construct a deal that acts as a plausible restraint – and extends the
timeframe for any breakout – but no amount of restrictions or intrusive monitoring can offer a certain guarantee against Tehran’s future intentions.¶ By the same token,
bombing Iran’s nuclear sites could certainly delay the programme, perhaps for a couple of years.
But, assuming that even the hawkish Mr Netanyahu is not proposing permanent war against Iran, air strikes would not end it. ¶ You
cannot bomb knowledge and technical expertise. To try would be to empower
those in Tehran who say the regime will be safe only when, like North Korea, it has a
weapon. So when Barack Obama says the US will never allow Iran to get the bomb he is indulging in, albeit understandable, wishful thinking.¶ The best
the international community can hope for is that, in return for a relaxation of
sanctions, Iran will make a judgment that it is better off sticking with a
threshold capability. To put this another way, if Tehran does step back from the nuclear
brink it will be because of its own calculation of the balance of advantage .¶ The fourth
element in this dynamic is that Iran now has a leadership that, faced with the severe and growing pain
inflicted by sanctions, is prepared to talk . There is nothing to say that Hassan Rouhani, the president, is any less hardheaded than previous Iranian leaders, but he does seem ready to weigh the options.
XO
The president of the United States should prohibit all use of body cavity surveillance in
the United States.
Executive can take action to curtail surveillance
Straw 14 (Joesph Straw-Published: Friday, January 17, 2014, 6:58 AM Updated: Saturday, January 18, 2014, 1:01 AM “Obama
calls for modest constraints on NSA surveillance programs” http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-calls-constraints-nsasurveillance-article-1.1582758 )
Regardless of how we got here,” Obama said, “the task before us now is
greater than simply repairing the damage done to our operations or preventing
more disclosures from taking place in the future.Ӧ National Security Agency leaker Edward
Snowden revealed last year that the government legally — but secretly — forces phone companies to turn over billions of records on
Americans’ calls and stores them.¶ Obama said the NSA will continue to vacuum up billions of U.S. phone call logs, but the government
“We have to make some important decisions
about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world while
upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections our ideals and our
Constitution require,” he said in a speech at Justice Department headquarters.¶ Among his proposals:¶ - Require the
will set up a new, outside entity to store the data.¶
government to get approval from a judge before it searches the data, except in emergencies.¶ - Continue NSA monitoring of foreign
terror suspects’ email accounts, but with protections for the privacy of data on innocent Americans caught in the dragnet.¶ - Establish a
panel of public advocates, who would argue before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to protect civil liberties in highprofile cases.¶ Obama asked Congress to approve the establishment of the advocate panel.
He would pursue the
remainder of his plans by executive order, he said, but welcomed Congress to make his proposals
law.¶ Responding to one of Snowden's most embarrassing revelations — that the NSA has eavesdropped on the personal cell phones
belonging to close allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel — Obama said that friendly leaders’ phones will not be tracked except
when doing so is critical to national security.
Executive orders increase presidential power
Risen 4 [Clay, Managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, M.A. from the University of Chicago “The Power of the
Pen: The Not-So-Secret Weapon of Congress-wary Presidents” The American Prospect, July 16,
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_power_of_the_pen]
In the modern era, executive
orders have gone from being a tool largely reserved for internal
White House operations -deciding how to format agency budgets or creating outlines for diplomatic protocol -- to a
powerful weapon in defining, and expanding, executive powe r. In turn, presidents
have increasingly used
that power to construct and promote social policies on some of the country's most controversial
issues, from civil rights to labor relations to reproductive health.
Prez Powers key to check global hotspots
South China Morning Post 2K (South China Morning Post 12/11/00 ProQuest [Newspaper] “Position of
Weakness)
weak president with an unclear mandate is bad news for the rest of the
world. For better or worse, the person who rules the United States influences
events far beyond the shores of his own country. Both the global economy and international politics
A
will feel the effect of political instability in the US. The first impact will be on American financial markets, which will have a ripple
A weakened US presidency will also be felt in
global hotspots across the world. The Middle East, the conflict between India
and Pakistan, peace on the Korean peninsula, and even the way relations
between China and Taiwan play out, will be influenced by the authority the
next US president brings to his job.¶ There are those who would welcome a weakening of US global
effect on markets and growth across the world.
influence. Many Palestinians, for example, feel they would benefit from a less interventionist American policy in the Middle East. Even
within the Western alliance, there are those who would probably see opportunities in a weakened US presidency. France, for example,
.¶ But the dangers of
having a weak, insecure US presidency outweigh any benefits that it might
bring. US global economic and military power cannot be wished away. A president
might feel that a less assertive US might force the European Union to be more outward looking
with a shaky mandate will still command great power and influence, only he will be constrained by his domestic weakness and less
This brings with it the risks of miscalculation and the
use of US power in a way that heightens conflict. There are very few conflicts
in the world today which can be solved without US influence. The rest of the
world needs the United States to use its power deftly and decisively. Unfortunately, as
certain about how to use his authority.
the election saga continues, it seems increasingly unlikely that the next US president will be in a position to do so.
T
‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun showing ownership
Glossary of English Grammar Terms, 2005
(http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)
Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive pronouns used to substitute a noun and to show possession or ownership.
EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs to me.)
Violation – Prisons include state and private run ones
Mcdonald and Patten 04 – [Douglas – Ph.D. and Master of Philosophy from Columbia University. Carl – Abt
Associates staff member, conducted on-site visits to prisons, public officials, and private prison administrators] [Governments'
Management of Private Prisons] (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203968.pdf) (accessed 8-7-15) //MC
Summary
This report examines
state and federal governments’ practices of contracting with
private firms to manage prisons , including prisons owned by state and federal
is on contracting for imprisonment
services in secure facilities, rather than for low-security or non-secure community-based facilities. Focus is
also limited to facilities for convicted adult offenders, rather than facilities
governments and those owned by
private firms . Its focus
that serve as local jails or immigrant detention facilities .
Harm
Alt causes to high instances prison rape
Flyn L. Flesher 2007
(“Cross-Gender Supervision in Prison and the Constitutional Right of Prisoners to Remain Free from Rape”
https://www.wcl.american.edu/endsilence/documents/CrossGenderSupervisioninPrisonsandtheConstitu
tionalRightofPrisonerstoRemainFreeFromRape.pdf )
Multiple factors increase the frequency of rape in women's prisons. Poor
training of prison guards and abandonment of rehabilitation goals also increase
the frequency of prison rape,42 as do failures to investigate and prosecute prison
rape.43 Overcrowding of prisons and an inability to sufficiently staff prisons
to oversee large populations serve to exacerbate the problem.4 4 Professor of
Correctional Law James Robertson has noted that "the very layout of many prisons
renders their architecture an accessory to rape" by making detection of
sexual attacks difficult.
Absent body cavity searches, prisons would turn to significantly less
effective detection measures such as body scanners. that makes drug
smuggling even easier and leads to increased instances of prisoner
deaths
Taelor Bentley, a Law Street Media Fellow, 6-24-2015,
"How Do We Solve the Drug Overdose Problem in California Prisons?," Law Street (TM),
http://lawstreetmedia.com/news/solve-drug-overdose-problem-california-prisons/
Officials have hopes that these new methods will lead to a decrease in the
death rate. But despite officers’ opinions that the efforts are discouraging drug smuggling, reports show that might not be the
case, and that instead these policies just create problems for visitors. There have been more than 6,000
scans on visitors and employees at eleven different prisons and no drugs
were found. Mohamed Shehk, an Oakland-based spokesman for Critical Resistance, stated, “The statistics —
$8 million, 6,000 scans and nothing to show for it — show that these are
intended to intimidate and criminalize people who are going to see their
loved ones inside.”
More than 150 California inmates have died due to drug overdoses since
2006, with a high of 24 deaths in 2013. Sharing needles, which often leads to the spread of Hepatitis C infections,
killed 69 inmates in 2013 alone. Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard is determined to change this high rate and is
modeling California’s new procedures after those that were successful in the Pennsylvania Corrections Department,
which he led for a decade. Pennsylvania’s annual rate of drug or alcohol deaths per 100,000 inmates is one, while
California’s is eight per 100,000 inmates.
Solvency
The aff only bans body cavity searches, not strip searches. The entire
aff is about strip searches being bad, which means they don’t solve
DeLand ’12 (Written by Gary W. DeLand, 2012 Title/Position: Director of Jail Operations, Utah Sheriffs' Association View
all of Gary DeLands blog articles. Jail Strip Searches: The Light at the End of the Tunnel Was Not a Train
Strip Searches
Defining
The early strip search cases created a bit of confusion over what a strip search is. Part of
that confusion was use of the term "body cavity search" or "visual body cavity search." The terms seem to imply searches actually
probe or look inside of the rectum or vagina which was not the case. The body-cavity searches were those where the male was
required to lift his genitals for visual inspection to see if contraband was being hidden and bending or squatting to allow visual
inspection of the anus (an external inspection). For females, prisoners were required to bend and spread their buttocks and/or squat
The Supreme Court commented on
the different and confusing meanings that have been applied in various cases to
"strip searches." The term is imprecise. It may refer simply to the
instruction to remove clothing while an officer observes from a distance of,
say, five feet or more; it may mean a visual inspection from a closer, more
uncomfortable distance; it may include directing detainees to shake their
heads or to run their hands through their hair to dislodge what might be
hidden there; or it may involve instructions to raise arms, to display foot
insteps, to expose the back of the ears, to move or spread the buttocks or
genital areas, or to cough in a squatting position. The impact of the Florence
ruling is that the term "strip search " now covers each of the different levels of
intrusion listed above . Since the so-called visual body-cavity searches are
permitted without reasonable suspicion, then certainly the less intrusive strip
searches are also authorized . It is now appropriate for jail officials to simply
refer to levels levels of unclothed searches as strip searches .
to permit an visual inspection of the external genitalia and anus.
Policies aimed at protecting prisoners from sexual abuse won’t get
enforced
Buchanan 07
Kim Shayo Buchanan, Associate professor of Law and Gender Studies at USC Gould School of Law who
specializes in constitutional law, international and comparative human rights law, prisoners’ rights,
reproductive rights, race, gender and sexuality, “Impunity: Sexual Abuse in Women’s Prisons”,
HARVARD LAW REVIEW, http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol42_1/buchanan.pdf, Vol
42, 2007, pp. 44-48//SRawal
In the United States, sexual abuse by guards in women’s prisons is so notorious and widespread that it has been
described as “an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls.”1 Women in prisons2 across the
United States are subjected to diverse and systematic forms of sexual abuse: vaginal and anal rape; forced oral sex
and forced digital penetration; quid pro quo coercion of sex for drugs, favors, or protection; abusive pat searches
and strip searches; observation by male guards while naked or toileting; groping; verbal harassment; and sexual
threats.3 Guards and prisoners openly joke about prisoner “girlfriends” and guard “boyfriends.” Women prisoners become pregnant when the only
men they have had contact with are guards and prison employees; often they are sent to solitary conªnement—known as “the hole”—as punishment for
having sexual contact with guards or for getting pregnant. 4 Such open and obvious abuses would seem relatively easy for a
prison administration to detect and prevent if it chose to do so . Prisons owe an afªrmative legal duty to protect
their inmates against abuse.5 Congress and forty-four states have criminalized all sexual contact between guards
and prisoners, regardless of consent.6 Nonetheless, within women’s prisons guards routinely commit serious
sexual offenses against the women in their custody. Government administrators know that such abuse is
occurring7 and acknowledge their duty to prevent it.8 However, they have generally neglected to do much about it, as most
prisons have failed to adopt institutional and employment policies that effectively prevent or reduce custodial
sexual abuse.9 In most workplaces, an employee who had sex on the job would be ªred. In prison, a report of custodial sexual abuse is
more likely to result in punishment or retaliation against the prisoner than in disciplinary consequences for the
guard.10 One might expect the law to furnish incentives for prisons to control such unlawful acts by their
employees, as it does for other civil defendants. It does not.11 Instead, as I demonstrate in this Article, a network of prison law rules—the Prison
Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PLRA”),12 governmental immunities, and constitutional deference— work together to confer near-complete immunity
against prisoners’ claims. In the United States, both male and female prisoners are stereotyped as black;13 more than two thirds of women in U.S.
prisons are African American or Latina.14 In this Article, I consider how the gendered racialization of women prisoners informs legal and institutional
indifference to their treatment in prison. Like black women under slavery,15 women in contemporary prisons are subjected to
institutionalized sexual abuse, while the law refuses to protect them or provide redress.
Abuses will continue- prisoners can’t effectively access legal redress
Buchanan 07
Kim Shayo Buchanan, Associate professor of Law and Gender Studies at USC Gould School of Law who
specializes in constitutional law, international and comparative human rights law, prisoners’ rights,
reproductive rights, race, gender and sexuality, “Impunity: Sexual Abuse in Women’s Prisons”,
HARVARD LAW REVIEW, http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/crcl/vol42_1/buchanan.pdf, Vol
42, 2007, pp. 70-73//SRawal
With few, if any, exceptions, prisoners’ civil claims against correctional authorities for toleration of sexual abuse have succeeded only when a large
number of women testify to widespread abuses, and some guard witnesses break ranks to corroborate the prisoners’ accounts that severe custodial
sexual abuse was both widespread and publicly known within the prison.199 When prison administrators seek to restrict male guards’ access to women
prisoners in order to protect the prisoners against sexual abuse, courts generally have upheld these institutional policies against guards’ employment
discrimination claims,200 at least at the appellate level.201 However, when a prisoner brings civil claims on her own behalf, they
are generally screened out or rejected.202 Indeed, one commentator argues that juries are so reluctant to award any
damages to prisoners that they will not on basis that prisoner was “not credible” because she had formed a “plan”
to get a transfer by reporting sexual activity with corrections officers; the court found some of this activity not to have
happened because it was uncorroborated, and stated that other activity “could only reasonably be described as consensual”
because the prisoner “never tried to caught [the guards] off, scream, or yell”). 70 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review [Vol. 42 do so unless
they believe the defendant has acted with such malice that punitive damages are appropriate.203 Even when prisoners are able to prove that they have
been raped, juries may tend to “lowball prisoners’ nonwage damages as an expression of disregard for them.”204 For example, in Morris v. Eversley,
205 a jury convicted a guard of sexually assaulting a female prisoner based on DNA evidence. A civil jury awarded the prisoner only $500
in compensatory damages and $7,500 in punitive damages.206 The district court judge found the verdict generally inadequate, and
ordered a new trial. The new jury awarded $1,000 for compensatory damages and $15,000 for punitive damages. The judge, apparently frustrated by
this paltry award, wrote: I was bafºed that the ªrst jury awarded such low amounts, and yet the second jury did not award much more. It
is hard to imagine that Morris could be made whole for the damages she suffered, including the loss of her
dignity, by a mere $500 or $1,000 in compensatory damages. . . . [A] prisoner, even a former prisoner, is unable to
recover a fair measure of damages.207 Such inadequate jury awards reºect the discredited prejudicial racial and
gender stereotypes by which low-status women, especially black women, prostitutes, and prisoners, are viewed as
less likely to be harmed by sexual assault. Outside of the prison context, damage awards for sexual assault are typically much higher. A
recent survey of civil actions for sexual assault resolved in state appellate courts between 2001 and 2004 found
that damage awards in sexual assault cases outside prison can range from nothing to well over one million
dollars. But in cases involving institutional liability, “a signiªcant number of cases award compensatory damages of $100,000 to $200,000.” Ellen
M. Bublick, Tort Suits Filed by Rape and Sexual Assault Victims in Civil As Bublick observes, “[i]nadequate damage awards may be a particular issue
when the victim and the assailant are acquaintances or partners,” as they are by deªnition in cases of custodial sexual abuse 1. The Prison
Litigation Reform Act The Prison Litigation Reform Act209 (“PLRA”) was expressly designed to deter prisoner
lawsuits. It was introduced in 1995 to respond to congressional concern about the dramatic increase in prisoner litigation between 1980 and the
mid-1990s—an increase that, as commentators have noted, coincided with a dramatic increase in the incarcerated population in the United States.210
The PLRA was not intentionally designed to block lawsuits for custodial sexual abuse; rather, it was designed to
address the perceived problem of jailhouse lawyers who brought frivolous lawsuits. In 1995, during the Senate debate over
the bill, Senator Bob Dole cited a notorious prisoner lawsuit in which a prisoner complained that the prison served chunky, rather than creamy, peanut
butter.211 Numerous other frivolous suits, such as claims arising from an unsatisfactory prison haircut and a desire for a particular brand of sneakers,
were also used during the PLRA debates as examples of the pressing need for special barriers to prisoner litigation.212 During the congressional
debates, Senator Joe Biden pointed out that the PLRA would erect “too many roadblocks to meritorious prison lawsuits.”213 He urged Congress not to
“lose sight of the fact that some of these lawsuits have merit—some prisoners’ rights are violated.”214 Senator Biden pointed out that hundreds of
women prisoners had been sexually abused by dozens of guards, openly and for years, in Washington, D.C., prisons. He noted that this practice
changed only after their class action was successful.215 Despite Senator Biden’s warnings, no amendment was adopted to protect the right of prisoners
to sue in the event of sexual abuse by guards. The PLRA is a status-based law that excludes almost all prisoner claims from the courts.216 Like
historical doctrines designed to deter rape average sentence given to Black women’s assailants is two years. The average sentence given to white
women’s assailants is ten years.” Crenshaw, Sexual Harassment, supra note 44, at 1471. complainants, black witnesses, and married women from
bringing white men to court, the PLRA establishes unique hurdles that are nearly impossible for prisoner plaintiffs to overcome. The most damaging
hurdle imposed by the PLRA is its grievanceexhaustion requirement.217 Like the marital privacy doctrine that excluded wives’ claims from the courts in
order to protect “family government,”218 this provision values the peace of mind of those in power over the safety of those who are in their custody.
The grievance-exhaustion provision requires inmates to exhaust internal prison grievance procedures before they
may bring their claims to an outside authority, even if the procedures are complex, inefªcient, unfair, or
incapable of offering a remedy for the prisoner’s claim.219 If the prisoner has failed to do so, the litigation is
dismissed. Thus a prison is virtually insulated from prisoner litigation to the extent that its grievance process is
complex and time-consuming, its deadlines for ªling a grievance are brief,220 and the threat of retaliation deters
prisoners from using the process at all. In practice the grievance-exhaustion requirement “invites technical mistakes resulting in
inadvertent noncompliance with the exhaustion requirement, and bar[s] litigants from court because of their ignorance and uncounselled procedural
errors.”221 Unreasonably quick grievance deadlines evoke the “fresh complaint” requirements of traditional rape doctrine.222 In New York, for
example, the Department of Corrections imposes a fourteen-day limit for ªling any prisoner grievance, unless the grievance authority determines that
“mitigating circumstances” justify the delay.223 If a prisoner is in a “consensual” sexual relationship with a guard, she is
unlikely to express a grievance until well after the guard becomes threatening or abusive, thus missing the
deadline.224 If she misses the grievance deadline, her litigation is dismissed . Furthermore, prison grievance procedures offer no
prospective relief to protect the prisoner before she is raped. If a guard has merely threatened to assault the prisoner, offered a quid
pro quo for sex, or groped her— or if she did not think to preserve a DNA sample during her rape—the grievance process will do nothing.225 Even
though ªling a grievance is futile in such circumstances, the PLRA still requires the prisoner to report the abuse to her abuser’s
colleagues through an often-humiliating disciplinary procedure226 that is likely to result in retaliation. In addition to
its grievance-exhaustion requirement, the PLRA further hinders prisoner litigation by prohibiting any prisoner lawsuit
“without a prior showing of physical injury.”227 Some courts have raised this barrier even further by requiring that the physical injury be
at least as serious as an injury that would meet the Eighth Amendment’s “de minimis harm” requirement.228 Presumably, vaginal or anal
rape would sufªce.229 On its face, however, the physical injury requirement appears to bar prisoner claims for sexual
abuse if no physical injury results.230 For example, the text of this provision appears to bar claims that a prisoner was forced to perform or
submit to oral sex, was digitally penetrated, or was coerced into sexual compliance through threats or inducements without a beating.
Alt causes to high instances prison rape
Flyn L. Flesher 2007
(“Cross-Gender Supervision in Prison and the Constitutional Right of Prisoners to Remain Free from Rape”
https://www.wcl.american.edu/endsilence/documents/CrossGenderSupervisioninPrisonsandtheConstitu
tionalRightofPrisonerstoRemainFreeFromRape.pdf )
Multiple factors increase the frequency of rape in women's prisons. Poor
training of prison guards and abandonment of rehabilitation goals also increase
the frequency of prison rape,42 as do failures to investigate and prosecute prison
rape.43 Overcrowding of prisons and an inability to sufficiently staff prisons
to oversee large populations serve to exacerbate the problem.4 4 Professor of
Correctional Law James Robertson has noted that "the very layout of many prisons
renders their architecture an accessory to rape" by making detection of
sexual attacks difficult.
Frm
Prefer existential risks—we cognitively underestimate high
magnitude impacts
Bostrom 11 Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of
Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of
the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the
London School of Economics, 2011 “The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on ExistentialRisk.com, Available
Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html
other psychological phenomena impede efforts at
thinking clearly and dealing effectively with existential risk.[32] For example, use of
the availability heuristic may create a “good-story bias” whereby people
evaluate the plausibility of existential-risk scenarios on the basis of
experience, or on how easily the various possibilities spring to mind. Since
nobody has any real experience with existential catastrophe, expectations
may be formed instead on the basis of fictional evidence derived from movies
and novels. Such fictional exposures are systematically biased in favor of scenarios that make for entertaining stories. Plotlines may feature
Many kinds of
cognitive bias and
a small band of human protagonists successfully repelling an alien invasion or a robot army. A story in which humankind goes extinct suddenly—
without warning and without being replaced by some other interesting beings—is less likely to succeed at the box office (although more likely to happen
in reality).