September 08, 2004

• Wow, this is superb. What an excellent find! I wish there were more entries, I can't stop reading. I received a large photograph in the mail. It exceeded the 4 x 6 inches allowed by the jail, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was not rejected by the trigger-happy mailroom. It was a picture of a bespectacled President Bush signing some important looking documents. In the lower margin was a personalized message with my name on it. It read: ‘Thank you for your support of the Republican National Committee. Grassroots leaders like you are the key to building a better, stronger, more secure future for our nation and all Americans... Best Wishes, George. W. Bush’.
• Great find. I couldn't find anything about the blog or the author on the net. Who is he?
• This is hurting my head. I want to know who he is too.
• It's from today's Guardian
• Great post. Couldn't stop reading 'til I read it all. Makes me sad and makes me angry.
• Thanks ddc, I found this likely match:

  "Investigators say he was bigger than Sammy the Bull. His minions say he ruled the drug trade in the Valley's rave scene. Now, authorities have "English Shaun," the man they claim reigned over a nighttime empire of ecstasy, meth, violence and excess."

  And a bit more mundane:

  Shaun Attwood (Registered Representative, Phoenix, Arizona) and Dominic Davis (Registered Representative, Phoenix, Arizona) were named as respondents in an NASD complaint alleging that they engaged in trading in a customer’s account that was excessive in light of the nature and resources of the account and the investment objectives of the customer. The complaint also alleges that Attwood failed to respond to NASD requests for information.

• criticalbill- this is incredible, thanks. i have no words right now...too engrossed in the story.
• I keep looking for the Abu Ghraib-like conditions in his accounts. So far it's a perfectly average prison experience. (I read a lot of prison writing looking for prison slang...)
• Is getting Hep. C in Jail really a perfectly average prison experience?
• One of the things I noticed is that there are no accounts I found in Jailhouse Jon's posts of any violence directed at him. No beatings, no rape, nothing. And absolutely no mention of why he's in prison. Is he just being careful about his topics, or is there something else?
• I suspect he was probably trying to keep his identity secret, which is why there's no reference to his crimes, and his name is changed from Shaun to Jon. I can't imagine Joe Arpaio would have been too keen on an inmate 'blogging' (presumably via an outsider transferring handwritten accounts onto teh intarweb). Arpaio's regime is an obscenity. If that's a "perfectly average prison experience" for any society, then there is something very wrong with the society. Please bear in mind that a large number of the people who must endure Arpaio's punishment system haven't been convicted of a damned thing - something Arpaio seems almost unaware of. See, for example, his attempts to broadcast pictures of inmates via webcams several years back, which was eventually ruled unlawful
• Astonishing. Immediately on the daily hit. Sure hope it's not a fraud.
• Is getting Hep. C in Jail really a perfectly average prison experience? Close: About 40 percent of all prisoners in the U.S. - in federal and state prisons - are infected with HCV. These are alarming rates. In some prisons, the rate of infection has reached 80 percent - virtually saturation level.
• After reading attached stories on this guy (Shaun) I'm not feeling too bad for him. In fact, I feel far worse for the men in this jail who have absolutely no chance and are only in there due, mainly, to circumstances often outside their control. This jackass, while suffering at the hands of a power hungry control freak, has an opportunity to lead a decent life when he gets out. If the stories are true, screw him. I'm not going to waste my time feeling sorry for him. Joe Arpaio is highly popular in his neck of the woods. His philosophy is one of; Jail/Prison should, in no way, be a vacation. Jails/Prisons are overrun because they are not a threat to anyone. They reform no one. Because it's not so bad to be there. Well, he's damn well going to make sure that his jail is bad enough that you don't ever want to come back to it. I suppose it's working, in a pathetic way. For the record, I do NOT support this guy at all. I do, however, understand why he is doing things this way. But he is over-the-top. No one should suffer in the ways he has made them suffer. Plus, I suspect that he is not "Mr. Looking Out For The Public Good guy". I know that there are questions about his personal finances (surprise, suprise) and certainly there are those who are trying to get him out. Good luck with that. Yeah, it sucks, so, don't break the law, cause it ain't the only place like that.
• The post on the blog about TB infections prisoners serving food in the cafeteria is astonishing. However you feel about rehabilitation or punishment as the goal of prisons, encouraging infections disease is just insane. It increases the costs of incarceration, and increases the chances that guards and the general population will be exposed to the disease. What insanity.