[rdiddly]

Justify? You'll note I never declared what was right or wrong, nor do I hasten toward any such conclusion. That was, not coincidentally, the point I was trying to illustrate... well firstly 1) that we don't know as much as we think we do, but mainly 2) that things are usually more complicated and murky than some simplistic moral fairy tale.

Anyway to a mind that's flexible and agile, nothing feels particularly like gymnastics, but I do note that there is a weird disproportionality of anguish and outrage on this thread, over something that happened to me just now -- 3 hours without a sandwich. Partly because of fortune and partly by my own will not to fuck people over, I've never seen the inside of one of these places, but I'm still willing to wager that "no sandwich" is not the worst abuse that goes on "in custody." So if it outrages you, and prisoner rights is something that matters to you, all that energy might be better directed toward addressing some of those more serious abuses.

Sorry to say, there are myriad other ways that the systems and institutions we all participate in, will ruin entire lives, including of non-prisoners, in cruel and dehumanizing ways. And there are criminals dead-set against those systems, who will do the same. Neither one is particularly your friend. Or sorry, that's presumptuous... neither one is particularly my friend.