Black Men Live Longer in Prison than Out?

A study of North Carolina inmates has been lighting up certain blawgs/blogs over at the end of last week and over the weekend.  According to the study black men may survive longer in prison than on the streets, specifically, "Black men are half as likely to die at any given time if they're in prison than if they aren't[.]"

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense.  

Let me tell you a story.  On the morning that I left FCI, Morgantown I was in an area of the institution called R & D, reception and discharge, changing into my street clothes from prison khakis.  A young black guy was also dressing in the clothes his people sent in.  His clothes were so out-sized that I remarked that he must have lost a lot of weight.  He said that had he not gone to jail he would have likely died from hypertension illness that he did not know he suffered from.  Setting aside the perils that live on the streets represent, the prison diet (as bad as it is) and the medical care in jail for certain populations is so much better than what was available to these guys in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, D.C. and Baltimore where a lot of the population at Morgantown hailed from.  

Then you subtract out drugs and alcohol, guns, and gang violence life in prison can be an objective improvement.

Terrorist's Diet Lawsuit Dismissed

Bob Doucette at the Oklahoman reports that, Terry Nichols, the asshat that aided and abetted American Terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bomber who murdered 168 men, women, and children in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995-- lost his pro se federal civil rights lawsuit over the quaility of his prison diet.  This is Doucette's story:

"Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' lawsuit over his prison food was dismissed by a Denver-based federal judge  In a decision [last] Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello ruled Nichols' claims that his constitutional rights being violated by prison officials concerning his diet were invalid.

Nichols, 55, had claimed in legal filings that he needed a diet of raw vegetables, fruit and whole grains that wasn't typical of prison fare.   Nichols claims that he has a medical condition which requires such a diet, and contends his Christian belief "is that God created our foods to be consumed in their whole unrefined state."

By not being provided this diet, Nichols claimed, his constitutional rights were being violated. [Judge] Arguello disagreed, saying that Nichols hadn't proved his diet qualified as 'cruel and unusual punishment,'and also wrote that there wasn't any proof that the prison diet violated his Christian beliefs.

Nichols claims he has gone on three hunger strikes since February, doing so to force prison officials to begin to address his medical and religious needs.  He claims he lost 35 pounds during the last hunger strike, going down to 125 pounds."
__________________________________