A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
My brother wrote about living through the earthquake in Port-au-Prince here, and of course I remembered this part of the story:
My wife ... was a civilian employee of MINUSTAH. A lawyer herself, she worked with lawyers from a dozen other countries in an attempt to reform and stabilize the Haitian legal system—an effort that had so far borne only limited results. There were still several thousand Haitians in prison awaiting trial; some had been waiting for years. (The main prison collapsed in the earthquake and the surviving prisoners all escaped, effectively resolving this particular problem.)
So when I read today that the prison in Van had been damaged and 150 prisoners had escaped, for a second I drew a mental parallel. Then I read the next sentence: "About 50 of the escapees surrendered back to authorities, saying they’d fled in panic."
I'm not quite sure what to make of that--or whether it's true--but it's passing strange. One in three escaped prisoners voluntarily went right back to the clink?
It's just one of those stories you wish a reporter would explore a bit more, isn't it?
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Comments :
Oct '10
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
How weird! yesterday I was on a flight reading your article in City Journal about earthquakes and today the first news I see is about an earthquake in Turkey. Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Mar '11
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
Boy the angles you could take on this - old jokes about Turkish prisons aside. How does this reflect the citizens' view on law and order (i.e. do the Turks view their system as ultimately more fair than the Haitians)? Does an Islamic culture have more respect for authority? Would be very interesting to hear the prisoners here.
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
There's obviously an interesting story here, in a lot of ways. I wish I knew more about it, because those are exactly the questions I'm asking,
Feb '11
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
Maybe the penalties for escaping are so draconian that the rational thing to do was indeed to go back...
Jun '10
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
This may only prove that a person, in this case thirty persons, have become institutionalized. My guess is that institutionalization is a more powerful force than any of us recognize, especially in an authoritarian and relatively impoverished society. This would be especially so with prisoners serving long sentences. I'm not saying I have any answers, I'm just guessing.
Feb '11
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
It's hard not to feel a real affection for those prisoners & (if that is what it is) their sense of justice. Not that I’m trying all that hard. I’d like to think I would do the same. Of course, I’d also like to think that I wouldn’t wind up in prison in the first place.
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
Somehow I suspect that this is not a phenomenon that can be related to anything that might ever happen in the United States or anything Americans understand by "justice."
A team of ace anthropologists would be required just to begin with this.
Sep '11
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
Perhaps those prisoners who turned themselves opted for the "easy way out." If they returned to jail (presumably they'll be transported to a different jail) they'd return to the life they are used to... food, shelter, etc. Apparently what awaited them outside jail was rubble, freezing temperatures, etc. Note that I know nothing about the condition of Turkish prisons.
Dec '10
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
It could also be as simple as those are the short timers.
Would you run away to live a life of constant fear on the lamb if you had a week or a month or even just a year left on your sentence?
Why risk it when you're almost out anyway?
If I had a couple of months left before my release and this happened, I'd come back too. Better to have your life back whole than get out two months early. There's even a chance that they'd cut you loose early because of it (that, and the jail falling down).
That said, had this happened six months into a 25 year sentence, you'd never see me again.
Oct '10
Re: A Small, Strange Detail from Eastern Turkey
Well stated points here, the question might be, if one escapes from a Turkish prison what options are there ? What is the makeup of the prison populations there ?
In Mexico, there are a bunch of really unsavory folk in the klink and it is best they stay inside.... Trust me, not one of those folk would return if the walls fell down.
Comparisons ? Dunno...