A look at how we handle the worst among us.

After a really poor night's sleep I get this morning's Houston Chronicle and right on the front page is a story on how we're not treating prisoners right.

And the Chron says it's not a left wing rag.

By DANE SCHILLER HOUSTON CHRONICLE

MIDWAY — Behind the razor wire topped fences of Ferguson prison and other Texas penitentiaries are 5,205 inmates branded the baddest of the bad — dubbed so devious they are locked in one-man cells for 23 hours a day often for decades. Lock down. Isolation.

Administrative segregation. Spread among 22 prisons, Texas has more inmates in so-called “ad-seg” than most other states in the nation.

They have been deemed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to be “confirmed” members of gangs, too organized, predatory and violent to mix with the 150,000 prisoners in general populations.

They serve their time in cages of about 9 feet by 7 feet with cement walls outfitted with solid steel doors or bars covered with mesh.

“We ain’t the most likeable or most welcomed group in society,” concedes 38-yearold Anastacio Garcia, a robber from the Rio Grande Valley who has been in isolation here for 15 years. “We sit here day in and day out, basically rotting ourselves away.”

One of the few straight things in this article. Yes Mr Garcia, you’re not likeable, welcome and as far as we’re concerned you have earned rotting in jail. That is why you are in prison. You don’t like this placed, don’t break the law.

Another 4,000 or so inmates are serving temporary stints in ad-seg as punishment for breaking rules or being escape risks.

Their cells are identical to those on death row...

Sounds like they are being well used.

...Citing its ineffectiveness as well as cost concerns, Mississippi and Maine have scaled back its use. In California, thousands of inmates recently launched a hunger strike in protest.

Hunger strike by California prisoners....and the problem is?

A Texas lawmaker unsuccessfully sought this year to require the prison system to review the standards for putting an inmate in ad-seg — and determine whether they are more likely than others to end up back behind bars.

“We are talking about human beings in an isolated place for years at a time,” said Rep. Marisa Marquez, a Houston native representing El Paso. “What does that do to them psychologically, and how does that help their rehabilitation when they are supposed to get out and function in society and be productive members?”

In Texas, members of eight prison gangs, categorized as Security Threat Groups, automatically go straight into isolation regardless of the crime they committed.

Those include“confirmed” members of the Texas Syndicate, Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood and others. Their only way out: renounce gang affiliations, which they rarely do out of loyalty or fear of retribution...

Ms Marquez, in case you didn’t read the list, those are gang members. They are not functioning or productive members of society. The money is most of them are not here legally and hopefully if/when they get out, they are sent back south of the border. They can fit back into their society.

...Guards sometimes carry shields to protect themselves from being stabbed with homemade spears or pelted with excrement, urine or rotten food — rancid homemade cocktails used for attacks known as “chunking.”

“Do not have sympathy for these men,” said a retired TDCJ guard who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The former guard noted they are served three meals a day, have medical care and better lives than law-abiding people who end up living under bridges.

The worse, the better, says Aaron McCartney, whose father, a longshoreman, was murdered in Liberty in 2006 by gangsters ordered by their captain to steal a 14-year-old pick-up truck for spare parts.

“Cut their heads off. They don’t deserve to live,” Mc-Cartney said of his father’s killers, who are in ad-seg. “They can think about what they did. That is where they deserve to be.”

Again, these are humans.

...Inmates contend the stringent lockup doesn’t prepare them for freedom.

“I live among the living dead,” said inmate Danny Corral, 32, who was convicted of murder, and sentenced at 16. “This cell is not very different from a mausoleum.”

And hopefully it is your mausoleum. You have already sent another person to a mausoleum.

...The ACLU contends ad-seg is arbitrary and ineffective.

“This type of isolation is pervasive around the country,” said Amy Fettig, ACLU’s senior counsel for the national prison project. “It is now being used at an unprecedented level. “Unfortunately, when you place somebody in (ad-seg) you are not teaching them how to be a better person. You are simply driving them crazy.”

No Ms Fettig, we are putting them in a place that keeps the general population of prison and the staff safer. The fact they are in prison or in gangs already puts questions onto their sanity.