The Nation: Brutality and Humiliation in American Jails (Cecily McMillan's NYT Op-Ed)

[LiberalElite]

http://www.nation.com.pk/international/25-Jul-2014/brutality-and-humiliation-in-american-jails

(A few days ago this was published as an op-ed in the NY Times titled "What I Saw on Rikers Island)

CECILY McMILLAN - I recently served 58 days of a three-month sentence on Rikers Island. I was convicted in May of assaulting a New York City police officer as the police cleared Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2012. (I am appealing my conviction.) I got a firsthand experience that I did not seek of what it is like to live behind bars.

Rikers is a city jail; it holds some 11,000 inmates who are awaiting trial or sentencing, or who have been convicted and sentenced to a year or less of time.

During my incarceration, two correction officers were arrested on charges of smuggling contraband, including drugs, to inmates. The week after I was released, two more correction officers and a captain were arrested on charges of having beaten a handcuffed prisoner into unconsciousness in 2012. Last week, The New York Times reported on the “culture of brutality” on Rikers. The city is now investigating more than 100 reported violent assaults on inmates.

None of this would surprise the inmates of the Rose M. Singer Center, the women’s barrack on the island, who routinely experience or witness brutality of all kinds.

[Diclotican]

1. LiberalElite

LiberalElite

Even I who have never been in New York, know about the violence in Rikers Island - from rumors and its like.... And I doubt it is the worst of the worst either - in fact I fear the whole prison system in US is corrupt to the core - and are not doing its job, rehabilitate the ones who is able to be rehabilitated - and to keep the ones who maybe are not able to be rehabilitated out of the society - if anything prison in the US sounds like a breeding ground for criminals - and gangs who is a plague for everyone on the outside...

Diclotican