A Christmas Message from outside a US children's prison...

[Joanne98]

http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=713

Flamenco Vigil for Global Abolition of Children's Prisons
Posted on Monday, December 25 @ 08:49:30 MST by editor


Teye & Belen Flamenco Gypsy Candlelight Christmas Eve Vigil for the Incarcerated Children

What initially seemed the most unlikely way to enjoy Christmas eve turned into one of the most beautiful and moving season celebrations I have ever experienced.

Yes, it was raining, and it was cold. Cold and wet to break out a quality flamenco guitar and play it. Cold to do a performance out in the open air. We were forced to improvise a makeshift construction to huddle under: consisting of our suburban, our lightshow stand, a microphone stand, a tarp and some bungee cords, and in the end, with all the candles, it almost resembled a nativity scene.

Initially there were only a few of us, but as the hour of the vigil went by, more and more people came, local people but also those who drove in from Dallas, McAllen, Houston, Del Rio. (For those not familiar with either the vastness of Texas or its speed limits, we are talking three, four, even seven hours of driving in bad weather!)

People of all ages held a candle, huddled under the improvised canopy or held umbrellas, and we enjoyed the closeness that comes from a common cause.

What was our cause? We were there to protest the incarceration in concrete prison cells, in prison uniforms, of CHILDREN, in a for-profit prison, with our tax money ($ 95 per detainee per day, that amounts to more than two million dollars a month for this prison alone), right here in the USA, self-proclaimed most special of all countries on earth.

We were here to provide a ray of hope to those inside the prison (for although our initial offer to the prison of a free Flamenco performance for the detainees and staff went unanswered and we were forced to do it on the street, rumor of such a gathering will surely find its way into the cells!) and to let them know that there are many Americans who care and will put an end to this.

We were here so that these facts may be broadcast around the world via the internet, and that eventually the mainstream media will have to pick up on it and that by national and international outrage these practices will stop. News has traveled fast on the Flamenco internet community and has cast a wider net from there.

While organizing this Vigil, we’ve come upon NEW AND DISTURBING FACTS (thanks Jay Johnson, for the research):

--The prison took it out on the detainees: it has taken away recreational privileges as a direct result of last weeks’ march and vigil. You may ask, why go ahead with the Christmas Vigil? According to a lady who is in touch with those inside, the detainees much preferred their privileges on hold over the feeling of total isolation that they had experienced before.

--The phenomenon of putting children in concrete cells is spreading like an ugly cancer. People who reacted to the Flamenco Newsletters that we sent out all over the world have informed us that the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Australia, are now all doing it. Some further research quickly revealed that the prisons in those countries are all built and run by... THE SAME CORPORATIONS AS THOSE WHO RUN THEM IN THE USA. Globalization at its finest.

--These are For-Profit-Prisons indeed: the ONLY way for the detainees to contact anyone on the outside is by means of telephone. And while the actual cost of a phone call is known to us all, the detainees’ only way of calling out is by purchasing a $ 20 PHONE CARD, good for 20 MINUTES. First, this makes it impossible for those who do not have $ 20 to call outside, second, for someone who may not speak the local language, 20 minutes is nothing, third, the corporation makes additional profit by selling 20 minutes for 20 dollars.

--Initially, the number of detainees in the prison in Taylor was given as 400, half of whom are children. It turns out however that at the time of writing, this prison is filled over capacity: more than 650 detainees are inside, over half of whom are children.

Please let it sink in: 350 CHILDREN IN CONCRETE PRISON CELLS AT CHRISTMAS 2006, IN THE USA, 35 MILES FROM THE CAPITOL OF TEXAS. Merry Christmas.

--Supposedly the children and their mothers are in the concrete cells so that the families may be together (according to the official statement). How to explain then, that the fathers were shipped out to different prisons, in Colorado and elsewhere?

--The prison as it exists in Taylor today is in grave violation of ... their own contract with Williamson County, where it states explicitly: “NO RAZOR WIRE”. Of course, since razor wire is a cheap and secure way of preventing escape, and since this is a prison that must make profit, rolls and rolls of razor wire have been installed.

Please don’t take my word for it! Just take highway 79 North (it branches off from Interstate 35, about a dozen miles north of the State Capital of Texas, Austin) and drive into Taylor. Take a left somewhere before the railroad overpass, and you will soon gaze upon the marvel that, in Good Newspeak, is called the Don Hutto Residential Center.

Believe me, it does not look like a place where you nor your family would want to reside.

WHAT CAN YOU DO???

I am positive that you will be outraged after reading this. Regardless of what one’s feelings are on the difficult subject of immigration, NO ONE agrees to putting children in concrete cells. So what can you do to help end this?

Nothing could be simpler. Just spread the word. This is understandingly kept low-profile. Two million dollars a month is good income, and the corporations are of course fully aware that imprisoning children will not sit well with most taxpayers, so the last thing the orporation wants is for this to be common knowledge.

And that is where YOU come in. If we ALL SPREAD THE WORD, THIS WILL STOP. Period.

Thank you very much, and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

--Teye, Austin, Dec 25, 2006
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=713

[Joanne98]

1. Modern-day Scrooges opt for prisons

Modern-day Scrooges opt for prisons (and making a profit off them too)
Marcia Ribble

Much has been written lately about building prisons. Most have implied that the way to end crime is to build more prisons. Hasn't anyone noticed that we already do have prisons, and they are not preventing crime?

I will support the building of a prison when sufficient monies are spent to 1) clean up neighborhoods, 2) create jobs for adults that pay a living wage (perhaps cleaning up the neighborhoods), and 3) ensure that children who come to school unprepared do not remain behind. We can reduce crime by preventing it through education, jobs, and decent neighborhoods.

In the England of Charles Dickens' time the response to poverty was to build prisons. That is exactly what we are doing today. Poverty makes it hard for children to learn. It increases the probability that they will not graduate from high school. And, when they do not graduate, they often commit crimes and end up in jail or prison.


Why? Poverty creates stress in children. Stress affects the brain's biochemistry and prevents learning from taking place, even when students are both willing and able to learn under normal conditions.

When Dickens visited the United States in 1842, he was surprised to find that female factory workers here could read and write, while in England those factory workers were usually illiterate. Our first factory workers were literate and fairly paid, but when the Irish immigrants arrived, starving and desperate, the early industrialists fired the shop girls, hired the Irish, and lowered the wages to increase profits. That remains the pattern today. Create poverty by deliberately setting low wages for workers, high salaries for executives, complain about crime and illiteracy, and build prisons.

Bonuses given to executives deepens these children's poverty. Scrooge is alive and well and hasn't been visited by the ghosts yet in the United States of 2006. To quote Dickens:

"Oh! But he was a tight-fisted, hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! ..." 'At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,'said the gentleman.... 'Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'" 'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge."

He was willing to contribute, not to prosperity for families, but to the building of prisons.

Marcia Ribble is a University of Cincinnati assistant professor in Humanities, Media, and Cultural Studies.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061220/EDIT02/612200314/1090/EDIT

[Trajan]

2. This is awful .....

The FUCKING republicans just ADORE privatization so they and their friends can reap HUGE profits; charging the highest cost and giving the lowest service ....

What fucking animals ....

And THESE are the guys who promote deeper, longer sentences for more and more trivial crimes .... These are 'Law and Order' corporate groups who sells prison related good, and lobby the government for stricter laws .... ALL to fill their own coffers ....

This is pitiful ...

[The Traveler]

3. What an incredibly ugly world we are making

This is disgusting and outrageous. Forwarding this thread now to as many people as I can think of.

[Joanne98]

18. Thankyou. That is want this group is asking people to do.

[High Plains]

4. This is why we need comprehensive immigration law reform.

[Joanne98]

6. The majority of children in prison are born in this country...

[Joanne98]

5. Massive US prison population continues to grow

Massive US prison population continues to grow
Fri, 2006-12-08 01:21
By Tom Carter – World Socialist Web Site

A report released December 1 by the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) documents a persistence and expansion of America’s vast prison population. In a country whose government addresses itself to the rest of humanity as the world’s leading democracy, almost 2.2 million individuals are behind bars, and this number is increasing at an unsustainable rate.

According to the report, "Prisoners in 2005," there were 2,193,798 people incarcerated in the United States as of December 2005. An additional 4.1 million were on probation and around 800,000 more on parole. This amounts to more than 7 million people—or 1 in 32 American adults—who were under some sort of supervision by the US prison system as of 12 months ago.

The full report can be downloaded on the BJS web site, here.
Since the government endeavor in the 1970s to get "tough on crime," the US prison population has increased six-fold. The largest growth has been experienced during the Clinton and Bush administrations, which have slashed social programs, cut taxes for the rich and made the market an object of worship.

The resulting social decay, polarization and disappearance of economic opportunities for broad sections of the population have been accompanied by a growth of petty crime and drug use. The government has aggressively combated the latter by expanding the prison system and imposing large mandatory sentences for nonviolent offenses such as drug possession, as a "deterrent" to potential offenders.

Today, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. According to the BJS report, 737 out of every 100,000 American residents were incarcerated at the end of 2005—up from 725 the previous year and up from 605 in 1995. In other words, one out of every 136 men, women and children in the US is behind bars.

This past year, the sharpest increases in prison population were found in the country’s poor and rural areas. Last year, South Dakota’s inmate population increased by 11 percent, while Montana’s rose by 10.9 percent and Kentucky’s by 10.4 percent. On the whole, the nation’s prison population increased by around 2 percent.

Due both to racism and economic deprivation, the proportion of black men in prison continues to be staggeringly high. Of black males aged 25-29, 8.1 percent are currently in prison. This compares to 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men.

In general, men are presently 13 times more likely than women to go to jail, although this is slowly changing. The number of female inmates grew last year by 2.6 percent, while the male inmate population grew only 1.9 percent. Since 1995, the number of male inmates has increased by 34 percent, while the female prison population has grown by 57 percent. This has largely been attributed to harsher sentencing for offenses such as drug use, as well as for crimes of association—many women are behind bars simply for living with a husband or boyfriend convicted of drug possession.

When considering these figures, it is important to remember the deplorable conditions in the prisons themselves. In the large penitentiaries, perennially overcrowded, HIV/AIDS, mental illness, physical and sexual assault and drug addiction are pervasive. The BJS report finds that federal prisons are currently operating on average at 34 percent above the maximum capacity for which they were designed.

One perhaps significant development noted in the report is that the population of military prisons increased over the year 2005 at a rate more than three times greater than that of the general prison population. While the number of military inmates is comparatively small—around 2,300—the population increased markedly, by 6.7 percent.

Prison is big business in the US—the industry itself is worth $40 billion a year. Recently, overcrowded state prison systems have begun to rely on private prison contractors to house inmates, and some of these companies have been very successful. These for-profit prisons, as one might expect, have become notorious for violations of inmates’ basic constitutional rights.

The populations of these private prisons are also growing rapidly. During 2005, the number of federal inmates incarcerated in this way increased by 9.2 percent and the number of state inmates by 8.8 percent. Overall, around 107,000 of the country’s inmates are now incarcerated for profit, though many more prisons contract out services such as food, sanitation and clothing.

It should be noted that the same companies employed to manage burgeoning prison populations in the US were tapped when the American military needed jails in Iraq—to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in defense contracts.

In the final analysis, the figures cited in this report contribute to a portrait of a society in an advanced stage of social decay. In the United States can be found levels of social inequality of unique and historic proportions. More billionaires than any other country in the world—more than half of the world’s billionaire population—live in America, and these 400-some people between them control more than $1.25 trillion.

In the US, the average CEO now earns hundreds of times the wage of the average worker. A tiny layer at the top of American society lives in conditions of luxury and extravagance insulated from and largely incomprehensible to the overwhelming majority of the population, and this tiny layer, through its enormous economic assets, asserts its control over all of America’s major political, social and economic institutions.

This social layer, when it encounters a complex social problem, is chronically incapable of solving it in a progressive manner; its responses are generally characterized by ignorance and shortsightedness, on the one hand, and brutality, on the other.

Faced with a social fabric that is coming apart at the seams, this elite responds by criminalizing and incarcerating a larger and larger proportion of its own population.

- Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/3561

[Joanne98]

7. Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons

Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?

By Deborah Davies

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. ‘Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.’

If a prisoner doesn’t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There’s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can’t crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.

Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.

Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.

The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year.

And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers.

But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas

They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week.

Our findings were not based on rumour or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S.

In many American states, prison regulations demand that any ‘use of force operation’, such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard.

The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and that no excessive force was used. In fact, many of them record the exact opposite.

Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system – a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush’s commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression.

In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor.

Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.

‘I thought: “What hypocrisy,” Carlson told me. ‘Because they know we do it here every day.’

All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson’s belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. They pointed to the mountain of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors – endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America’s own prisons.

Many of the tapes we’ve collected are several years old. That’s because they only surface when determined lawyers prise them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits.

But for every ‘historical’ tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily.

It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.

In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a ‘restraint chair’. His hands and feet are shackled, there’s a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He’s not. Not yet.

The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.

The tape comes from Utah – but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who’ve died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair.

Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’

His name is Joe Arpaio. He positively welcomes TV crews and we were promised ‘unfettered access.’ It was a reassuring turn of phrase – you don’t want to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe’s jails.

We uncovered two videotapes from surveillance cameras showing how his tough stance can end in tragedy.

The first tape, from 2001, shows a man named Charles Agster dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Agster is mentally disturbed and a drug user. He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late-night grocery store. The police handed him over to the Sheriff’s deputies in the jail. Agster is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he’s struggling.

The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair. One of them kneels on Agster’s stomach, pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair.

Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous – the manuals on the use of the 'restraint chair’ warn of the dangers of ‘positional asphyxia.’

Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agster is unconscious. The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he’s already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital. Agster's family is currently suing Arizona County.

His mother, Carol, cried as she told me: ‘If that’s not torture, I don’t know what is.’ Charles’s father, Chuck, listened in silence as we filmed the interview, but every so often he padded out of the room to cry quietly in the kitchen.

The second tape, from five years earlier, shows Scott Norberg dying a similar death in the same jail. He was also a drug user arrested for causing a nuisance. Norberg was severely beaten by the guards, stunned up to 19 times with a Taser gun and forced into the chair where – like Charles Agster – he suffocated.

The county’s insurers paid Norberg’s family more than £4 millions in an out-of-court settlement, but the sheriff was furious with the deal. ‘My officers were clear,’ he said. ‘The insurance firm was afraid to go before a jury.’

Now he’s determined to fight the Agster case all the way through the courts. Yet tonight, in Sheriff Joe’s jail, there’ll probably be someone else strapped into the chair.

Not all the tapes we uncovered were filmed by the guards themselves. Linda Evans smuggled a video camera into a hospital to record her son, Brian. You can barely see his face through all the tubes and all you can hear is the rhythmic sucking of the ventilator.

He was another of Sheriff Joe’s inmates. After an argument with guards, he told a prison doctor they’d beaten him up. Six days later, he was found unconscious of the floor of his cell with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries. After a month in a coma, he died from septicaemia.

‘Mr Arpaio is responsible.’ Linda Evans told me, struggling to speak through her tears. ‘He seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing.’

In some of the tapes it’s not just the images, it’s also the sounds that are so unbearable. There’s one tape from Florida which I’ve seen dozens of times but it still catches me in the stomach.

It’s an authorised ‘use of force operation’ – so a guard is videoing what happens. They’re going to Taser a prisoner for refusing orders.

The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital. The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair. ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ he shouts with increasing desperation. ‘It hurts!’

One guard then jabs him on both hips with a Taser. The man jerks as the electricity hits him and shrieks, but still won’t get into the wheelchair.

The guards grab him and drop him into the chair. As they try to bend his legs up on to the footrest, he screams in pain. The man’s lawyer told me he has a very limited mental capacity. He says he has a back injury and can’t walk or bend his legs without intense pain.

The tape becomes even more harrowing. The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame. He falls on the floor, crying in agony. They Taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning.

One of the most recent video tapes was filmed in January last year. A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two ‘wards’ – they’re not called prisoners.

One of the youths hits a staff member in the face. He knocks the ward to the floor then sits astride him punching him over and over again in the head.

Watching the tape you can almost feel each blow. The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head – even after he’s been handcuffed. Other staff just stand around and watch.

We also collected some truly horrific photographs.

A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of ‘use of force operations.’ So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.

But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.

‘They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,’ lawyer Christopher Jones explained. ‘We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.

‘The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it’s really air-tight.’

And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes – autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair – he didn’t expect to be beaten to death.

Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.

Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted.

Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing – the same man who changed the policy on videoing – has been promoted. He’s now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons.

How could anyone excuse – still less condone – such behaviour? The few prison guards who would talk to us have a siege mentality. They see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they back each other up, no matter what.

I asked one serving officer what happened if colleagues beat up an inmate. ‘We cover up. Because we’re the good guys.’

No one should doubt that the vast majority of U.S. prison officers are decent individuals doing their best in difficult circumstances. But when horrific abuse by the few goes unreported and uninvestigated, it solidifies into a general climate of acceptance among the many.

At the same time the overall hardening of attitudes in modern-day America has meant the notion of rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment – even loss of liberty is not seen as punishment enough. Being on the restraint devices and the chemical sprays.

Since we finished filming for the programme in January, I’ve stayed in contact with various prisoners’ rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered.

Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantanamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there.

His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found ‘no evidence of systematic abuse.’

But then, as one of the prison reformers we met on our journey across the U.S. told me: ‘We’ve become immune to the abuse. The brutality has become customary.’

So far, the U.S. government is refusing to release these Guantanamo tapes. If they are ever made public – or leaked – I suspect the images will be very familiar.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo – or even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too familiar. And much is it is taking place in America’s own backyard.

Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons, was shown on Wednesday, March 2, at 11.05pm.

[Joanne98]

8. HERE IS THE VIDEO

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm

[BushOut06]

9. Repugs love tossing children in adult prisons

It seems that every day, you hear about some DA wanting to try some child as an adult. No child should EVER be sent to an adult prison. I don't care what the fuck they did. Children simply do NOT have the same mental facilities as adults do, this has been proven over and over.

[Joanne98]

10. October protest against police brutality.. (video)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9080621110492110728&q=Police+brutality

[Joanne98]

11. The road to Abu Ghraib goes thru the US prison system

And this is THE BOOK on that subject...

ITEM OVERVIEW
Abner Louima. Abu Ghraib. The Humboldt Five. Extraordinary Rendition. Lynchings. School Of The Americas. Prison Rape. Whether or not it makes front-page news, make no mistake: Torture is an everyday tool of dominance and terror in the United States. On the heels of Our Enemies in Blue, his controversial chronicle of policing, Kristian Williams once again upsets the notion that "excessive force" by the state is anything but altogether American.
American Methods is a damning audit of the US record in underwriting human rights violations around the globe. In the last 25 years alone and under several administrations, we confront death squads in El Salvador, genocidal campaigns in Turkey, brutal interrogations done on our dime, even in our name by various "friendly governments," and more. Returning to our shores, Williams observes the banality of violence at home—on both sides of the prison wall. What emerges is the distinct character of American torture, particularly its emphasis on sexual violence, misogyny, and racialized spectacle. Ultimately, American Methods offers devastating conclusions about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and our national culture.

http://www.akpress.org/2006/items/americanmethods

[Morgana LaFey]

12. As a nation, we have totally lost our soul. Totally.

This is beyond reprehensible, as is the torture we now sanction (including in our own domestic prisons).

I don't know what happened, or when, but it's shocking beyond belief to me. I do know it's been a long time coming. I do know that bringing fascists into public service at the end of WWII didn't help, but that certainly hasn't been all of it.

How will we redeem ourselves? CAN we? Should we even be allowed?

[Joanne98]

17. I know. All we can do now is make sure they can't hide it...

Drag them into the sunlight and let the world world see what this country really is....

[AikidoSoul]

19. Not everyone is like this. We are the nation too.

The trouble is that everything is controlled by for-profit corporations that have no compassion, no accountability and no heart. We need reform in every possible area. It will be a big job... but we can do it together.

[porphyrian]

13. Prisons cause more problems than they solve for the convenience of a few.

Crime would virtually end tomorrow if we put the resources wasted on building and filling prisons on solving the social problems which drive so many to it.

[Joanne98]

14. Red Tape Lets Guards Rape Women Prisoners, Suit Argues

Red Tape Lets Guards Rape Women Prisoners, Suit Argues
by Kari Lydersen
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2730/printmode/true

Female inmates who have suffered sexualized violence at the hands of male jailers are braving retaliation threats to band together in an uphill legal battle to expose and eliminate barriers to their protection.
Jan. 6 – Shenyell Smith's transfer to the "honor unit" at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York – a section of the prison boasting special privileges for prisoners with excellent disciplinary records – turned out to be far from rewarding.

According to Smith, shortly after the move, Officer Delroy Thorpe started making comments about her appearance and in September 2001, he asked her how she felt about becoming sexually involved with a guard. When she rejected his advances, she said, he told her that no inmate "tells him no."

As one of many plaintiffs suing New York prison officials over sexualized violence in the state's incarceration facilities, Smith alleges that eventually, Thorpe forced vaginal, anal and oral sex on her. She said his assaults continued and that Thorpe told her that if she complained, no one would believe her.

Despite the threats, Smith spoke out about the assaults. She visited the prison medical center shortly after the rapes and told health care providers she was experiencing vaginal and rectal pain.

In November and December 2001, she told the prison superintendent and her counselor in the Family Violence Program about the assaults and reported them to the Inspector General's office.

She received no responses.

In January 2002, Smith filed an official grievance with the state Department of Correctional Services (DOCS), which was denied.

All the while, Thorpe continued to maintain his post in the honor unit, despite having been named in other complaints of sexual abuse and harassment filed with the Inspector General's office.

Smith's is one of many similar stories recounted in court filings related to a 2003 suit against individual New York DOCS guards, officials and supervisors. The plaintiffs, who are seeking class-action status in order to include all abused women in New York state correctional facilities, are being represented by the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project.

Smith's co-plaintiffs report subjection to rape and groping as well as observation in showers and other abuses. The lawsuit alleges that sexual abuse, assault and harassment is common in New York's state correctional facilities, and women prisoners have little recourse for relief from their abusers.

New York DOCS spokesman Mike Frasier said he could not comment since the case is in ongoing litigation.

So far the US District Court for the Southern District of New York has not certified the case as a class-action lawsuit. Prisoners' rights advocates say the hold-up is mainly due to federal legislation known as the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which they argue has essentially hamstrung prisoners with legitimate complaints.

The PLRA was passed in 1996, supposedly to avoid frivolous lawsuits by prisoners. It requires prisoners to exhaust every administrative remedy before filing a lawsuit in civil court. Since many of the plaintiffs named in the suit never filed grievances with the Department of Corrections, the DOCS has argued, they are not eligible to file a class-action lawsuit.

But the Legal Aid Society, along with allies like the Center for Constitutional Rights and other women's and human rights groups, argue that the psychological and emotional effects of sexual abuse make it unreasonable to expect women to be mentally and emotionally capable of following DOCS procedure.

As the PLRA has been interpreted in New York State, a complainant must not only report a problem but identify the means and procedures to remedy it. That means that to comply, women would not only need to file grievances describing their abuse but also recommend what reforms the prison system must make to change the situation.

"The state is arguing that in order to have their day in court, women need to be able to articulate the failings of the policies and procedures which allowed the problem to occur," Legal Aid Society attorney Dori Lewis said. "The prison administration needs to be told there's a problem and they need to figure out how to fix it. You can't expect women to come forward about their abuse and also tell the prison system how to fix itself."

A 1996 report by Human Rights Watch identifies the PLRA as a major obstacle to prison reform. The group wrote that the law has "seriously compromised the ability of any entity, private or public, to combat sexual misconduct in custody."

Lewis affirmed that not many lawyers advocate on behalf of prisoners and said the PLRA is one of the reasons why. She noted that there have only been a few class-action lawsuits filed nationwide on sexualized violence and sexual misconduct in the past few decades, including ones in Georgia in 1992 and Washington, DC two years later.

Studies by rights groups have documented the prevalence of sexual abuse and rape in women's prisons across the country. The majority of guards in women's prisons across the country are men, according to an analysis by Human Rights Watch, which also found that male guards sexually assault female prisoners or manipulate them into sex with promises of extra privileges, family visits or points toward early release.

A 1996 Human Rights Watch report on the matter notes that "virtually every prisoner who had lodged a complaint of sexual misconduct faced retaliation by the accused officer, his colleagues or even other prisoners… These punishments took the form of write-ups for sexual misconduct, the loss of 'good time' accrued toward an early parole, or prolonged periods of disciplinary segregation."

Advocates note that sexualized violence and manipulated sex is highly damaging to women mentally and physically.

In Smith's case, she reports that she eventually suffered depression, anxiety, sleeplessness and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Smith said she experienced bouts of uncontrollable shaking and suicidal thoughts. Having been abused prior to her incarceration made the situation even worse.

"If you think of how women in domestic violence situations on the outside are traumatized and afraid," Lewis said, "that is multiplied by an infinite amount in prison where women would have to complain about a guard to his friend or peer and have no expectation that they'll be moved or protected from retaliation."

A state judge will likely rule in late February on whether to give the lawsuit class-action status. If it proceeds and is successful, it could gain reforms and punitive damages on behalf of all women abused in New York state prisons. Since it is a state lawsuit, it may not have wide-ranging impact in terms of precedent set, but lawyers hope it will serve as a warning or model for other states in their implementation of PLRA and their process for dealing with sexual abuse complaints.

The plaintiffs also argue that sexual abuse in prison violates international law against rape, torture and cruel and unusual punishment, a situation which should supersede compliance with the PLRA and other administrative roadblocks.

"The international condemnation against rape and sexual assault is not being dealt with," said Jennie Green, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. "These standards are supposed to be universal."

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2730/printmode/true

[peacetalksforall]

15. What are the parents being held for? How long are they there?

Are lawyers getting in and out? Sorry, don't have time to read all the links - can you provide details about the claimed purpose and the technicalities of it all? What are other people in the legal professions saying? That would help overworked people like myself get a faster glance at this.

I don't understand the part about all those other countries having parallel prisons like ours? I thought we were kinda unique for hypocrisy and privatization when it involves profit of a few.

Extra question - how far away is Crawford?

[Joanne98]

16. It seems that the US is spending it's evil prison ideology into other countries

The companies are US..Capital Corrections and Wackenhut I would assume.

I don't know why some mothers are there too. Maybe their immigrants. But I don't see why they would be stuck there. It's all so evil.

[fishwax]

29. It is an immigration holding center

so everyone there is being held awaiting deportation, I believe.

[NotGivingUp]

20. this is all so awful. there's no way i could watch the videos.

we must put an end to this insanity. we can do it together.

[Joanne98]

21. I recommend anyone who's a muslim to watch the Torture Inc video

It would help them realize that torture and brutality is an American policy. They won't feel so singled out afterwards.

[Joanne98]

22. I just sent this link to this thread to the Edwards campaign....

http://johnedwards.com/

I think that poverty and prisons are the same issue. I'm praying that he will make this part of his campaign. Please God. This has to stop.

[Joanne98]

23. Angela Davis speaks out on Prisons and Katrina NEW!

Thursday, December 28th, 2006
Angela Davis Speaks Out on Prisons and Human Rights Abuses in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

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Scholar and former prisoner Angela Davis was in New Orleans this month to speak out against human rights violations and demand amnesty for those imprisoned during Hurricane Katrina. We hear from her keynote address at the event "Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina: A Weekend of Reconciliation and Respect for Human Rights."
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Former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards has entered the 2008 presidential race -- one day earlier than he intended. On Wednesday, Edwards’ campaign inadvertently posted the news of his candidacy during a test-run on its website. Edwards had intended to make the announcement today during a speech in the 9th Ward district of New Orleans.
Scholar and former prisoner Angela Davis was also in New Orleans recently. Her visit to the city was in recognition of International Human Rights Day. After Hurricane Katrina hit, many in New Orleans were arrested for looting, left to drown in locked jail cells and held past release dates. As many as 85% of defendants in the 3,000 criminal court cases still pending in New Orleans qualify for representation by a public defender. An untold number of them have yet to see a lawyer.

Angela Davis went to New Orleans to speak out against human rights violations and demand amnesty for those imprisoned during Hurricane Katrina. She gave the keynote address at a series of events organized by the prison-abolition group - Critical Resistance. "Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina: A Weekend of Reconciliation and Respect for Human Rights" - took place in New Orleans earlier this month. In her speech Davis referred to Merlene Maten - a 73-year-old New Orleans grandmother - who spent 16 days in prison for allegedly looting $63 worth of food from a deli a day after Hurricane Katrina hit. Here is an excerpt of Angela Davis’ speech.

Angela Davis. Activist, author and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her most recent books are "Abolition Democracy" and "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 [phone].

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450208

[Joanne98]

24. THE WALL. Prisoners of the drug war....

http://www.november.org/thewall/Wall-index.html

[Solly Mack]

25. recommended...there's still time to recommend

Damn :(

[Joanne98]

26. Thankyou Solly Mack....

[Joanne98]

27. kick

[Joanne98]

28. TREATED LIKE TRASH!

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b919b57ff4ff3585e419967986224e37

Treated Like Trash: New Katrina Report Reveals ‘Dickensian’ Abuse of Incarcerated Youth
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?...

New America Media, News Report, Cheryl Brown and Donal Brown, Posted: May 09, 2006

Editor’s Note: A damning new report details the ordeal of incarcerated youth during Hurricane Katrina, including being shackled and left in the rising waters in their cells. This story is a joint project reported and written by Donal Brown, reporter for the New America Media and Cheryl Brown, editor and co-owner of the Black Voice News serving Riverside and San Bernardino, California.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- Imagine you are a 14-year-old boy incarcerated for a minor offense and a category five hurricane is bearing down on the city. You are told nothing but then the lights go out, they come on for a short time, but go off again for good. The water is rising up to your legs then to your thighs.

A day passes and you are given no food and water.

“The water was past our hips. Beaucoup feces was everywhere, and we hoped the water wouldn’t go over our heads.” So begins the story of Eddie, an African-American child who said he will never be able to get out of his mind what happened during Katrina.

In a telephone interview on May 8, Eddie Fenceroy, now 15, told of his experience in the South White Detention Center at the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) during Hurricane Katrina.

When Eddie was finally evacuated to some fish farm ponds at the OPP, he was "shackled at the ankles in a coffle and handcuffed," in the style trains of slaves were handled in the old South.

“The grown people were not shackled; it was like they thought we were much faster and could run away. Where would we have run? I was hoping to live and not die,” he said.

Eddie said he was starving and not allowed to eat the food that floated past on the flood waters, not even wrapped loaves of bread. He had to watch as the guards fed their own children. Then the guards deserted with their families. They left one person to guard, and he had an assault rifle trained on the juvenile inmates.

Eddie was finally taken to the Broad Street Bridge where he saw a lot of dead bodies floating in the water. He still has nightmares about the bodies and is plagued with foot fungus contracted during three days standing in the polluted waters.


http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?...

[Joanne98]

30. kick

[Joanne98]

31. .........

[Joanne98]

32. kick

[mzteris]

33. this is sickening.....

:wtf:

This country is getting sicker by the minute.