U.S.A.PRISONS - ABUSE OF PRISONERS INVESTIGATED
Hendry Guards Charged with Abusing Inmates
Astounded by what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq,
most Americans
looked on in disbelief. Quick to dismiss US soldiers'
behavior as an
apparition, it showed their total ignorance of what
really goes on inside
US prisons. Accordingly, The DISH presents this very
limited exposé of
two states where compassionate conservatives Jeb and
George W. Bush were
governors. In these states, prisoner abuse is
commonplace.
On Tuesday (5-1-07), prosecutors in Tallahassee, Florida
issued arrest
warrants for eight former prison employees at the Hendry
Correctional
Institution in the Everglades. Guards at the medium to
minimum security
605-bed prison for men are charged with criminal abuse of
inmates, battery
and failure to report inmate abuse.
Department of Corrections Secretary James McDonough said
"a cabal" of
officers sadistically tormented prisoners with
"dehumanizing, improper,
illegal, heinous and despicable acts. Using the threat of
force - beating
and choking - prison employees, including the warden and
assistant warden,
compelled inmates to clean toilets with their tongues.
Done apparently in
an organized and conspiratorial fashion, inmates were
forced to choose
between eating their food off of floors or providing
sexual favors to
guards." The abusers face a combined 23 state
criminal charges. The FBI
and U.S. Attorney are reportedly looking into civil
rights violations
connected to these cases.
Charges Filed in Florida Boot Camp Death
Seven former juvenile boot camp guards and a nurse were
charged with
aggravated manslaughter in the death of 14-year-old
Martin Lee Anderson,
who collapsed in the exercise yard at the Bay County
sheriff's boot camp
in Panama City, Florida on January 5, 2005. Anderson was
beaten by guards
who said he was uncooperative and refused to continue
participating in
boot camp intake exercises. Anderson's death was captured
on videotape.
Initially, the medical examiner's autopsy claimed
Anderson died of
complications from sickle cell, a usually benign blood
disorder in blacks.
However, a second autopsy ruled Anderson suffocated due
to the guards'
actions. Anderson's death caused the state's top law
enforcement officer
to resign and the military-style boot camp's elimination.
The Associated
Press.
Deadly Restraint
Officers said Paul Choy, a 5' 4", fifteen-year-old,
refused to comply with
punishment for failing to finish a five-mile run
(2-4-92). Choy was
restrained by two staff members with a choke hold for ten
minutes. When
the officers released their hold, Choy was no longer
breathing.
A nurse trained to identify signs of sexual assault
observed injuries
consistent with anal rape. "His was the first such
case to come to my
attention. Now, I've lost count of the number of children
killed by
suffocation in custodial settings. Yes, I said
suffocation.' I know the
preferred euphemism here is accidental
restraint-related death.' But out
of respect for the victims and for the English language,
I opt to use the
other word."
Blaming the victim, officials said, "Paul was too
frail a boy for boot
camp. He didn't have the athletic ability.' He
should have been sent
somewhere else. His accident' was the result of an
unfortunate
bureaucratic oversight. They miscalculated, sending a
puny, little Asian
kid to a camp designed for tough young thugs (niggers),
who are inured to
being knocked around--ones who would benefit from being
marched and
exercised to exhaustion and could safely bounce back from
almost any
amount of brutal treatment.'
Paul's demise was part of the window of loss,'
similar to an egg in a
large shipment to market. One must expect some breakage,
particularly
among the ones with prior defects. It's the price of
doing business."
Whenever the subject of young people dying violently in
custodial settings
make the news, which is becoming more frequent as larger
numbers of them
are funneled into that industry, there is a call for
better trained staff,
rather than examining the efficacy of the whole notion of
punishment,
particularly in isolated settings. See www.nospank.net/camps
for more.
Texas: A Hellhole of Abuse
By John Burl Smith
Morales v. Turman (1977), a federal lawsuit to reform
Texas' juvenile
detention system, as well as end the physical abuse of
incarcerated
youths, required observation monitors. According to
monitor Steve Bercu,
"Within days after we arrived, the culture inside
the institutions
reverted to what it was before. They were beating kids
up, and doing bad
things just like before. Texas' ingrained, entrenched,
institutional
culture, simply took over again."
On Tuesday (5-1-07), police went to 22 Texas Youth
Commission (TYC)
facilities and its headquarters in Austin to investigate
claims that young
inmates were sexually abused and that TYC officials
covered it up. TYC
houses about 2,700 youth ages 10 to 21. A 2005
investigation unearthed
evidence that high-ranking officials at its West Texas
State School in
Pyote had repeated sexual contact with some of the 250
youth housed there.
Charged with abuses dating from October 2004, the former
assistant
superintendent at TYC's West Texas State School was
indicted on two counts
of improper relationship with students and two counts of
improper sexual
activity with a person in custody. The former principal
was indicted on
one count of sexual assault, nine counts of improper
sexual activity with
a person in custody and nine counts of improper
relationship between a
student and an educator.
Amidst headlines of a crackdown on illegal sexual
encounters between
agency employees and their charges, a halfway house
employee in Fort
Worth, Texas was arrested (4-25-07) and accused of trying
to entice a girl
to perform oral sex. On April 30, health services
auditors disclosed that
a rape at a state youth lockup was not reported or
followed up, along with
myriads of other problems ranging from delayed treatment
to lack of
psychiatric care.
Then came this bomb shell, superintendent of the
high-security juvenile
prison, Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg, Texas
was fired
(4-29-07) amid allegations of inmate abuse. Texas
continues to be a
"hellhole of abuse" for youth even after
Morales. State officials have
opened 27 investigations into inmate complaints of abuse
at Evins.
A US Attorney's report said that the prison's high levels
of violence,
overcrowding, and an inadequate number of guards violated
inmates'
constitutional rights. Inmate-on-inmate assaults were
five times the
national average for a comparable facility.
News You Use
When Kids Get Life
In 1992, the US ratified the International Covenant on
Civil and Political
Rights, which requires that juvenile imprisonment focus
on rehabilitation.
However, the US reserved the right to sentence juveniles
to life without
parole in extreme cases involving the most hardened of
criminals.
According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, more than 2,000
inmates are currently serving life without parole in the
US for crimes
committed when they were juveniles. Worldwide, the US is
one of the only
countries that allows children under 18 to be sentenced
to life without
parole. Figures reported by the UN' Convention on the
Rights of the Child
show only 12 juveniles are serving such sentences outside
the US.
In When Kids Get Life, FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (The
O.J. Verdict,
Innocence Lost) profiles five individuals sentenced to
life without parole
as juveniles in Colorado, an early pioneer in juvenile
justice that
focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
According to Bikel, the
focus on rehabilitation took a sharp turn in the late
1980s and 1990s,
when violent crimes by young offenders increased and
attracted enormous
press coverage. In response, legislators nationwide
clamped down. The
Colorado General Assembly eliminated the possibility of
parole for life
sentences and expanded the power of district attorneys to
treat juveniles
as adults.
For more on the young men sentenced to live without
parole, their victims
and the ongoing debate on juvenile justice and the harsh
punishments meted
out to youthful offenders, visit www.pbs.org, where
you can view the video
When Kids Get Life.
The
DISH Vol. 10 No 20
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