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While the nation is still in shock over the videos and photos of gruesome sexual and humiliating abuses of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, it is well to recall the words of Attorney General John Ashcroft when he sent a team of prison experts to restore Iraq's criminal justice system last year. Ashcroft said: "Now all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land, and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish an equitable criminal justice system based on the rule of law and the standards of basic human rights." One of the principal prison experts that Ashcroft chose for modernizing Iraqi prisons was Lane McCotter, who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and trained the guards. McCotter had resigned as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 under pressure after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. After retiring from the army, McCotter was head of the corrections departments in New Mexico and Texas before taking the job in Utah. In an interview with Online Magazine, McCotter said that of all the prisons in Iraq, Abu Ghraib "is the only place we agreed as a team was truly closest to an American prison." Since 80% to 90% of Abu Ghraib had been destroyed, McCotter set about rebuilding it, everything from walls and toilets to handcuffs and soap. He employed 100 Iraqis who had worked in the prison under Saddam Hussein, and paid for everything with wads of cash, up to $3 million, that he carried with him. While the public has been overwhelmed with horror photos from Abu Ghraib, hardly any attention has been paid to the widespread practices of involuntary rape and violence in U.S. prisons, where 2,210,000 men and women are incarcerated. In Pennsylvania and several other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male prisoners at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation. At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have been forced to wear black hoods and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl. Some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, during much of the time when President Bush was governor, because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Federal Judge William Wayne imposed a consent decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex. Nationwide, during the last quarter century, over 40 state prisons were under some form of court order for brutality, crowding, poor food or lack of medical care, according to Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group in Washington that calls for alternatives to incarceration. When President Bush was asked what he knew about abuse in Texas prisons while he was governor, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said the problems in American prisons were not comparable to the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib. Chase Riveland, a former secretary of corrections in Washington State and Colorado, said: "In some jurisdictions in the United States, there is a prison culture that tolerates violence, and it's been there a long time." The quadrupling of prison and jail inmates to 2.1 million in the past 25 years has worsened the problem, Riveland said. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has 83,000 members who are employed in prisons, jails and other correction facilities. Known as AFSCME Corrections United (ACU), it conducts a continuing state-by-state fight against the privatization of prisons. It maintains that part of the prison problem is due to inadequate staffing, which makes for an unsafe workplace. AFSCME Illinois Council 31, with 15,000 members, has a prison reform agenda that includes funding for a new maximum security prison and a program for gang control in each correction facility. There is no evidence of self-criticism by the union of the many cruelties that prisoners are commonly subjected to. Our acknowledgement to Fox Butterfield for his excellent reporting of the mistreatment of U.S. prisoners in the May 8, 2004 issue of The New York Times. Our weekly "LaborTalk" and "Labor and the War" columns can be viewed at our Web site (www.laboreducator.org). Union members who wish information about the AFL-CIO rank-and-file reform movement should visit (www.rankandfileaflcio.org). |
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For the latest drug war news, visit our friends and allies below We are careful not to duplicate the efforts of other organizations, and as a grassroots coalition of prisoners and social reformers, our resources (time and money) are limited. The vast expertise and scope of the various drug reform organizations will enable you to stay informed on the ever-changing, many-faceted aspects of the movement. Our colleagues in reform also give the latest drug war news. Please check their websites often. |
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