The Death Penalty

Well, this is pretty fucked up:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... l-facility


America's private prison system is a national disgrace

An ACLU lawsuit against a prison in Mississippi is the latest to detail flagrant abuses at a private correctional facility


Jill Filipovic
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 June 2013


The privatization of traditional government functions – and big government payments to private contractors – isn't limited to international intelligence operations like the National Security Agency. It's happening with little oversight in dozens of areas once the province of government, from schools to airports to the military. The shifting of government responsibilities to private actors isn't without consequence, as privatization often comes with a lack of oversight and a series of abuses. One particularly stunning example is the American prison system, the realities of which should be a national disgrace.

Some of those realities are highlighted in a recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of prisoners at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF). EMCF houses severely mentally ill prisoners, with the supposed intent of providing both incarceration and treatment. Instead, the ACLU contends, the facility, which is operated by private contractors, is rife with horrific abuses. As the ACLU states, it is

"an extremely dangerous facility operating in a perpetual state of crisis, where prisoners live in barbaric and horrific conditions and their basic human rights are violated daily."

The complaint lists a litany of such horrors, but here are a few highlights: rampant rapes. Placing prisoners in solitary confinement for weeks, months or even years at a time, where the only way to get a guard's attention in an emergency is to set a fire. Rat infestations so bad that vermin crawl over prisoners; sometimes, the rats are captured, put on leashes and sold as pets to the most severely mentally ill inmates. Many suicide attempts, some successful. The untreated mentally ill throw feces, scream, start fires, electrocute themselves and self-mutilate. Denying or delaying treatment for infections and even cancer. Stabbings, beatings and other acts of violence. Juveniles being housed with adults, including one 16-year-old who was sexually assaulted by his adult cell mate. Malnourishment and chronic hunger. Officers who deal with prisoners by using physical violence.

....A severely ill 16-year-old with "a long history of being physically and sexually abused in addition to suffering from a traumatic brain injury, limited intellectual functioning, self-harm, and psychosis" was moved to EMCF from a juvenile detention center. His cell allegedly had a broken lock, and so other prisoners were able to enter. Five or six of them beat him. He was moved to a solitary confinement unit and, when he voiced his suicidal ideations and asked to see a psychiatrist, was deemed "manipulating to be moved".

Another told prison mental health staff that he was depressed and thinking about about suicide. The treatment plan from the prison psychologist was reportedly three words: "encourage behavioral compliance". After being asked to provide a urine specimen, which he could not give because of a health condition, the ACLU reports:

"Mr. Roe began banging on his door, smeared blood on the cell door window, threatened to commit suicide, and tied a rope around his neck. Officers sprayed excessive amounts of Mace in his cell. According to witnesses, officers waited approximately 20 minutes before pulling Mr. Roe out of his cell. By that time, he was non-responsive and cyanotic. He was taken, his hands and feet bound by zip-ties, to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

For several days after Mr. Roe's death, medical staff continued to 'document' in the daily segregation log that Mr. Roe appeared to be 'in good health and mood.'"

These kinds of abuses are not relegated to a single prison, but they also aren't inherent in any detention system. In the United States, though, they're business as usual. Our prison system is increasingly built and run by for-profit corporations, who have a financial interest in increasing the number of people in prison while decreasing the amount of money it costs to house them.

Since 1980, the US prison population has grown by 790%. We have the largest prison population of any nation in the history of the world. One in three African-American men will go to jail at some point in his life. Imprisoning that many people, most of them for non-violent offenses, doesn't come cheap, especially when you're paying private contractors. The United States now spends $50bn on our corrections system every year.

...Large-scale imprisonment isn't making us any safer, either. But it is putting small-time non-violent individuals – drug users and dealers – in close contact with more hardened criminals and making it significantly more difficult for them to find decent work after their release. That's a perfect recipe for recidivism, not rehabilitation.

Prisons, as demonstrated by the ACLU case, have also become de facto mass institutions for the mentally ill, except without the oversight that pure psychiatric facilities face. With states tightening their budgets, mental health care is being cut even further. While the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of crimes than victimizers, they are imprisoned at disproportionate rates, and often lack meaningful mental healthcare in prison and even face conditions that exacerbate their diseases, like solitary confinement and total squalor. We're effectively taking some of the most vulnerable members of society and subjecting them to ongoing torture.

We have so demonized criminals in the United States that there's widespread acceptance of the fact that jail in modern day America means rapes, beatings, vermin, filth and abuse. But to what end? "Criminals" are punished, yes – brutally, and in ways that should repel and shame us. But rehabilitation isn't happening in these facilities. Crime isn't being deterred; if anything, it's being fostered.

The American public is losing out. The only winners are the private companies who are still awarded contracts to build and maintain more prisons, and who throw their weight behind politicians who promote the supposedly "tough on crime" measures that ensure those prisons are full.

There are many ways to punish crime and protect the public. Ceding our humanity doesn't have to be one of them.

It was the movie 'Dead Man Walking' that got me into Pearl Jam, with the song 'Long Road' on the soundtrack album. Was never a big fan of them until I heard Vedder sing that song.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... punishment

The Catholic nun who changed the US debate on the death penalty forever

Sister Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking shook American attitudes on capital punishment. And 20 years on, it still inspires


Amy Goodman
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 June 2013


Sister Helen Prejean, campaigner for death row prisoners as well as families of murder victims, on 4 February 2013. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Thirty years ago, a Catholic nun working in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans was asked if she would be a penpal to a death row prisoner. Sister Helen Prejean agreed, forever changing her life, as well as the debate on capital punishment in the US.

Her experiences inspired her first book, "Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States," which has just been republished on its 20th anniversary. She was a penpal with Patrick Sonnier, a convicted murderer on death row in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. In her distinctive southern accent, she told me of her first visit to Sonnier:

"It was scary as all get-out. I had never been in a prison before … I was scared to meet him personally. When I saw his face, it was so human, it blew me away. I got a realization then, no matter what he had done … he is worth more than the worst thing he ever did. And the journey began from there."

Sister Helen became Sonnier's spiritual adviser, conversing with him as his execution approached. She spent his final hours with him, and witnessed his execution on 5 April 1984. She also was a spiritual adviser to another Angola death row prisoner Robert Lee Willie, who was executed the same year. The book was made into a film, directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as the character Matthew Poncelet, an amalgam of Sonnier and Williams. Sarandon won the Oscar for best actress, and the film's success further intensified the national debate on the death penalty.

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world still using the death penalty. There are currently 3,125 people on death row in the US, although death penalty opponents continue to make progress. Maryland is the most recent state to abolish capital punishment. After passage of the law, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley wrote:

"Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent, it cannot be administered without racial bias, and it costs three times as much as life in prison without parole. What's more, there is no way to reverse a mistake if an innocent person is put to death."

Studies of the racial bias abound. The Death Penalty Information Center, citing a recent Louisiana Law Review study, reports that in Louisiana, the odds of a death sentence were 97% higher for crimes in which the victim was white than those where the victim was African-American. Nationally, 75% of the cases that resulted in an execution had white victims.

Although Colorado is not one of the states to abolish the death penalty, Governor John Hickenlooper used his executive authority to grant a temporary reprieve to one of the three death row prisoners there, saying:

"It is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives."

This week, Indiana released a former death row prisoner. Paula Cooper was convicted for the 1985 murder of Ruth Pelke. Cooper was sentenced to death at the age of 16, and was, at the time, the youngest person on death row in this country. Pelke's grandson, Bill Pelke, actively campaigned for clemency for her:

"I became convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my grandmother would have been appalled by the fact that this girl was on death row and there was so much hate and anger towards her … When Paula was taken off of death row in the fall of 1989, I thought, 'Well, that's it. She's off of death row. My mission has been accomplished.'"

Nevertheless, Pelke joined a march from Florida's death row prison to Atlanta, on which he met Sister Helen Prejean:

"After 17 days of walking down the highways with this nun, you get a real education about the death penalty. It was on that march with Sister Helen Prejean where I dedicated my life to the abolition of the death penalty. As long as there's any state in this world that's killing their own citizens, I'm going to stand up and say that it's wrong."

Prejean said one of her greatest regrets was that she failed to reach out to the families of the murder victims while she was spiritual adviser to Sonnier and Willie. She went on to found Survive, an organization to support families of murder victims like Ruth Pelke. She wrapped up our conversation this week by saying:

"I've accompanied six human beings and watched them be killed. I have a dedication to them to do this; I can't walk away from this. I'm going to be doing this until I die."