Abu Ghraib kind of stuff on US territory

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Yet another torture story involving naked prisoners, this time on US territory and done on US citizens.

Here's what the story features:

Here's what one of the victim asks:

Yes. Why take clothes off? Why let male officers come?

The other woman:

The article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/04/MN305813.DTL

What's wrong with the police and prison service in the US? Do they have a sex obsession? It's the fourth about sexual abuse of own citizens by law enforcement I'm posting on these boards.

The courts are no better:

Yes, they ordered male guards to slide hands up and down female inmates' thighs crotch and to flatten their breasts. At least clothed. For now. Who knows what's next.

Equal employment opportunities more important than the inmates' sexual freedom?

What "legitimate goals" could justify that?

The Supreme Court is more reasonable:

But how much time does it take before the case reaches the Supreme Court? Lower courts don't seem to care about higher courts. Prison authorities and the police don't seem to care about any courts.

The article:

http://www.law.indiana.edu/ilj/v73/no3/jackson.html

However, I have seen an article the author of which concluded that banning cross-gender searches would infringe on the guards' equal employment opportunity.

How can something like that happen in a country that practically invented modern democracy and was founded on Christian principles?

What point having constitutional freedoms and rights if they can be abridged as petty executives see fit?

Note than inmates doesn't always mean convicts. Some of those people are actually waiting for a trial. Some of them with no charge at all. Some of them aren't even adult. Sometimes it's not just being exposed. Sometimes it's being left uncovered.

Bunch of sickos, you could say. But it's pretty much the standard.

Canada has that, too, although there's less of publicity. Probably because they don't exceed 40 million people in the whole Europe-sized country.

Here's a Canadian URL:

http://www.prisonjustice.ca/politics/1002_womeninmensold.html

Not so gross as one's I've seen when doing research on inmates' and detainees' rights from Canada and Australia (especially the notorious Brisbane prison).

[ February 07, 2005, 15:51: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Yes, it is standard, and sadly I do not think the US is the only western country stuff like this happens. I am quite certain it happens everywhere to a greater or lesser degree. I think many Eastern European countries have quite a lot of problem with the police as many of them are remnants from communist style education and system.

 

Hmm, I have had no personal experience, but from friends' accounts I know that in some cases there have been beatings... Though, to be honest, they usually happened when the guys have been fighting with cops or in any other ways provoked them. There is, in Bulgaria at least, a bit of racism in that too - gypsies can expect it worse than most others - I dunno how much so, though. What's the bigger problem, though, is corruption, not police brutality.
Prisons, though, are the place where one can expect more problems, both from guards and inmates. Still, something like what the storiev chev pointed out would be extreme.

 

Sounds like they should stay out of trouble with the law then.

 

I think joacqin hit the nail on the head. This isn't only a "western" problem, it's a human nature problem that is inherent when you have one class of persons subject to another class of persons.

Perhaps the reason it's so easy to find cases of this documented in the US is because we have such an accessible legal system...even for the accused and convicted.

Here in Maricopa County, Arizona we have a County Sheriff who has the reputation of being the toughest sheriff in the US. It falls under the Sheriff's Office to run the county jail which is filled with convicts as well as people who are just awaiting trial. Sheriff Arpaio has had more complaints filed against him by "prisoner rights" advocate groups than any other law enforcement official in the land, and with the exception of one or two incidents that really turned out to be the independent actions of a guard, he has been found blameless.

Yeah, he took away their porn mags. Yeah, he took away their coffee. Yeah, he restricted all cigarettes (an important form of 'currency' in jail), Yeah, he started up "chain gangs" to clean the sides of roads...with both male and female inmates, Yeah, when he was faced with an overcrowded jail and the possibility that he would have to release offenders...he built a "tent city" to house the overflow (what's wrong with a convict living under similar circumstances as our soldiers in Iraq?).

He has made the Maricopa County jail a place that you definitely DON'T want to go, yet he gets charged with prisoner abuse all the time.

My point is this...chev, I don't believe that the links that you posted are in any way indicative of the US penal system (he-he, I just said "penal"), no more so than can happen anywhere in the world. I've seen in my own town how you can have a tough prison system that still respects the basic human rights of a prisoner...and cable TV isn't one of them.

 

Yeah, going to prison here is sort of like going to church.

 

Hack,

Don't forget about the pink jump suits and handcuffs.

 

Yeah, and why not shoot everyone that is found guilty of a crime and rape their children. They should've stayed out of trouble.

 

The main problem is the attitude espoused by Khazadman, the "take that you filthy dirty criminals" attitude. That everything happening to someone suspected for a crime is something they had coming. This is very common.

I work in a closed psychiatric ward with sometimes violent patients and where an amount of force sometimes is nescessary to protect both oneself, ones workmates, other patients and the violent patients himself. Almost all of the old geezers (it is mostly middle aged to old men, 45-60,) who work there are extremely good towards the patients and know exactly when force is nescessary and how much of it and they more often err on the side of leniancy than on the side of harshness, though never to put anyone in any danger. Still there are one or two of the staff who abuses their power and use excessive force whenever force is called for, they do not initiate anything but they use more than what is needed to subdue to the patient. Meaning that instead of grappling the patient and holding him down until he can be doped up and tied down they smack him around a bit. No systematic abuse but still very unescessary. I can in some way understand them, when a person jumps you and tries to hurt you it is difficult to hold back ones own adrenalin and rage but that is what you have to do as you are dealing with a sick sick person who has as little control over his condition as a cancer patient. The thing is that the solidarity is so strong among the workforce so that even though a majority disagrees with the excessive use of force by these few persons nothing is ever said and no one would ever dream of filing a complaint. In places like that there is a culture of silence, you turn the blind eye when things like that happen.

This is why I dont buy HS argument that things like this get out most of the time in the US. The very nature of the institutions and the culture them where these things happens prohibits all but a very very few cases to ever go beyond the walls. Those cases that get out are always the tip of the ice berg. But just as the vast majority of the people at my work are great caretakers who stay well withing the bounds of decency so are the a vast majority of the police and prison guards great at what they do and never do anything wrong, except for turning a blind eye to those who do wrong.

 

I've never heard of anything like this happening in THIS westen country. Or maybe I'm just being naive. I'm sure it would be front page news over here if it happened. If a car crash kills more than 2 people in New Zealand, it is front page news here, so I'm sure something like this would be.

 

I can testify to the same thing HB has said. Our prisoners are pretty well off and we have next to no abuse complaints and any abuse complaints are often proved to be over-hyped and one sided.

However, what we do have is a problem of repeat offenders. I remember attending the Holtz case (standard murder case, a Maori man stabbed then robbed a liquor store owner who proceeded to bleed to death) in New Zealand. When Mr. Holtz had been found guilty and sentenced he casually asked the guard on the way out of the courtroom "Will I make it in time for gym break?".

We do have claims of corrupt policemen and claims that NZ is turning into a police state but they're mostly bogus and are made by people whose drug stash was discovered by the police.

I don't see how equal opportunity should come into the equation. A male prison guard can be a prison guard at a male prison. A female prison guard can be a guard at a female prison. They're both prison guards. Any man that demands to be able to work at a female prison as a guard needs a serious mental examination.

 

@Hacken Slash (indirectly joacqin, as well):

From what I know, problems with police in the continental system (under the more or less romano-germanic legal system) is mostly limited to beating and verbal insults. There is just one group of protesters who claim they were all ordered to strip down for a visual search, probably for weapons, and there is no mention of having to remove underwear. You could probably find a couple of cops who have searched a drug addict for sharp or pointy objects, or maybe a couple of collective strip-to-underwear visual searches, but most of that stuff would probably not hold in a court. And exactly one case of a same-gender full strip-search - in highschool (hope against hope the policewomen and teachers in question will rot in prison). But that's it. The police theoretically has the power to do cross-gender searches, but they almost never do strip-searches, let alone full strip-searches and I haven't been able to find a single claim that a cross-gender full strip search has been made. There's already lots of havoc if a male cop pats a female for guns or knives.

Sometimes there is beating, but in most cases it results from the cops being attacked or insulted by hooligans, although not always. From the demonstration mentioned, I've seen a photo of genuine and serious abuse, but a long time has passed since I saw the previous one.

No cold rooms, though.

As for the scale of the problem: http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/34/49.html

http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/20/1182.html

I believe it exceeds the civilised world's average. We aren't talking People's Republic of China or some such.

Aha, one more thing. Please don't take it as an attack on the US when I'm posing the question how something like that can be going on there. In fact, I intended to single the US out in a positive way for Christian values and the beginning of modern democracy and there was no sarcasm there. It gives me creeps that it happens in such a positive setting, that's why. It's so umatching.

And I've already mailed the PM's Office on "if possible, by a member of the opposite gender" in our police-related enactment. They say they have forwarded it to Internal Affairs even though it was the whole government's enactment, not just the Internal minister's one, but I've still had no reply. Yesterday, I e-mailed the party which is proposing an update to the KPK (direct translation is "executive penal code", which means the proper procedures mostly in prisons) in which there is no "if possible" clause. I congratulated them and pointed them in the direction of the police enactments of the government and that recent atrocious same-gender search in a countryside highschool (of which the perpetrators may rot in prison and be strip-searched daily).

As for your sheriff, he seems to be a decent guy and much in-line with my own convictions. Prison is not a holiday resort. There are people who have to support themselves for 1/4 of the money spent on the average prisoner. I'm not against making prisoners work, I'm strongly in favour of it. Rooting out underground cigarette-based trade is a good idea, as well. Coffee? Well, no luxuries, right? But there's a difference between making them pay for themselves or denying them luxuries, and stomping on their dignity or inflicting elaborate punishment.

A very important problem here is that some of those people await trial and they are potential convicts only, but can still be proven innocent or not proven guilty (things look a bit different for those caught red-handed when there's more than the cop's word to that). Some of those haven't even been given any charges.

There also seems to be a double standard for what is decent and what isn't. Look at a stroy from Yahoo (click here):

Who on Earth would demote a soldier for that? If that's indecent exposure...

But male guards pushing hands up and down female inmates' thighs and crotch, flattening their breasts or conducting visual strip-search (although we could probably find a couple of cross-gender cavity search incidents if we insisted... it only creeps me out too much to want to read that if it can be avoided), or watching them while they are showering or being strip-searched including cavity-searched; and male inmates being allowed to watch all that... it apparently is not indecent.

These will be harsh words on my part and I'm sorry if they cause distress, but in a country which makes such a great deal of indecent exposure laws, when such things as I described go on (and if ruled illegal, only on the basis of the search not being reasonable - just as if it were a same-gender unreasonable one), it looks like gross hipocrysy.

To my great regret, I need to point out that schools seem to consider it normal to conduct strip-searches for lost cash, like $7 or $21, and the students aren't always allowed to keep their underwear. In this case they were, but the links I provided lead to threads with quotes from articles dealing with searches where they weren't, like in this case:

Here is a link to the story of a school where strip-searching students was routine.

I know that laws are made to prevent such travesty. For example, in one county:

But in the same county:

There are laws, but no one in the enforcement seems to care. So they're enforcing what, if it's not the law? Civic order? Public security? Government's policies? Because law enforcement it is not. It also seems wrong to me that counties are allowed to make such policies locally. In Poland, you need a parliament bill for something like that.
@Abomination:

I agree wholeheartedly. And any person who supports such a "right" of his needs a similar examination unless it's one of those invertebrate lawyers. I would never take such a case, no matter the pay.

[ February 08, 2005, 01:33: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

No... must fight... agreeing with... Hacken Slash!

Sounds like that sheriff is enforcing Bentham's "principle of less eligibility" and the basic justice principle of parsimony. Essentially, this means that conditions in jail should be worse than those outside, but not excessively so. Good on him - if he's not found to have acted unreasonably or unethically, then he should be allowed to continue as he has. I'd argue that the penalty isn't the first thought of most offenders; if that were the case, then jacking up penalties and sentences would be enough to eliminate crime. But for specific deterrence, you're much better off making jail what it is supposed to be: punishment by the rules.

Of course, I feel that this line of thought should only be supported if there is no other recourse available; better rehab, intermediate sanctions and alternatives to prison should be exhausted first if it is reasonable to do so. But Hack put it pretty well: a prison is somewhere you really should want to avoid. Denying someone their freedoms is seen as the ultimate punishment in Western societies that have abandoned the death penalty; depending on the severity of the crime, you should be able to count on having your basic human rights met, but luxuries should be at an absolute minimum and awarded rarely.

You should ALWAYS have some grounds for complaint about treatment from justice and correctional personnel, since they have such intrusive and coercive powers. Chev's examples are pretty gruesome; if I was on the receiving end of that, I'd want to knock someone's teeth out for doing it. Power without accountability inevitably breeds corruption, which is why I have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, Baxter, the ASIO and USA-PATRIOT laws and other such "secret" policing. I'd like to see the architects of Abu Ghraib drawn and quartered (metaphorically, of course) for their actions, but it will never happen. I want to see certain Australian officials and MPs dragged over the coals for the treatment of David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, but that seems even less likely.

However, there needs to be a limit on what can be expected in a prison - it's not a resort, and you're not in there to have a break from the rat race. Prisoner entitlements should be based on merit and behaviour, not generalised for all courtesy of a judicial ruling aimed at a potentially exceptional case. Abuse should never be tolerated, but it's not supposed to be any more comfortable than life on the outside.

As I've said before, though, it seems common sense and decency have no place in common law, on either count.

@ HB, Abomination, Chev:

With the notable exceptions of the treatment of Aborigines and the migrant detention facilities and our *wonderful* refugee policy (founded by the *cough* Honourable Philip Ruddock, an Amnesty member that the organisation will have NOTHING to do with), our penal and prison systems tend to be okay. Australia is in uproar about a mentally ill migrant being detained in the Baxter detention centre, which is one of our outback "illegal refugee" centres. As more information becomes available, it's becoming clearer that no-one gives a toss about cross-jurisdictional stuff. Despite this woman becoming near-catatonic and stripping herself naked in the yard and curling up into a foetal position, no-one cared enough to resolve the situation for a few months.

At least we care enough to be pissed off when we find out about this sort of thing. Not that we actually do much about it - the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was over a decade ago, and nothing much has changed.