The United
States Is The Largest Prison Camp In The World
The United States Is The Largest Prison Camp In The World
The Criminal Justice (sic) System
The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world. The
US not only has a far higher percentage of its population in prison than
allegedly “authoritarian” governments, but also has a larger total number of
citizens imprisoned than China, a country with four times the US poplulation.
The US is by far the largest prison camp in the world.
The conditions, such as solitary confinement, in which many US
prisoners are kept are strictly illegal under international law, but that means
nothing to “freedom and democracy America.” Solitary confinement, especially
confinement inside tiny cells, is like being buried alive. Yet, “freedom and
democracy America” is subjecting more than 100,000 citizens to this horror as I
write. We hear so much about “America’s moral conscience,” but where is this
conscience?
Other prisoners are used as a cheap work force for US military and
consumer industries. Prison labor and the privatization of prisons have created
an enormous demand for prisoners. American citizens are shoveled into the
profit-making prison system regardless of innocence or guilt.
There is no doubt that a large percentage of US prisoners are innocent
or imprisoned for victimless crimes, such as drug use. According to official US
government statistics, 97 percent of all felonies are settled with plea
bargains. Consequently, the police evidence and prosecutor’s case is never
tested in court. Not even the innocent want a trial, because the jurors are
brainwashed and biased against everyone charged, and the punishments that
result from trial conviction are much harsher than those given to a compliant
defendant who agrees to a plea bargain. Despite the US Constitution’s
prohibition of self-incrimination, the US prison population consists of people
coerced into self-incrimination. There is no justice whatsoever in the US
criminal justice (sic) system. See https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Good-Intentions-Prosecutors-Constitution/dp/0307396061/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1532978346&sr=1-6&keywords=paul+craig+roberts+books
“Law and order conservatives” have fantasy ideas about US prisoners
lounging around watching TV all day, playing sports in the open air, and
studying in prison libraries for law degrees—a life of leisure at public
expense. Soren Korsgaard, editor of a crime journal, tells us what life inside
an American prison is really like.
Paul Craig Roberts
The United
States Criminal Justice System Violates Human Rights
Søren Korsgaard
The US criminal justice system has a long history, continuing to this
day, of systematically violating prisoners’ human rights and, hence,
international law. Although it has moved away from executions of those who
committed their crimes as minors, the justice system still condones wrongful
executions as evidenced by a study from 2014, published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, in which it was concluded, conservatively,
that at least 1 in 25 of US death row inmates is innocent of the crime for
which they were sentenced to death. Even though this figure, along with facts
related to dubious executions, are readily available for public consumption, a
massive 55-60% of the US population still supports the death penalty.
Considering that such polls are conducted, it is safe to say that most
have given the death penalty some thought; however, the conditions of US
prisons are evidently a rare topic of reflection or conversation, except that
most informed citizens are, at least, somewhat acquainted with the practices
associated with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and other so-called ‘black
sites.’ These practices, of course, include detention without charge or trial,
various methods of torture, isolation, and indefinite imprisonment of minors in
flagrant violation of international law. What is less known is that equally
criminal human rights abuses take place in US maximum security facilities,
so-called supermax prisons, and it is therefore essential that the conditions
of these are put into the spotlight. In fact, as will be shown in this article,
these supermax prisons have been specifically built for torture in the form of prolonged
solitary confinement, which goes by many names including isolation,
administrative segregation, management control units, protective custody,
restrictive housing, and special needs units.
What is solitary confinement? It is typically defined as the physical
and social isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22 to
24 hours per day. According to a detailed report by Amnesty International, the
US “stands virtually alone in the world in incarcerating thousands of prisoners
in long-term or indefinite solitary confinement,” as more than 40 states
operate supermax facilities, collectively housing over 25,000 inmates that are
kept in near-constant solitary confinement. In other prisons, an additional
80,000 inmates are at any time kept in isolation for variable periods. Solitary
confinement has become the first resort in many prisons, and it has been shown
that even absurdities can lead to years in isolation. For example, men and
women have been placed in isolation for “months or years not only for violent
acts but for possessing contraband, testing positive for drug use, ignoring
orders, or using profanity ….. or report rape or abuse by prison officials.”
Perhaps the most absurd example concerns a group of Rastafarian men who were
placed in solitary confinement, some for more than a decade, for refusing to
cut their hair as it was fundamental to their faith.
The international community has for a long time discouraged nations
from using solitary confinement. For example, when UN’s Special Rapporteur on
torture and other inhuman punishment, Juan E. Méndez, delivered his report
before the UN’s General Assembly about solitary confinement, he absolutely
condemned the use of prolonged isolation and equated it with torture. He added
that it should only be used under “exceptional circumstances, for as short a
time as possible.” After citing various scientific studies, which showed that
“lasting mental damage” can result from even a “few days of social isolation,”
he stated that “indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement” should be
absolutely prohibited. Méndez also urged nations to end the practice of
solitary confinement in pre-trial detention. Méndez’s recommendations were
later codified in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of
Prisoners, known as the “Mandela Rules.”
Extremely harsh sentences and absurdities leading to isolation have
also not gone unnoticed by the UN, especially in the context of underage
offenders. Among others, Méndez has scolded the US for “being the only country
in the world that continues to sentence children to life in prison without
parole,” a practice which violates international law as it is considered a
“cruel and inhumane punishment” in accordance with article 37(a) of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that “no child [below 18
years of age] shall be subjected to … capital punishment nor life imprisonment
without possibility of release ….”
During the production of the report on torture and isolation, US
officials had openly opposed Méndez’s investigation by restricting his access
to prisons and various types of documentation; for example, the number of
prisoners in solitary confinement is an estimate as such documentation is not
available to the public or even the UN. ADX, a supermax, was one of the prisons
that US authorities did not want Mendez to inspect and scrutinize. It is
located in Florence, Colorado, and has gained a notorious reputation, even
internationally, and it is guarded by secrecy and censorship. The former warden
has described it as a “clean version of hell,” and that “it’s far much worse
than death.”
Pursuant to Amnesty International’s report, “Entombed: Isolation in the
US Federal Prison System,” the vast majority of ADX prisoners are kept in their
cells for 22-24 hours per day “in conditions of severe physical and social
isolation.” The designers of ADX (as well as other supermax prisons) had that
specific purpose in mind as thick steel-reinforced concrete walls prevent
inmates from having contact with those in adjacent cells, and “most cells have
an interior barred door as well as a solid outer door, compounding the sense of
isolation.” When prisoners are not confined to their cells for 24 hours per day
due to understaffing and other issues, they can leave their cells for a few
hours per week to “exercise” in a “bare interior room or in small individual
yards or cages, with no view of the natural world.” Cells are equipped with a
shower and toilet, minimizing the need for leaving them. The inmates are almost
invariably separated from other humans, and even “checks by medical and mental
health staff, take place at the cell door and medical and psychiatric
consultations are sometimes conducted remotely, through tele-conferencing.”
It is no surprise that under these conditions, suicide attempts,
self-mutilations, and acute psychoses are rampant among the inmates. Amnesty
International concludes that “the conditions of isolation at ADX breach
international standards for humane treatment and, especially when applied for a
prolonged period or indefinitely, amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment in violation of international law.”
According to the official policy of the Bureau of Prisons, mentally ill
inmates are not kept in isolation. It has, however, been profusely documented
that inmates with serious psychiatric disorders are kept in isolation and many
inmates with no diagnosis have become seriously mentally deranged. Many of
these instances have been detailed in various lawsuits. In one lawsuit against
ADX, it was detailed that many inmates “suffer from chronic mental illness and
some routinely smear themselves and their cells with their own [feces], howl or
shriek continuously or bang their metal showers at all hours of the day or
night.” This lawsuit also detailed several specific instances of inmates
deteriorating mentally during solitary confinement at ADX, one of whom was John
Powers. He was originally placed in the Control Unit (the most isolated part of
ADX) to serve a 60-month sentence, but he was frequently transferred to the
federal medical facility at Springfield after numerous incidents of
self-mutilation. Upon being ‘stabilized’ with various pharmaceuticals, he was
promptly returned to the CU at ADX. His medical records showed that he had
lacerated his scrotum, bit off his finger, inserted staples into his forehead,
and slashed his wrists. Originally, he was ordered to serve 60 months in the
Control Unit, but because he did not comply with the behavioral requirements,
he spent an unfathomable ten years and five months in that unit before finally
being transferred to the lesser restricted General Population Unit (GPU). In
the GPU, officials continued to deprive him of mental health care, and
subsequently he sliced off his earlobes, sawed through his Achilles tendon, and
mutilated his genitals. In 2013, he was transferred to another high-security
facility and reportedly “rammed his head into an exposed piece of metal in his
cell, causing a skull fracture and brain injury …. [later he was found
inserting] metal into his brain cavity through the hole that remain[ed] in his
skull.”
The
psychological effects of solitary confinement have been well-known for decades
and are not even controversial; for instance, in the early 1990s, Dr. Stuart
Grassian conducted extensive interviews with people held in restricted housing
in the Pelican Bay State Prison, the only supermax in California. Dr. Grassian
discovered that solitary confinement “induces a psychiatric disorder
characterized by hypersensitivity to external stimuli, hallucinations, panic
attacks, cognitive deficits, obsessive thinking, paranoia, and a litany of
other physical and psychological problems. Psychological assessments of men in
solitary at Pelican Bay indicated high rates of anxiety, nervousness, obsessive
ruminations, anger, violent fantasies, nightmares, trouble sleeping, as well as
dizziness, perspiring hands, and heart palpitations.” Considering the
humanitarian aspects and that prolonged solitary confinement is a breach of
international law, it is striking that the US continues to enforce it upon its
convicts as well as those awaiting trial. It appears that inmates are perceived
as objects that need to be dealt with in the most efficient way possible for
prison staff regardless of international regulations and recommendations.
Søren
Korsgaard, author of America’s Jack the Ripper: The Crimes and Psychology
of the Zodiac Killer, is the editor-in-chief of Radians & Inches: The
Journal of Crime. He may be contacted via
Editor@RadiansANDInches.com.
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