Prison Nation

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This article has been modified from a post on SomethingAwful.
Main Article: Prisons in America.

by HidingFromGoro

Required Watching
National Geographic's Prison Nation feature

Contents

Prison Nation

Incarceration rates for selected countries
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 738 people per 100,000 behind bars (2005). There is speculation that China may have a slightly higher rate due to jailing of political dissidents, but so far just speculation.

A 2008 study found that more than 1 in 100 American adults are in prison or jail. One in every 31 adults (7.3 million) is in prison, or on parole or probation. One out every 45 whites is under some form of correctional control- and one out of every 11 blacks. 1 in 18 men and 1 in 89 women (races combined). Spending on corrections has risen by 400% in the last 20 years, outpacing all but Medicaid in growth.

The prison population has exploded in recent decades- a phenomenon known as "hyperincarceration," even though violent crime, "serious crime," and property crime has been declining:

The scope of this problem is difficult to overstate- especially because it necessarily includes things like prison gerrymandering, police militarization, mandatory minimum sentences, "tough on crime" politicians, for-profit incarceration, and all sorts of other things including guys with mansions talking about "2 Americas." This is generally known as the Prison-Industrial Complex, or as I (and others) call it- the Machine.

What don't you understand? Why don't you believe?
What more do I have to show you to make you believe?
Tanks crushing cars. Houses burned to the ground while children look on. Puppies thrown into fires while children look on. Newborn babies brain-damaged or snuffed out while their mother is shackled to a bed with a sheet up so she can't see her baby she just gave birth to.
Black guys picking cotton at gunpoint in LA. Swarms of rats chewing off fingers & eyes in IL. Indefinite sensory deprivation. Bags of feces thrown on people in VA. Arms held out of feeding-slots to shatter elbows in VA. Pregnant women beaten so hard the braces get knocked off their teeth in TX. Men forced to fight to the death in gladiator matches in CA. Men shot for sport in CA. Men overcrowded at 300% capacity nationwide. Children given life sentences without the possibility of parole- nationwide. HIV+ inmates beaten and sent to sensory-deprivation isolation with biohazard stencils and no medical treatment. Men put in sensory-deprivation isolation for up to 36 years with no contact with the outside world (including lawyers). Secret medical experiments performed on thousands of inmates in PA. Cops running brutal abuse schemes and creating their own gangs in NY. Penises amputated in WA. Feces mixed into food in CO. These are just the things which I've provided links to on major news outlets in this subforum in the past few weeks.
Stomping on an inmate's head until he involuntarily soils his pants. 41 shots on the street to kill an unarmed man. Executing a cuffed man in front of 100 witnesses and cameras. The countless videos of abuse inside prison walls and the countless more off-camera.
The tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rapes inside each and every year. The brutal, life-altering rape every four minutes.
Love one another. For God's sake, or whatever you believe in- just love one another. No matter how angry or outraged or just joking about it- whatever you do whoever and wherever you are just do this one thing. We are dying. You are dying. We are being tortured, we are in indescribable pain and hopeless despair. We are you. You lose your humanity when we get gangraped. You are us. We're all in this together.
Cry with us, bleed with us, scream with us.
It's us. All of us- you are us. We are us. We're all human, we're all Life.
All of us.

Prison Rape: Real, Rampant, and Sure as Hell Not Funny

Alberto Gonzales' DOJ admits to over 60,000 rapes per year in prison. Human Rights Watch and other NGO's involved put the number at more than twice that.


Chris J. got gang-raped in prison today. He needs surgery to fix his rectum, and probably other medical attention for the rest of his injuries but he's probably not going to get it. He knows this and is thinking about the pain his rectal scarring is going to cause him for the rest of his life. He laid in his bed for a little while covered in semen and his own blood thinking about AIDS. Since shower time has come and gone, he cleaned himself up with the water in the toilet, he also sat on it for a long time trying as hard as he could to evacuate all the semen out of him. His phone card was stolen as punishment for fighting back and he doesn't have any money in his account to call anyone on the outside, so he's just trying to deal with it on his own. Many inmates and guards are already making fun of him and discussing prices for having a go at him within his earshot. After TV time he's going to have to try and sleep in his cell with 2 other guys who ain't trying to hear his sob story and may even have been involved in his attack.
The pictures of his wife and kids were taken as punishment with promises to defecate or ejaculate on them while a different man was inside him as further punishment for fighting back. He's been clean for 9 months but that heroin would make all this pain go away for just a little while. Chris is more likely than not to go back to the heroin.
Chris will never be able to fully express the pain and rage caused by his rape even to a professional; and he's definitely not getting insurance which covers the help he needs when he gets out. This psychological trauma will have a severe impact on his ability to have healthy relationships on the Outside- out in the World- and will likely lead to bad arguments with his wife resulting in domestic violence. The effects his mental state has on his kids will be profound and probably irreversible. They might grow up in the sort of state in which prison is a very real possibility. When they find out what happened to dad how will they react?
His pain and anger will manifest itself in all sorts of ways and he might go off on some taxpayer in a convenience store or seriously injure someone who cuts him off in traffic. When that happens Chris will go back to prison and there will be similar ripple effects on his victims. Even if that doesn't happen remember Chris uses heroin to suppress his pain and will likely be re-arrested on a drug charge or a property crime he did to get heroin money.
Since there are no secrets in prison when Chris returns it will already be known he is a bitch who likes it in the ass, and he will have to become someone's sex slave. Staff will encourage this. Or he can stab somebody to try get a new rep. If he wins the knife fight & isn't killed outright, the person he kills has loved ones & family members who will become enraged at this, and the violence will continue.
What happened to Chris happened to 200 people today if you go by Alberto Gonzales' DOJ. If you go by HRW it happened to more than 400 people. This does not include juveniles in programs like Nihilanthic posts.
This is every day, every state. There are no exceptions. Going by HRW's numbers it's one Chris every four minutes.
You could be the next Chris, no matter how white you are- no matter how rich your family is. The Machine cares not. It must feed and It will feed.
And the Machine will never be satisfied.


What I would give if only prison rape was treated as seriously as non-prison rape. I've held so many survivors in my arms and... well, I can't explain it. That sharing of insecurities, fears, pain, loss, and rage simply cannot be described, and I'll not try to do so except in the case of Chris who explicitily wanted it out there. The courage it takes to collapse in man's arms after another man (or men) have violated and destroyed so much of your psyche... I don't think I'll ever be as strong as Chris. My best wishes and blessings go out to all who talk to survivors, be they inmates or not.

There is a world where people look down on prison rape jokes, and ostracize those who tell them- a world where that act is seen as vile and disgusting no matter what crime may have been alleged or convicted. That world is just around the corner, and we are so close, we are so close to making that a reality.

Characteristics of staff involved in sexual misconduct

Type and position of staff involved in sexual misconduct

Impact on staff and inmate in substantiated sexual misconduct

Articles on Prison Rape

Putting the right people in Prison? DNA Exonerations

Police misconduct

Prosecutorial misconduct

Race of exonerated

Defective or fraudulent science

The Machine

Stopping racial balkanization in prison would be nearly impossible today, and in many cases it's not necessarily what the administration wants. Inmates self-segregate anyway, the California system has been on the brink of all-out race war since the 1960's when gang formation was actively encouraged by prison staff to prevent things like Attica from happening. Also more and more inmates were starting to get into the whole counterculture/extreme political stuff and staff realized that a united front of inmates of all races would be extremely difficult to control. So a couple guard-sanctioned acts of violence resulted in the creation of the main power structure we've had for the last 40 years. It's no coincidence that the main prison gangs all started within a couple joints in the same part of California- the Black Guerrilla Family, Mexican Mafia & Nuestra Familia, and the Aryan Brotherhood. The main indictments and such of the AB's really only came when they started becoming too allied with the Eme's and started killing too many people on the outside.

Now, prison gangs- the indispensable enemy- are more important than ever at maintaining control. The pacification of Attica required the National Guard and the shooting of hostages. Today's prisons are so overcrowded, with many operating at 200%+ of design capacity, and understaffed with undertrained personnel that a cohesive uprising will be impossible to control. It would take the Marines, if not air strikes. This comes at the steep price of widespread prison violence. There are third-generation racially-based gang members today. Even if the government wanted to end it it would be very difficult.

The other side effect, magnified by the hyperincarceration of minorities and juveniles due to the drug war, is that all street-level gang activity is either directly or indirectly controlled by prison gangs. This is because at some point any serious banger is going to be going to prison and will then need to ally with a prison gang at first in order to avoid being killed outright, and then later for mutual benefit; and partially because in most gangs you can only get so far if you haven't been inside. Criminal trials are a good way to see if you'll snitch or cooperate. So If you're a local street gang in El Paso moving some weed across the border and doing a little local-level distribution, at some point in the chain 5% to 20% of the money is going to be given to the Eme's or NF. Same goes for white gangs selling speed- at some point the Aryan Brotherhood or the NLR's or some such is going to be getting a cut. Nearly all street-gang activity is at some level connected to prison gangs. The taxes are paid voluntarily for many reasons, not the least of which is that nobody wants to be a member of a non-paying gang and then go to prison and face the taxman; to say nothing of the very real possibility that the taxman might one day pay a visit to the neighborhood. Every prison gang has some "Davids," remember.

Institutionalized gang warfare and racism used to prevent uprising

That was part of the reason for its genesis, but I don't think even back then they realized how bad it would get or how quickly they would lose control. They started with control-units (now called SHU's) to try to keep it in check, and when that didn't work they built a prison where the whole thing was a SHU (Pelican Bay). When that didn't work they SHU'd it up too, and then when it hit 200% capacity they built another one just like it (Kern Valley). It filled up twice over as well, and it still didn't work.

In the 60's, it was thought that racial conflict inside prisons was preferable to wholesale uprisings nationwide like Attica; that the price was worth preventing total anarchy systemwide. It was thought that increased racial strife between cons could be effectively managed by increased harshness on the part of the facility. We now know this not to be true, but far too late. It was also thought at the time that the country was much closer to some kind of major upheaval than it really was. Vietnam, civil rights movement, counterculture, all of it- Nixon, not realizing Nam would end not with a bang, etc. felt that some kind of uncontrollable uprising was inevitable. Attica and the violent episodes which happened in the streets as a result of civil rights + Vietnam were seen as mere hints to some future mass revolt, instead of what they wound up being. The drug war is usually credited to Reagan but in fact it was Nixon's last, greatest war- and will be his legacy once future historians look on the matter with more educated eyes.

What the government could not have foreseen was how their initial efforts could so completely backfire. In the 60's, there were things which would be totally unheard of in prison today. There were gangs of big strong gay men who roamed the tiers, protecting all small inmates of any race from rape- and killing prison rapists. This is unthinkable in today's prisons. So it started by sending groups of Hispanics in a juvenile facility into tiers with older black offenders, knowing that they would be victimized and gang up. Knowing that they would take to the adult prisons this allegiance. This was the birth of the Eme's- the Mexican Mafia, one of the most feared and powerful criminal organizations as has ever existed in this country and which will endure for the entire lifetime fo the USA. The administrators could not have foreseen this.

Why do people even join gangs now?

Well, besides the protection it affords from prison rape: The gang addresses all the needs which the facility does not, and those which the con might not have gotten fulfilled on the outside before incarceration. To join you have to be vetted- you will get a background check of sorts (and there are no secrets in prison). This is to ensure undesirables do not gain entry but gives many guys a sense of importance they may not have otherwise had. You will be mentored, taught to read & write, taught the rules- all gangs have a charter, or constitution, you will need to recite this from memory at a certain point or you will be denied entry and forced to fend for yourself (and probably punished harshly by members). This is done to ensure obedience and to weed out those who cannot follow orders, but gives a sense of belonging to something important, to have put in effort and succeeded. You'll have someone to push you for that last rep on the weight bench, to help you deal with the problems you have with your girlfriend, to send someone on the outside to look in on your kid. Many in prison did not have mentors, role models; poverty, drugs & the "baby-daddy" effect- magnified (as almost every social ill) by hyperincarceration- have seen to that.

The big brother or father is provided by the gang. People join clubs, fraternities, military, etc. looking for a sense of belonging; the sense of "tribe" or "family." How powerful would it be if you knew- not thought but knew- that the only way you get in is by taking a life, that all the others have taken one, that they will go to prison before betraying you... that they will die for you- that they will kill for you?

Since all prison gangs are racial in nature, even more importance can be assigned (tribe). There is a reason the whites use Norse runes/symbols, and Hispanics use Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican imagery and tradition. To speak the ancient language of Nahuatl allows covert communication by members, but it also allows these angry men who have stunted senses of community, belonging, importance to reach back through the centuries and identify with the invincible Eagle Warriors of the Aztec empire; same for the Norse imagery providing identification with the mighty Vikings.

By the way, the government knows how important and effective this shit is, and part of USMC boot camp is filling the recruits' minds with stories of Zulus, Spartans, and other legendary warriors to build up "a warrior mind" or whatever excuse they use nowadays.

This is the power of gangs- at the top they're essentially businesses, but at the bottom they fulfill these very primal needs of angry and needy people; the brains of the soldiers are effectively starved for a sense of belonging, of purpose, and once the gang provides that it's like the first shot of heroin. It's absolutely irresistible for many, many people.

Riots, Drugs, and manipulating the media

I think it would be extremely unlikely. Remember that the prison-gang power structure was essentially created by the government in the first place to prevent things like Attica from happening again. Racial balkanization and the creation of a second gender through the government's tacit approval of prison rape ensures that every facility is too fractured to successfully revolt. Whole books have been written on this, and one of them (Lockdown America) is linked.

There are still riots all over the country, but they are quickly put down and media response is carefully managed. CERT and DART teams have surged in popularity, with prison guards nationwide aping SWAT teams with their neat toys and pseudo-military tactics... just as every police force has SWAT, aping the mighty LAPD SWAT team in a kind of cargo-cult reverence for "tactical operations," slick hardware, and big budget boosts. Here we see again that when it comes to the Machine, most roads lead to California. Signing up for DART is also a great way to get out of work for training, and travel to seminars and trade shows. Prisons are somewhat more creative when it comes to use of things like this, since they don't really get the chance to play soldier kicking in a door with flashbangs and submachine guns serving a bench warrant or possession arrest like the cops. You'll see any excuse to "get tactical," including such foolishness as using a rappelling setup to check exterior 2nd floor windows instead of, you know, a ladder. They actually showed this stunt on an episode of one of MSNBC's prison-porn shows- and played it with a straight face instead of how they should have, which is with zany sound effects and tuba music like the kitty clips on America's Funniest Home Videos or something.

Moreover, prison administrators and politicians wield a much more powerful weapon than a club or gun these days, that being the skill to manage media representation of prison violence. Add to that a media almost universally supportive of the Machine, and even the foot soldiers on the yard know that taking over a prison is only going to result in a hail of bullets to the cheers of the populace.

The other side of it is that the shot-callers inside are making a lot of money with things the way they are. Killing a guard out of turn is the death penalty in your major prison gangs. It's bad for business, you see. Business is booming for the guards as well, drug abuse is rampant in nearly every prison; and while everyone's got a story or three about some Mission Impossible capers getting drugs into a facility, the fact is that to run a successful drug distribution business you need a steady supply and it's a whole lot less headache to just pay off the right staff members and not have to worry about it.

That's not to say a revolt would be easy to control, especially in the early stages. These days it's a race to the bottom to see who can lock up the most browns for the least green, so you have 200% or 300% overcrowding and overworked, undertrained staff (especially in private joints). If 60 inmates decide they want to fly your skin like a flag, and you have 30 bullets, well that's pretty much what's going to happen. And if they wanted that joint they'd take it. I've said before that if a prison got took these days they might need air strikes to take it back (and depending on the prison they just might); but even if the inmates took it, and held it, then what? It would require a concentrated, coordinated effort on par with a military operation and surely result in the deaths of many staff members; and as such render any political message or complaint of conditions irrelevant. It just wouldn't play on TV in Middle America. Eventually state SWAT, National Guard or active-duty shock troops would regain control no matter the cost. Then on TV it would be all about the dead heroes and prisons statewide would go into indefinite lockdown.

It wouldn't matter if the guards had been running a pit & a pendulum in there, violence on that scale would result in America's ears being deafened for decades on the subject of prison conditions and then the Machine would have unfettered free reign to run wild on anyone and everyone unfortunate enough to get caught in It's maw.

"Closing the Gap" Between Incarceration and Probation.

US Government
Drug offenders place an extraordinary burden on the criminal justice system. Existing correctional institutions are overwhelmed by the task of incarcerating serious drug offenders. Probation alone is an inadequate tool for dealing with drug offenders. However, lower level drug offenders are not routinely incarcerated unless they also commit a serious offense or have multiple drug-related convictions. To close the gap between incarceration and probation, the U.S. Department of Justice has explored numerous intermediate steps or punishments, including civil penalties, license suspension and revocation, boot camps and shock incarceration, halfway houses, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and denial of federal benefits such as grants, contracts, purchase orders, financial aid, and business and professional licenses.
Alerting Casual Drug Users
The denial of federal benefits sanction (Section 5301 of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act) helps ensure that individuals found guilty of violating the Controlled Substances Act will, at the very least, forfeit their claims to most taxpayer-supported economic benefits and other privileges. Federal benefits are defined by statute as "the issuance of any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of the United States or by appropriated funds of the United States." The program alerts casual drug users to the fact that, as students, they can lose their student loans; as broadcasters, they can lose their Federal Communications Commission licenses; as physicians, they can lose their authority to prescribe medicine; as pilots, they can lose their Federal Aviation Administration licenses; as businessowners, they can lose their Small Business Administration loans or the right to contract with the Federal Government; and as researchers, they can lose medical, engineering, scientific, and academic grants.
Types of Federal Benefits That May Be Denied:
Selected Procurement and Nonprocurement Programs
  • Procurement programs that may be denied under Section 5301. All contracts or purchase orders issued by federal agencies or by others using monies appropriated by the Federal Government. This will include all federally awarded acquisition and personal property sales.
  • Nonprocurement programs that may be denied under Section 5301. All taxpayer-supported economic benefits, defined by statute as "the issuance of any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of the United States or by appropriated funds of the United States.

The use of attack dogs

Mike Knolls, Special Operations Unit, Utah Department of Corrections, October 26, 2005
"Obviously a dog is more of a deterrent [than a Taser gun].You get more damage from a dog bite.I think it's right up there with impact weapons . . ."

The use of dogs to threaten and attack prisoners to facilitate cell extractions has been a well-kept secret, even in the world of corrections. Human Rights Watch has spoken with more than two dozen current and former correctional officials who had no idea dogs were authorized, much less ever used, for this purpose. Many were, as one said, "flabbergasted."

In three of the five states that authorize use of dogs in cell extraction, the policies appear to be used rarely if at all. In Connecticut (20 cases in 2005) and Iowa (63 cases between March 2005 and March 2006), use of dogs for this purpose is far more common.

Human Rights Watch knows of no other country in the world that authorizes the use of dogs to attack prisoners who will not voluntarily leave their cells. Dogs are often used in prisons in the United States and elsewhere to patrol perimeters and to search for contraband, a use that does not raise human rights concerns.

When Human Rights Watch began this research in 2005, two additional states, Massachusetts and Arizona, also permitted the use of dogs in cell extractions. In 2006, however, corrections departments in those states instituted new policies prohibiting such use of dogs. We welcome these decisions and urge the corrections departments of Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, South Dakota and Utah to follow suit. If they do not do so, the respective state legislatures should enact legislation prohibiting the practice. The American Correctional Association, which publishes standards for professional corrections management, should include a prohibition on the use of dogs for cell extractions in its use of force standards.

State Prisons

Louisiana - Angola Prison

One out of every 45 people in Louisiana is in prison. Think about that for a minute. This is the highest rate in the country (and the world) by a wide margin. The crown jewel of the Louisiana prison system is Angola. This is one of the most backward and barbaric prisons in the world. They tell horror stories about Angola in Pelican Bay.

Angola

Prisoners pick cotton

Angola is a former slave plantation which still maintains a massive (18,000 acres) farming operation run wholly without machinery. Inmates- overwhelmingly black- still pick cotton by hand there, along with soybeans. They work the fields with hand tools just like in the "good old days." Some of the guards there are directly descended from the slave-drivers who worked there when it was a slave plantation. Inmates also maintain a large golf course for use by the staff.

The "Angola 3" are three Black Panthers who were kept in solitary for 36 years. This is the longest time anyone has been in solitary US history as far as any surviving records indicate. This is also in violation of international treaties the US has ratified. They got let out after John Conyers visited the prison and was stunned by that fact. One of them, Robert King Wilkerson, got released from Angola after 29 years in solitary. He is now a nationally-recognized prison activist and his motto is "I'm free of Angola, but Angola will never be free of me."

Over 600 of the 5100 inmates have been in there over 25 years. 85% of them (of the 5100 not the 600) are expected to die in there due to the extreme length of prison sentences in Louisiana. Many were wrongly convicted, but due to shoddy records and shady forensics, we will never know how many. Michael Williams was 16 years old when he was wrongly convicted of rape based on one eyewitness. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Shortly after his 40th birthday- after 24 years in Angola- he was freed based on DNA testing. He received no compensation, because compensating people for wrongful conviction or imprisonment is illegal in Louisiana.

Torture is rampant at Angola, last year they finally had a hearing on the abuse, and practices such as the freezing treatment were at last exposed in open court. The freezing treatment is stripping someone naked and spraying them with water and throwing them in an unheated cement room with open windows in the winter time. They got to hear about jaws being broken if you talked back, forcing inmates to urinate and defecate on themselves (and beating those who refused until they lost control of their bodily functions). For example "one of the guards was hitting us all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums – the drumming sound that – from hitting us in the head with the stick." Medical records supported almost every allegation. The state agreed to settle without admitting liability. Some of the inmates got $7,000 settlement payments, most got nothing.

Texas - Harris County Jail

The Harris County Jail in Houston, TX is the third largest joint in the country and one of the largest in the world. Only the Rikers Island (which is actually a complex of 10 different jails) and the LA County Jail (largest on the planet) are larger. 25% of the $1.5 billion Harris County budget is law enforcement, with more than $750,000 a day spent on detainees. A shortage of guards means the jail shells out $35 million a year on overtime; some guards are topping out at $100,000 a year in total pay.

An average of 10,000 people are held there per day, not counting another 1,100 bused 6 hours to and from Northern Louisiana each day. Some of them- up to 1,700 at some points- have to sleep on the floor because parts of it are unused due to severe staff shortages. When state inspectors come, the floor-sleepers are hidden in underground tunnels until the inspectors leave. It has operated without Texas Jail Standard Commission certification since 2004, in violation of state law.

The jail also operates in violation of federal law- the Department of Justice ruled that the jail "fails to provide detainees with adequate: (1) medical care; (2) mental health care; (3) protection from serious physical harm; and (4) protection from life safety hazards."

In Harris County there is an "assembly line" set up to more quickly and efficiently certify children as adults so that they can go to adult jails & prisons. With its 162 juvenile-to-adult certifications in 2007-08, Harris County alone certified 19 more juveniles as adults than in the state’s nine other leading counties which altogether certified just 143 juveniles as adults. In Texas the juvenile system is known as the "School-to-Prison Pipeline."

In its "medical tank," inmates have been left in their own blood and feces for days on end (including pregnant women), and the tank has a tendencey to flood.

Illinois - Cook County Jail

The Cook County Jail in Chicago is the largest single-site jail in the country. 100,000 people are admitted to the jail each year. Like other large county jails, it too operates in direct violation of state law and the US Constitution; with everything from inmates sleeping on the floor to sleeping inmates being injured by swarms of rats- and even unnecessary amputations. A bunch of inmates were also each awarded $200 settlement payments after suffering penis injuries from improperly performed STD tests.

The building itself is dilapidated, in violation of almost every applicable building code or safety regulation. After a 2007 inspection it required over 40,000 seperate work orders.

Undertrained guards, despite their brutality, have trouble actually doing their jobs there- one inmate was able to not only get a loaded pistol into the jail but from there into the courtroom simply by tucking it in to the waistband of his boxers.

DOJ found that the 8th Amendment civil rights of the inmates have been extensively and systematically violated.

Specific violations that have resulted in federal sanctions include:

1. Systematic beatings by jail guards. 2. Poor food quality. 3. Inmates forced to sleep on cell floors due to overcrowding and mismanagement (resulting in a $1,000 per inmate class action settlement). 4. Rodent infestation and injury caused to sleeping inmates by rat and mouse bites. 5. Violations of privacy during multiple invasive strip searches. 6. Failure to provide adequate medical care, including failure to dispense medications. 7. Invasive and painful mandatory tests for male STD's (resulting in a $200 per inmate class action settlement). 8. Unnecessarily long waiting time for discharge upon payment of bond, completion of sentence, or charges being dropped. Wait times are currently routinely in excess of 8 hours, nearly all of which is spent with many inmates packed into tiny cells.

Not only to they routinely fail to provide psychiatric drugs to those inmate who need them, they also forcibly inject other inmates (who DON'T need them) with unusually high doses of things like Haldol, Zyprexa, and Ativan. Misuse or overuse of Zyprexa can cause irreversible motor dysfunction. Haldol leads to severe complications in over half the people it's given to, even when properly prescribed. The drugs are prescribed over the phone without examination or proper diagnosis, which is actually a criminal offense in IL; as is forcibly injecting psychotropic drugs except under a very specific set of circumstances, none of which are met at Cook County. At least three inmates have died from overdoses of or side effects from these medications.

New York - Riker's Island

Riker's Island. The Rock. Adult inmates refer to the savage juvenile building as "Vietnam." Actually a penal colony of 10 separate jails, the Rock is the second-largest confinement facility in the entire world. When it comes to putting people in cages Cali is king, but the Big Apple gives it a serious run for its money with Riker's. The Rock has been a jail sine 1884, and has been overcrowded almost continuously since that time.

Most of the jails are dilapidated. They ran out of room to hold all the inmates, so there are huge prison barges anchored there to hold the overflow- one purpose-built, 2 modified British troop transports decommissioned after the Falklands War; and also two converted ferry boats (built in 1930) were used until 2003.

3 guards were handed a 58-count indictment earlier this year for running what known as "The Program." Here's how it worked: the guards took a group of Bloods and trained them how to deliver beatings while making sure injuries were hard to notice. This group was known as "the Team." The Team was responsible for handing down punishments for things the guards didn't like- one boy was beaten half to death with broom handles for taking too long on a phone call. They also went forth in search of new recruits for the Team, they would ask inmates "are you with it" or "are you down with it," if the answer was "no" or "down with what" a crushed eye socket or collapsed lung was the result. As compensation, Team members were allowed to extort whatever money, food, or toiletries they could find from nonmembers; and were allowed exclusive access to things like TV time and phone calls. Between July and October of 2008 the unit was locked down as a result of Program-related violence an average of once every three days.

Documents show that higher-ups at the jail were regularly briefed about the Program.

One 18 year old was killed by the Team. One woman was tied up and gang-raped with a foreign object, and officials "won't talk about" how inmates managed to get into her single cell without guards noticing or putting a stop to it.

This won't be the first time Riker's will have to pay many tens of thousands of dollars as a result of guard-sanctioned violence. Previous settlements of $500K and $100K, and many more suits pending seem to indicate a pattern. As many as 150,000 inmates were wrongfully and improperly strip-searched in violation of a 2002 court order (which itself cost the NYC taxpayers over $50M).

California - Pelican Bay

Califas is notorious for its prisons, and many of its joints are legendary- San Quentin, Corcoran, Folsom, Alcatraz. These are some of the toughest prisons ever built, filled with violent men and staffed by sadistic guards shielded by one of the most invincible unions in history. The names of these facilities are synonymous with cruel and brutal prison time, even among lay people- but one stands out. It doesn't really have an ominous nickname like "the Rock" or anything because its name and rep speak for itself.

Pelican Bay is the end of the line. Most times, once you go in you don't come out. Some have, and then gone to other facilities, and there are very few badges of honor in prison more respected than having survived at Pelican Bay. It became fashionable enough that inmates at many facilities have had to institute a death penalty for lying about having been there.

In fact, when other prisons come under fire from the Justice Department, one of their main defenses is "hey, at least we're not Pelican Bay."

Half of Pelican Bay is “just” a maximum security prison, and like other prisons, the general population is known as the main line. This is how they roll on the main line at Pelican Bay. Skip to 0:51 to see just how quickly a prison fight starts, and why things like martial arts, “confidence,” and the like are totally worthless in prison. Those 2 guys aren't punching him, they're stabbing him. This is prison fighting 101.

Madrid v. Gomez
"The Eighth Amendment's restraint on using excessive force has been repeatedly violated at Pelican Bay, leading to a conspicuous pattern of excessive force," Henderson wrote in describing the severe beatings then common at the facility, the third-degree burns inflicted on one mentally ill inmate who was thrown into boiling water after he smeared himself with feces, and the routine use of painful restraining weapons against others."
These guards got convicted of setting up inmate attacks:
The four-page indictment says that Powers and Garcia told Pelican Bay prisoners that other inmates were child molesters, thus making them targets for retaliatory attacks. On seven occasions, the two guards spread rumors about inmates to encourage attacks on them, then put them together with other inmates so that attacks could take place. In one instance, the inmate who was attacked, Watson White, died from stab wounds he received during the assault.

Pelican Bay's SHU- supermax- is considered the gold standard by which all other SHUs and control units are judged. California was a pioneer in control-unit incarceration, it’s designed to “break” inmates like you’d break a horse. For those who can’t be broken, it’s a supermax warehouse where they can be kept out of the way. 22.5 hour a day solitary lockdown, with exercise time done in a 12x28 concrete chamber (with 12 foot walls):

SHU cells are specifically designed to reduce “visual stimulation” to an absolute minimum. The cells are designed so that inmates can’t see out, or can only with great difficulty, and they aren’t allowed to put anything on the wall. No direct sunlight reaches the SHU. Inmates are fed in their cell, twice a day, through a slot. When Dr. Craig Haney made his first visit to the prison, he was told by a guard that this was the only design flaw in the prison—that they had not figured out a way to "automatically" feed the prisoners, eliminating any need for contact with them whatsoever. SHU inmates are permitted to shower three times per week.

No contact visits, no phone calls, no TV, no nothing. This level of isolation requires “step-down” programs for SHU inmates. After 8-12 years in a SHU, inmates usually need a 1 to 2 year program of resocialization to adjust even to a maximum security unit. The difference between SHU and the main line is almost as drastic as the difference between the main line and the street. Many in the SHU won’t have to worry about that because they are serving indefinite SHU assignments. This is called The Forever.

Want to build your own supermax unit? It's as easy as Legos!

In California, 34,164 inmates are serving life sentences.

Seven prison systems — Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system — do not offer the possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms. That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in 2008, 1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led the nation in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.

Virginia - Red Onion State Prison

The Red Onion State Prison in Wise County, VA is identical to the Wallens Ridge prison in Big Stone Gap (pictured). These are Level 6 supermax facilities- general population here is equivalent to SHU time at other prisons. Essentially, these places are SHUs. Punishments at these facilities include being strapped spread-eagle on a steel slab in your underwear and then turning the temperature down while not allowing you up to use the toilet, and leaving you in your own filth for a couple days. This is in violation of federal law, the US constitution, international treaties, and United Nations guidelines on prisoner treatment. quote:

The day I arrived I was...told that I was at Red Onion now and if I act up they would kill me; and there was nothing anyone could or would do about it.

There are no vocational programs, no skill training programs, no group activity of any kind, including religious services. Very little reading material is allowed, and is heavily restricted. Even the length of letters is restricted, to further isolate them from the outside world. Visits are noncontact- through glass w/ intercom phone and the inmate is shackled & chained during the visits.

3 ten-minute showers are allowed per week, but there are no doors or curtains and female guards are used at shower time to humiliate the inmates. When this was done at GITMO, they called it torture and there was worldwide outrage.

Life in segregation is even more restrictive. Nobody really knows how many inmates are in segregation because the facilities don't disclose it. Segregation in Virginia is indefinite. DOC policies provide no guidance on permissible length of time in segregation. Inmates do not know what, if anything, they can do to secure their release to general population. While the DOC’s operating procedure mandates periodic reviews of an inmate’s placement in segregation, it does not specify criteria for guiding the institution’s decision-making process. Nor does it affirm the goal of safely transferring inmates to lesser custody as soon as feasible.

Connecticut used to send prisoners to WR, and when CT legislators visited the prison investigating inmate abuse, they discovered the warden's office decorated with Civil War "memorabilia" and a model of a slave ship. The practice of sending CT guys to WR has stopped as a result of an ACLU lawsuit.

Private Prisons

Main Article: Private Prisons.


Military Prisons

Surprisingly, the US already operates a nationwide network of virtually rape-free and gang-free prisons. I've done time in two of them. Sexual assaults in the military prison system are almost unheard of compared to federal & state systems. I was in one of the larger facilities and nobody could even remember when the last one was, or if there even was a first one. There weren't even any rumors or tall tales, and many a con can spin a good yarn. Their way of doing things prevents the conditions which cause the problem from occurring in the first place. Even fights were only about as frequent as you might see in a Navy bar-room (maybe even less frequent, depending on the bar).

We were never beaten, unless we were fighting and even then only sometimes. The beatings were always short- seconds in length, just enough to get the message across and only for as long as it took to get the cuffs on, with only maybe one or two shots for emphasis. Mostly they just cuffed us, and as gently as you can when you're cuffing up someone with their face in the concrete. Sometimes you'd "accidentally" hit yourself on the wall or floor as you were being restrained, but it never got taken too far. They never used dogs or tasers on us, words usually sufficed and when they didn't fists (and sometimes gas) were all that were necessary. Even boots were rarely used.

I was beaten only twice over the course of a couple years and change, and both were as the result of fights in which I struck the other man first. To say I started them is not entirely accurate, though. In prison, the fight starts with the insult- everything else after that is just jockeying for position.

With such a peaceful place, there was no need for violence to enforce the social structure. There were very little resources to be hoarded or fought over, so no economy could develop among us, and thus precluded the need to form a gang in the first place; since there was nothing to be gained and no violence from which we needed to protect ourselves. Since there was no economy, and we had so little property (save that which available to all from the facility) nobody could get in debt. In prison, when you owe, you will bleed. We had a lot fewer privileges & amenities than guys have in civilian prison, but because of the way the military runs it (which is vastly different than the civilian system), we were a lot better off than guys in civilian prison.

We had less allowed us than those in state prisons, yet we were more free. In a way, liberty had been traded for security, and it was a bargain at twice the price.

Why don't we run all prison like the Navy does?

The military system works they way it does because both the men and the Machine are vastly different from their civilian counterparts.

Firstly, the men. Military inmates are not what you'd call career criminals; they are never brutal, ruthless predators; because a predator is not going to join the military in the first place. Or he'll be denied entry, or kicked out too soon to do any major crime. A guy who will rape you to prove a point, or kill you over some cigarettes won't be able to stop himself for blowing up over some minor shit in boot camp. Neither would he voluntarily go somewhere where a hick with a funny hat tells him how to polish his shoes. Once military inmates get out, they have a chance at a life, because they have some education, some treatment, some skills, and the majority are white; so they don't have to face the quadruple-whammy of a record, an addiction, being unskilled/uneducated, and racism.

This is not to say that there were no bad men in there. On the contrary, I regularly took my meals with my boy Mark, who killed two people with a knife. His crime was actually pretty similar in many ways to OJ’s (except there was no car chase or lengthy trial), although by the time I met him the OJ jokes had worn thin and were no longer used. Also many of the hands-on sex offenders had some pretty horrific rap sheets. Demolition Man cracked a guy’s skull with TV (which is why we called him that since Stallone did that in the movie), another guy had raped and blinded an off-duty police officer- and then there was the SEAL who committed a bloody murder and then gone to the gym with the weapon in his gym bag and still covered in blood. He could not be socialized (and was utterly insane) so he stayed in seg all the time, heavily medicated. One time I was on the work detail that had to clean his cell after he covered it in his own excrement (a common thing for the mentally ill to do in prison). Another guy in seg did that more than once, and told the camera that he was “the Shit God.” The name stuck.

The Machine itself is the other key difference in the military. The Navy guys weren’t career jailers- they were just doing a rotation at the facility in between rotations on ships or whatever. So since they weren’t from the area (had no connections to the town) and didn’t stay long enough to get bitter/jaded, they never went corrupt or abusive, and didn’t bring drugs or other contraband in for us. None of them were sadistic or brutal physically- there were those who tried to throw their weight around, but they were just playing at being RDC’s- drill instructors (usually they were guys who had tried out for DI but didn’t make it). The joint kept those guys in the orientation tier, because the Navy does phased socialization.

Essentially when you go in, the first thing they do is keep you in isolation (and not 23hrs, either- full 24/7) for a few days to see if you’re a suicide risk or mentally ill, and also to see if you’ll buck up on guards. If you don’t, then you go to the orientation tier where it’s more strict and you have no privileges, with the abovementioned guards running it. This will determine if you can follow rules and get along with other inmates. Only after this are you sent to a main tier- in this way, cons who will cause too many problems or pose a danger can be easily identified before they get to a place where they can cause any serious damage, and get put in psych programs/on medication. Many of us in there were on medication or in group therapy (not me though, although I was in the drug program), the facility knew that if someone does something bad, they probably have some issues which can at least be addressed, if not outright treated.

This was for everyone, and done whether you wanted to or not- in this way, the problem of guys not taking advantage of programs or seeking help because they’re worried about being seen as weak is avoided.

The facilities were kept in good repair, and when one started to get run down it was renovated in a timely fashion. There was never any overcrowding, in fact the only time I even had a celly was when we had to take guys from a different prison in while it was being renovated at the same time one of our tiers was closed for renovation. Staff-to-inmate ratio is critical in keeping a safe prison, and overcrowding ruins the ratio.

Why state prisons will never be run like military prisons

The very things which make the military system safe and effective are the reasons why state prisons probably will never be run that way.

To solve just the overcrowding issue in California alone, 92 prisons would need to be built, to house inmates while the existing prisons either receive major overhauls or are demolished entirely. At the very least, 25-45 would need to be built to bring the existing prisons under 200% capacity.

Rotating guards is not feasible in the state prison system, not unless there is a radical change in the very concept of what it means to be a prison guard, and whether it is to be considered an actual career. Getting any kind of meaningful change past prison unions is likely not possible in today’s world. Take a look at Califas to see the power prison unions hold.

The other things are not feasible unless there is either a massive increase in money spent on the prison infrastructure and Machine as a whole (which tends not to actually get spent on what it needs spending on), or a massive decrease in the amount of people we cage. The main thing I hear is ending the Drug War, or legalization, but it’s hard to be optimistic about the system, its very essence makes it resistant to change, to toning it down. If you start keeping kids out of the system, eventually enough guys will get released that we'll have to start shutting prisons down. A prison will create a thousand or two thousand jobs in a community. Oh, we never build them in our community, but close enough so that guards can commute. You shut that down and you're taking jobs away from Americans, no politician is going to do that. No corrections union is going to allow that. You build a prison, you're creating jobs, you're tapping a vein of funding, of tax revenue. No politician or union can resist that.

What if you decriminalize the dope game? A police union isn't going to like that. Look at the control they have over people as a result of the Drug War. Look at how far they've been able to push the limits, it will be very difficult to scale those limits back. If you need less cops due to no Drug War they might not just lay them off; or just cancel a police department. Are they just going to hang it up, and turn in all the machine guns, masks, and tanks?

The Drug War needs to end- and I hope it does- but I fear that if it does, they will find a new War.

The Holmesburg Prison Experiments

From 1951 until 1974, inmates of Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison were used as experimental guinea pigs for secret medical experiments. The experiments were overseen and sponsored by the U.S. Army, the CIA, The University of Pennsylvania, and at least two private corporations: Dow Chemical Co. and Johnson & Johnson.

The Holmesburg Prison experiments are in blatant violation of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 as well as the Oath of Hippocrates yet they were carried out and financed in secret for decades. By 1963, there were 50 human experiments involving nearly 1,000 Holmesburg inmates involving anything from poisonous vapors, radioactive isotopes, mind controlling drugs, and triggers for psychological disturbance and violence. Experimenters also used inmates to study various skin diseases encountered during World War II. Dr. Albert Kligman, the director of the blatant abuses carried out at Holmesburg for decades, saw Holmesburg Prison as “acres of skin” and himself as “a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.”

Attention has been drawn slowly but steadily to one of the darkest moments in American medical and research history through efforts of former research subjects as Allen M. Hornblum’s “Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison, A True Story of Abuse and Exploitation in the Name of Medical Science.” The analogy drawn between the Nazi experiments during World War II and those sanctioned by major private corporations, a well respected research institution, and the United States Government at Holmesburg is a chilling one.


Conditions today:

External Links

Activist/Outreach Organizations

Recommended Reading

See Also

Private Prisons

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