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<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2><i>Published on Monday, May 10, 2004
by the <a href="http://www.thestar.com">Toronto Star</a> <br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5><b>An Ugly Prison
Record<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Given the Way it Treats its
own Inmates, America Shouldn't be Shocked at the Abuse of Iraqis<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>by Christopher Reed<br>
</b></font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>For a nation founded on
slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in
their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the
prison torture scandal continues in Iraq. <br><br>
In a column in the New York Times last week, Middle East analyst Thomas
Friedman warned that the revelations created the "danger of losing
America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the
world." <br><br>
Does he not read the world's newspapers? Uncle Sam as moral authority?
<br><br>
Other U.S. pundits similarly harrumphed about America's endangered
integrity and leadership. President George W. Bush himself said the
prison mistreatments were not the American way. <br><br>
But they were, and they are. <br><br>
Friedman's column was headlined, "Restoring our honor," but the
abuse of prisoners surprises nobody who reads newspapers or scans the
Internet. Americans have been mistreating and torturing their fellow
Americans in their own lock-ups for decades. What honor is there to
restore? <br><br>
In "liberal" California, horror stories have appeared for years
from hellholes such as Pelican Bay prison, where they house "the
worst of the worst" and also inflict the worst brutalities. A
prisoner dumped in scalding water so his skin peeled off like old
varnish; prisoners left naked outside in rainy and bitter weather for
days; multiple beatings and rapes; several unexplained deaths. <br><br>
In Corcoran prison, California, guards held their own Roman gladiator
games with prisoners pitted against each other in fights to the near
death. A disliked and defenseless prisoner was placed in the same cell as
the biggest and baddest sex criminal known as the Booty Bandit to be
duly raped to the amusement of the prisoner's supposed guardians.
<br><br>
Pelican Bay is such a fearful place, with prisoners kept under perpetual
scrutiny while unable to see any other human being, a psychiatrist told a
court that many were going insane. <br><br>
A federal judge finally ordered reforms, as did another over Corcoran,
but there is little evidence that either have become proper places even
to house the worst. <br><br>
Similar reports surface across America. Texas is especially bad.
<br><br>
Significantly, private, for-profit prisons have some of the worst
records. <br><br>
They often have such poor medical facilities that prisoners die from
curable conditions, as Harper's magazine revealed in an exhaustive
inquiry last year. <br><br>
California holds more prisoners than Britain, France, Germany, and Canada
combined, yet jails are still grossly overcrowded. Conditions in many
southern U.S. prisons resemble some of the worst of the developing world,
with prisoners sleeping on filthy floors overrun by rats. <br><br>
In 1999, it was reported that 13 women at California's state-run
Chowchilla female detention center had died the previous year from
negligent, or non-existent, medical care. Amnesty International reported
in 1999 that male guards in several U.S. states routinely raped female
prisoners. <br><br>
In a book published in 2001, Going Up The River, former Wall Street
Journal reporter Joseph Hallinan told of visiting a prison in Alabama
where chained inmates still broke boulders with sledgehammers. <br><br>
The sheriff of Phoenix, Ariz. was re-elected by loyal voters after
bringing in female convict chain gangs. All this has been going on since
Saddam Hussein was a young man. <br><br>
It has worsened in recent years, despite a massive prison-building
program that now incarcerates 2 million, the world's largest prison
population. <br><br>
Yet Americans have mostly ignored the disgrace of their penal system.
<br><br>
They became so fearful of crime, they lost consideration for the lives of
criminals. Any idea of rehabilitation has been abandoned. Even when
scandals over mistreatment do emerge, many say the inmates deserve it.
<br><br>
This does not excuse commentators such as Friedman, or the shocked,
shocked, demeanor of U.S. news anchors and commentators. <br><br>
Yet the details from Iraq itself support the view that prisoner abuse in
Iraq was inevitable. <br><br>
At Abu Ghraib prison, the alleged main perpetrator is staff sergeant Ivan
"Chip" Frederick, 37, the senior of six non-officers charged
with cruelty and other mistreatment. He is a part-time military policeman
called up last year for service in Baghdad and was a prison guard for
six years in Virginia. <br><br>
Another reflection on the role of private enterprise in U.S.
incarceration is the background of Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski,
also a military police reservist in Iraq. <br><br>
When she was put in command of Abu Ghraib and its thousands of Iraqi
inmates last year, she had never done penal work before. In the army she
was an intelligence officer and in private life, a business consultant.
<br><br>
Shortly before her suspension from duty she told a Florida newspaper that
her prisoners were living so well, she was worried they wouldn't want to
return home. <br><br>
Another American living in dreamland. <br><br>
<i>Christopher Reed is a Los Angeles-based reporter who has written
extensively on prison conditions in the United States. <br><br>
</i><div align="center">Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
<br><br>
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