LAWSUITS AGAINST PRISONS
Texas inmate Douglas C. Welsch has filed a civil suit against Governor (and President) George W. Bush and the heads of the prison system alleging that permitting evangelical Christians unprecedented access to the prison system violates the United States and Texas Constitutions. Welsch's suit alleges that then-Governor Bush, in personally turning over the Jester TI prison unit to the Prison Fellowship Ministry of Charles Colson, violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause by making Christianity the de facto religion of the Texas prison system. The suit alleges the Texas Constitution is being violated by the use of state property by a religious society.
Additionally, Welsch's First Amendment suit challenges the practice throughout the prison system of broadcasting Mike Barber Christian revivals. Barber, a former Houston Oilers football player, is associated with Kenneth Copeland Ministries, and it is that entity that Welsch alleges erected satellite receiving dishes on every prison unit so these Christian evangelical programs could be received. Usually broadcast once a month, the programs feature Mike Barber as he leads a Christian revival on a prison unit. Most of the broadcasts have originated in Texas prisons, but recent broadcasts have also been done from Lawton, Oklahoma and from Florida.
Welsch's suit charges the Governor and the prison authorities with deliberately advancing Christianity over Judaism, Islam, Native American and other religious faiths or no religious faith at all. The suit is Douglas C. Welsch vs. George W. Bush, et al., and is Civil Action No. OO-H-2230 in the Houston Division of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
OHIO SUPERMAX TORTURE
CITING BRUTAL CONDITIONS that have led to inmate suicides, the American Civil Liber-ties Union of Ohio has filed a federal civil rights action demanding significant and far-reaching changes at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. Ohio ACLU legal director Ray Vasvari noted that the inmates at the high maximum security facility--known as a "Supermax"--are not seeking money damages, but rather a court order requiring state officials to remedy a wide range of inhumane conditions, including the lack of recreation, mental health and medical care, and the use of excessive restraints. "The inhumane conditions at the Supermax are not something that just happened because of bad management or neglect: they were part of the state's plan from the start," Vasvari said. "A prison like that belongs in the history of the Soviet Gulag, not in present-day America." The practices and conditions specified in the lawsuit include:
--Inmates are held 23 hours a day in solitary, confined to 7x14-foot concrete cells with built-in furniture
--Fluorescent lights in the steel-doored cells remain on 24 hours a day; prisoners who attempt to shade their eyes are punished
--Inmates are shackled and strip-searched each time they leave their cells
--"Outdoor recreation"--such as it is and when allowed--is limited to 60 minutes a day in an unheated cell with a four inch slit in the wall. There is no indoor recreation facility. Inmates who request psychiatric help (or any medical attention) are subjected to an interview shouted through cell doors, in front of prison guards and other prisoners
--Psychotherapy is conducted while prisoners are chained to a pole
--Visitors are prohibited from any physical contact with the inmates.
These and many other inhumane conditions violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids the government from subjecting prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment, as well as similar provisions of international human rights law, the lawsuit charges.
ACLU SUIT http://www.aclu.org/court/wilkinson.pdf PRISONER RIGHTS http://www.aclu.org/issues/prisons/hmprisons.html