TORTURE AND SLAVERY IN U.S. PRISONS: A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
In 1996 The World Organization Against Torture asked me to sit on their Board of Directors, and contribute to the report they were readying called "Torture in the United States--the Status of Compliance by the U.S. Government with the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." As a result, I've had the opportunity to read the Convention Against Torture (CAT). It causes me pain to say that the U.S. uses devices of torture with impunity. We find much the same discrepancy between theory and practice when we read the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
International Treaties and Covenants to which the U.S. is a signatory ban the racially-biased death penalty, the physical abuse of women in prisons, abuse of the mentally ill, abuse involving prison labor, involuntary human scientific experimentation, violation of children's rights.
According to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The World Organization Against Torture, and Prison Watch Interp;nationale (out of Paris), there is a persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violations in the U.S. Amnesty notes that "International human rights standards exist for the protection of all people throughout the world, and the USA has been centrally involved in their development. Some are legally binding treaties; others represent the consensus on the minimum standards, which all states should adhere to. While successive U.S. governments have used these international standards as a yardstick by which to judge other countries, they have not consistently applied those same standards at home. In some areas, international standards offer greater human rights protection than U.S. domestic law, but the U.S. authorities have refused to recognize the primacy of international law.
"The USA has been slow to agree to be bound by important international and regional human rights treaties. It is one of only two countries, for instance, which have failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (The other is Somalia, which has no recognized government.)
"Even when the USA has ratified human rights treaties, it has often done so only halfheartedly, with major reservations. For example, it has reserved the right to use the death penalty against juveniles, expressly forbidden by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which the United States ratified in 1992. The United States repeatedly has continued to use international law and intergovernmental systems when they serve U.S. foreign policy interests, but has sometimes discarded or condemned these systems when they are perceived to run counter to its interests."
Article I of the United Nations Convention Against Torture prohibits "physical or mental pain and suffering, inflicted to punish, coerce or discriminate for any reason." Practices such as the indefinite use of shackles and other mechanical restraints, the involuntary administration of dangerous chemical treatments, and the practice of extended isolation cannot be justified. Such practices put the U.S. in violation.
I have been a human rights advocate on behalf of prisoners in the United States for the past 22 years. Those years have brought hundreds of increasingly disturbing calls and complaints from U.S. prisoners and their families. Most describe inhumane conditions including cold, filth, callous medical care, extended isolation sometimes lasting over a decade, harassment and brutality, vivid descriptions of four point restraints, restraint hoods, restraint belts, restraint beds, stun grenades, stun guns, stun belts, tethers, waist and leg chains, and other devices of torture. Often, prisoners report mentally ill prisoners banging their heads or screaming ceaselessly with no attention given to them other than overuse of psychotropic drugs.
A social worker at Utah State prison writes, "Yocham was directed to leave the strip cell and a urine soaked pillow case was placed over his head like a hood. He was walked, shackled and hooded, to a different cell where he was placed in a device called "the chair". . . . he was kept in the chair for over 30 hours resulting in extreme physical and emotional suffering."
Another describes Scotty Lees in Arizona being placed in a restraint chair. "He was stripped naked and placed in the chair with his buttocks several inches below his knees. His arms and legs were then cuffed and shackled to the legs of the chair to prevent him from moving. The design of the chair forces the inmate's back against the chair. He was left uncovered and unprotected in pain for over 24 hours. Mobility was nonexistent. He couldn't relieve himself without soiling himself. . . ."
Another from Arizona notes, "during the struggle, jailers shocked Norberg multiple times with stun guns. Inmates who witnessed his death estimate that he was shocked between eight and twenty times. The medical examiner put it at 22 times. . . ".
From Texas, "I was sprayed with so much gas that I lost consciousness. I was kept naked this way for 8 or more hours."
From Delaware, "I was sprayed starting from the left side of my face to the right side and back again. I was blind for about 15 minutes. Another kind of spray caused me to vomit. I was told that prisoners 30 feet away began to vomit."
From Utah, "I was sprayed with pepper spray and it was 10 hours before I was allowed to wash. This resulted in burns and blisters to my arms, face, chest, and feet. For the entire 10 hours, I felt like I was being boiled alive. When you are forced to stand in the sun with no shelter, the sweat from your body continues to reactivate this chemical agent so that you remain in extreme pain."
Some of the most poignant letters are on behalf of mentally ill prisoners--like the man in California who spread feces over his body. The guards' response was to put him in a bath so hot it boiled 30% of the skin off his body. Or the letters I received on behalf of Frank Hunter, a mentally ill prisoner in a New Jersey isolation unit who was tortured to death. The guards would make Frank perform sexual acts on himself in order to get food or cigarettes.
The use of extended isolation has been a growing concern. In New Jersey, Ojore Lutalo has been held in the Management Control Unit in total isolation since February 4, 1986. He has never received any charges or explanation for this. He is let out for an hour and a half every other day. He has basically been told that he is being kept in sensory deprivation because of "what he could do if he wanted to."
In California, Ruchell Magee spent over 21 years in solitary confinement.
Couple all of this with sexual abuse, people dying under privatized medical care, and shocking treatment of people being held in INS detention centers and you have a clear picture of the real criminal justice system in the United States.
In addition, race has been shown to be a major determining factor in the imposition of the death penalty, and the application of the death penalty is almost exclusively used against the poor. The politics of the police, the politics of the courts, the politics of the prison system, and the politics of the death penalty are a manifestation of the racism and classism which governs so much of the lives of the disadvantaged in this country. Every part of the criminal justice system falls most heavily on people of color, including slavery being still permitted in prisons by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In many areas of the country, mostly in inner cities, young people feel that the police are an occupation army and inner cities are militarized zones. They feel that the courts are used to feed young Blacks and Latinos into prisons where those bodies are suddenly worth a fortune.
There is no way to look into any aspect of prison or the wider criminal justice system in the U.S. without being slapped in the face with the racism and white supremacy that prisoners of color endure. There is often little hesitation on the part of Departments of Corrections to acknowledge that guards who are Klan members run certain prisons. Sadly, human rights violations go even further. I've had ample evidence of being under surveillance. A client coming out of my office was picked up by the Essex County Sheriff's Department in Newark and questioned about me. The California Department of Corrections has also named me as a subversive. Even advocating on behalf is prisoners is suspect to government agencies.
The United Nations definition of political prisoners fits well over 100 U.S. prisoners. Many of the activists of my generation who participated in the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the white radical movement, or the American Indian Movement were killed by government forces during the '60s and '70s --the National Guard on college campuses, the police in inner cities, and the State Police on the nation's highways. Others were often imprisoned on false charges, and many are still imprisoned over 25 years later. Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Geronimo Pratt finally had their sentences overturned because proof of FBI perjury was uncovered. Dhomba was released after fighting his false conviction for 19 years. Geronimo was released after spending 27 years fighting the lies.
Other practices have to do with the physical and sexual abuse of women in U.S. prisons. Recent on-site evaluations of conditions in women's prisons have found extensive gender-based mistreatment, physical abuse and outright sexual assault. A pattern has emerged of male prison personnel engaging in rape, sexual assault, sexual taunting, and unwarranted visual surveillance of female prisoners in showers and bathrooms.
In yet another area, Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture establishes an unconditional right of an immigrant who has experienced or faces torture to not be expelled back to their country of origin. The United States practices the opposite. Victims of persecution in other countries, especially torture and rape, often need time and medical or psychological treatment before they can tell their stories. This is not provided, and refugees are often automatically returned to their countries of origin or placed in long-term, sometimes indefinite detention in INS prisons under conditions that are frequently abusive and inappropriate.
Abuses involving prison labor deserve mention as well. In recent months, the U.S. Government has been justifiably critical of the practice of some foreign governments, such as China, of using the prison population as a source of forced, underpaid laborers. What is not so widely known and understood is that similar practices occur in the U.S. under conditions that amount to prohibited forced labor and the use of prison labor as punishment. At a prison facility in Texas, for instance, current employers of prisoners include a circuit board assembler, an eyeglass manufacturer, and a maker of valves and fittings. Many of those companies have closed their factories outside the prisons, and now rent factory space in the prisons for $1.00 per year. Once again, practices such as this violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Many U.S. government practices fit the UN definition of genocide when it comes to the treatment of the poor and people of color.
The U.S. has been quick to voice its condemnation of human rights violations in other countries while stressing, in contrast, the civil and political rights it guarantees within its borders. In my 35 years as a civil rights activist, and then as a human rights activist, I have often seen just the opposite. The political function of U.S. practices is inescapable. Police, the courts, the prison system, and the death penalty all serve as social control mechanisms. The massive building of prisons that has occurred in this country isn't about the rate of crime. Prisons reflect both the structure of a society and the nature of struggle against that structure. The folks in prison are mostly poor and the working class who need jobs and education. Prison issues are class issues.
Reading through the Conventions and Treaties gives me hope that the United States can ultimately be held accountable. Only through international attention can we begin as a nation to be honest about the economic and political reasons for U.S. prisons. Work on these issues is particularly important because the U.S. is exporting not only the concepts, but the devices of torture as well.
--BONNIE KERNESS IS Director of the Criminal Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee, Newark, NJ