Prisons are Using Military-Grade Tear Gas to Punish People
"...Mount
Olive is just one of dozens of prisons nationwide turning to chemical
agents for control as labor shortages, private incentives, and intense
marketing drive prisons to supplement overworked guards, in overcrowded
prisons, by relying directly on pain.
'Most
of these weapons are designed by the military,' says Dr. Rohini Haar, a
medical expert with Physicians for Human Rights, “and they’re designed
for military uses. But the military, especially the US military, is a
limited market. So the next step for companies that are trying to make a
profit off these weapons that they design is to sell them to one, law
enforcement and police, and two, to prisons.
'And
as there’s more and more attention being paid to social protest and
police brutality, prisons are becoming a bigger market for these.
Because they’re sold quietly, there’s less regulation, and the market is
there.'"
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Showing posts with label prison violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prison violence. Show all posts
Five Years of Solitude: The Use of Segregation in NS Prisons Numbers in the Thousands
"Over the last five years, solitary confinement has been used in Nova Scotia’s prisons 8,516 times. More than 2,000 of those cases involve young offenders. There were over 1,000 cases of solitary confinement in 2014 alone....
There’s no refuting the decades of evidence that segregation is damaging to prisoners. Aside from over a century of academic studies, organizations such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the United Nations have all recently condemned solitary’s practice in North American prisons. Humans are social animals. Isolating a person causes harm, and harms the already vulnerable the most. It quickly causes psychosis, depression, insomnia, aggression, paranoia and hallucinations. The UN’s special rapporteur on torture has called on all countries to ban the use of extended segregation, claiming just 15 days in solitary confinement is enough to cause irreversible psychological damage."
Related Article: Assaults Nearly Double at Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, Records say
"Over the last five years, solitary confinement has been used in Nova Scotia’s prisons 8,516 times. More than 2,000 of those cases involve young offenders. There were over 1,000 cases of solitary confinement in 2014 alone....
There’s no refuting the decades of evidence that segregation is damaging to prisoners. Aside from over a century of academic studies, organizations such as the New York Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the United Nations have all recently condemned solitary’s practice in North American prisons. Humans are social animals. Isolating a person causes harm, and harms the already vulnerable the most. It quickly causes psychosis, depression, insomnia, aggression, paranoia and hallucinations. The UN’s special rapporteur on torture has called on all countries to ban the use of extended segregation, claiming just 15 days in solitary confinement is enough to cause irreversible psychological damage."
Related Article: Assaults Nearly Double at Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, Records say
The Jail that has Reduced Violence by Helping Inmates Escape from the Gang
"Latest Ministry of Justice figures show the number of recorded assaults in English and Welsh prisons has increased by more than 1,000 over the last year, from 14,045 in 2012-13 to 15,441 in 2013-14. The government’s London Crime Reduction Board highlights the worrying significance of gang members driving such violence and offending in custody. And Nick Hardwick, HM chief inspector of prisons, has reported on unacceptably high levels of violence in young offender institutions, such as Isis and Feltham, named last year by the Howard League for Penal Reform as the most violent prison in England and Wales.
Yet since the Catch22 project began in April 2013, the number of violent incidents in Thameside has significantly dropped from a peak of approximately 90 violent incidents per month to fewer than 20. This 75% reduction is highlighted in an evaluation of the project published on 19 November. The research, Gangs in Prison, based on 19 in-depth interviews, clearly shows that leaving a gang is very difficult. 'It is clear that they are coming from and likely returning to very challenging living environments. Prisoners often described their area as a ‘ghetto’ with few opportunities and high levels of crime and violence.'”
View the Gangs in Prison report
"Latest Ministry of Justice figures show the number of recorded assaults in English and Welsh prisons has increased by more than 1,000 over the last year, from 14,045 in 2012-13 to 15,441 in 2013-14. The government’s London Crime Reduction Board highlights the worrying significance of gang members driving such violence and offending in custody. And Nick Hardwick, HM chief inspector of prisons, has reported on unacceptably high levels of violence in young offender institutions, such as Isis and Feltham, named last year by the Howard League for Penal Reform as the most violent prison in England and Wales.
Yet since the Catch22 project began in April 2013, the number of violent incidents in Thameside has significantly dropped from a peak of approximately 90 violent incidents per month to fewer than 20. This 75% reduction is highlighted in an evaluation of the project published on 19 November. The research, Gangs in Prison, based on 19 in-depth interviews, clearly shows that leaving a gang is very difficult. 'It is clear that they are coming from and likely returning to very challenging living environments. Prisoners often described their area as a ‘ghetto’ with few opportunities and high levels of crime and violence.'”
View the Gangs in Prison report
Damning Annual Prison Report Should Make Grayling Think Again
"The chief inspector of prisons' annual report has just been published and it is as damning as you would expect. Nick Hardwick is doing the best he can to get the chaos of Britain's prisons into the public sphere and to tentatively offer explanations for why it is taking place.
The situation is currently verging on catastrophic. He found a 'significant decline in safety'. There were often weaknesses in basic safety processes such as risk assessments for new prisoners and prisoners in crisis being held in segregated areas in poor conditions. Drugs in prisons – legal and illegal – were becoming a source of debt, with the associated bullying and violence which comes with that."
View the Report
"The chief inspector of prisons' annual report has just been published and it is as damning as you would expect. Nick Hardwick is doing the best he can to get the chaos of Britain's prisons into the public sphere and to tentatively offer explanations for why it is taking place.
The situation is currently verging on catastrophic. He found a 'significant decline in safety'. There were often weaknesses in basic safety processes such as risk assessments for new prisoners and prisoners in crisis being held in segregated areas in poor conditions. Drugs in prisons – legal and illegal – were becoming a source of debt, with the associated bullying and violence which comes with that."
View the Report
News in Brief:
Canada:
Canada:
- What's behind the trend of declining crime rate in Toronto?
Commentary by the Centre's Professor Rosemary Gartner - Stephen Harper is wrong: Crime and sociology are the same thing
Article by Centre graduate Rashmee Singh - Women and girls often exploited in street gangs, says ex-member
Ian McKinney, 24, opens up on the dangers of Winnipeg gang life - Reports contradict PM's view on aboriginal women victims
- Fairness for Victims Act faces major constitutional problem
- Boat crash on Lake Ontario leads to key test of civil forfeiture law
- Robert Latimer case: How Harper's tough agenda ignores individual nature of crime
- Black inmate sues B.C. over alleged KKK beating and "torture" by jail staff
- Are you on the no-fly list? Who knows?
- Audit raises concerns about prisoners' privacy rights
- Library time and book access limited for federal prisoners, advocates say
- Red Devils: A glimpse into Hamilton's oldest outlaw biker gang
- Three-quarters of Americans want cameras in the Supreme Court as one federal judge demonstrates why some of his colleagues don't
- Are police bigoted? Race and police shootings: Are blacks targeted more?
- Should Twitter, Facebook and Google executives be the arbiters of what we see and read?
- San Quentin's museum is captivating
- Tough case to crack: the mystery of Britain's falling crime rate
- Home Secretary launches best use of stop and search scheme
- "Prisons are being reduced to warehouses": Company pulls the plug on contract to educate inmates at High Down
Ten Years After Law’s Passage, DOJ Takes Baby Steps To Address Prison Sexual Assault
Ten years after Congress passed legislation to address rampant sexual
abuse in prison, especially of teenagers and LGBT individuals, the
Department of Justice is starting to implement new regulations under the law.
The new policies will impose basic requirements, such as separating teens in adult prisons, and banning cross-gender pat-downs in juvenile and female units. Facilities must also develop plans to eliminate rape, and will be subject to federal audits, U.S. News reports.
Just as the PREA turns ten years old, the first audit was conducted last week at a federal prison in West Virginia, and more are scheduled for the coming weeks. But some are alarmed to learn who will perform the first round of audits. The American Correctional Association, a membership organization for corrections officers, performs accreditation for many detention centers, and will be asked to examine sexual assault prevention as part of that assessment. But the ACA has very close ties to corrections officers, and a ProPublica analysis calls it the “very organization that has been criticized over the years for failing to identify and address safety problems at prisons across the country.”
Read on...
The new policies will impose basic requirements, such as separating teens in adult prisons, and banning cross-gender pat-downs in juvenile and female units. Facilities must also develop plans to eliminate rape, and will be subject to federal audits, U.S. News reports.
Just as the PREA turns ten years old, the first audit was conducted last week at a federal prison in West Virginia, and more are scheduled for the coming weeks. But some are alarmed to learn who will perform the first round of audits. The American Correctional Association, a membership organization for corrections officers, performs accreditation for many detention centers, and will be asked to examine sexual assault prevention as part of that assessment. But the ACA has very close ties to corrections officers, and a ProPublica analysis calls it the “very organization that has been criticized over the years for failing to identify and address safety problems at prisons across the country.”
Read on...
The Unbelievable Brutality Unleashed on Kids in For-Profit Prisons
Privatization of the youth prison industry handed soaring profits to
GEO, but a history of brutal injustice to its incarcerated youth and
their families.
Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.
Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.
“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’”
Thus
began a search for his son Mike that lasted more than six weeks.
Desperate for answers, he repeatedly called the prison and the
Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I was running out of options.
Nobody would give me an answer, from the warden all the way to the
commissioner.”
Finally, a nurse at the prison gave him a clue: Check the area hospitals.
After
more frantic phone calls, he found Mike in a hospital in Greenwood,
hours away. He was shocked at what he saw. His son could barely move,
let alone sit up. He couldn’t see or talk or use his right arm. “He’s
got this baseball-size knot on the back of his head,” McIntosh said.
“He’s got cuts all over him, bruises. He has stab wounds. The teeth in
the front are broken. He’s scared out of his mind. He doesn’t have a
clue where he’s at – or why.”
Rape in Prison
Published: June 23, 2009
Rape accompanied by savage violence has long been part of prison life. Congress finally confronted this horrendous problem by passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. In addition to bringing attention to a long overlooked problem, the new law created a commission that has put forth a broad set of rape-prevention standards that deserve to become mandatory in correctional agencies throughout the country.
The commission report, released earlier this week, should come as alarming news. It suggests, for example, that rapes carried out by corrections officers and inmates are widespread, but the actual rates of rape vary widely from place to place.
Drawing on a federal survey of more than 63,000 state and federal inmates, the commission said that about 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months. Extrapolating from this data, the commissioners estimate that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners nationally during this period.Read on...
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