Kiriakou writes: "Would you believe a uniformed law enforcement officer or a
mentally ill homeless man? The guards got away with it. Across the country,
prison guards get away with things like this every day."
Prisoner behind bars. (photo: Getty)
Torture Is Alive and Well in America's Prisons
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
26 July 16
Last month, I wrote about the terrible conditions mentally ill inmates face
in prisons and jails across America, compounded by cruel and oppressive
conditions in so-called suicide watch cells (Department of Retribution:
Torturing the Mentally Ill). I relayed the experiences of an inmate at the
Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Virginia.
That same inmate, I have learned, recently broke a jail record for time
spent in protective, segregated confinement over his 16 months at the jail.
At Pamunkey, inmates in protective custody are kept in a lockdown state in
solitary cells 23 hours per day. They have one hour to shower, make phone
calls, and if they're allowed, exercise in the prison yard.
(Exercise is allowed at the whim of whatever guard happens to be on duty.
The yard at Pamunkey, however, is slated to be enclosed. Asked how prisoners
could get fresh air and sunshine, the jail's security director said that
they should "look out the window.")
This inmate, who is a childhood friend of a friend, was in protective
custody not because he was in danger or because he was a danger to himself
or others, but because he slept with a CPAP machine to help with his
breathing. This required an electrical outlet. He offered to give it up to
go into the general population, but the jail said this would compromise his
health, another reason used to put prisoners in protective, solitary
custody.
His neighbors were there for protective reasons and included a former police
officer, transgendered people, and people with serious mental health issues
who are considered dangerous to others.
Interestingly, the jail doesn't automatically place sex offenders in
solitary/protective custody, and a number of them move freely without
incident in gen-pop.
The inmate sent my friend a map and description of the cell he resided in.
He estimated (based on his height) that it was about 10 feet by 5 feet. It
included a window through which he could be observed by jail staff, and
opposite it, a metal door. A one-inch thick mattress rested on a concrete
slab. There was a cubby beneath the bed to store clothing. A metal sink and
toilet were just to the left of the door and opposite the window.
While the window meant that the prisoner could be observed while using the
toilet, it also allowed him to view the TV in the jail dayroom. Sometimes,
other prisoners would wander over to talk to him.
The inmate, who suffered for several months with an anal fissure that became
a fistula, had a doctor's order for a second mattress to provide additional
padding. It was provided only after a year-long wait.
In the meantime, the prisoner had two surgeries; the second was needed to
repair damage caused by the prison's lack of medication, and support
normally should be provided after this kind of surgery.
Oh, and in case you wondered: the patient wasn't permitted to have
prescribed painkiller drugs in the days following both surgeries. The pain
from the fistula and the area around it after it's been excised has been
likened to "sitting on a sharp knife."
And although the prisoner was in protective custody, he was transferred for
court appearances in a prison van, chained to other inmates. All inmates in
protective custody are supposed to be transferred alone. The van had no
seatbelts prior to Freddie Gray's death in a Baltimore police van, and we
saw what happened there. Once at the courthouse, he was also kept in holding
cells with other prisoners.
The prisoner is now at Virginia's prisoner processing facility in State
Farm, where he is part of the general population. At this time he is in a
two-man cell he describes as the size of a bathroom in a pre-McMansion home.
Possibly because of the CPAP, he has no cellmate.
While the conditions at State Farm make Pamunkey "look like a Hilton,"
(among other things, it has no air conditioning and temperatures in the
summer approach the 100s) he appreciates the company of other people during
meals and time in the prison yard.
As for his medications: all prisoners are taken off their medications upon
arrival at State Farm and evaluated. He has been told he will be put on
another antidepressant that didn't work for him in the past.
More worrying is that he experienced two seizures, at least one a grand mal,
during the first week he was taken off anti-seizure medication. My friend
has alerted his attorney about this latest development.
To tell you the truth, this is not one of the worst stories that I've heard
from solitary. Indeed, one of my cellmates at the Federal Correctional
Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania, had his own nightmare there. And FCI
Loretto is federal, which is supposed to be far, far better than any state
prison or local jail.
The cellmate, whom I'll call "James," was a mentally ill homeless man from
Pittsburgh. He'd purposefully violated the terms of his federal probation so
he could spend the winter months indoors.
James was clear with both the medical staff and his cellmates that he was
mentally ill and needed to be medicated. We appreciated his candor.
But the medical staff's primary mission is to keep costs low, and drugs for
serious mental illness are expensive. Since James was supposed to go home in
a few months anyway, they didn't give him his meds. You can guess what
happened: James began to spiral into insanity, and he was sent to solitary
confinement.
James's struggles angered the staff. After one incident in solitary, he was
stripped naked, beaten, and thrown outside. It was January, and the
temperature in the central Pennsylvania mountains was 10 degrees. An
eyewitness told me that James apologized and asked to be let back in. He
started crying after a couple of hours in the cold. Then he curled up into a
ball and fainted.
No guards were punished for what they did to James. Even if he'd reported it
to the federal Bureau of Prisons headquarters, who would have listened to
him? Would you believe a uniformed law enforcement officer or a mentally ill
homeless man?
The guards got away with it. Across the country, prison guards get away with
things like this every day.
The only solution is legislative - at both the federal and state levels.
While Congress has made the right noises about reform, Congressional leaders
have not allowed these reform measures to come up for a vote. Similarly,
some states, like Ohio and Nebraska, have made progress by outlawing
solitary for minors. But when a state like Louisiana allows individuals to
be kept in solitary for more than 40 years, there is still an obvious human
rights problem. The rest is up to voters. We have to demand that our
candidates for statewide and national office support sentencing and
corrections reform. Until then, our solitary confinement systems will remain
an international embarrassment and a crime against humanity.
________________________________________
John Kiriakou is an Associate Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies
in Washington DC. He is a former CIA counterterrorism operations officer and
former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Prisoner behind bars. (photo: Getty)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Torture Is Alive and Well in America's Prisons
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
26 July 16
ast month, I wrote about the terrible conditions mentally ill inmates face
in prisons and jails across America, compounded by cruel and oppressive
conditions in so-called suicide watch cells (Department of Retribution:
Torturing the Mentally Ill). I relayed the experiences of an inmate at the
Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Virginia.
That same inmate, I have learned, recently broke a jail record for time
spent in protective, segregated confinement over his 16 months at the jail.
At Pamunkey, inmates in protective custody are kept in a lockdown state in
solitary cells 23 hours per day. They have one hour to shower, make phone
calls, and if they're allowed, exercise in the prison yard.
(Exercise is allowed at the whim of whatever guard happens to be on duty.
The yard at Pamunkey, however, is slated to be enclosed. Asked how prisoners
could get fresh air and sunshine, the jail's security director said that
they should "look out the window.")
This inmate, who is a childhood friend of a friend, was in protective
custody not because he was in danger or because he was a danger to himself
or others, but because he slept with a CPAP machine to help with his
breathing. This required an electrical outlet. He offered to give it up to
go into the general population, but the jail said this would compromise his
health, another reason used to put prisoners in protective, solitary
custody.
His neighbors were there for protective reasons and included a former police
officer, transgendered people, and people with serious mental health issues
who are considered dangerous to others.
Interestingly, the jail doesn't automatically place sex offenders in
solitary/protective custody, and a number of them move freely without
incident in gen-pop.
The inmate sent my friend a map and description of the cell he resided in.
He estimated (based on his height) that it was about 10 feet by 5 feet. It
included a window through which he could be observed by jail staff, and
opposite it, a metal door. A one-inch thick mattress rested on a concrete
slab. There was a cubby beneath the bed to store clothing. A metal sink and
toilet were just to the left of the door and opposite the window.
While the window meant that the prisoner could be observed while using the
toilet, it also allowed him to view the TV in the jail dayroom. Sometimes,
other prisoners would wander over to talk to him.
The inmate, who suffered for several months with an anal fissure that became
a fistula, had a doctor's order for a second mattress to provide additional
padding. It was provided only after a year-long wait.
In the meantime, the prisoner had two surgeries; the second was needed to
repair damage caused by the prison's lack of medication, and support
normally should be provided after this kind of surgery.
Oh, and in case you wondered: the patient wasn't permitted to have
prescribed painkiller drugs in the days following both surgeries. The pain
from the fistula and the area around it after it's been excised has been
likened to "sitting on a sharp knife."
And although the prisoner was in protective custody, he was transferred for
court appearances in a prison van, chained to other inmates. All inmates in
protective custody are supposed to be transferred alone. The van had no
seatbelts prior to Freddie Gray's death in a Baltimore police van, and we
saw what happened there. Once at the courthouse, he was also kept in holding
cells with other prisoners.
The prisoner is now at Virginia's prisoner processing facility in State
Farm, where he is part of the general population. At this time he is in a
two-man cell he describes as the size of a bathroom in a pre-McMansion home.
Possibly because of the CPAP, he has no cellmate.
While the conditions at State Farm make Pamunkey "look like a Hilton,"
(among other things, it has no air conditioning and temperatures in the
summer approach the 100s) he appreciates the company of other people during
meals and time in the prison yard.
As for his medications: all prisoners are taken off their medications upon
arrival at State Farm and evaluated. He has been told he will be put on
another antidepressant that didn't work for him in the past.
More worrying is that he experienced two seizures, at least one a grand mal,
during the first week he was taken off anti-seizure medication. My friend
has alerted his attorney about this latest development.
To tell you the truth, this is not one of the worst stories that I've heard
from solitary. Indeed, one of my cellmates at the Federal Correctional
Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania, had his own nightmare there. And FCI
Loretto is federal, which is supposed to be far, far better than any state
prison or local jail.
The cellmate, whom I'll call "James," was a mentally ill homeless man from
Pittsburgh. He'd purposefully violated the terms of his federal probation so
he could spend the winter months indoors.
James was clear with both the medical staff and his cellmates that he was
mentally ill and needed to be medicated. We appreciated his candor.
But the medical staff's primary mission is to keep costs low, and drugs for
serious mental illness are expensive. Since James was supposed to go home in
a few months anyway, they didn't give him his meds. You can guess what
happened: James began to spiral into insanity, and he was sent to solitary
confinement.
James's struggles angered the staff. After one incident in solitary, he was
stripped naked, beaten, and thrown outside. It was January, and the
temperature in the central Pennsylvania mountains was 10 degrees. An
eyewitness told me that James apologized and asked to be let back in. He
started crying after a couple of hours in the cold. Then he curled up into a
ball and fainted.
No guards were punished for what they did to James. Even if he'd reported it
to the federal Bureau of Prisons headquarters, who would have listened to
him? Would you believe a uniformed law enforcement officer or a mentally ill
homeless man?
The guards got away with it. Across the country, prison guards get away with
things like this every day.
The only solution is legislative - at both the federal and state levels.
While Congress has made the right noises about reform, Congressional leaders
have not allowed these reform measures to come up for a vote. Similarly,
some states, like Ohio and Nebraska, have made progress by outlawing
solitary for minors. But when a state like Louisiana allows individuals to
be kept in solitary for more than 40 years, there is still an obvious human
rights problem. The rest is up to voters. We have to demand that our
candidates for statewide and national office support sentencing and
corrections reform. Until then, our solitary confinement systems will remain
an international embarrassment and a crime against humanity.
John Kiriakou is an Associate Fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies
in Washington DC. He is a former CIA counterterrorism operations officer and
former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
