I made reference in a previous post to the US's justification for its
massive killings of civilians through sanctions (and cluster bombs,
destruction of water and electrical infrastructures, etc.) as using
"human rights" as a smokescreen for their real agenda. Here is another
good example of how absolutely callous the U.S. is about human rights
(as if more were needed after Latin America, the mid-East, East Asia,
Africa, etc. in terms of whom the U.S. has supported and continues to
support with weapons, training, etc. Dan
THE TORONTO STAR October 3, 1999
BALL & CHAIN
The United States demands that other nations observe human
rights, but
strips
them away from those caught up in one of the world's meanest
prison systems
By Kathleen Kenna, Washington Bureau
Washington -- Stealing food while homeless, after two previous minor
convictions, put a man in prison for the rest of his life in
California.
A woman whose name was on the register for a hotel room where a
drug
pipe - but no trace of drugs - was found was jailed in Arizona. She had
no
previous record.
Twin A-students headed for law school were sent to prison for 15
years
in Texas after their car mechanic, nabbed for dealing drugs, claimed
they
were customers. No drugs or paraphernalia or any other evidence was
found
to support the dealer's claim.
This is justice, American-style.
The United States is one of the meanest jailors in the world,
human rights
groups say. And it's about to become the largest.
Some 2 million Americans - including a wildly disproportionate
number
of blacks - are locked away in state and federal prisons and local
jails.
Another 3.4 million are on probation and 705,000 on parole. In a few
months, it's expected the U.S. will overtake Russia as the world leader
in
incarceration.
And while Americans champion human rights around the globe,
while
Congress slaps economic and other sanctions on nations that abuse such
rights, and Bill Clinton makes protection of these rights a cornerstone
of
his
presidency, the U.S. is breaking the rules it demands all others follow.
The prison system has been condemned by the United Nations Human
Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others
for violating international treaties on human rights.
An Amnesty report, Rights For All, issued last fall, found
“human rights
violations in the U.S.A. are serious and persistent.”
“The United States professes to be a leader in human rights, it
imparts its
values on other countries. . . . If you want to be a leader in human
rights,
you'd better get your house in order first,” says Janice Christensen,
director of
the group's “campaign for human rights in the U.S.A.”
“In U.S. prisons and jails, physical and sexual abuse are
endemic and
repressive control methods . . . are increasingly being used,” the
Amnesty
report states.
Abuse included excessive brutality and sexual assault by staff,
electroshock weapons that are banned in Canada and most other
industrialized
nations, chemical weapons and restraint chairs in which prisoners may be
kept for days.
Women continue to be shackled and put in handcuffs, leg
restraints and
even chains when pregnant and giving birth, the report says.
As prisons flourish, spending on education and rehabilitation
inside, and
prevention outside - addiction treatment, early-childhood development,
job
training and poverty reduction - has decreased.
And there's been a firestorm of lawsuits, justice department
and
independent inquiries and court-ordered takeovers relating to the abuse
and
torture of inmates.
Proven cases range from sexual abuse of women prisoners to
sanctioned
“gladiator” fights between inmates at California's brutal Corcoran
prison.
The raw statistics are astonishing:
Russia has an incarceration rate of 690 per 100,000 people; the
U.S.,
672. Ukraine is among the top five, at 390; Singapore, 287; South
Africa,
265. In Canada, it's 115 per 100,000; in China, it's estimated to be
103.
“Minority communities represent 70 per cent of all new prison
admissions and more than half of all Americans behind bars,” says a 1999
report by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute.
“By the mid-1990s, roughly 1 in 3 young black men were under the
`supervision' of the criminal justice system . . . in a jail or prison,
on
probation
or parole, or under pretrial release,” Elliott Currie writes in Crime
And
Punishment In America. “The figure was 2 of 5 in California and more
than
half in Baltimore, Md.”
Chances of imprisonment are 30 per cent for African American
males, 16
per cent for Hispanics, 4 per cent for whites.
The Justice Policy Institute estimates 1.2 million American
prisoners
committed crimes without violence.
Prisoners are getting younger and older. At one end, states are
lowering
the age limit at which teen offenders can serve time with adults. At
the
other,
prisons are crowded with elderly “lifers” because more states are
virtually
eliminating parole.
Women are the fastest growing segment in U.S. prisons. Their
numbers
increased 417 per cent from 1980 to 1995, compared with a 235 per cent
hike
for men.
A new report from the justice department estimates at least 16
per cent of
inmates are mentally ill, including those cast aside as the U.S., like
Canada,
closed mental health centres and hospitals.
While major crime in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level
since the
FBI started keeping national statistics in 1973, and violent crime is
down 7
per cent and dropping, prison construction is at a record high and
soaring.
American leaders are tapping public fears aroused by civil
unrest during
the Vietnam War, the crack epidemic and violent crime that ravaged inner
cities from the 1960s to '80s. The result is more death sentences,
decades-
long “mandatory minimums” - especially for drug offences - fewer
probation
terms, more sentences without parole, and “three strikes” laws that
impose
life sentences for three-time offenders, no matter how slight the
crimes.
“It is tragic and it is obscene that our society has turned
against itself,”
says Wilbert Rideau, an award-winning journalist, documentary film
director
and one of the most prominent U.S. prisoners' rights crusaders.
“We needed a bogeyman, so instead of declaring a war on
illiteracy, on
poverty, we declared a war on drugs and ourselves.”
Corrections has become a profitable and booming business.
Twenty-eight
states have private prisons, and at least four more are considering
privatization.
A convention of private prison corporations and contractors in
Las Vegas
last month revealed the number of inmates in for-profit prisons soared
from a
few thousand in 1989 to more than 120,000 in 1998.
“The states' need for new beds and financing for those beds
offers a
tremendous area for revenue growth for the private sector,” convention
organizers said.
National incarceration costs are the equivalent of almost $60
billion a
year, far more than the national welfare budget of $25 billion.
Prisons are so lucrative that communities advertise and offer
tax breaks,
free land and other incentives to lure them.
The largest and one of the toughest law-and-order states,
California,
spends more on prisons than on higher education.
“What does that say about our social priorities when you pay
more for
incarceration than education? It's really hard to justify this
explosion
in the
number of people incarcerated when crime has been declining . . . but
it's
reflective of a public sentiment that crime is still a major concern,”
says Jim
Turpin, legislative liaison for the American Corrections Association.
Since the Amnesty campaign was launched a year ago, Illinois has
banned restraints for pregnant women, and new legislation is expected
soon to
make it illegal there.
No other state has followed suit.
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