NO SPECIAL FAVORS FOR IRAQIS:

IRAQ 'SUPERMAX' PRISON WON'T WIPE AWAY ABU GHRAIB STAIN (Earl Ofari Hutchinson, 5/28/04, Pacific News Service)

In his five-point plan for Iraq reconstruction, President Bush touted his plan to build a modern maximum-security prison in Iraq as one way to wipe away the horrid stain of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The irony is that the type of maximum-security prison Bush wants to build has come under fierce assault from prison reformers, lawmakers and even some prison officials in the United States. These prisons, popularly known as a supermax prisons, have been the target of prisoner lawsuits in Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, and Illinois. In 2000, the Justice Department brought federal charges against prison guards for shooting inmates at Pelican Bay, California's supermax prison.

Supermaxes have been called by the prisoners, "torture chambers," where they are subjected to flagrant human rights and civil liberties violations, and appalling psychological and physical abuses. In a lawsuit filed by Ohio prisoners at the state's supermax prison in 2002, Keith Garner, a prisoner confined at the prison, bluntly told a judge that the conditions at the prison were "like being in a tomb." [...]

Prisoners are often dumped in supermaxes for petty, non-violent offenses, for being a suspected gang member even if they have not been accused of any misconduct, if serving a long prison sentence, or are mentally ill, or simply to relieve prison overcrowding. A disproportionate number of the prisoners in supermaxes are black and Latino. The lawsuits have documented a long litany of abuses that include: the misuse of the restraints, punitive shackling, the use of electro shock weapons, and pepper spray, random strip searches, confinement to prolonged isolation in a tiny cell with lights on for 24 hours, few or no books, minimal recreation and exercise, and denial of psychological treatment and counseling.

These abuses are eerily similar to those inflicted on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Many of those prisoners that were subjected to the inhumane torture had not committed any terrorist acts, or were members of militias fighting against American forces. Many of the prisoners in America's supermaxes also can be held indefinitely as the Iraqi prisoners were. There are virtually no uniform standards, or guidelines that spell out when and under what circumstances a prisoner is no longer considered a behavior threat and can be returned to a regular prison. The warden generally makes that decision, and it's a decision that's fraught with whim, capriciousness and more often than not, racial bias.

If this treatment's good enough for Americans then what's the big deal about Abu Ghraib?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2004 11:49 AM