And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Activist Mailing List - http://get.to/activist Source : Human Rights Watch Annual Report 1999 URL: http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/usa/index.html UNITED STATES Human Rights Developments (continued) At the end of 1997, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting conditions in two super-maximum security prisons in the state of Indiana. Although excessive use of physical force in these facilities had diminished in recent years, we still found excessive isolation, controls, and restrictions that were not penologically justified, and mentally ill inmates whose conditions were exacerbated by the regime of isolation and restricted activities, as well as by the lack of appropriate mental health treatment. The Indiana Department of Corrections instituted a number of reforms that were responsive to our concerns. Most significant was the development of a special housing unit for the treatment of disruptive or dangerous mentally ill inmates that opened in June 1998. Abusive conduct by guards was reported in many prisons. The threat of such abuse was particularly acute in supermax prisons. Since Corcoran State Prison in California opened in 1988, fifty inmates, most of them unarmed, were shot by prison guards and seven were killed. In February 1998, federal authorities indicted eight Corcoran officers for deliberately pitting unarmed inmates against each other in gladiator-style fights which the guards would then break up by firing on them with rifles. In July, the state announced a new investigation into at least thirty-six serious and fatal shootings of Corcoran inmates. Guard abuse was by no means confined to California prisons. Across the country, inmates complained of instances of excessive and even clearly lawless use of force. In Pennsylvania, dozens of guards from one facility, SCI Greene, were under investigation for beatings, slamming inmates into walls, racial taunting and other mistreatment of inmates. The state Department of Corrections fired four guards, and twenty-one others were demoted, suspended or reprimanded. In many other facilities across the country, however, abuses went unaddressed. Overcrowded public prisons and the tight budgets of corrections agencies fueled the growth of private corrections companies: approximately 100,000 adults were confined in 142 privately operated prisons and jails nationwide. Many of these facilities operated with insufficient control and oversight from the public correctional authorities. States failed to enact laws setting appropriate standards and regulatory mechanisms for private prisons, signed weak contracts, undertook insufficient monitoring and toleratedprolonged substandard conditions. In less than a year, there were two murders and thirteen stabbings at one privately operated prison in the state of Ohio. Sexual and other abuses continued to be serious problems for women incarcerated in local jails, state and federal prisons, and INS detention centers. Women in custody faced abuses at the hands of prison guards, most of whom are men, who subjected the women to verbal harassment, unwarranted visual surveillance, abusive pat frisks and sexual assault. Fifteen states did not have criminal laws prohibiting custodial sexual misconduct by guards, and Human Rights Watch found that in most states, guards were not properly trained about their duty to refrain from sexual abuse of prisoners. The problem of abuse was compounded by the continued rapid growth of the female inmate population. As a result women were warehoused in overcrowded prisons and were often unable to access basic services such as medical care and substance abuse treatment. In Michigan, where women were plaintiffs in a civil rights suit jointly litigated by private lawyers and the Department of Justice, these women reported retaliatory behavior by guards, as described in more detail below. The retaliation ranged from verbal abuse, intimidation, and excessive and abusive pat frisks, to loss of visitation privileges and “good time” accrued toward early release. Men in prison also suffered from prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, committed by fellow inmates. Prison staff often allowed or even tacitly encouraged sexual attacks by male prisoners. Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, there were few if any preventative measures taken in most jurisdictions, while perpetrators were rarely punished adequately by prison officials. As in previous years, increasing numbers of children were incarcerated nationwide, even as the number of violent juvenile offenders fell. Research by the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) found that only 6 percent of juvenile arrests in 1992 and 1994 were for violent crimes. Between 1994 and 1995, according to OJJDP, violent crime arrests of juveniles between the ages of fifteen and seventeen fell by 2 percent; arrests of younger juveniles for violent crimes dropped by 5 percent for the same period. Despite this declining percentage of violent juvenile offenders, and in spite of the costs associated with incarceration, most states continued to incarcerate high numbers of children for nonviolent offenses. Between 1992 and 1998, at least forty states adopted legislation making it easier for children to be tried as adults, and forty-two states detained juveniles in adult jails while they awaited trial. Prompted by a 1996 Human Rights Watch report on human rights abuses in the state of Georgia, the Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded a year-long investigation of the state’s juvenile detention facilities in February 1998. The DOJ identified a “pattern of egregious conditions” that violated children’s rights, including overcrowded and unsafe conditions, physical abuse by staff and excessive use of disciplinary measures, inadequate educational, medical and mental health services. In March 1998, the state and the DOJ signed an agreement that required the state to make extensive improvements. The DOJ concluded at least two other investigations of juvenile facilities in 1998, finding violations in the county detention centers in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Greenville, South Carolina. In each of these facilities, the DOJ found evidence that staff employed excessive force against juvenile inmates. Asylum Seekers and Immigrants Implementation of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) continued to violate international human rights standards that apply specifically to asylum seekers, as well as the human rights of other immigrants, through detention in often inhumane conditions. The IIRIRA’s expedited removal proceedings, intended to process and deport individuals who enter the United States without valid documents as quickly as possible, imperiled bona fide refugees and resulted in immigrants’ being detained in increasing numbers. If an asylum seeker prevails in initial summary procedures at ports of entry, he or she is detained pending a “credible fear” interview, i.e. an interview to determine whether there is a credible fear of endangerment in the country of origin: grounds for granting asylum. Asylum seekers who have proven credible fear may be released at the discretion of district directors of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), but usually they are detained throughout the process and until asylum hearings are completed—sometimes for years. More than half of the immigrants held in INS custody during 1998, some 9,000 people, were sent to local jails to await immigration proceedings. Faced with an overwhelming, immediate demand for detention space, the agency handed over control of its detainees to local sheriffs and other jail officials without ensuring that basic international and national standards requiring humane treatment and adequate conditions were met. INS detainees—including asylum seekers—were being held in jails entirely inappropriate to their non-criminal status, where they were often mixed with accused and convicted criminal inmates and where they were sometimes subjected to physical mistreatment and inadequate conditions of confinement. Though not serving a criminal sentence or awaiting trial on criminal charges, an INS detainee’s experience in a local jail was no different from that of a local inmate. During an eighteen-month investigation into conditions and treatment at the jails used by the INS, Human Rights Watch found that INS detainees in jails were subjected to physical mistreatment, were not provided with basic medical care, were often unable to communicate with jail staff due to language barriers, and were subjected to severe restrictions on contact with families, friends, and legal representatives—when, in the minority of cases, detainees were able to obtain legal counsel. In a September report, Human Rights Watch called on the INS to end its use of jails to house immigration detainees; the jails’ punitive and rehabilitative nature are never appropriate for INS detainees who are simply awaiting immigration hearings and who are not accused or convicted of committing a crime. Asylum seekers should be detained only in exceptional circumstances and should never be sent to jails. Until the INS ends its use of jails to hold its detainees, all INS detainees should be held in separate sections in jails. Human Rights Watch also called for INS detention guidelines for jails and a humane release policy for detainees held indefinitely. The treatment of children held by the INS was also disturbing. Investigations by Human Rights Watch in three states foundthat nearly all children received little or no information about their right to be represented by an attorney in their immigration proceedings, in violation of international standards and in breach of a consent decree which binds the INS. Some unaccompanied minors were housed with juvenile offenders, locked up and made to wear prison uniforms even though they were held for administrative reasons only. Human Rights Watch continued to work with INS officials and concerned members of Congress to seek reforms. Until a series of mid-year shootings by the U.S. Border Patrol (a part of the INS), along the U.S.-Mexico border, border-crossers’ complaints of abuse continued but reports of serious physical abuses, such as shootings, beatings, and kickings, seemed to decline. Beginning in June 1998, after a Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona was shot dead, Arizona agents opened fire at border-crossers at least a half-dozen times over a three-month period, leading to one fatality in September. And along the southern California border with Mexico, Border Patrol agents shot two men fatally during shooting incidents in September. All three of the men killed by agents were reportedly holding rocks in a threatening way when agents shot them; investigations were underway at the time of this writing. Congress ordered the creation of a Citizens’ Advisory Panel (CAP) in response to reports of abuse along the border; the CAP first met in 1995. In December 1997, it made recommendations for reforms in the way the INS and other agencies receive and investigate abuse complaints, but few had been implemented as of October 1998. The CAP’s mandate has now expired. The mistreatment of migrant workers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. territory in the North Pacific Ocean, received heightened scrutiny by Congress, the administration, and human rights organizations. Companies operating in the islands mistreated thousands of laborers, primarily from China, the Philippines, and Bangladesh, who had become essentially indentured workers in garment manufacturing plants; these abuses had been allowed Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE http://shell.webbernet.net/~ishgooda/oglala/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
