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7.58 a.m. ET (1258 GMT) December 18, 1998
By Farah Mihlar
COLOMBO � A top United Nations official Friday called for stronger
monitoring to control widespread "sexual misconduct" in women's prisons in the
United States.
"We concluded that there has been widespread sexual misconduct in U.S prisons,
but there is a diversity � some are dealing with it better than others," said
Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women.
"We had a whole host of recommendations, primarily that there should be
external monitoring of misconduct in the prisons and that it shouldn't be only the
warden that decides," she told Reuters in an interview.
Coomaraswamy visited the U.S in June to investigate human rights violations in
womens' prisons there.
Her findings will be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in March
1999.
She said contrary to U.N. regulations on prisoners the United States allows men
to guard female prisons leading to widescale abuses.
"The U.S has its own interpretation of equality in their statute which allows men to
guard women and women can guard men so you have a situation where male
guards are running in and out of female prisons," Coomaraswamy said.
She said rape and assault was high in most U.S prisons, but added that guards
using female prisoners for sexual contractual favors and the lack of privacy were
also big problems.
Coomaraswamy said some prisons had taken steps to deal with the problem but
more needed to be done.
"Georgia has sexual misconduct but has set up a very strong scheme to deal with
it. In California and Michigan nothing has been done and the issue is very
prevalent," she said.
Coomaraswamy also called for a review of U.S. drug laws, which she said were
dragging more women to prison.
"Largest number of women being incarcerated are black because of draconian
laws to do with drugs. There is a massive flow in the number of women entering
prison, specially black."
"All these women have families and children and just because the court puts them
in prison for being the wife of a drug dealer many of them lose their children,"
Coomaraswamy added.
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