UN OFFICIAL SEEKS REFORMS IN US PRISONS

COLOMBO, Dec 18 (Reuters) - A top United Nations official on 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 favours 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 prevalant," 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.

Checked-by: Richard Lake