US IN DOCK FOR PRISON CRUELTY

Torture and sexual violence against prisoners is widespread in jails across
the United States, according to a report published today, which also accuses
the country of wholesale human rights abuses.

The two-year study by Amnesty International, its first comprehensive
analysis of north America, accuses the US of failing in its duty to provide
a moral lead to the rest of the free world.

"Across the USA, thousands are victims of human rights violations," said
Pierre Sane, Amnesty's international secretary-general.

"Too often, human rights in the USA are a tale of two nations. Rich and
poor, white and black, male and female."

In particular, Amnesty concentrated on the penal system, where, it claims,
the breakdown in basic human rights has led to atrocities more commonly
associated with authoritarian third world regimes.

The massive increase in the prison population - it has trebled to 1.7
million in the past 18 years - has put the system under tremendous strain,
resulting in a shift "away from rehabilitation towards... incapacitation and
punishment".

Overcrowding and a lack of central control have also provided prison staff
with opportunities to exploit inmates, especially women.

The report cites two recent examples: the Department of Justice sued Arizona
and Michigan states for failing to protect women from sexual assaults and
"prurient viewing during dressing, showering and use of toilet facilities".

And earlier this year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons paid A3300,000 to
settle a lawsuit brought by three women who claimed they had been beaten,
raped and sold by guards for sex with male inmates at a federal prison in
California.

The indiscriminate use of leg irons, restraint poles, restraining chairs,
and electro-shock weapons, including stun belts, stun shields and stun guns,
is also alleged to be common.

There were two other major areas where Amnesty said it found persistent
abuses: brutality by the police and the "arbitrary, unfair and racist" use
of the death penalty.

The report, Rights For All, claims it has evidence that police officers
regularly beat and shoot suspects who are not resisting arrest, and that
there is widespread misuse of batons and chemical sprays.

The victims are mostly from ethnic minority backgrounds, and the officers,
who are encouraged to be aggressive, nearly always seem to get away without
punishment, even when charges are brought against them.

At a briefing in London, Piers Bannister, one of the researchers who
compiled the 153-page report, said that racial discrimination within the
police was virulent.

"It makes a mockery of the slogan which many of them use, 'To Protect and
Serve'," he said.

Mr Bannister described how an unarmed African American, William J.
Whitfield, was shot dead in a New York supermarket on Christmas Day last
year when an officer mistook the keys he was carrying for a gun.

After the policeman was cleared, it emerged that he had been involved with
eight prior shootings, yet had not been placed on a monitoring programme.
Amnesty says that black officers have complained of institutionalised
discrimination, pointing out that 23 black undercover detectives have been
shot by their colleagues after being mistaken for suspects.

Though Amnesty has long railed against America's use of the death penalty,
it claims that there has been another worrying development.

The US has started to execute juvenile offenders, in clear breach of article
six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. America was
one of only two countries to opt out of signing this provision of the
treaty, which covers the execution of minors.

Two men were killed by lethal injection in Texas this year, even though they
were 17 when they committed their offences, and another 65 juveniles are on
death row across the country.

"Such executions are rare worldwide," the report says. "Iran, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only other countries known to have
executed juvenile offenders since 1990."

Amnesty makes a series of recommendations. These include provision of extra
funding for the Justice Department so that it can properly implement the
Police Accountability Act and provisions of the Violent Crime Control and
Law Enforcement Act.

"The USA has little room for complacency in terms of human rights, both in
terms of some sectors of US society, and of the country's role in the
international arena," said Mr Sane.

Checked-by: Don Beck