WHO GUARDS THE GUARDS?

A new report from the California Department of Corrections about Corcoran
State Prison in the San Joaquin Vally hardly instills confidence that
allegations of sometimes shocking brutality by prison guards in California
prisons were the product of fevered imaginations. Furthermore,the report
concludes that management at Corcoran "engaged in selective coverup of
excessive force."

And what the CDC investigators uncovered at Corcoran might be only a
fraction of the cases of excessive force there. At the request of Attorney
General Dan Lungren, prison staff were not compelled to cooperate with the
investigative effort, so 80 percent of the Corcoran staff did not cooperate.

Rob Stutzman of the attorney general's office says this is because the
Department of Justice is conducting its own investigation and that penal
officers who are forced to cooperate with an internal investigation cannot
have that information used against them in a subsequent criminal case.

But the DOJ investigation has not resulted in criminal complaints at
Corcoran, so charges by critics like Cory Weinstein of California Prison
Focus in San Francisco that "the shroud was thrown over this investigation
by Dan Lungren" have a certain amount of plausibility.

After newspaper investigations, the Department of Corrections formed a task
force in November 1996 to investigate Corcoran. It found at least 13
confirmed case of coverups of the use of excessive force in incidents
ranging from staged fights between inmates to a guard slapping a prisoner in
handcuffs to a threat by a guard to kill a prisoner to the setting up a rape
of one inmate by another.

In some instances, prison officers who were themselves the focus of
accusations or who were "critical witnesses to alleged misconduct" carried
out investigations themselves and found nothing that required discipline.

The problem of "who shall guard the guards" has troubled political theorists
since the time of the ancient Greeks.

It is especially difficult in prisons, where the guards must sometimes
control the behavior of violent people, some of whom believe they have
nothing left to lose.

But the difficulty of the task does not excuse the initiation of violence by
those who are supposed to represent the forces of civilization. When
authorities cover up such excesses, it compounds the degradation of
civilized values.

The CDC task force has performed a service in documenting misconduct and
coverups at Corcoran. Allowing media reporters more access to prisoners
would provide yet another check on prison guard misconduct, but the
corrections department limited such access a couple of years ago. Despite
complaints and hearings, that policy has not been changed. It should be.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett