INMATE ABUSE CLOSER TO HOME THAN ABU GHRAIB

We Ignore The Tensions, Brutality And Racism In America'S Own Prisons

Are Americans finally seeing the connections -- that the incidents of
U.S. soldiers beating and humiliating detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison have direct parallels in patterns of inmate abuse reported in
our own state and local prison systems?

For some of us, the answer is yes. The Abu Ghraib news has triggered
the biggest wave of interest in U.S. penal conditions in many years,
says Kara Gotsch, spokesperson and trend-watcher for the American
Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

Careful media watchers can hardly miss the direct Iraqi-U.S. penal
connections, highlighted by The New York Times' Fox Butterfield, The
Washington Post's David Finkel and others.

Lane McCotter, selected by Attorney General John Ashcroft to head a
team of Americans to reopen Iraq's prisons, was forced in 1997 to
resign as director of Utah's prisons after a case in which a mentally
ill inmate died after guards left him shackled naked to a restraining
chair for 16 hours. McCotter is the official who suggested that Abu
Ghraib be used as the main U.S. prison in Iraq, and directed training
of the guards there.

Charles Graner, called the ringleader of the guards who assaulted and
abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, was formerly a guard at State
Correctional Institution -- in southwestern Pennsylvania. An inmate
accused Graner of slipping a razor blade into his food, then joining
with other guards in punching, kicking and slamming him to the floor.
When the inmate yelled "Stop, stop," one of the guards said: "Shut up
. before we kill you."

Among other allegations made at the same facility: Guards beat
prisoners, spit in their food and wrote "KKK" in one beaten prisoner's
blood.

Are such incidents highly isolated in American prisons? Not likely.
More than 40 state prison systems have been under court order in
recent decades to remedy conditions of overcrowding, poor food or lack
of care, according to Marc Mauer of the Washington-based Sentencing
Project.

During much of the time George W. Bush was governor of Texas, state
prisons there were under a federal consent decree. U.S. District Judge
William Wayne Justice wrote in a 1999 opinion: "Many inmates credibly
testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the
prison system."

Mauer cautions that while there have been "horrendous abuses" in
American prisons, torture-like practices are far from the norm. The
character of a prison's leadership is critical; even an overcrowded
prison that sets clear rules and treats prisoners with respect can
avoid abusive situations.

But there's an inherent problem, Mauer insists: "Prison is a
degrading, humiliating, negative experience. Prisons keep people in
cages against their will. Prisons are inherently tension-laden places."

And then factor in the pressures of rising inmate numbers and budgets.
The United States now incarcerates a stunning 2.1 million people, one
of every 143 residents.

Facilities, notes the ACLU's Gotsch, are increasingly overcrowded,
staffs stretched to the limit, training spotty, recruitment tough.
Young guard recruits, just out of high school, may be paid as little
as $16,000 to $18,000 a year while working in violent and hostile
environments.

Then there's race. In 2002, 10 percent of black males age 20 to 39
(prime developmental and production years) were in prison, but only
2.4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males the same
age.

Increasingly, prisons aren't close to inmates' homes and relatives,
but in distant rural areas. Prisons are a big growth industry in rural
America -- about 350 new ones since 1980, representing more than half
of all new prison construction.

So what do we get? Overwhelmingly white, rural guards using
state-sanctioned lethal force to imprison a heavily black inmate
population. The result is a huge cultural chasm. And as it's been
through American history, whites are in control -- as they were during
our long national history with slavery, as they were from the 1870s to
the 1920s, when lynchings of African Americans were widely tolerated
in the Deep South and some Northern states too.

As for Muslim inmates, American guards rubbing pork on their dishes
didn't just occur in Abu Ghraib; it has happened in U.S. prisons too.

It's clear we Americans have a huge problem on our hands. We passed
and maintain harsh sentencing policies that reach far beyond the truly
dangerous criminals who clearly need to be kept locked up. We
consistently ignore the tensions, the brutality, the racism engendered
in our prisons. We fail to pursue alternatives to incarceration very
seriously. No national leaders step forward with a clear, effective
reform strategy.

Abu Ghraib blew the whistle on us -- the whole world knows what can
happen in an American-run prison. But are we listening ourselves? Will
we change?