Sexual Abuse In U.S. Federal Women's Prisons

The following is part of an article by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

On Tuesday, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee held a hearing on its investigation into the disturbing raft of sexual abuse against women at facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In his opening statement, the chair, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said the BOP “is failing systemically to prevent, detect and address sexual abuse of prisoners by its own employees.”

The findings are the result of an eight-month investigation. According to the subcommittee, over the past decade Bureau of Prisons employees sexually abused incarcerated women in at least 19 of the 29 federal facilities — about two-thirds — where women have been held. Investigators found at least 134 cases to be substantiated, but Ossoff added a caveat.

“Given the fear of retaliation by survivors of sexual abuse; the apparent apathy by senior BOP officials at the facility, regional office and headquarters levels; and severe shortcomings in the investigative practices implemented by BOP’s Office of Internal Affairs and the Department of Justice inspector general, I suspect the extent of abuse is significantly wider.” 

Here are some of the other key findings in the investigative report:

• The BOP has failed to prevent, detect and stop recurring sexual abuse in at least four federal facilities — including abuse by senior prison officials. (For example, at FCI Dublin, a federal prison in California, both the warden and the chaplain were among several employees who were found to have sexually abused incarcerated women.)
• The BOP has failed to effectively implement the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law meant to establish better standards and oversight to prevent sexual abuse in federal prisons — whether committed by incarcerated people or prison officials. (Just last week, the officer at FCI Dublin whose job was to ensure the prison complied with PREA was convicted of sexually abusing incarcerated women.) 
• The failures have been systemic. Prisons were able to pass mandatory PREA audits during a time when officials there said there was a “culture of abuse” in the facilities. 
• The BOP has a backlog of about 8,000 internal affairs cases that has built up over more than five years, including hundreds of sexual abuse allegations against staff that haven’t been investigated.

Jails, Prisons, Detention - Sitting Ducks For Coronavirus

(The image on the right is from change.org.)

Maybe it's because I spent most of my working life in various aspects of law enforcement, but I have been thinking about this since it became obvious that we are in a pandemic with the Coronavirus. While the media is obsessed with what people must do to protect themselves, I have heard very little about what is being done to protect the people that society has locked up.

The United States has more people locked up in our prisons and jails than any other country in the world, and it is our responsibility to take care of those people -- including protecting them from a dangerous virus. And the Trump administration has added to this problem by keeping thousands of people in detention (undocumented immigrants) -- people whose only "crime" was to come to this country to better take care of their families.

Adding to the problem is the fact that most prisons, jails, and detention facilities are overcrowded. There is simply no way to initiate "social distancing" in these facilities. That means when the virus enters a facility, it will spread quickly -- endangering both inmates and employees.

Some facilities have started to limit the people who can enter a facility -- like family or friends visiting. But you also have attorneys (and denying them would raise constitutional questions). You also have many employees entering every day, and even if without symptoms, they could be carrying the virus in to the facility.

Some of you may not care about this population, saying they are just criminals. That's a mean and short-sighted view. While the people broke a criminal law (except for the undocumented immigrants), many of them will be rehabilitated, and spend the rest of their lives as hard-working and tax-paying citizens. We must give them that chance. They were locked up to be punished (and I have no problem with that), but they were not locked up to be killed.

The system may need to consider some rather extreme measures -- like paroling all non-violent offenders. That would allow some "social distancing" for the violent offenders we shouldn't parole. We should also beef up the medical care provided in the facilities (some of which are already sub-par). And it is time to close the detention facilities holding undocumented immigrants, and return to previous immigration policy.

How we treat those we lock up says a lot about what kind of country and people we are. We already look bad because we lock up so many more people than any other country. Do we want to make it worse by unnecessarily killing them? I hope not.

Romney Is Wrong - U.S. Engages In "Mass Incarceration"

 The other day, Hillary Clinton gave a speech calling for a fairer justice system and an end to "mass incarcerations" in the United States. It was a good speech, and I was happy to finally see an American politician addressing the failures of our criminal justice system.

But making our system fairer and ending the mass incarcerations is not going to be an easy thing to accomplish. Almost immediately, failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke up against Clinton's idea. He said:

We don’t have mass incarcerations in America. Individuals are brought before tribunals, and they have counsel. They’re given certain rights. Are we not going to lock people up who commit crimes?

Romney is either a liar or an idiot, but either way he is wrong. Any honest person that looks at the statistics will be able to see that (see charts below). The United States has by far the largest prison population rate per 100,000 citizens of any country in the world. And it has the largest number of people in prison -- nearly 2.5 million people. No other country is close. China (with a much larger population) is the closest, with about 1.6 million prisoners. The truth is that the United States has about 5% of the world's population, but has 25% of the world's total prison population. That seems to me to be the definition of mass incarceration.

And no Mitt, neither Hillary Clinton nor anyone else is suggesting that we stop locking up criminals -- just that we limit those incarcerations to the criminals that need to be locked up to protect the public. All other countries lock up their criminals. Why do they not have a prison to population rate as high as ours? Are Americans more dishonest or criminal-minded than people in other countries? Of course not.

The sad fact is that while other countries lock up their criminals, the United States decided that was not enough. We decided to use our prisons to solve our social problems. The mass incarceration started with President Nixon's "war on drugs" in 1971. That has been an abysmal failure, but it has been continued by every president since then. They have all failed to realize that drug abuse is a social and medical problem -- not a criminal problem. And while the "war on drugs" has not reduced drug availability, it has filled our state and federal prisons (mostly with low-level and non-violent drug offenders).

That was bad enough, but then the federal government and many states passed new sentencing guidelines that gave judges no leeway in sentencing and vastly increased the length of those sentences. This also had an effect on our prison population -- causing it to balloon (again with many low-level and non-violent offenders).

We like to claim we are a free and democratic country that supports human rights -- but our prison population shows something else. It makes us look like a police state. And it makes us the laughingstock of the world. We need to change our criminal justice system and stop the mass incarceration -- regardless of what Mitt Romney and his right-wing buddies think. You cannot solve social and medical problems by criminalizing them -- and we were foolish to think that could be done.

(Note -- the caricature of Mitt Romney above is by DonkeyHotey.)

 (This image of prison population rates is from chartsbin.com.)

(This image of the history of U.S. prison population is from politicalblindspot.com.)

WTF ?

Free Country Or Prison State ?

This chart may shock some Americans. At least I hope it will. But it is all true -- and it is unacceptable. We are quickly turning this country into the world's largest prison state. And we are doing it because we seem to think the answer to all of society's perceived problems is just to lock more people up. We should be ashamed of turning this nation, once the world's beacon of freedom, into a country where taking freedom away is thought to be an answer to anything.

Portugal Shows How To Deal With Drugs

The United States has spent well over a trillion dollars in waging a "war on drugs", and we have filled our prisons with mostly non-violent drug offenders. In fact, we have put so many people in prison for drugs that we now lead the world in both the number of prisoners and the number incarcerated per capita our population. No other country, not even those considered to be police states with no citizen rights, even comes close to having as many people incarcerated as the U.S. does.

And it hasn't worked at all. In spite of all the money spent and people locked up, drugs are still easily available to anyone who wants them and the number of users has not fallen significantly. Our "war on drugs" has been a spectacular failure by any measure. Unfortunately, most citizens and elected officials in this country continue to believe there is only one way to deal with the drug problem -- through the criminal justice system, believing that after 40 years of abject failure the system will somehow magically begin to work. Well, it won't!

But there is another way, a way that actually does work -- and one European country has shown us how to do it. Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs. And contrary to popular belief in this country, it did not result in a new epidemic of drug addicts -- just the opposite. In that 10 year period they have been able to cut the number of "problematic" users in half (intravenous users and those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs).

How have they done this? They have done it by honestly educating the public and by providing treatment for those drug users. And they have done this while spending less money -- because education and treatment are much less expensive than incarceration.

All Portugal did was recognize that drug use is a medical and social problem -- not a legal problem. So they stopped treating it like a legal problem. Isn't it time that we learned from Portugal's success (and our own miserable failure), and did the same thing?

A Terrible Idea

Prisons for profit may be one of the worst ideas that conservatives have come up with. Right-wingers would like to think that the private sector can always do everything better than the government. That is simply not true, and prisons are one area where government does much better. As the picture above implies, when you build a private for-profit prison you must fill it with prisoners (so the private owners can maximize their profit -- which can easily lead to people being sent to prison, when they could have been dealt with in a less restrictive and more effective way.

Private prisons are also just lawsuits waiting to happen (which the government would be liable for, since they send the prisoners there and pay for their keep). They pay their guards less, and therefore get an inferior quality employee (who is probably not properly trained, since training costs money). The owners also have the desire to cut corners on food, medical care, and other things to squeeze out a little bit more profit -- most of which could easily result in other lawsuits, since the Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners have a right to decent food, good medical care, and proper shelter.

The government sends people to prison, and that means the government is responsible for those people while they are in custody. Putting them in the care of a for-profit penal institution is just asking for trouble (which will surely come). And in the long run, it will be more expensive.

World's Largest Prison State

Americans like to tout their "freedom" and talk  about other countries being "police states", but the truth is that the United States imprisons more of its own population than any other nation (both in the number of those imprisoned and the per capita number of prisoners). In short, we are the world's biggest police state (or prison state, if you prefer that term).

The only way this could possibly be justified is to believe that a larger percentage of the U.S. population are criminals. Do you believe that? I don't. I don't think Americans are any more prone to criminal behavior than the residents of any other country.

We do, however, have a government that thinks it can solve social problems by criminalizing behavior that those in power don't approve of -- even though that behavior might not hurt anyone. Is this the action of a "free" country?

A Second Massive Failure

In 1971, the United States declared a war on drugs. In the 40 years since that time, well over $1 trillion has been spent and the prison population has ballooned over 800% (causing massive new spending to build new prisons and take care of the ever-growing prison population). It has gotten to the point that the United States now has the largest prison population in the world -- both in absolute numbers and in prisoners as a percentage of the population. We now jail more people than countries known for having a police state.

And what do we get for all this spending and incarceration? Nothing. The so-called "war on drugs" hasn't reduced drug use in this country or impeded the flow of drugs into the country. It has been a massive and total failure -- and yet our government continues it as though something were being accomplished.

We should have learned a lesson the first time this country tried Prohibition and outlawed the production, possession and use of alcohol. It was also a failure. All it did was to create a new black market that funneled millions of dollars into organized crime (and creating fighting and violence over that black market). That prohibition was repealed because people realized that the better path was to regulate, alcohol and tax it, and set up rehabilitation centers for those who developed an addiction (alcoholism).

But we didn't learn from that failed attempt at Prohibition of a drug, and now we have recreated the same conditions -- with a new black market, crime cartels, and violence over who will control that black market. Drug possession and use should never have been criminalized. It is much more a medical problem than a criminal one. And it can be handled much more effectively by education, regulation, taxation, and rehabilitation.

You cannot solve a social and medical problem by criminalizing it. When will we finally realize that, and repeal this second failed attempt at Prohibition?

WTF Is Wrong With Americans ?

I have nothing to add. "Silhouette Man" laid it out very well.

Law & Order: Good Politics, Bad Policy

As recently as 1980, the United States had less than 500,000 people incarcerated in prisons nationwide. That may sound like a large number, but we are a large country and it is in line with the prison populations per capita of other nations. But since then, our prison population has grown much faster than our population did. By 2006, we had 2.2 million people incarcerated (and that number has just grown larger in the last six years). That is far more than any other country in the world.

Some of you may be thinking that our prison population is so large because we have a large civilian population, but that's not the case. Other large population countries have far fewer people in prison. Our prison population is 153% more than Russia's, 505% higher than Brazil's, 550% higher than India, and 2000% higher than Nigeria, Bangladesh, or Indonesia.

Even when the prison population is considered on a per capita rate, we have a much higher rate of incarceration than any other country. In 2006, the United States was incarcerating about 738 people for every 100,000 people in this country. Now that rate has gone even higher -- 760 prisoners for every 100,000 people. To show you how out of whack this is, here are the incarceration rates of the 15 countries with the highest incarceration rates (after the U.S.):

1. Russia...............607
2. Cuba...............487
3. Ukraine...............360
4. Singapore...............350
5. Botswana...............339
6. South Africa...............335
7. Taiwan...............259
8. Thailand...............257
9. United Arab Emirates...............250
10. Poland...............228
11. Israel...............209
12. Libya...............207
13. Iran...............206
14. Mexico...............196
15. Brazil...............191

Even China, with its autocratic government only has a rate of 118 prisoners per 100,000 people. The truth is that out incarceration rate is way out of whack. It should be in the range of other developed nations like Great Britain (145), Spain (145), Australia (126), Canada (107), Italy (102), Germany (95), France (88), Ireland (78), Sweden (78), and Japan (62).

Why does the United States incarcerate a so much larger percentage of its population than any other country does? Are the citizens of the United States so much much lawless than the people of other countries? Of course not. People are the same everywhere. The difference is in attitude and policy.

One of the main causes is the drug war -- a failed policy that has incarcerated millions of non-violent people without affecting the use or availability of drugs. Instead of incarcerating drug users (which in many cases just gives them a criminal record and training in other criminal behaviors), we could be attacking the problem fair less expensively with education and rehabilitation. This would save both lives and money. We should also consider legalizing some (or all) drugs and taxing them -- at least marijuana.

The other main cause of our ballooning prison population is the politics of "law and order". It is very popular for politicians of both political parties to campaign on being tough on crime, and once they are in office they pass laws making more things criminal and instituting longer sentences for all crimes (even non-violent crimes). This works great to get votes (since much of the general public likes the sound of it, but doesn't consider the outcomes).

This push for more crimes and harsher sentences has resulted in our prisons being overcrowded even though we have built more and more of them. We now have 7.1 million Americans under some kind of correctional supervision (prison, jail, parole, probation, etc.). And it is tearing a big hole in both federal and state budgets as we incarcerate more and more people. Even during the current economic mess, most states are increasing spending on prisons while cutting spending on education and help for honest and hurting American citizens.

The criminal justice system in the United States is badly broken, and it is time we fixed it. And it cannot be fixed with more "law and order". We must adjust our attitudes and policies. We must put more effort into prevention and rehabilitation, and we must stop the failed war on drugs. We must stop trying to legislate morality or micromanage the lives of our citizens. We must stop trying to use the law to solve our social problems.

Locking people up and throwing away the key may make some people feel better, but it is no solution to America's problems. It just creates more problems.

Who Should Count Prisoners In Census ?

There is a quirk in the census numbers that needs to be fixed. It seems that many rural counties, both here in Texas and across the nation, are getting credit for thousands of prisoners that actually don't live in the county. They are prisoners in state prisons and state jails. And in a state like Texas, that can be a significant number of miscounted persons.

I say miscounted because the inmates of state prisons and state jails are counted as residents of the county in which their prison unit is located. Here in Texas, that amounts to over 155,000 people. Since most prisons are located in rural counties away from urban areas, that means those rural counties get a population bump in the census by counting those prisoners.

The problem is that nearly all of those prisoners will never live in the county in which they are counted as residing. They will return to their original county of residence when they are released, and the huge majority of them will be released back to urban areas.

So what's the problem with that? The problem is that things like federal funds (and state funds) are distributed according to the census population -- things like social service money and law enforcement funds. The urban counties are getting short-changed by this. They are the counties that will have to provide social services to the released prisoners, and they are the counties that will have to deal with the prisoners if they break the law again.

But the money is going to rural counties who will never have to deal with these prisoners after their release. This miscount also pads the population roles of rural counties when it comes to things like redistricting. The rural counties get more representation than they deserve and the urban counties get short-changed by getting less representation than they deserve.

This is not a problem to fix, but it will require a change in state law. A new law needs to be passed that says prisoners will be counted in the county in which they are convicted. The prison system has these records and could easily provide the information to the U.S. Census workers.

The current system is unfair. The prisoners should be counted in their county of conviction, because that is highly likely where they will be released to, and where the money to help them should be distributed. Continuing the current system is just unfair.

The Prison Problem In America

Here in America, according to Senator James Webb (D-Virginia), "Either we're the most evil people on earth or we're doing something wrong." He's talking about our prison system. The United States doesn't just lock up its dangerous criminals, but also its societal problems like the mentally ill and those addicted to drugs. Consider the following facts:

* We have only 5% of the world's population, but house 25% of the world's prisoners.

* We incarcerate 756 out of every 100,000 people -- five times the world average.

* One in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, in jail or on supervised release.

* We spend $70 billion per year on corrections -- a rise of 40% in the last twenty years.

* About 16% of adult inmates are mentally ill (and the rate is higher in juvenile institutions).

* About 60% of those serving a drug sentence have no history of violence.

* About 80% of drug arrests are for possession -- not sales.

* African-Americans make up 14% of drug-users, but 56% of drug inmates.

Any one of the above statistics would show our system has a problem, but taken together they show a system in crises. Dahlia Lithwick of Newsweek puts it well, when she says, "If Americans actually have the conversation about our disastrous prison policies, we'll understand the trends all move in very dangerous directions: we lock up more people, for less violent crime, at ever greater expense, breeding more dangerous criminals who often come out unemployable, violent and isolated."

Fortunately Senator Webb sees the truth. He is proposing an 18 month review of our prison system with an eye toward finding solutions to the problems above. He wants to improve treatment for the mentally ill, reform our drug laws, improve and establish re-entry programs for ex-offenders, decrease prison violence, reduce overall incarceration rates and save our prison beds for truly dangerous criminals and gang leaders.

Now all the senator has to do is convince the other members of Congress to go along with his 18 month review. That is the first step to any reform. Once this is done, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that reforms are necessary.

The embarrassing fact is that while we claim to be a free nation, we lock up more of our citizens than any of the world's dictators. Are Americans more prone to breaking the law than the citizens of other countries? Are we truly evil? Nonsense! Americans are neither better nor worse than the people of any other country.

We have more prisoners locked up than anyone else, because our leaders have chosen to use criminal law to deal with our societal problems. Most other civilized nations treat their mentally ill persons rather than dumping them on the criminal justice system. If they must be locked up, for their own safety or the safety of others, it is in a psychiatric institution where they can still receive treatment.

The simple use or possession of drugs should also not be dealt with as a crime. It is a medical problem and treatment is the only real solution. The user is only hurting himself -- not others, and in a free country that should not be a crime. If the user does go on to commit a crime (such as theft or burglary) then there are already laws on the books to deal with that. There is no compelling societal need to turn recreational drug users into criminals.

Most recreational drug users, especially of marijuana, hold down full-time jobs, pay taxes and support families. Is it really better to have other taxpayers pay for their incarceration, and their family's loss of a breadwinner? Prohibition failed the first time we tried it, and this modern prohibition of drugs has been an even more miserable failure.

Prisons are a necessary part of a civilized country, but they should be reserved for violent criminals and career criminals -- people who have proven they cannot be trusted with the safety or property of others. Locking up drug users, the mentally ill, and first-time non-violent offenders is antithetical to the ideals of a free country.

California Must Release Thousands Of Prisoners

It looks like California has run afoul of federal courts. The state is housing over 160,000 prisoners in facilities that were built to house only half that many. The overcrowding is so bad that prisoners are dying because they cannot receive adequate care.

The fact is that whether any state holds 10 prisoners or 10 million prisoners in a state facility, that state is required to provide each of those prisoners with a minimum level of decent food, shelter and medical care. The federal courts have long held that failure to do this is a violation of the United States Constitution's ban of cruel and unusual punishment.

Now a three-member panel of federal judges is ordering California to release tens of thousands of prisoners. The panel agreed with lawyers for the inmates that "crowding is the cause" of the constitutional violations, and said, "The evidence is compelling that there is no relief other than a prisoner release order that will remedy the unconstitutional prison conditions."

The judges are giving California two to three years to release between 40,000 to 60,000 prisoners, or they will order the release. The judges didn't tell California how to do this -- just that it has to be done. Building new prisons is out of the question, since California is already running a deficit of several billion dollars. The deficit would also seem to rule out paying the counties to house the extra prisoners.

That leaves increasing the amount of "good time" a prisoner can earn, or changing the rules of parole so prisoners are not revoked for minor offenses. These solutions would put violent offenders on the street faster, and make it harder to revoke them when they mess up their parole. These would not seem to be good solutions either.

But there is another solution -- one not considered by the courts or the state (yet). They could change their drug laws, and release all non-violent drug offenders who are incarcerated for possession only. The "war on drugs" has been a miserable failure. It has not curbed drug use, but it has filled our prisons with non-violent persons who could be better handled with treatment programs.

It may make politicians and police feel good to incarcerate those possessing small amounts of drugs for personal use, but it is not solving this countries drug problem. The California overcrowding case is the perfect opportunity to change the way we deal with the problem.

Possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use should be treated as a medical problem -- not a criminal one.