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U.S. Prisons: Horror behind bars The cells measure 2.3 by 3.3 meters and are designed so that inmates cannot see
each other. They remain in this small space for 23 hours of the day and during the
hour of exercise they are tied up in shackles. Food is given to them through the
small opening in the door of their cell. This describes Pelican Bay State Prison in
California, one of the most notorious in the United States for its cruelty.
U.S. prisons have become concentration camps, according to experts. The majority
of U.S. states spend more money building prisons than schools. California has one
of the largest prison systems in the world, and public funds allocated to
maintaining the prison system are greater than what goes to education. Many more
penitentiaries than schools have been built, a surprising reality, not only for its
local repercussions, but also for its social significance in the most powerful
nation in the world.
The United States has the unfortunate record of being the country with the
largest prison population in the world, two million. The number of inmates
increases at an alarming rate of 50% every 10 years.
With 5% of the global population, it harbors 25% of the prisoners reported
worldwide. The U.S. Justice Department asserts that there are 690 prisoners for
every 100,000 inhabitants, much higher than the European average of less than 100
inmates.
Lucrative business
The privatization of prisons in the United States has become a lucrative
business, something truly incredible. "The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), as this
private industry is called, is the biggest beneficiary of penal policy, based on
repression and punishment more than reintegration and education," journalist Marta
Caravantes commented.
Comparative studies indicate that private prisons register costs of 10- 15% less
than those of public institutions, and that cost efficiency is reflected in the
lower quality of inmates' food and medical services, lower salaries and other
conditions, all in the name of profit.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution legalizes these practices by
adopting the exception: slavery and forced labor are not prohibited from being
applied "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted."
With $7 billion USD in new investments every year, the prison industry's annual
budget exceeds $35 billion USD and has more than a half million workers, making it
the second largest employer in the United States after General Motors.
Caravantes considers the private correctional facilities, which employ the
cheapest labor on the whole continent, without social protection, a prosperous
business extending through 27 states and including 120 penitentiaries. Prisoners
package products for Microsoft, Starbucks and Jansport and also provide labor for
other companies.
"Behind the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex are Wall Street firms and
banks that primarily supply the funds for the construction of private prisons,"
denounces Monica Moorehead, coordinator of the Millions for Mumia Abu-Jamal, an
African-American freedom fighter who has been battling his death sentence for over
16 years. Abu-Jamal is one of the best-known prisoners in the world for his
restless struggle against the injustices of the U.S. system.
Some believe that an effort is under way to export private prisons to Latin
American and Europe. The largest of the U.S. prison companies, Corrections
Corporation of America, is operating in England and some companies want to invest
in Mexico, seeking greater profits from prisoners outside their national territory.
Hispanics and African-Americans: disproportionate sentences
Twenty-five U.S. states continue allowing the execution of mentally retarded
prisoners, denounced by the organization Human Rights Watch. U.S. prisons are
currently being transformed into new concentration camps to imprison the homeless,
unemployed, intoxicated, mentally ill and other minorities who are cannon fodder in
the current U.S. justice system, according to specialist Jerome G. Miller, an
expert on the prison system and social reintegration techniques, cited in Sally
Burch's article, published on the Internet.
More than 60% of the inmates belong to racial minorities and ethnic groups.
African-Americans account for 12% of the total population but fill half the prisons
of the United States and receive disproportionate sentences. In New York, one out
of every three young black men is imprisoned or on parole.
Estimates on the current rate of African-American imprisonment indicate that the
majority of men between 18 and 49 years of age will be incarcerated within a
decade. In some cities, one third of young African-American men are awaiting trial
or already imprisoned.
The treatment of Native Americans involves the same violations of human rights.
The most prominent case is that of Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for
over 20 years after an extremely irregular trial.
The International Action Center of New York has labeled the U.S. prison system
the institution which legalizes racist oppression and apartheid, a new type of
segregation reserved for the lowest and most marginalized classes.
Hispanics and African-Americans are victims of this cruel prison policy.,
Considered a social problem, they are locked up to prevent them from bothering
whites of the comfortable class.
The five Cubans, convicted unjustly last year in an illegal trial and given
excessive sentences, are part of this racist policy. These men, whose mission was
to protect Cuba from criminal actions perpetrated by counterrevolutionary groups
based in Miami, are currently imprisoned throughout the United States, the country
that has massacred the Afgan people under the justification of fighting terrorism.
New mental asylums
Ripping out eyes and other hair-raising self-mutilations by disturbed
prisoners are not just scenes from U.S. cinema, where prison dramas have become
recurring themes.
Journalist Sasha Abramsky denounced the punishments meted out by the prison
guards in an article published in American Prospect magazine, in which she asserts
that maximum security prisons have become the technological equivalent of the
snakes' nest.
Horrified by the violence characterizing U.S. prisons, psychiatrist Terry
Kupers, author of the book Prison Madness, considers these centers the
largest mental asylums in the United States, due to the doubling of the number of
patients interned in the state institution specialized in dementia, reports Inter
Press Service.
The treatment received by U.S. prisoners is directed at degrading human beings
instead of improving their mental state. Kupers declared how in solitary
confinement cells, he was struck by the level of psychosis in prisoners, who scream
profanities, injure themselves and are covered in excrement.
The weakening of the U.S mental health system in recent decades, which reduced
psychiatric wards to a minimum, is one of the reasons why prisons are full of
mentally ill people, according to a study published by the British magazine The
Lancet. The federal budget approved this year does not provide a solution to
the problem.
The authors of the study, psychiatrist Seena Fazel of Oxford University and
British medical doctor John Danesh of Cambridge selected 12 industrialized
countries for their long-term study.
One of every seven inmates in the 12 developed nations, more than one million
people, suffer from psychosis or deep depression which could lead to suicidal
behavior. In addition, one in two men and one in five women suffer from personality
disorders, the experts confirmed.
One year ago, another denunciation, made by Human Rights Watch, called for U.S.
legislation prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, currently
practiced in 25 states, according to that organization. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme
Court declared that the execution of mentally retarded people was constitutional.
At that moment only two of the 50 states prohibited it, although the number in
favor of eliminating the practice has risen to 13.
Many sick people on death row remain in legal limbo, wondering what their
destiny will be.
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Granma International
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