Prison is designed to break ones spirit and destroy ones resolve. To do this the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality - all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.
-Nelson Mandela
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
SC. Inmate Beaten By Prison Guard
SC deputy investigated, fired after inmate beating
CAMDEN, S.C. — Authorities say a deputy has been fired after being caught on video beating a South Carolina inmate dozens of times in the legs with a baton or pipe.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said Monday that state police and the FBI are investigating whether the civil rights of inmate Charles Shelley were violated. Columbia television station WIS-TV aired the surveillance video of the beating Thursday and reported that Shelly's leg was broken and he needed stitches.
Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill said the deputy was fired. The sheriff did not give the deputy's name.
Shelley told the station he had been arrested on an outstanding warrant and other violations. WIS said the deputy reported the inmate threatened him.
CAMDEN, S.C. — Authorities say a deputy has been fired after being caught on video beating a South Carolina inmate dozens of times in the legs with a baton or pipe.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said Monday that state police and the FBI are investigating whether the civil rights of inmate Charles Shelley were violated. Columbia television station WIS-TV aired the surveillance video of the beating Thursday and reported that Shelly's leg was broken and he needed stitches.
Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill said the deputy was fired. The sheriff did not give the deputy's name.
Shelley told the station he had been arrested on an outstanding warrant and other violations. WIS said the deputy reported the inmate threatened him.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons
Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons
Four of New York’s most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal official
The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.
Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.
Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person’s physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.
Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method — in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down — for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.
The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York’s juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.
“It is New York’s fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”
Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.
Introducing Legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.
The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.
Two monitors, jointly chosen by federal and state officials, will oversee the state’s efforts to carry out the accord over the next two years, making regular progress reports to a federal judge, who must approve the agreement before it goes into effect
The state-federal accord, filed in United States District Court in Albany, echoes recommendations issued in December by a state task force, which found major shortcomings throughout the youth prison system. The task force recommended substantially expanding mental health care and replacing most residential youth prisons with smaller centers closer to communities where most young offenders and their families are from.
It Will require all youth prisons in New York to abide by the restrictions on physical restraint. She said the state also planned to hire a chief psychiatrist in the near future to oversee drug regimens and mental health counseling at all of the state’s youth prisons.
But advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up.
“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It doesn’t get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/nyregion/15juvenile.html?scp=13&sq=juveniles%20/us&st=cse
Four of New York’s most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal official
The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.
Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.
Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person’s physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.
Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method — in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down — for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.
The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York’s juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.
“It is New York’s fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”
Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.
Introducing Legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.
The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.
Two monitors, jointly chosen by federal and state officials, will oversee the state’s efforts to carry out the accord over the next two years, making regular progress reports to a federal judge, who must approve the agreement before it goes into effect
The state-federal accord, filed in United States District Court in Albany, echoes recommendations issued in December by a state task force, which found major shortcomings throughout the youth prison system. The task force recommended substantially expanding mental health care and replacing most residential youth prisons with smaller centers closer to communities where most young offenders and their families are from.
It Will require all youth prisons in New York to abide by the restrictions on physical restraint. She said the state also planned to hire a chief psychiatrist in the near future to oversee drug regimens and mental health counseling at all of the state’s youth prisons.
But advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up.
“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It doesn’t get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/nyregion/15juvenile.html?scp=13&sq=juveniles%20/us&st=cse
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Suspicious Death In Maine State Prison
Another Suspicious Death in Maine State Prison’s Lockdown Unit
AUGUST 3, 2010
by James Ridgeway
Maine Attorney General Janet Mills reportedly will review the results of an investigation by the state police into the death of a prisoner named Victor Valdez, who died last November in the Special Management Unit (SMU) of Maine State Prison. While the Maine Department of Corrections says he died of natural causes, inmates who say they witnessed the incidents insist he was beaten and abused by prison staff, who also hindered him from receiving treatment for a serious medical condition.
Lance Tapley, who has written before about abuses in the SMU, published a lengthy article on Valdez’s death last week in the Portland Phoenix. As Tapley described the situation:
[Valdez] was a very sick man. His kidneys had failed, and he had required dialysis treatment several times a week for eight years, via a stent implanted in his arm. He also suffered from congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, and lung problems, according to court documents filed prior to his sentencing in 2009 to four years’ incarceration for a 2008 aggravated assault in Portland…While at the prison, which is in the coastal village of Warren, he received his dialysis at Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta.
Various inmates described the treatment of Valdez in letters to the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, a group that actively opposes the abuse of solitary confinement in Maine’s prisons. One reason for the beating by guards, one letter said, was their anger at having to take Valdez to dialysis treatments at a nearby hospital early in the morning. An inmate named Jeff wrote to Coalition member Judy Garvey that staff had “ripped out” Valdez’s dialysis tubes in order to cart him off to the SMU for breaking a prison rule, “and he bled all over the place.” Another inmate named Joel OlavarrÃa Rivera, a friend of Valdez, wrote to Garvey in Spanish (here translated by Eda Trajo of El Centro Latino in Portland):
I saw how the officers abused Victor Valdez. I saw the officers cover him with pepper spray and they took him away to check his blood pressure, and afterwards they put him back in the cell without cleaning the cell or him. When the officers put him back in his cell I could smell the pepper spray because it’s so strong. And Victor fell on the floor and he stayed like that with all that stink of pepper spray.
In 10 minutes they called code blue. When the medics came Victor was foaming at the mouth, which came from the pepper spray. They left the pepper spray on him and they didn’t clean it. I thought he was dead because he was a sick man and the pepper spray made it difficult to breathe. The next day they brought him back one room closer to mine, and he tells me that they didn’t want to take him to dialysis and that they forced him to sign a document that says he doesn’t want to go to dialysis. And he doesn’t read English and they don’t even translate for him. He can’t miss dialysis or he’ll die and therefore they’ve forced him to sign for his own death.
Shortly before his death, according to Garvey, inmates were ordered to return to their cells immediately. Valdez, who was hard of hearing and had limited English, did not respond right away. Other prisoners told Garvey he was then beaten and pepper sprayed. Valdez died less than a week later.
Initially Denise Lord, the Associate Corrections Commissioner, told the Bangor Daily News that Valdez had died of “medical causes in the hospital.” However, as Tapley points out:
[N]o state medical examiner looked at Valdez’s body, despite a prison protocol requiring the prison to notify the state police to see if they wished to investigate a prisoner’s death. The medical examiner’s office, part of the attorney general’s office, works hand in glove with the state police. The medical examiner’s office assistant told the Phoenix that Valdez’s death “didn’t meet our criteria” because he was “sick enough” to have died from natural causes. In such a case, a prison physician would sign the death certificate, she said. But who signed it and the cause of death listed is information unavailable to the press and general public, according to the state’s Office of Vital Records.
According to Tapley’s article, Valdez’ mother, at the time traveling out of the country, gave permission for his body to be cremated.
After Garvey and other prison reformers launched a campaign for an investigation, Attorney General Mills asked the state police to prepare a report on the causes of death. She is expected to announce the findings soon. In the meantime, Garvey has sought information from Associate Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord on the details surrounding the death.
.. Who certified Mr. Valdez’s death and at what date and time?
Lord: Medical information is confidential and we cannot disclose this to a member of the public without consent…
Tapley cites Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, who told him that it is “quite common for prisons to cover up and restrict the info on prisoner beatings, deaths, etc., and it generally works quite well. . . . The use of laws on medical privacy to cover up wrongdoing is also fairly widespread.”
This is not the first suspicious death to take place in Maine State Prison’s SMU. The death of an aging prisoner named Sheldon Weinstein is referenced in Tapley’s article, and was also described here on Solitary Watch by former Maine State Prison chaplain Stan Moody.
http://solitarywatch.com/2010/08/03/another-suspicious-death-in-maine-state-prisons-lockdown-unit/
AUGUST 3, 2010
by James Ridgeway
Maine Attorney General Janet Mills reportedly will review the results of an investigation by the state police into the death of a prisoner named Victor Valdez, who died last November in the Special Management Unit (SMU) of Maine State Prison. While the Maine Department of Corrections says he died of natural causes, inmates who say they witnessed the incidents insist he was beaten and abused by prison staff, who also hindered him from receiving treatment for a serious medical condition.
Lance Tapley, who has written before about abuses in the SMU, published a lengthy article on Valdez’s death last week in the Portland Phoenix. As Tapley described the situation:
[Valdez] was a very sick man. His kidneys had failed, and he had required dialysis treatment several times a week for eight years, via a stent implanted in his arm. He also suffered from congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, and lung problems, according to court documents filed prior to his sentencing in 2009 to four years’ incarceration for a 2008 aggravated assault in Portland…While at the prison, which is in the coastal village of Warren, he received his dialysis at Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta.
Various inmates described the treatment of Valdez in letters to the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, a group that actively opposes the abuse of solitary confinement in Maine’s prisons. One reason for the beating by guards, one letter said, was their anger at having to take Valdez to dialysis treatments at a nearby hospital early in the morning. An inmate named Jeff wrote to Coalition member Judy Garvey that staff had “ripped out” Valdez’s dialysis tubes in order to cart him off to the SMU for breaking a prison rule, “and he bled all over the place.” Another inmate named Joel OlavarrÃa Rivera, a friend of Valdez, wrote to Garvey in Spanish (here translated by Eda Trajo of El Centro Latino in Portland):
I saw how the officers abused Victor Valdez. I saw the officers cover him with pepper spray and they took him away to check his blood pressure, and afterwards they put him back in the cell without cleaning the cell or him. When the officers put him back in his cell I could smell the pepper spray because it’s so strong. And Victor fell on the floor and he stayed like that with all that stink of pepper spray.
In 10 minutes they called code blue. When the medics came Victor was foaming at the mouth, which came from the pepper spray. They left the pepper spray on him and they didn’t clean it. I thought he was dead because he was a sick man and the pepper spray made it difficult to breathe. The next day they brought him back one room closer to mine, and he tells me that they didn’t want to take him to dialysis and that they forced him to sign a document that says he doesn’t want to go to dialysis. And he doesn’t read English and they don’t even translate for him. He can’t miss dialysis or he’ll die and therefore they’ve forced him to sign for his own death.
Shortly before his death, according to Garvey, inmates were ordered to return to their cells immediately. Valdez, who was hard of hearing and had limited English, did not respond right away. Other prisoners told Garvey he was then beaten and pepper sprayed. Valdez died less than a week later.
Initially Denise Lord, the Associate Corrections Commissioner, told the Bangor Daily News that Valdez had died of “medical causes in the hospital.” However, as Tapley points out:
[N]o state medical examiner looked at Valdez’s body, despite a prison protocol requiring the prison to notify the state police to see if they wished to investigate a prisoner’s death. The medical examiner’s office, part of the attorney general’s office, works hand in glove with the state police. The medical examiner’s office assistant told the Phoenix that Valdez’s death “didn’t meet our criteria” because he was “sick enough” to have died from natural causes. In such a case, a prison physician would sign the death certificate, she said. But who signed it and the cause of death listed is information unavailable to the press and general public, according to the state’s Office of Vital Records.
According to Tapley’s article, Valdez’ mother, at the time traveling out of the country, gave permission for his body to be cremated.
After Garvey and other prison reformers launched a campaign for an investigation, Attorney General Mills asked the state police to prepare a report on the causes of death. She is expected to announce the findings soon. In the meantime, Garvey has sought information from Associate Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord on the details surrounding the death.
.. Who certified Mr. Valdez’s death and at what date and time?
Lord: Medical information is confidential and we cannot disclose this to a member of the public without consent…
Tapley cites Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, who told him that it is “quite common for prisons to cover up and restrict the info on prisoner beatings, deaths, etc., and it generally works quite well. . . . The use of laws on medical privacy to cover up wrongdoing is also fairly widespread.”
This is not the first suspicious death to take place in Maine State Prison’s SMU. The death of an aging prisoner named Sheldon Weinstein is referenced in Tapley’s article, and was also described here on Solitary Watch by former Maine State Prison chaplain Stan Moody.
http://solitarywatch.com/2010/08/03/another-suspicious-death-in-maine-state-prisons-lockdown-unit/
Sunday, August 1, 2010
California Inmates Abused And Have Rights Violated
'Daniel into the lion's den'
Another factor undermines the appeals process, according to prisoners and former officers: fear.
Edgar Martinez, back home after a recent term at High Desert, claimed that guards trampled his belongings and strip-searched him in a snow-covered yard. He said he watched guards provoke fights among inmates and tell others, "this 602 needs to go away or we're going to make your life a living hell." Afterward, Martinez said, he was too terrified to protest mistreatment.
In one 2007 case, said Edwards, the former lieutenant, several inmates were brutally beaten by guards and denied adequate treatment. None filed a complaint. "Nothing ever came of that incident. Not a damn thing," he said.
Inmates sometimes refrain from reporting abuse to avoid being shipped to other facilities. "There are staff who say, 'He's a pain, get rid of him,' " then transfer the prisoner to a location dominated by his racial or ethnic enemies, Cervantes said, "like Daniel into the lion's den."
Kernan defended the process for discovering and punishing misconduct, which includes independent oversight, court supervision and avenues for inmates and officers to complain anonymously to outside watchdogs.
The state Inspector General's Office closely monitors some investigations of serious lapses by staff, including excessive force, sexual misconduct and dishonesty. Last year it agreed with the prisons' handling of the vast majority of such cases.
Lee Seale, corrections deputy chief of staff, called that record "a departmental success story."
In 2009, 42 officers or sergeants were dismissed in misconduct cases involving prisoners. That total did not include those fired for granting prisoners special favors.
However, when officers caused moderate to severe inmate injuries – or deaths – discipline was relatively light. The Bee examined all 15 such episodes monitored by the inspector general in 2009, involving 32 officers. Eight were dismissed; most received small pay cuts or short suspensions.
In one case, an officer needlessly punched a prisoner in the head, broke his elbows and lied about it in reports. The penalty: a 12-day suspension.
An officer assigned to monitor inmates on suicide watch failed to do so and falsified his records. When he eventually did his check, he overlooked the fact that one prisoner was dead. He "also failed to notice a note the deceased inmate posted in a window on his cell door," the inspector general's report notes, "indicating his intent to commit suicide."
That officer's salary was cut by 10 percent for two years.
Such cases suggest that California prisons lack a workable process to impose reasonable discipline, said Elyse Clawson, a former correctional official in two states who served on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2007 expert panel that examined the state prison system.
"You have to wonder," she said, "if there is a (prison) culture that assigns much value to what happens to inmates."
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/01/2928417/rights-of-prisoners-under-siege.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=1387966#Comments_Container#ixzz0vPmSRZAl
Another factor undermines the appeals process, according to prisoners and former officers: fear.
Edgar Martinez, back home after a recent term at High Desert, claimed that guards trampled his belongings and strip-searched him in a snow-covered yard. He said he watched guards provoke fights among inmates and tell others, "this 602 needs to go away or we're going to make your life a living hell." Afterward, Martinez said, he was too terrified to protest mistreatment.
In one 2007 case, said Edwards, the former lieutenant, several inmates were brutally beaten by guards and denied adequate treatment. None filed a complaint. "Nothing ever came of that incident. Not a damn thing," he said.
Inmates sometimes refrain from reporting abuse to avoid being shipped to other facilities. "There are staff who say, 'He's a pain, get rid of him,' " then transfer the prisoner to a location dominated by his racial or ethnic enemies, Cervantes said, "like Daniel into the lion's den."
Kernan defended the process for discovering and punishing misconduct, which includes independent oversight, court supervision and avenues for inmates and officers to complain anonymously to outside watchdogs.
The state Inspector General's Office closely monitors some investigations of serious lapses by staff, including excessive force, sexual misconduct and dishonesty. Last year it agreed with the prisons' handling of the vast majority of such cases.
Lee Seale, corrections deputy chief of staff, called that record "a departmental success story."
In 2009, 42 officers or sergeants were dismissed in misconduct cases involving prisoners. That total did not include those fired for granting prisoners special favors.
However, when officers caused moderate to severe inmate injuries – or deaths – discipline was relatively light. The Bee examined all 15 such episodes monitored by the inspector general in 2009, involving 32 officers. Eight were dismissed; most received small pay cuts or short suspensions.
In one case, an officer needlessly punched a prisoner in the head, broke his elbows and lied about it in reports. The penalty: a 12-day suspension.
An officer assigned to monitor inmates on suicide watch failed to do so and falsified his records. When he eventually did his check, he overlooked the fact that one prisoner was dead. He "also failed to notice a note the deceased inmate posted in a window on his cell door," the inspector general's report notes, "indicating his intent to commit suicide."
That officer's salary was cut by 10 percent for two years.
Such cases suggest that California prisons lack a workable process to impose reasonable discipline, said Elyse Clawson, a former correctional official in two states who served on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2007 expert panel that examined the state prison system.
"You have to wonder," she said, "if there is a (prison) culture that assigns much value to what happens to inmates."
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/01/2928417/rights-of-prisoners-under-siege.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted&qwxq=1387966#Comments_Container#ixzz0vPmSRZAl
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