All inmates are powerless, women most of all, making them especially vulnerable to abuse, including rape and other forms of sexual assault, despite federal and state laws criminalizing forced or nonconsensual acts. Yet they repeatedly happen, many unreported for fear of recrimination or inability to provide proof. Other times out of shame or expectation that charges will be scoffed at.
In addition, women at times reporting them are isolated, ostensibly for safety, but the effect takes a physical and emotional toll. According to Deborah Golden, staff attorney for the DC Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyer’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, many women don’t view sex as an abuse. Most experienced sexual and other physical mistreatment before prison, reports Sarah From, Women’s Prison Association public policy director.
In 2004, AI reported nearly 2,300 sexual abuse cases against men and women, the true totals far higher according to experts believing the problem is systemic and growing.
According to a 2007 Bureau of Justice Statistics report titled, “Sexual Victimization in State and Federal Prisons Reported by (male and female) Inmates,” 4.5% of prisoners (108,000) reported being abused in the past year – also grossly understated because most incidents aren’t reported. In addition, they’re equally common against men and women, Human Right Watch saying at least 140,000 males are raped during incarceration.
In her 2006 paper titled, “Sexual abuse of women in United States prisons: a modern corollary of slavery,” Brenda Smith compared the similarities, explaining that custody is the common thread even though, unlike slaves, prisoners ostensibly have rights under Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude, and US law.
Abuse, however, remains unchecked, Angela Davis calling prison rape “an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls,” men, women, and children victimized. Further, they’re almost never provided mental health services to handle trauma, nor are guards given proper training or mandates to prevent sex crimes in the first place. This issue was addressed by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), the first federal law regarding sexual assault on prisoners, aiming to curb it through a “zero-tolerance” policy, as well as research and information gathering.
It calls for developing national standards to prevent, detect, reduce and punish sexual assault, making data on them more available to administrators, and holding officials and guards more accountable for their actions. But laws without enforcement are hollow, prisoner rights historically America’s lowest priority. Those incarcerated are society’s most abused and mistreated, especially vulnerable women out of sight behind bars.
Male Rape in Prison
Against women or men, rape inflicts pain and suffering. As a result, human rights and humanitarian groups as well as international courts now recognize it as torture. Most US states define it as forced, nonconsensual sex. California’s law mirrors others saying:
It’s sexual intercourse carried out “against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person or another.” It’s also when “the perpetrator threatens to use public authority to imprison, arrest, (otherwise punish), or deport the victim or another, and the victim reasonably believes the perpetrator is a public official.”
This article focuses on torture against men and women, inflicted by prison guards and officials. Male rape is generally inmate-on-inmate. As a result, the topic is covered briefly, very much deserving detailed discussion in a separate article.
In April 2001, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled, “No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons,” citing studies showing about one in five men raped at least once during confinement. Documenting it with dozens of first-and accounts, HRW explained its long-lasting effects, including depression, PTSD, and HIV-AIDS, one victim saying:
“I remained in shock and paralyzed in thought for two days until I was able to muster the courage to report it. This is the most dreadful and horrifying experience of my life.”
According to HRW, “Rape is not an inevitable consequence of prison life, but it certainly is a predictable one if little is done to prevent it and punish it.” Indifference to prisoner rights perpetuates it against vulnerable men, women and children.
http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/torture-other-forms-of-abuse-widely-used-in-us-prisons/
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tolerating-Torture
Tolerating Torture
March 29, 2011
tags: Bradley Manning, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, NRCAT, Torture in U.S. Prisonsby James Ridgeway and Jean CasellaA noteworthy piece on solitary confinement appeared yesterday as a guest column in the New Jersey Star-Ledger. The column is by George Hunsinger, who teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary and is the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT). It is noteworthy, too, that NRCAT, which previously focused its work largely on U.S.-sanctioned torture abroad in the post-9/11 world, has now taken up the issue of torture in U.S. prisons. Its 2011 agenda includes, as one of seven major initiatives, a call on religious leaders and people of faith to “advocate for the end of long-term solitary confinement in prisons.”
Under the title “Torture Here at Home Cannot Be Tolerated,” Hunsinger begins with the case of accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning, now in his tenth month of soltiary confinement in a military brig, and then writes of the tens of thousands of other Americans who live in similar conditions.
The conditions under which Manning is being held are deplorable. No individual, whatever crime he may have committed, should be held in prolonged isolation or be routinely shamed through the use of unnecessary forced nakedness. And that’s the key point — no prisoners should suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment — no matter who they are or what crime they may have committed.
I’m not qualified to speak for Bradley Manning. What I do know, however, is that there are thousands of prisoners throughout the country who face conditions that are similar to, or worse than, those Manning may be enduring. Unfortunately, however, those poor souls are almost completely ignored.
Many prisons contain units in which prisoners are held in isolation for prolonged periods of time (months or even years). The lack of human interaction is profoundly damaging to many of these prisoners — some suffer sufficiently to cause actual physical changes in the makeup of their brains.
Long-term solitary confinement is torture. It has been known to cause prisoners to go insane. And it is unnecessary. In many cases, prisoners are held in solitary confinement to punish them for minor infractions, because of the severe overcrowding of our prisons or other administrative reasons, or because they are mentally ill.
We need to think about what sort of people we want to be. Do we want to be a people who ignore torture that occurs here? Do we want to sit comfortably at home, knowing that somewhere not far away someone is being broken, his mind shattered, by a severe loneliness that has lasted for years?
It is one thing to punish a criminal. It is another to abuse him or her — to strip away his very humanity by denying him contact with all other humans. Solitary confinement can cause permanent damage. And let us remember that under the law, Manning, an American citizen, is still innocent until proved guilty.
It is our urgent responsibility to create a prison system where there is no place for such enforced suffering and where the rights of all citizens are upheld.
http://solitarywatch.com/2011/03/29/tolerating-torture/
March 29, 2011
tags: Bradley Manning, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, NRCAT, Torture in U.S. Prisonsby James Ridgeway and Jean CasellaA noteworthy piece on solitary confinement appeared yesterday as a guest column in the New Jersey Star-Ledger. The column is by George Hunsinger, who teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary and is the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT). It is noteworthy, too, that NRCAT, which previously focused its work largely on U.S.-sanctioned torture abroad in the post-9/11 world, has now taken up the issue of torture in U.S. prisons. Its 2011 agenda includes, as one of seven major initiatives, a call on religious leaders and people of faith to “advocate for the end of long-term solitary confinement in prisons.”
Under the title “Torture Here at Home Cannot Be Tolerated,” Hunsinger begins with the case of accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning, now in his tenth month of soltiary confinement in a military brig, and then writes of the tens of thousands of other Americans who live in similar conditions.
The conditions under which Manning is being held are deplorable. No individual, whatever crime he may have committed, should be held in prolonged isolation or be routinely shamed through the use of unnecessary forced nakedness. And that’s the key point — no prisoners should suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment — no matter who they are or what crime they may have committed.
I’m not qualified to speak for Bradley Manning. What I do know, however, is that there are thousands of prisoners throughout the country who face conditions that are similar to, or worse than, those Manning may be enduring. Unfortunately, however, those poor souls are almost completely ignored.
Many prisons contain units in which prisoners are held in isolation for prolonged periods of time (months or even years). The lack of human interaction is profoundly damaging to many of these prisoners — some suffer sufficiently to cause actual physical changes in the makeup of their brains.
Long-term solitary confinement is torture. It has been known to cause prisoners to go insane. And it is unnecessary. In many cases, prisoners are held in solitary confinement to punish them for minor infractions, because of the severe overcrowding of our prisons or other administrative reasons, or because they are mentally ill.
We need to think about what sort of people we want to be. Do we want to be a people who ignore torture that occurs here? Do we want to sit comfortably at home, knowing that somewhere not far away someone is being broken, his mind shattered, by a severe loneliness that has lasted for years?
It is one thing to punish a criminal. It is another to abuse him or her — to strip away his very humanity by denying him contact with all other humans. Solitary confinement can cause permanent damage. And let us remember that under the law, Manning, an American citizen, is still innocent until proved guilty.
It is our urgent responsibility to create a prison system where there is no place for such enforced suffering and where the rights of all citizens are upheld.
http://solitarywatch.com/2011/03/29/tolerating-torture/
Report Documents Abuse in Pennsylvania Prison's Lockdown Unit
Report Documents Abuse in Pennsylvania Prison's Lockdown Unit
Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | April 26, 2011 at 1:40 pm | Tags: Human Rights Coalition | Categories: civil liberties / civil rights, due process, human rights, Pennsylvania, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, retaliation, solitary confinement, suicide, torture | URL: http://wp.me/pKbGK-OV
A report released yesterday by the Human Rights Coalition, a nonprofit organization concerned with prisoners' rights, provides a vivid and grim picture of life inside the solitary confinement unit of the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon in south-central Pennsylvania. The report describes what it calls a "culture of terror" in the prison's Restricted Housing Unit (RHU).
For purposes of this report, a culture of terror is defined as a set of assumptions and practices that divide a community into those with absolute power and those who are absolutely powerless. This dynamic is inherent within the logic of prisons, and is at its most intense in the solitary confinement units...Those with power in this culture reinforce their rule through a strict code of silence whereby they refuse to inform on one another to those higher up or outside of the prison hierarchy. Prison guards enforce their rule through threats and use of force, along with deprivations of basic necessities such as food, water, hygienic items, cleaning supplies, clothing, and bedding. Prison administrators and top officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) adopt an informal though strictly enforced policy of turning a blind eye to reports of torture and abuse.
Those without power—prisoners—are more often than not divided against one another, enticed to assault and inform on one another in exchange for more favorable treatment. Those individuals who strive to cultivate an ethic of solidarity amongst the oppressed are viewed as the system’s greatest threat and consequently made an example of via relentless abuse and indefinite, potentially permanent placement in solitary confinement.
The core elements of this culture of terror include:
arbitrary, biased process for establishing who is placed in solitary;
utilization of fabricated misconducts as a tool of retaliation;
systematic denial of prisoner grievances regardless of their merit;
the use of violence as a standard technique for enforcing obedience;
refusal to engage in constructive dialogue on the part of prison authorities;
targeting witnesses of abuse for purposes of intimidation;
displays of overt racism as a tool of dehumanization.
The report is valuable for explaining and documenting the mechanics of the process by which prisoners are placed and held--sometimes indefinitely--in solitary. Inmates end up in solitary largely on the say-so of guards, against which they have virtually no recourse. "The threat of solitary confinement and the ability to impose it upon a prisoner arbitrarily creates a predictable and intentional stifling of grievances," the report argues. "Intimidating prisoners into not pursuing grievances discourages them from filing lawsuits as well, since federal law mandates that prisoners must 'exhaust administrative remedies' prior to filing a lawsuit" under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. When an inmate does go ahead and file a grievance, it is likely to go nowhere. According to the report, "97.89 percent of the 43,853 grievances filed by prisoners [in 2008] were rejected for various reasons," based on the Department of Corrections' own records.
Prisoners who file grievances or otherwise protest their conditions are also subject to retaliation. The HRC report provides several examples, including withholding food, water, showers, and mattresses as well as forced cell extractions and the use of pepper spray and restraint chairs. It calls retaliation "the lynchpin holding together the culture of terror in the solitary units at Huntingdon, as it involves the targeted application of violence and the deprivation of basic necessities with the deliberate intent of silencing protest, public exposure, and legal action." One prisoner who says he was punished for trying to report abuse in the RHU asks in a letter, "Are we worthy of the same rights as a civilian witness who is being intimidated not to testify or are we unworthy of protection due to the fact that we are convicts?"
What makes the depth and detail of this report remarkable is the extreme difficulty of obtaining information about what goes on in solitary confinement. It is generally close to impossible for journalists, researchers, and advocates to gain access to these units. HRC based its report largely on what it describes as a "review of more than a thousand pages of letters, affidavits, grievances, misconducts, other prison documents, legal paperwork, and conversations with family members" over the past year. Critics of the report will no doubt raise questions about the veracity of the prisoners' accounts, but they have the ring of truth and echo what we have heard from and about prisoners in other facilities. More importantly, they represent the public's only window into a deeply hidden world about which we know virtually nothing--but for which we are, ultimately, responsible.
If nothing else, this report should lead to other investigations and eventually some form of meaningful action and oversight by the state legislature, Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, and Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. HRC ends the report with a series of recommendations that include such investigations.
Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | April 26, 2011 at 1:40 pm | Tags: Human Rights Coalition | Categories: civil liberties / civil rights, due process, human rights, Pennsylvania, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, retaliation, solitary confinement, suicide, torture | URL: http://wp.me/pKbGK-OV
A report released yesterday by the Human Rights Coalition, a nonprofit organization concerned with prisoners' rights, provides a vivid and grim picture of life inside the solitary confinement unit of the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon in south-central Pennsylvania. The report describes what it calls a "culture of terror" in the prison's Restricted Housing Unit (RHU).
For purposes of this report, a culture of terror is defined as a set of assumptions and practices that divide a community into those with absolute power and those who are absolutely powerless. This dynamic is inherent within the logic of prisons, and is at its most intense in the solitary confinement units...Those with power in this culture reinforce their rule through a strict code of silence whereby they refuse to inform on one another to those higher up or outside of the prison hierarchy. Prison guards enforce their rule through threats and use of force, along with deprivations of basic necessities such as food, water, hygienic items, cleaning supplies, clothing, and bedding. Prison administrators and top officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) adopt an informal though strictly enforced policy of turning a blind eye to reports of torture and abuse.
Those without power—prisoners—are more often than not divided against one another, enticed to assault and inform on one another in exchange for more favorable treatment. Those individuals who strive to cultivate an ethic of solidarity amongst the oppressed are viewed as the system’s greatest threat and consequently made an example of via relentless abuse and indefinite, potentially permanent placement in solitary confinement.
The core elements of this culture of terror include:
arbitrary, biased process for establishing who is placed in solitary;
utilization of fabricated misconducts as a tool of retaliation;
systematic denial of prisoner grievances regardless of their merit;
the use of violence as a standard technique for enforcing obedience;
refusal to engage in constructive dialogue on the part of prison authorities;
targeting witnesses of abuse for purposes of intimidation;
displays of overt racism as a tool of dehumanization.
The report is valuable for explaining and documenting the mechanics of the process by which prisoners are placed and held--sometimes indefinitely--in solitary. Inmates end up in solitary largely on the say-so of guards, against which they have virtually no recourse. "The threat of solitary confinement and the ability to impose it upon a prisoner arbitrarily creates a predictable and intentional stifling of grievances," the report argues. "Intimidating prisoners into not pursuing grievances discourages them from filing lawsuits as well, since federal law mandates that prisoners must 'exhaust administrative remedies' prior to filing a lawsuit" under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. When an inmate does go ahead and file a grievance, it is likely to go nowhere. According to the report, "97.89 percent of the 43,853 grievances filed by prisoners [in 2008] were rejected for various reasons," based on the Department of Corrections' own records.
Prisoners who file grievances or otherwise protest their conditions are also subject to retaliation. The HRC report provides several examples, including withholding food, water, showers, and mattresses as well as forced cell extractions and the use of pepper spray and restraint chairs. It calls retaliation "the lynchpin holding together the culture of terror in the solitary units at Huntingdon, as it involves the targeted application of violence and the deprivation of basic necessities with the deliberate intent of silencing protest, public exposure, and legal action." One prisoner who says he was punished for trying to report abuse in the RHU asks in a letter, "Are we worthy of the same rights as a civilian witness who is being intimidated not to testify or are we unworthy of protection due to the fact that we are convicts?"
What makes the depth and detail of this report remarkable is the extreme difficulty of obtaining information about what goes on in solitary confinement. It is generally close to impossible for journalists, researchers, and advocates to gain access to these units. HRC based its report largely on what it describes as a "review of more than a thousand pages of letters, affidavits, grievances, misconducts, other prison documents, legal paperwork, and conversations with family members" over the past year. Critics of the report will no doubt raise questions about the veracity of the prisoners' accounts, but they have the ring of truth and echo what we have heard from and about prisoners in other facilities. More importantly, they represent the public's only window into a deeply hidden world about which we know virtually nothing--but for which we are, ultimately, responsible.
If nothing else, this report should lead to other investigations and eventually some form of meaningful action and oversight by the state legislature, Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, and Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. HRC ends the report with a series of recommendations that include such investigations.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Kids Sexually Abused In Arizona's Juvenile Corrections
The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections Is a Bloody Mess
It's not typically a headline-making department. The state's most violent juvenile offenders go to the adult system; most kids wind up at the ADJC after committing a series of petty crimes. In October 2008, only 126 of the 625 kids in custody were there for violent crimes.
The agency's mandate is to rehabilitate, not punish. These are, after all, children. Their records are kept secret and expunged once they turn 18.
You may not have known of it, but the U.S. Department of Justice is well aware of the ADJC. Twice now, the state agency has fallen under scrutiny and federal orders to improve services and ensure safety.
The 1987 civil rights lawsuit Johnson v. Upchurch ultimately led to federally mandated changes at the agency, which had famously kept one boy in solitary confinement for several weeks.
Conditions for kids behind bars in Arizona got better — for a while. Then they got worse.
In 2001, the Department of Justice began making inquiries into conditions at the ADJC, after a series of stories in New Times revealed concerns about the safety of both staff and kids, as well as potential civil rights violations. In 2002 and 2003, three boys in ADJC custody committed suicide. The DOJ ultimately investigated under CRIPA, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, confirming much of what New Times had originally reported.
Again, things got better, though internal critics have always wondered just how much. The Department of Justice was satisfied, however, and closed its case in 2007.
No one from the outside has paid much attention since. And even when they have, it's tough to figure out just how closely anyone's looking. This fall, the Arizona Auditor General released a report on suicide prevention at the ADJC. The report was largely glowing, leading the Arizona Republic, the state's newspaper of record, to hand out high-fives in a story headlined, "Arizona's Juvenile Jails Free of Suicides Since '03."
The story and the audit didn't mention how close some of the calls were, even though the report acknowledged reviewing agency documents from March to May 2009; presumably, those would have included several of the incidents mentioned above.
The audit also praised the department for improving staff/youth relations, while ignoring three recent criminal cases in which ADJC staff were sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to having sexual relationships with kids.
And perhaps auditors failed to interview the staff members New Times spoke with, all of whom presented grave concerns about conditions at the ADJC — while insisting they like their jobs and want to continue working with kids who desperately need them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The employees' concerns vary from person to person, with an overriding theme: This agency — charged with taking care of sometimes violent and mentally disturbed kids — is not very professional.
The ADJC employees warn that a public-records request will reveal only some of what's going on at the agency.
"All someone has to do is write an IR [incident report] and put 'confidential' on it," and it's kept secret, one guard says. (To the agency's credit, many of the records provided by the ADJC for this story are, in fact, quite damning.)
A tour of the facilities is pointless, too, another guard says — even for the federal investigators, who were treated to a whitewash, several of the employees say.
"Anytime anybody comes to do an inspection, we know months in advance," one comments. It's easy to make things look good.
Another, who has worked for the ADJC since the Upchurch case, sees a real change in the kids coming into the system today.
"The kids we have now are nothing like the kids we had in those days," he says. "The kids we had then were real criminals."
He adds, "I wish we had counselors for every single one of them, and then I wouldn't have a job . . . We have psych associates that are overly taxed. Usually at any given point and time we'll have three psych associates to deal with 100 kids."
As for the community-based care that the agency is pushing for, which results in early release, the employee says, "Those kids come right back."
Norman Davis, chief presiding judge for the juvenile division of the Maricopa County Superior Court, echoes this.
"The first year I thought I was saving everybody. The second year, all the kids came back," he says, laughing ruefully and adding that obviously this is an exaggeration.
As for the extent to which mental illness affects the behaviors of the kids he sentences, Davis says he's really not sure.
"The longer I go — mental illness, what does that mean, exactly?" he asks, rhetorically. "Things of the mind are very difficult to get ahold of.
One shared concern among those interviewed for this story is staffing numbers. The CRIPA investigators strongly suggested that in many cases, each housing unit needs to have two staff members on hand at all times — including at night. And yet that tends to be a time, staff say, when corners are cut.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kids Are Not Alright
The Department of Juvenile Corrections is supposed to watch -- and rehabilitate -- troubled teens. But no one's watching the department.?
Editor's note: The names of juveniles throughout these stories have been changed to protect their privacy. Although their criminal case files are public record, their corrections files are not.
Suicide at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections
From Brewer to Arpaio, No One's Listening to the Experts About How to Save Money or Protect Civil Rights and Public Safety When It Comes to Juvenile Corrections
Suicidal Tendencies: The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections Is a Bloody Mess
December 17, 2009
Terri CapozziDavid GasparArizona Department of Juvenile CorrectionsPrisonsCriminal Sentencing and Punishment The boys in the Nova cottage at Adobe Mountain School had been locked in their cells for six days. They had not been allowed to go to school or to the cafeteria or to chapel. No weekly phone calls. They had not showered, or washed their clothes. Some had been without a mattress on their metal bed frames for weeks. Leftover food and garbage sat on the floors of their cells; some boys banged on the doors, demanding to use the bathroom. A streak of dried urine ran under the door of one cell. Inside there was more urine and feces on the floor.
Terri Capozzi followed a trail of blood, seeping into the hallway, to the door of the cell belonging to a boy named Roberto. She looked through the window.
"The room was in complete disarray," Capozzi, the youth rights ombudsman for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, would later write in a memo obtained by New Times. "Looking down on the floor, I saw the bottom half of a pint milk container set carefully in the middle of the blood-spattered floor. It appeared that the container was filled to the brim with blood.
" . . . As I stepped into the empty room, I noticed on the floor not far from the milk carton a wad of white gauze bound together. It was blood-soaked on one end. When I looked up at the walls, I realized that the container was a bucket, the gauze a rudimentary paintbrush and that [Roberto's] blood was the paint. The walls were filled with carefully drawn ornate designs, carefully rendered. I was awestruck by what occurred in this room."
Capozzi was told the mess had been made in the past 30 minutes, but her associate, Adobe Mountain youth rights specialist Brenda Lewis, confirmed it had been there for at least several hours. Roberto, a 15-year-old serving time for burglary, had been in and out of the infirmary for days, treated for self-inflicted cuts.
The Nova boys were locked down because they'd been misbehaving, and were supposed to be participating in a marathon group-counseling session. But just one brief session had been held the previous night, they told Lewis, when she visited them early on the afternoon of Day Six.
As Capozzi and Lewis left the cottage, the boys were allowed to go to dinner in the cafeteria for the first time in almost a week. Capozzi was speaking with Roberto -- he had never cut himself before coming to Adobe, she would write, but now was "clearly mentally compromised" and suicidal -- when Joe Taylor, the school's superintendent, approached. He called her into his office and ordered her off school property, angry that she'd crossed him by speaking with kids without his permission, undermining him and his staff.
The response: Taylor has since been promoted to ADJC assistant director, in charge of the agency's Safe Schools program.
As for Roberto, he was released from Adobe but returned in November, after he ran away from a residential treatment center. And he's still cutting himself .
The story of Roberto and what happened in the Nova cottage may be particularly chilling, but it is not the only example of abuse of children in the custody of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections. Contrary to the agency's name, policymakers long ago gave ADJC the mandate to rehabilitate troubled kids, not punish them -- and certainly not abuse them.
And yet reports of mistreatment -- including verbal and sexual abuse, inappropriate use of restraints and solitary confinement, and violence against both juveniles and staff -- are common at the state's facilities, which typically house just under 1,000 Arizona youths at a time.
New Times has spent more than nine months investigating conditions within ADJC. Among the findings:
ADJC no longer follows the practices put into place by a federal court order in 1993 that were designed to ensure that proper conditions are maintained for youth in detention. ADJC violates the intent of the now-expired court order by:
• Routinely putting children in solitary confinement in specialized "separation units" for days or weeks, sometimes even months, without adequate education or other services.
• Locking children in their cells for days at a time, also in violation of a department policy that prohibits lock downs lasting longer than two hours at a time.
• Providing substandard mental health services. Undertrained staff counsel children, and there are waiting lists for beds in mental health cottages.
• Failing to provide enough staff. The staff-to-youth ratio should be at least one staff member for every eight youths.
In addition, ADJC violates its own internal policies and goes against acceptable national practices in the following areas:
• Staff members often use violence to control kids when it is not necessary. Sometimes staffers are disciplined, sometimes not.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2001-07-05/news/the-kids-are-not-alright/
It's not typically a headline-making department. The state's most violent juvenile offenders go to the adult system; most kids wind up at the ADJC after committing a series of petty crimes. In October 2008, only 126 of the 625 kids in custody were there for violent crimes.
The agency's mandate is to rehabilitate, not punish. These are, after all, children. Their records are kept secret and expunged once they turn 18.
You may not have known of it, but the U.S. Department of Justice is well aware of the ADJC. Twice now, the state agency has fallen under scrutiny and federal orders to improve services and ensure safety.
The 1987 civil rights lawsuit Johnson v. Upchurch ultimately led to federally mandated changes at the agency, which had famously kept one boy in solitary confinement for several weeks.
Conditions for kids behind bars in Arizona got better — for a while. Then they got worse.
In 2001, the Department of Justice began making inquiries into conditions at the ADJC, after a series of stories in New Times revealed concerns about the safety of both staff and kids, as well as potential civil rights violations. In 2002 and 2003, three boys in ADJC custody committed suicide. The DOJ ultimately investigated under CRIPA, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, confirming much of what New Times had originally reported.
Again, things got better, though internal critics have always wondered just how much. The Department of Justice was satisfied, however, and closed its case in 2007.
No one from the outside has paid much attention since. And even when they have, it's tough to figure out just how closely anyone's looking. This fall, the Arizona Auditor General released a report on suicide prevention at the ADJC. The report was largely glowing, leading the Arizona Republic, the state's newspaper of record, to hand out high-fives in a story headlined, "Arizona's Juvenile Jails Free of Suicides Since '03."
The story and the audit didn't mention how close some of the calls were, even though the report acknowledged reviewing agency documents from March to May 2009; presumably, those would have included several of the incidents mentioned above.
The audit also praised the department for improving staff/youth relations, while ignoring three recent criminal cases in which ADJC staff were sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to having sexual relationships with kids.
And perhaps auditors failed to interview the staff members New Times spoke with, all of whom presented grave concerns about conditions at the ADJC — while insisting they like their jobs and want to continue working with kids who desperately need them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The employees' concerns vary from person to person, with an overriding theme: This agency — charged with taking care of sometimes violent and mentally disturbed kids — is not very professional.
The ADJC employees warn that a public-records request will reveal only some of what's going on at the agency.
"All someone has to do is write an IR [incident report] and put 'confidential' on it," and it's kept secret, one guard says. (To the agency's credit, many of the records provided by the ADJC for this story are, in fact, quite damning.)
A tour of the facilities is pointless, too, another guard says — even for the federal investigators, who were treated to a whitewash, several of the employees say.
"Anytime anybody comes to do an inspection, we know months in advance," one comments. It's easy to make things look good.
Another, who has worked for the ADJC since the Upchurch case, sees a real change in the kids coming into the system today.
"The kids we have now are nothing like the kids we had in those days," he says. "The kids we had then were real criminals."
He adds, "I wish we had counselors for every single one of them, and then I wouldn't have a job . . . We have psych associates that are overly taxed. Usually at any given point and time we'll have three psych associates to deal with 100 kids."
As for the community-based care that the agency is pushing for, which results in early release, the employee says, "Those kids come right back."
Norman Davis, chief presiding judge for the juvenile division of the Maricopa County Superior Court, echoes this.
"The first year I thought I was saving everybody. The second year, all the kids came back," he says, laughing ruefully and adding that obviously this is an exaggeration.
As for the extent to which mental illness affects the behaviors of the kids he sentences, Davis says he's really not sure.
"The longer I go — mental illness, what does that mean, exactly?" he asks, rhetorically. "Things of the mind are very difficult to get ahold of.
One shared concern among those interviewed for this story is staffing numbers. The CRIPA investigators strongly suggested that in many cases, each housing unit needs to have two staff members on hand at all times — including at night. And yet that tends to be a time, staff say, when corners are cut.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Kids Are Not Alright
The Department of Juvenile Corrections is supposed to watch -- and rehabilitate -- troubled teens. But no one's watching the department.?
Editor's note: The names of juveniles throughout these stories have been changed to protect their privacy. Although their criminal case files are public record, their corrections files are not.
Suicide at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections
From Brewer to Arpaio, No One's Listening to the Experts About How to Save Money or Protect Civil Rights and Public Safety When It Comes to Juvenile Corrections
Suicidal Tendencies: The Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections Is a Bloody Mess
December 17, 2009
Terri CapozziDavid GasparArizona Department of Juvenile CorrectionsPrisonsCriminal Sentencing and Punishment The boys in the Nova cottage at Adobe Mountain School had been locked in their cells for six days. They had not been allowed to go to school or to the cafeteria or to chapel. No weekly phone calls. They had not showered, or washed their clothes. Some had been without a mattress on their metal bed frames for weeks. Leftover food and garbage sat on the floors of their cells; some boys banged on the doors, demanding to use the bathroom. A streak of dried urine ran under the door of one cell. Inside there was more urine and feces on the floor.
Terri Capozzi followed a trail of blood, seeping into the hallway, to the door of the cell belonging to a boy named Roberto. She looked through the window.
"The room was in complete disarray," Capozzi, the youth rights ombudsman for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, would later write in a memo obtained by New Times. "Looking down on the floor, I saw the bottom half of a pint milk container set carefully in the middle of the blood-spattered floor. It appeared that the container was filled to the brim with blood.
" . . . As I stepped into the empty room, I noticed on the floor not far from the milk carton a wad of white gauze bound together. It was blood-soaked on one end. When I looked up at the walls, I realized that the container was a bucket, the gauze a rudimentary paintbrush and that [Roberto's] blood was the paint. The walls were filled with carefully drawn ornate designs, carefully rendered. I was awestruck by what occurred in this room."
Capozzi was told the mess had been made in the past 30 minutes, but her associate, Adobe Mountain youth rights specialist Brenda Lewis, confirmed it had been there for at least several hours. Roberto, a 15-year-old serving time for burglary, had been in and out of the infirmary for days, treated for self-inflicted cuts.
The Nova boys were locked down because they'd been misbehaving, and were supposed to be participating in a marathon group-counseling session. But just one brief session had been held the previous night, they told Lewis, when she visited them early on the afternoon of Day Six.
As Capozzi and Lewis left the cottage, the boys were allowed to go to dinner in the cafeteria for the first time in almost a week. Capozzi was speaking with Roberto -- he had never cut himself before coming to Adobe, she would write, but now was "clearly mentally compromised" and suicidal -- when Joe Taylor, the school's superintendent, approached. He called her into his office and ordered her off school property, angry that she'd crossed him by speaking with kids without his permission, undermining him and his staff.
The response: Taylor has since been promoted to ADJC assistant director, in charge of the agency's Safe Schools program.
As for Roberto, he was released from Adobe but returned in November, after he ran away from a residential treatment center. And he's still cutting himself .
The story of Roberto and what happened in the Nova cottage may be particularly chilling, but it is not the only example of abuse of children in the custody of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections. Contrary to the agency's name, policymakers long ago gave ADJC the mandate to rehabilitate troubled kids, not punish them -- and certainly not abuse them.
And yet reports of mistreatment -- including verbal and sexual abuse, inappropriate use of restraints and solitary confinement, and violence against both juveniles and staff -- are common at the state's facilities, which typically house just under 1,000 Arizona youths at a time.
New Times has spent more than nine months investigating conditions within ADJC. Among the findings:
ADJC no longer follows the practices put into place by a federal court order in 1993 that were designed to ensure that proper conditions are maintained for youth in detention. ADJC violates the intent of the now-expired court order by:
• Routinely putting children in solitary confinement in specialized "separation units" for days or weeks, sometimes even months, without adequate education or other services.
• Locking children in their cells for days at a time, also in violation of a department policy that prohibits lock downs lasting longer than two hours at a time.
• Providing substandard mental health services. Undertrained staff counsel children, and there are waiting lists for beds in mental health cottages.
• Failing to provide enough staff. The staff-to-youth ratio should be at least one staff member for every eight youths.
In addition, ADJC violates its own internal policies and goes against acceptable national practices in the following areas:
• Staff members often use violence to control kids when it is not necessary. Sometimes staffers are disciplined, sometimes not.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2001-07-05/news/the-kids-are-not-alright/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)