Robert Leone Brutally Beaten By Pennsylvania State Police: ...
A handful of Pennsylvania State officers are under fire this month as attorneys review video ...
07/05/2012 2:46 pm Updated: 07/05/2012 6:36 pm ... family believes authorities want to keep their
son imprisoned for the .... I mean they made it way too difficult for prisoners to complain about ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/05/robert-leone_n_1651829.html
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Sunday, August 12, 2012
Oregon's prison for women accused of failing to stop inmate abuse
Oregon's prison for women accused of failing to stop inmate abuse
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 3:13 PM
SALEM -- A lawsuit accuses Oregon's prison for women of failing to stop the sexual abuse of an inmate during a period when the state was paying $1.2 million to settle the sexual abuse claims of 17 current and former inmates.
The suit alleges two male employees targeted an inmate at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility from 2008 to 2012, the Salem Statesman Journal reported Tuesday. It claimed the abuse included orders to perform oral sex, kissing and groping her, and watching her shower.
One employee in the lawsuit, 38-year-old Shawn Jacob Riley, was arrested in April and charged with official misconduct and custodial sexual misconduct. The second employee is a corrections officer only named as Mr. Jacques.
The lawyer who filed the suit last week, Brian Lathen of Salem, said the first name isn't known.
Riley, a maintenance worker, was the second physical plant employee at the Wilsonville prison to be arrested this year and charged with sexual misconduct with an inmate.
Department of Corrections officials said steps have been taken to prevent such abuse. Each of the department's facilities now has a sexual assault response team, as well as a hotline number that inmates or their families can use to report abuse, said agency spokeswoman Anita Nelson.
Lathen, who represented many of the 17 earlier victims, said that has not been enough to stop the abuse.
"When I heard these new incidents were fairly recent, I was really surprised, because they were swearing up and down that they had made changes so it wouldn't happen again," he said.
-- The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/06/oregons_prison_for_women_accus.html?fb_action_ids=381005958631748&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366
Published: Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 3:13 PM
SALEM -- A lawsuit accuses Oregon's prison for women of failing to stop the sexual abuse of an inmate during a period when the state was paying $1.2 million to settle the sexual abuse claims of 17 current and former inmates.
The suit alleges two male employees targeted an inmate at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility from 2008 to 2012, the Salem Statesman Journal reported Tuesday. It claimed the abuse included orders to perform oral sex, kissing and groping her, and watching her shower.
One employee in the lawsuit, 38-year-old Shawn Jacob Riley, was arrested in April and charged with official misconduct and custodial sexual misconduct. The second employee is a corrections officer only named as Mr. Jacques.
The lawyer who filed the suit last week, Brian Lathen of Salem, said the first name isn't known.
Riley, a maintenance worker, was the second physical plant employee at the Wilsonville prison to be arrested this year and charged with sexual misconduct with an inmate.
Department of Corrections officials said steps have been taken to prevent such abuse. Each of the department's facilities now has a sexual assault response team, as well as a hotline number that inmates or their families can use to report abuse, said agency spokeswoman Anita Nelson.
Lathen, who represented many of the 17 earlier victims, said that has not been enough to stop the abuse.
"When I heard these new incidents were fairly recent, I was really surprised, because they were swearing up and down that they had made changes so it wouldn't happen again," he said.
-- The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/06/oregons_prison_for_women_accus.html?fb_action_ids=381005958631748&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366
Friday, August 3, 2012
County Admits To Abuse While Kids Were In Lock-Up
Government admits to child abuse in Secure Centers
By Paul Sullivan, from insidetime issue August 2011
Whenever the Government tries to conceal a document it is most likely that it contains information that would be ‘embarrassing’ rather than a security threat; and never more so than the manual detailing the institutionalised abuse of children in privatised secure accommodation which has just been prised from the Government’s grasp.
It is no wonder it took 5 years to force the Government’s hand when it contains what Phillip Noyes, of the NSPCC, called ‘shocking revelations graphically illustrating the cruel and degrading violence inflicted on children in custody’. Behaviour which would see a parent prosecuted and their children removed.
The Government fought to the end to keep it secret; even after the Information Commissioner said that public interest was so grave the document should be released.
It is hard to imagine a situation, in a juvenile centre, so serious that it would warrant the violence sanctioned by the report. The Ministry of Justice say, ‘staff need to be able to intervene effectively, to protect the safety of all involved.”
What many people who have witnessed the prison system at first hand could point out is that most ‘interventions’ are not about ensuring safety but more about graphically demonstrating who has the power and who is in control. ‘Control’ is an overused word in the prison industry. There are very few situations where immediate or violent action is required because, by the very nature of the establishments, every door has a lock.
The population of the juvenile estate are legally children and one would expect them to behave like children with the outbursts and tantrums that are part of being a child. We have long been told that being truculent and rebellious is a part of adolescence that is important to the healthy maturity to adulthood.
In most cases, de-escalation of an incident can be achieved either by withdrawing or by counselling. This may be a good use of female staff, who are not seen as a threat and can use gentle reason to achieve the desired outcome.
If a prisoner, juvenile or adult, is smashing their cell; most of the damage is to their own property - there is very little damage that can Government admits to child abuse in Secure Centres actually be done to prison property other than a smashed TV. Rather than a testosterone drunk riot squad, with shields, smashing their way in, it would be more sensible to quietly observe until the person has calmed down; and then someone who the person trusts goes in for a chat.
That word ‘trust’ is important. How could anyone trust a group of people who abuse them. Trust is the thing that feeds compliance and rehabilitation, and trust is one of the most powerful tools in de-escalation but is also the easiest thing to lose. Violence to achieve power and compliance actually achieves nothing but hatred and distrust. You only have to look at wartime resistance movements to see that forcefully demonstrating power achieves nothing except, sometimes, a more determined opposition.
There are very rare occasions when intervention might be critical; in the case of immediate self-harm or a violent attack on another person but in a juvenile centre where the staff bulk, strength and training outweighs the residents manyfold there should never be a need to resort to the violence described in the report. Such violence demonstrates failure and anarchy.
Because these are ‘closed’ establishments nobody sees what goes on; they are surrounded with secrecy. After 14 year-old Adam Rickward hanged himself at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre it was revealed that, shortly before his death, he had been restrained using ‘unlawful force’: yet nobody has been held to account.
Assuming these staff are adults, and possibly fathers, it is hard to imagine how they justify to themselves the violence they inflict on the children.
Custody staff are trained not to see prisoners as individual people and this can cause the weaker ones, who may have been bullied as a child, to use force and ‘power’ to counter their own feelings of weakness and guilt. Once again, a better system of staff recruitment, better training, and absolute supervision by people who are held to account is long overdue.
It’s a sad day when the state has to admit to institutionalised violence against the vulnerable people in their custody; sadder still, possibly, because this violence is contracted out to private companies to make profit for their shareholders. How do those shareholders now view their holdings in these companies?
Paul Sullivan was formerly resident at HMP Wakefield.
By Paul Sullivan, from insidetime issue August 2011
Whenever the Government tries to conceal a document it is most likely that it contains information that would be ‘embarrassing’ rather than a security threat; and never more so than the manual detailing the institutionalised abuse of children in privatised secure accommodation which has just been prised from the Government’s grasp.
It is no wonder it took 5 years to force the Government’s hand when it contains what Phillip Noyes, of the NSPCC, called ‘shocking revelations graphically illustrating the cruel and degrading violence inflicted on children in custody’. Behaviour which would see a parent prosecuted and their children removed.
The Government fought to the end to keep it secret; even after the Information Commissioner said that public interest was so grave the document should be released.
It is hard to imagine a situation, in a juvenile centre, so serious that it would warrant the violence sanctioned by the report. The Ministry of Justice say, ‘staff need to be able to intervene effectively, to protect the safety of all involved.”
What many people who have witnessed the prison system at first hand could point out is that most ‘interventions’ are not about ensuring safety but more about graphically demonstrating who has the power and who is in control. ‘Control’ is an overused word in the prison industry. There are very few situations where immediate or violent action is required because, by the very nature of the establishments, every door has a lock.
The population of the juvenile estate are legally children and one would expect them to behave like children with the outbursts and tantrums that are part of being a child. We have long been told that being truculent and rebellious is a part of adolescence that is important to the healthy maturity to adulthood.
In most cases, de-escalation of an incident can be achieved either by withdrawing or by counselling. This may be a good use of female staff, who are not seen as a threat and can use gentle reason to achieve the desired outcome.
If a prisoner, juvenile or adult, is smashing their cell; most of the damage is to their own property - there is very little damage that can Government admits to child abuse in Secure Centres actually be done to prison property other than a smashed TV. Rather than a testosterone drunk riot squad, with shields, smashing their way in, it would be more sensible to quietly observe until the person has calmed down; and then someone who the person trusts goes in for a chat.
That word ‘trust’ is important. How could anyone trust a group of people who abuse them. Trust is the thing that feeds compliance and rehabilitation, and trust is one of the most powerful tools in de-escalation but is also the easiest thing to lose. Violence to achieve power and compliance actually achieves nothing but hatred and distrust. You only have to look at wartime resistance movements to see that forcefully demonstrating power achieves nothing except, sometimes, a more determined opposition.
There are very rare occasions when intervention might be critical; in the case of immediate self-harm or a violent attack on another person but in a juvenile centre where the staff bulk, strength and training outweighs the residents manyfold there should never be a need to resort to the violence described in the report. Such violence demonstrates failure and anarchy.
Because these are ‘closed’ establishments nobody sees what goes on; they are surrounded with secrecy. After 14 year-old Adam Rickward hanged himself at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre it was revealed that, shortly before his death, he had been restrained using ‘unlawful force’: yet nobody has been held to account.
Assuming these staff are adults, and possibly fathers, it is hard to imagine how they justify to themselves the violence they inflict on the children.
Custody staff are trained not to see prisoners as individual people and this can cause the weaker ones, who may have been bullied as a child, to use force and ‘power’ to counter their own feelings of weakness and guilt. Once again, a better system of staff recruitment, better training, and absolute supervision by people who are held to account is long overdue.
It’s a sad day when the state has to admit to institutionalised violence against the vulnerable people in their custody; sadder still, possibly, because this violence is contracted out to private companies to make profit for their shareholders. How do those shareholders now view their holdings in these companies?
Paul Sullivan was formerly resident at HMP Wakefield.
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