One prisoner was left brain dead from the abuse

Food and water deprivation, abuse and overcrowding in Michigan’s women’s prison By Naomi Spencer 10 September 2014 A pair of statements issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and three inmates at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility describe widespread human rights abuses in Michigan’s only women’s prison. Overcrowding, the regular use of forced restraint and tasers, forced nudity, and the withholding of food water, and sanitation are among the complaints. The ACLU statement, issued to the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) in July and obtained by the Ann Arbor News this week, charges that the prison subjected mentally ill inmates to “barbaric and unconstitutional” conditions tantamount to torture. “Witnesses have reported seeing mentally ill prisoners denied water and food, ‘hog tied’ naked for many hours, left to stand, sit or lie naked in their own feces and urine, denied showers for days and tasered,” ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss wrote. Inmates in solitary confinement were denied water, the ACLU states. When prisoners begged guards for water, the Ann Arbor News reports, they “failed to provide it for hours, and possibly days, in some cases.” One prisoner was left brain dead from the abuse, according to the ACLU. “At least one mentally ill inmate who experienced these abuses, specifically water and food deprivation and poor sanitation, was transferred to an outside hospital last month after she was found non-responsive in her cell,” Moss wrote. “Through various sources, we understand she has since been pronounced brain dead.” The statement describes another prisoner being “hog tied” by a guard. “One inmate, who pleaded with a guard to help a mentally ill prisoner who was crying naked on the floor and unable to move—because her feet were cuffed to her hands behind her back—was told that her fellow prisoner would have to stay like that for two hours or more, because she had not learned to behave.” A separate statement was filed as a formal grievance with MDOC by three Huron Valley inmates. The inmates describe being held, along with another woman, in an 8- by 12-foot cell that used to be a “chemical caustic closet” because of overcrowding. The prison was built to hold up to 2,143, but officials have not released the current population count. Inmates in the cellblock known as Dickinson A, where the closet is located, are reportedly housed in extremely cramped conditions on a regular basis. “The cell I’m in is inadequately small for myself and three others, and there are not enough lockers, no privacy, inadequate desks and chairs, and there is no ventilation,” wrote one prisoner. That statement, also obtained by the Ann Arbor News, was made in the form of an appeal in February after an initial grievance was rejected by the state on the grounds that more than one inmate had “filed a grievance about the same issue, and therefore the grievance was discarded.” At the time, MDOC stated, “Two or more prisoners and/or parolees may not jointly file a single grievance regarding an issue of mutual impact, or submit identical individual grievances regarding a given issue as an organized protest. Such grievances will be rejected by the grievance coordinator.” In response to the February appeal, MDOC claimed that the cell was fine. “All prisoners housed in Dickinson unit have been treated humanely and with dignity in matters of health care, personal safety and general living conditions,” the department declared. Conditions in the Huron Valley facility have long been deplorable. In 2012, the ACLU filed a letter signed by 34 human rights and legal organizations calling for the end of “sexually humiliating” and unsanitary strip searches by guards that was contributing to both infections and mental health trauma among prisoners, many of whom had suffered sexual abuse. A class action lawsuit in 2009 on behalf of over 900 women who said they were sexually abused by guards resulted in the implementation of a female-only staffing policy at Huron Valley. Michigan Women’s Justice and Clemency Project director Carol Jacobsen told the News that abuse was “heavy” in the prison, in part because of what the newspaper described as “the near-impossibility of civilian accessibility.” Jacobsen said she had been unable to see the prison’s living quarters for years. Meeting with inmates, she said, nevertheless made clear that the conditions were contributing to an epidemic of mental illness. “It’s gone on for years,” Jacobsen said of the use of solitary confinement. “I’ve been documenting it with various women for years. A lot of these women, they throw them in segregation for months on end, are mentally ill … and then they deteriorate. It’s horrible to see them deteriorate.” Michigan prisons, like prisons across the United States, are pits of abuse, misery and disease. They are also a rich source of profit for corporations. The food service company Aramark, for example, enjoys a $145 million contract with MDOC to provide meal service to the state prisons. Last month, the state of Michigan fined the company $200,000 for “errors” that included widespread food shortages, inadequately trained employees, lax management of utensils such as knives, and serving food that was spoiled and infested with maggots. Aramark reports an annual revenue of $13.5 billion. As the economy of Michigan has deteriorated and social infrastructure spending has been axed, the incarceration rate, length of prison terms, and government spending on prisons have all soared. Over the past several decades, the largest area of economic growth in Michigan has been in its $2 billion-a-year prison system. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Michigan devotes a larger portion of its state general fund budget to prisons than any other state. In 1980, corrections accounted for 3 percent of the state budget; in 2013, Michigan devoted fully 21 percent of spending on prisons. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/10/pris-s10.html

Sexual Assult At Rikers New York City By Correctional Officers

Suit: New York City allowed Rikers Island corrections officers to commit widespread assault. May 22nd 2015 Two inmates from one of America's most famous jails say New York City allowed Rikers Island corrections officers to commit widespread sexual assault. The women filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against one of the jail's corrections officers and the city saying the officer repeatedly raped them. The women say when they tried to report the assaults, they were told nothing could be done. Part of the suit reads the officer threatened to allow other inmates to beat the women up if they reported assault. The women's attorneys also allege when Rikers officers get reported, "retaliation includes threats and other verbal abuse, deprivation of food for extended periods of time, refusing to permit women to bathe, and placing them in punitive segregation based on false disciplinary charges." Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act -- or PREA -- in 2003 hoping to effectively create a zero- tolerance policy. The New York Times recently pointed out, however, the DOJ took nearly a decade to create "final standards" for the law and many corrections facilities like Rikers are lagging. A public advocate who has petitioned for the city to bring Rikers in line with PREA told Capital New York, "It really doesn't come as a surprise -- the city for a long time has turned a blind eye to unacceptable rates of sexual victimization on Rikers Island." A spokesman for the city's corrections department told CNN the office wouldn't comment on pending litigation but said the department does have a "zero tolerance policy with regard to sexual abuse and assault."

Abuse At WVDC IN Rancho Cucamonga County Lock Up

West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. By Joe Nelson, The Sun Posted: 02/05/15, 10:28 PM PST|Updated: on 02/06/2015 0 Comments An attorney alleging in two federal lawsuits that deputies at a San Bernardino County jail routinely abused inmates with Taser guns said Friday he will soon be filing a third lawsuit with 35 new plaintiffs. Victorville attorney James Terrell said the lawsuit should be filed within the next two weeks. In May, he and Victorville attorneys Sharon Brunner and Stanley Hodge filed two lawsuits on behalf of 10 inmates at the jail after the FBI and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced in April that criminal and internal affairs investigations had been launched. “The things we have learned from our clients are truly horrifying. The torture and abuse was perpetrated by several very demented and socially deviant San Bernardino deputies,” Terrell said in an email Friday. “The actions of these officers will come to light very soon, we believe, and are so awful that they violate basic principles of human decency.” The new lawsuit comes in the wake of a federal grand jury proceeding in Riverside that Terrell said concluded Wednesday with the testimony of one of his clients. Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, declined to comment, as did San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, named as a defendant in each of the five federal lawsuits filed to date. Terrell said he and Brunner have traveled up and down the state in the last year, visiting jails, state prisons and federal prisons, meeting with alleged victims — most former food servers in the protective custody unit at West Valley who allegedly were singled out by deputies. Inmates housed in the protective custody unit at the jail wear green jumpsuits and are segregated from the jail’s general population because they are susceptible to violent attacks by other inmates. Inmates say they were subjected to a brutal hazing ritual of Taser gun abuse by deputies — the price they pay for the privileges that come with the title of “chow server” including more television and telephone time and freedom to move around the jail. “Ironically, it was prisoners housed in protective custody for their own personal safety and protection . . . who were singled out by the individual defendants for abuse and torture, presumably because of their inability to retaliate and protect themselves,” Los Angeles attorney Matthew Eanet said in a lawsuit filed on behalf of former West Valley inmate Eric Wayne Smith on Jan. 25. Smith, 28, of Hesperia, is now serving a sentence at Avenal State Prison for buying and receiving stolen property with prior convictions. He was the first to come forward with the allegations that prompted the criminal and administrative investigations, Eanet said. When the criminal and internal affairs investigations were announced in April, the Sheriff’s Department had already fired rookie deputies Brock Teyechea, Andrew Cruz and Nicholas Oakley, who had been out of the training academy less than a year. In October, the department announced that four more deputies had been placed on paid leave during the investigation, but refused to disclose their names. Deputies, the lawsuits allege, would routinely stun inmates with their Taser guns, deprive them of sleep by entering their cells in the middle of the night, stunning them with Taser guns as they slept or by blaring loud music over the jail’s intercom. Smith’s lawsuit alleges deputies also played audio clips of the horror film “Silence of the Lambs” in the middle of the night to taunt inmates. Smith and other inmates also allege Teyechea sprayed pepper spray under their cell doors, causing them to become violently ill or press their faces against a ceiling air vent to avoid the caustic chemicals. Investigators documented Smith’s injuries by taking photographs of burn marks on his body caused by the electric shock of a Taser gun, according to Smith’s lawsuit. Along with Teyechea, Cruz and Oakley, other defendants named in the lawsuits include McMahon, West Valley Capt. Jeff Rose, and deputies Robert Escamilla, Russell Kopasz, Robert Morris, Eric Smale and Daniel Stryffeler. The alleged inmate abuse was institutional, learned and either ignored or condoned at the very top, the lawsuits allege. “Certainly, it’s more than just the three (deputies) who were fired,” said Eanet. McMahon has remained unflappable through it all, standing by the actions of his deputies and how the Rancho Cucamonga jail is operated. He denies a culture of inmate abuse there, chalking the transgressions up to a few bad apples no longer within the department. He hosted a media tour of the jail in May, touting its medical and dental facilities and ongoing upgrades, including electronic kiosks that will allow inmates to file grievances, request medical aid and order commissary items. All units at the jail are also being equipped with surveillance cameras. The San Bernardino County Grand Jury, in its annual report released on July 1, gave the county’s jails a glowing review and characterized relations between inmates and deputies at the jails as “good.” But the Berkeley-based prisoner advocacy nonprofit Prison Law Office sees things differently. It has fielded more than 700 complaints from inmates over the last few years alleging excessive use of force by deputies, shoddy medical treatment and neglect. “We identified problems with medical, mental health and dental care, excessive use of force by deputies, failure to protect inmates from violence by other inmates, and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Kelly Knapp, a staff attorney with the Prison Law Office. “They are failing to provide reasonable accommodations for inmates with disabilities and are discriminating against them from access to certain programs such as fire camp.” The Prison Law Office has been working with the Sheriff’s Department to address the problems and could have an agreement in place within the next month, Knapp said. If the problems are not adequately addressed and negotiations break down, the Prison Law Office may consider a lawsuit. If that happens, the Sheriff’s Department has already agreed not to argue certain defenses in court such as inmates not following the proper grievance process before taking legal action or the statute of limitations lapsing, Knapp said. Through his spokeswoman, Cindy Bachman, McMahon declined to comment for this report, saying it would be inappropriate given the ongoing investigation. But he did say he would be willing to sit down and discuss the investigation after it is complete. About the Author Joe Nelson covers San Bernardino County for The Sun, Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts. Reach the author at joe.nelson@langnews.com or follow Joe on Twitter: @sbcountynow. http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20150205/35-more-san-bernardino-county-inmates-allege-abuse