Iraq 'Supermax' Prison Won't Wipe Away Abu Ghraib Stain

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Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson,
Pacific News Service, May 26, 2004

Editor's Note: President Bush promised a "modern, maximum-security prison" in Iraq -- and the destruction of the notorious Abu Ghraib complex -- as a way of giving Iraq a more humane prison system. But so-called "supermax" prisons in the United States are far from humane, the writer says.

Supermax prisons have been the target of prisoner lawsuits in California, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and Illinois. Prisoners have called them "torture chambers" where they are subjected to flagrant human rights and civil liberties violations and appalling psychological and physical abuses. In a lawsuit filed by Ohio prisoners at the state's supermax prison in Youngstown in 2002, inmate Keith Garner bluntly told a judge that the conditions at the prison were "like being in a tomb."

The lawsuits cite a litany of abuses that include: the misuse of the restraints; punitive shackling; the use of electro-shock weapons and pepper spray; random strip searches; prisoners being confined to prolonged isolation in a tiny cell with lights on for 24 hours; minimal recreation and exercise; and the denial of psychological treatment and counseling.

These abuses are eerily similar to those inflicted on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Many detainees there had not committed any terrorist acts, or were members of militias fighting against American forces. Many of the prisoners in America's supermaxes also can be held indefinitely, as the Iraqis were. There are virtually no uniform standards, or guidelines that spell out when and under what circumstances a prisoner is no longer considered a behavior threat and can be returned to a regular prison. The warden generally makes that decision, and it's a decision that's fraught with whim, capriciousness and frequently, racial bias.

More: http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d8ccb8306b9f05c2273b18e913d90f7a


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