Pubdate: Sun, 16 May 2004
Source: Dominion Post, The (Morgantown, WV)
Copyright: 2004 The Dominion Post
Contact:  http://www.dominionpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1426
Author: Rich Lowry
Note: Rich Lowry is a syndicated columnist and the editor of The National 
Review
Related: Prisoner Abuse And The Drug War - What You Can Do 
http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0291.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

OTHER SCANDALS IN PRISONS

If we insist on having an orgy of self-flagellation about the prison abuses 
at Abu Ghraib, we might as well gain something from it. That something 
shouldn't be a change in our interrogation tactics in the war on terror -- 
they don't seem at fault for the perverse acts of a few MPs -- but reform 
of the ongoing scandal that is the U.S. prison system.

It is telling that two of the guards involved in the Iraq scandal were 
prison guards in the United States. Our prisons aren't run the way 
cellblocks 1-A and 1-B in Abu Ghraib were between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. last 
fall, thank goodness, but they tend to be pits of sexual violence, madness 
and drug abuse. They are at once too brutal and too lax. Fixing them is not 
something we owe the international community or anyone else -- besides 
ourselves.

Events at Abu Ghraib have established that we are horrified at the idea of 
forcible sodomy -- some of which might be featured in the new batch of 
photos -- in prisons. Good. That sense of outraged disgust should apply 
here. An estimated 10 percent of priso * inmates are victims of rape at 
least once. Two-thirds of the victims are raped repeatedly, and some male 
prisoners report 100 or more incidents of sexual assault a year. According 
to Cindy Struckman-Johnson of the University of South Dakota, a third of 
the victims have thoughts of committing suicide, and 17 percent attempt it.

Suicidal despair is a common feature of prisons, since they are used to 
warehouse the mentally ill. Instead of deinstitutionalizing the mentally 
ill, we have trans-institutionalized them, effectively transferring them 
from mental-health hospitals into prisons. There are more mentally ill 
people in America's jails and prisons -- somewhere between 200,000 and 
300,000 -- than in all its psychiatric hospitals. They don't get proper 
treatment and are often punished for the consequences of their illness by 
bein g placed in solitary confinement, thus exacerbating their sickness.

On top of these problems, there are gangs, drugs, abusive guards and more. 
How do we improve our prisons? The most important change has to be in our 
attitude. Prisons can do great good -- they have been the most important 
factor in declining crime during the past decade. But the people who go 
there, despite their weakness or wickedness, are human beings and deserve 
to be treated as such. Incarceration is itself the punishment and shouldn't 
be augmented by random brutality or poor treatment.

A message should be sent from the very top, i.e. governors, that the abuse 
of prisoners, by fellow inmates or by guards, will not be tolerated. It is 
especially important that inmate-on-inmate rape and acts of abuse by guards 
be punished, even if powerful look-the-other-way prison-guard unions don't 
like it. Overcrowding, which overwhelms guards and helps create the 
conditions for rape and other violence, should be alleviated. If we are 
going to jail more people than any other country in the world, let's build 
more prisons. But since there are limits on resources, the 
incarceration-intense drug war needs to be re-examined. And the mentally 
ill should be diverted into mental institutions.

Meanwhile, as criminal-justice expert Eli Lehrer argues, while prisoners 
are under our control we might as well try to do some good for them. Work 
programs in prison can get prisoners in the habit of working and reduce 
recidivism. More than 10 percent of prisoners test positive for drugs at 
any given time. Coercive treatment programs should attempt to wean them of 
addiction. Finally, prisoners tend to be simply dumped on the streets when 
they are released. More intensive post-prison monitoring can help keep them 
from going back.

It is understandable that Abu Ghraib has raised such an outcry. The abuses 
there will get more American soldiers killed. But there is something odd 
about a country that gets more exercised about the treatment of foreign 
prisoners than the treatment of its own. Let's not expend all of our prison 
outrage on behalf of Iraqis.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake