Table Of ContentU.S. Prisons: Horror behind bars
by Raisa Pages (Granma International staff writer)
From the Cuban dailly, Granma, April 16, 2002
The cells measure 2.3 by 3.3 meters and are designed so that inmates cannot see each other. They
remain in this small space for 23 hours of the day and during the hour of exercise they are tied up in
shackles. Food is given to them through the small opening in the door of their cell. This describes
Pelican Bay State Prison in California, one of the most notorious in the United States for its cruelty.
U.S. prisons have become concentration camps, according to experts. The majority of U.S. states
spend more money building prisons than schools. California has one of the largest prison systems in
the world, and public funds allocated to maintaining the prison system are greater than what goes to
education. Many more penitentiaries than schools have been built, a surprising reality, not only for its
local repercussions, but also for its social significance in the most powerful nation in the world.
The United States has the unfortunate record of being the country with the largest prison population
in the world, two million. The number of inmates increases at an alarming rate of 50% every 10
years.
With 5% of the global population, it harbors 25% of the prisoners reported worldwide. The U.S.
Justice Department asserts that there are 690 prisoners for every 100,000 inhabitants, much higher
than the European average of less than 100 inmates.
Lucrative business
The privatization of prisons in the United States has become a lucrative business, something truly
incredible. "The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), as this private industry is called, is the biggest
beneficiary of penal policy, based on repression and punishment more than reintegration and
education," journalist Marta Caravantes commented.
Comparative studies indicate that private prisons register costs of 10- 15% less than those of public
institutions, and that cost efficiency is reflected in the lower quality of inmates' food and medical
services, lower salaries and other conditions, all in the name of profit.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution legalizes these practices by adopting the exception:
slavery and forced labor are not prohibited from being applied "except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
With $7 billion USD in new investments every year, the prison industry's annual budget exceeds $35
billion USD and has more than a half million workers, making it the second largest employer in the
United States after General Motors.
Caravantes considers the private correctional facilities, which employ the cheapest labor on the
whole continent, without social protection, a prosperous business extending through 27 states and
including 120 penitentiaries. Prisoners package products for Microsoft, Starbucks and Jansport and
also provide labor for other companies.
"Behind the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex are Wall Street firms and banks that primarily
supply the funds for the construction of private prisons," denounces Monica Moorehead, coordinator
of the Millions for Mumia Abu-Jamal, an African-American freedom fighter who has been battling his
death sentence for over 16 years. Abu-Jamal is one of the best-known prisoners in the world for his
restless struggle against the injustices of the U.S. system.
Some believe that an effort is under way to export private prisons to Latin American and Europe. The
largest of the U.S. prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America, is operating in England
and some companies want to invest in Mexico, seeking greater profits from prisoners outside their
national territory.
Hispanics and African-Americans: disproportionate sentences
Twenty-five U.S. states continue allowing the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, denounced
by the organization Human Rights Watch. U.S. prisons are currently being transformed into new
concentration camps to imprison the homeless, unemployed, intoxicated, mentally ill and other
minorities who are cannon fodder in the current U.S. justice system, according to specialist Jerome
G. Miller, an expert on the prison system and social reintegration techniques, cited in Sally Burch's
article, published on the Internet.
More than 60% of the inmates belong to racial minorities and ethnic groups. African-Americans
account for 12% of the total population but fill half the prisons of the United States and receive
disproportionate sentences. In New York, one out of every three young black men is imprisoned or
on parole.
Estimates on the current rate of African-American imprisonment indicate that the majority of men
between 18 and 49 years of age will be incarcerated within a decade. In some cities, one third of
young African-American men are awaiting trial or already imprisoned.
The treatment of Native Americans involves the same violations of human rights. The most
prominent case is that of Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for over 20 years after an
extremely irregular trial.
The International Action Center of New York has labeled the U.S. prison system the institution which
legalizes racist oppression and apartheid, a new type of segregation reserved for the lowest and
most marginalized classes.
Hispanics and African-Americans are victims of this cruel prison policy., Considered a social
problem, they are locked up to prevent them from bothering whites of the comfortable class.
The five Cubans, convicted unjustly last year in an illegal trial and given excessive sentences, are
part of this racist policy. These men, whose mission was to protect Cuba from criminal actions
perpetrated by counterrevolutionary groups based in Miami, are currently imprisoned throughout the
United States, the country that has massacred the Afgan people under the justification of fighting
terrorism.
New mental asylums
Ripping out eyes and other hair-raising self-mutilations by disturbed prisoners are not just scenes
from U.S. cinema, where prison dramas have become recurring themes.
Journalist Sasha Abramsky denounced the punishments meted out by the prison guards in an article
published in American Prospect magazine, in which she asserts that maximum security prisons have
become the technological equivalent of the snakes' nest.
Horrified by the violence characterizing U.S. prisons, psychiatrist Terry Kupers, author of the book
Prison Madness, considers these centers the largest mental asylums in the United States, due to the
doubling of the number of patients interned in the state institution specialized in dementia, reports
Inter Press Service.
The treatment received by U.S. prisoners is directed at degrading human beings instead of improving
their mental state. Kupers declared how in solitary confinement cells, he was struck by the level of
psychosis in prisoners, who scream profanities, injure themselves and are covered in excrement.
The weakening of the U.S mental health system in recent decades, which reduced psychiatric wards
to a minimum, is one of the reasons why prisons are full of mentally ill people, according to a study
published by the British magazine The Lancet. The federal budget approved this year does not
provide a solution to the problem.
The authors of the study, psychiatrist Seena Fazel of Oxford University and British medical doctor
John Danesh of Cambridge selected 12 industrialized countries for their long-term study.
One of every seven inmates in the 12 developed nations, more than one million people, suffer from
psychosis or deep depression which could lead to suicidal behavior. In addition, one in two men and
one in five women suffer from personality disorders, the experts confirmed.
One year ago, another denunciation, made by Human Rights Watch, called for U.S. legislation
prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, currently practiced in 25 states, according to
that organization. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the execution of mentally retarded
people was constitutional. At that moment only two of the 50 states prohibited it, although the
number in favor of eliminating the practice has risen to 13.
Many sick people on death row remain in legal limbo, wondering what their destiny will be.
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Granma International
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