Prison Legal News
You will want to check this out. Perhaps watch the videos. But
“Be advised these are authentic videos shot in real American prisons and jails. They contain graphic scenes of violence, assaults, nudity and death. Please do not view these materials if you are a minor or easily shocked. We present these materials to provide a realistic glimpse into the reality of the current American prison and jail system.”
The editor of Prison Legal News, Paul Wright, was profiled in the March 07 issue of Seven Days a free indie paper in VT.
The last three paragraphs from the Seven Days profile of P. Wright:
It’s no accident that conditions in American prisons are miserable, Wright concludes. It’s a deliberate and conscious political decision that reflects the common perception of prisoners as an expendable population.
“Nothing has happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo that’s publicly known at this point that we do not report on a regular basis as happening all the time in American prisons,” Wright asserts. “We know that prisoners are being beaten to death on a regular basis in military prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo. That happens on a regular basis here in the United States.
“We know prisoners have been sexually assaulted and humiliated by their staff, exposed to freezing temperatures, subjected to sensory deprivation, held in restraints and painful positions for long periods of time,” he continues. “All that happens in American prisons, too — and we’re the ones reporting on it.”
Posted in memory of my grandfather, the prison reformer Howard B. Gill.
permalink | Jock Gill | Civil Rights and Equality, Culture, Empowerment
See also
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/03/09/suit_urges_state_to_overhaul_prisons/
and
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/01/prison_a_wasteland_for_mentally_ill/
At the National Conference on Media Reform, Van Jones had some great things to say about prison reform. He was talking about the privatization of the prison system and talked about how this was turning Wall Street into the twenty first century slave market. He tied it together very nicely with, “You don’t need the N word anymore, all you have to say is ‘felon’”.