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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 10, 2016)
February 10, 2016 Black History Month O PINION Page 19 New Prices Effective May 1, 2014 Martin Cleaning Service Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Residential & Commercial Services Minimum Service CHG. $45.00 A small distance/travel charge may be applied CARPET CLEANING 2 Cleaning Areas or more $30.00 Each Area Pre-Spray Trafic Areas (Includes: 1 small Hallway) 1 Cleaning Area (only) $40.00 Includes Pre-Spray Trafic Area (Hallway Extra) Federal Prison Guards are Brutalizing Inmates My witness to the assault on justice J Ohn K iriaKOu Two federal pris- on guards in Flori- da recently agreed to plead guilty for beating a prisoner and then covering it up. One oficer faces up to three years in a federal pris- on, while the other is looking at a year. The Justice Department issued a press release that cast the news as a great victory over oficial malfeasance. “The Justice Depart- ment is committed to holding ofi- cers who engage in such criminal acts accountable,” insisted Van- ita Gupta, who heads the depart- ment’s civil rights division. Good for the Justice Depart- ment, right? Well, there’s a lot more to this issue. The federal prison system cer- tainly hasn’t seen the levels of inmate abuse that state and local prisons have become infamous for. New York’s Ryker’s Island, for example, is notorious for vio- by lent crimes committed by guards against prisoners — including juveniles — who are sometimes chained or handcuffed while they’re assaulted. But the federal system’s record isn’t anything to be proud of, either. The two Flor- ida oficers are no anomaly. About a year ago, I inished a 23-month stay in a federal prison for blowing the whis- tle on the CIA’s torture program. I couldn’t believe some of the things I saw there. A few months after I checked in at the Federal Correctional Insti- tution at Loretto, Pennsylvania, a new prisoner arrived. He was a for- mer prison guard who’d used his steel-toed boots to stomp another prisoner unconscious. The Loretto guards were clear about the rules: “This is his house,” they told us. “If anybody even looks at him cross- eyed, they’re going to solitary.” It didn’t really matter. After only a couple of months, the for- mer guard was transferred to the minimum-security work camp across the street, despite the fact that he’d committed a violent crime. The ix was in. I wish I could say that was the worst of it. One of my cellmates at Loret- to, whom I’ll call “James,” was a mentally ill homeless man from Pittsburgh. He’d purposefully violated the terms of his federal probation so he could spend the winter months indoors. James was clear with both the medical staff and his cellmates that he was mentally ill and need- ed to be medicated. We appreciat- ed his candor. But the medical staff’s primary mission is to keep costs low, and drugs for serious mental illness are expensive. Since James was supposed to go home in a few months anyway, they didn’t give him his meds. You can guess what happened: James began to spiral into insanity, and he was sent to solitary coninement. James’s struggles angered the staff. After one incident in solitary, he was stripped naked, beaten, and thrown outside. It was January, and the temperature in the central Penn- sylvania mountains was 10 degrees. An eyewitness told me that James apologized and asked to be let back in. He started crying after a couple of hours in the cold. Then he curled up into a ball and fainted. No guards were punished for what they did to James. Even if he’d reported it to the federal Bureau of Prisons headquarters, who would have listened to him? Would you believe a uniformed law enforcement oficer or a men- tally ill homeless man? The guards got away with it. Across the country, prison guards get away with things like this ev- ery day. The solution isn’t to prosecute two isolated abusers and then is- sue a press release crowing about it. The solution is to put cameras absolutely everywhere in prisons, and to vet and train guards much more thoroughly. Moreover, in- spector general ofices should in- vestigate more oficial crimes, and the Justice Department should be willing to prosecute more guards who abuse inmates. No one should celebrate the outcome of the Florida case un- til the abuse of prisoners by their guards becomes a thing of the past. OtherWords columnist John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. 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