Pubdate: Sat, 15 May 2004
Source: National Review Online (US Web)
Copyright: 2004 National Review
Contact:  http://www.nationalreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/287
Author: Rich Lowry
Action: 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)

THE OTHER PRISON OUTRAGE: ON THE HOME FRONT

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 ten 
percent of prison 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 being 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 ten 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