| SPEAKING UP |
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By Bonnie Kerness  ast month, a United Nations committee cited the United States as a human rights violator against its own people. The torture of prisoners in the United States is widespread, the U.N. Committee Against Torture found.
The comittee of 10 human rights experts noted egregious violations, including the use of electric stun belts and restraint chairs on prisoners, prison chain gangs, sexual assault of female prisoners and detention of minors. These common practices in U.S. prisons violate international law, namely the U.N. Convention Against Toruture, which the United States ratified in 1994. Prisons are one of the largest growth industries in the United States. While the United States has 5 percent of the world's population, it holds an astounding 25 percent of the world's prisoner population. We are living in an era when the criminalization of poverty is a lucrative business and this country has replaced the social safety net with a dragnet. Contrary to popular belief, most U.S. prisoners have been convicted of nonviolent offenses. The so-called war on drugs, which is really war against poor people of color, fuels the prison industry. |
U.S. prisoners are mostly poor and working-class people who need jobs and education. Just as U.S. prisons hold large numbers of drug-dependent people, they house vast numbers of the mentally ill. Imprisoned mentally ill people endure the kind of torture cited by the United Nations.
U.S. prison practices place it in the company of China and other nations it has criticized for human rights violations. Working on behalf of prisoners, I daily receive letters and phone calls that describe inhumane conditions in U.S. prisons. These include cold, filth, callous medical care, extended isolation that sometimes lasts over a decade, harassment, brutality, racism and the use of torture devices. |
Reports of torture devices in prison largely come from the isolation units, called "control units." Torture devices commonly used in U.S. prisons are four-point restraints, restraint hoods, belts and beds, stun grenades, belts and guns, tethers, waist and leg chains and air Tasers.
Add to this the U.N. treaty positions on the racially biased death penalty, abuses involving the mentally ill, prison labor, children's rights and the shocking treatment of people in Immigration and Naturalization Service detention centers. U.S. prison practices place it in the company of China and other nations the United States has justifiably criticized over the years for human rights violations. I have treated prisoners who have endured torture in U.S. prisons, and I have treated hundreds of ex-prisoners who have returned to our communities with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. My soul is shaken by what I read in my daily mail. What is going on in the name of all of us must be looked at very carefully. Bonnie Kerness of Elizabeth is a human rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee. |
| THE STAR-LEDGER | MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2000 |