p thoughts and notices

The International Centre for Prison Studies, part of King’s College in London, indicates that the USA is the country with the most inmates in the world in absolute terms, with more than 2 million people behind bars, compared with 1.5 million in China and 847 thousands in Russia. The USA’s incarceration rate is 714 per 100,000 people, compared to a mere 118 for the People’s Republic of China. Interesting numbers for a country that defined itself as the Land of the Free. Something is indeed amiss when even Fox News, is running features on the increased criminalization of behavior.

What should be equally troubling is the matter of prisoners’ treatment. We all know by now about the abuses committed in Abu Ghraib prison by, amongst others, “specialist” Graner. (Of course, since his lawyer qualified the enactment of Mr. Graner’s gay S&M fantasies inflicted on unwilling subjects as being equivalent to cheerleading, paraphernalia can only guess that the OJ Simpson legal team was not available for Mr. Graner).

An interesting aspect of Mr. Graner’s biography (and perhaps why he is referred to as “specialist”) is that he spent a large part of his brilliant career working as a prison guard in Pennsylvania , where he seemed to have honed the skills that would prove so useful to him later in Iraq. Of course, abuse of foreign prisoners is common knowledge by now, be it in Guantanamo Bay or in the other Iraq “penal” institutions managed by the British Army.

Given the above, are there any reasons to believe that American domestic prisoners get much better treatment? Well, a cursory search on the internet leads paraphernalia to believe that, when it comes to mistreating inmates, the USA does not discriminate much between citizens and foreigners. There are some pretty bad stories, while sexual abuse of incarcerated women is said to be rampant by Amnesty International and is now even used by non-violent drug users to seek refugee status in Canada. paraphernalia also wishes to point out that abuses of all sorts by guards and is not limited to women, as noted by Human Rights Watch and SPR. Given that a large proportion of the US inmates comprise non-violent drug users subject to mandatory sentencing, it is hard not to conclude that using drugs is far less dangerous and damaging for your health than doing time because of it.

As for all compassionate conservatives that support infantile policies (stuff like: 3 strikes, you’re out and mandatory minimum), fans of the new Attorney General who endorses torture, drug warriors and staff of corporations that benefit from the war on drugs, paraphernalia can only advises you to keep praying. You need it much, much more than non-violent drug users (except, of course, for those that are stuck in your Gulag!).