cannabisnews.com: Activist Criticizes U.S. Prison Conditions!





Activist Criticizes U.S. Prison Conditions!
Posted by FoM on April 14, 1999 at 06:23:07 PT
Source: Michigan Live
GENEVA Female prisoners in the United States suffer frequent sexual abuse from male guards and are often held in leg irons or shackles in violation of international standards, a U.N. human rights expert said.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, a U.N. investigator, said Tuesday that both federal and state governments should do more to ensure minimum standards of treatment for female prisoners and better training for prison guards. In a report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Ms. Coomaraswamy urged the Clinton administration to review drug laws, pointing out that many women were jailed because of drug-related offenses that could be better handled by community-based programs. "The United States is criminalizing a large segment of its population; this segment is overwhelmingly composed of poor persons of color and is increasingly female," Ms. Coomaraswamy said in her report to the 53-nation commission. The number of women in U.S. prisons rose to nearly 65,000 in 1995, up from 12,300 in 1980, according to U.S. government figures. Neal Walsh, a spokesman for the U.S. diplomatic mission to the United Nations in Geneva, said most of the deficiencies cited in the report had already been highlighted by U.S. authorities. "We welcome this sort of scrutiny as it serves as an example to other countries that we provided the necessary access," Walsh said. A series of U.N. human rights experts have visited the United States in the past year at the invitation of the Clinton administration. Abuse of women in U.S. prisons has also been highlighted by Amnesty International, which has mounted a campaign against human rights violations in the United States. Ms. Coomaraswamy's 55-page report documented individual cases of abuse -- such as rape of women prisoners in a California jail and the use of tear gas against a woman shackled to a bed in a Michigan jail. It also looked at the huge differences in state practices -- praising Minnesota for high standards and forward-looking policies while singling out Michigan for most criticism. Ms. Coomaraswamy criticized the use of restraints such as leg irons and shackles in prisons throughout the country, saying that it was against international rules on the treatment of prisoners. "Women in labor are also shackled during transport to hospital and after the baby is born," she wrote, citing one case in which the woman remained shackled during delivery. Rape was fairly rare, Ms. Coomaraswamy wrote. Women frequently agreed to have sex with male guards, however, in return for favors and were subject to harassment when being frisked by men or monitored during showering. "It is clear that sexual misconduct by male corrections officers against women inmates is widespread," she wrote. The report also criticized the practice of keeping female asylum seekers in prisons for want of lack of space elsewhere. 
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