An investigation by the Sacramento Bee News earlier this year exposed the abuse of prisoners by police in the Behavior Management Unit of High Desert State Prison in Susanville, Calif. Closed recently due solely to budget cuts, the High Desert behavioral unit was created in 2005. It and other BMUs were implemented across California to deal with supposedly troublesome inmates. Proven by signed affidavits, interviews and correspondence with 18 prisoners, the Bee report exposed the racism, torture and cruelty that plagued the High Desert behavioral unit.
|
|
One example is that of Jason Brannigan, an African-American prisoner who was pepper-sprayed by police and hauled naked by a chain in front of other people.
“They’re walking me on the chain and it felt just like … slaves again,” said Brannigan. “Like I just stepped off an auction block.” (Sacramento Bee, May 9)
This cruelty imposed on the prisoner was triggered by his failure to return a meal tray on time.
Inmates see the cruelty as blatantly racist. For instance, a convict was left lying on the floor with rectal bleeding. Staff refused to take him for medical attention, according to a state researchers’ report. When prison guards arrived, “they said ‘It’s the f—ing n—– again, let him die.’ And they left him there.” (Sacramento Bee, May 9)
Complaints by prisoners are often rejected or discarded by prison officials at High Desert State Prison. Letters to the FBI and state inspectors office are never delivered, according to the Bee’s interviews with inmates. The guards usually claim their mail logs were lost in a computer crash, so they cannot confirm whether or not the mail was delivered. When state researchers left High Desert, they alerted Corrections Department officials of the horrifying treatment endured by prisoners. Rather than being sympathetic, the officials told the researchers to tone down their complaints.
The brutality at High Desert takes many forms, including prolonged solitary confinement, which the Geneva Convention banned as torture with regards to the treatment of prisoners of war. This is no surprise, given that U.S. supermax prisons have been condemned as inhumane by the ACLU and United Nations.
Such punishment is reminiscent of the Security Housing Units that serve to put inmates in solitary confinement for months, even years. These units have been known to cause some inmates to become mentally ill.
It is the same throughout the country. For example, in Richmond, Va., Rastafarians who refuse to cut their hair on religious grounds are put into semi-isolation in segregation cells. They are given little outside contact, and some have been locked away for up to a decade.
While the situation at the High Desert BMU has drawn government and media attention due to the severity of the abuse, brutality and racism are defining characteristics of the capitalistU.S. prison system. This is a criminal” justice” system where Black people are more likely to be arrested on drug charges than whites despite the fact that they both commit drug offenses at a similar rate, where African Americans are frequently excluded from jury service, and where plea bargains threaten defendants with longer sentences for exercising their constitutional right to a trial.
The prisons are tools of the ruling class. They are used to enforce laws that ensure that the capitalists’ property and profits are protected at the expense of the workers.
