Blind Eyes

Thomas Nephew at Newsrack has two excellent posts (1, 2) about torture in American prisons.   The horrible fact they expose is that we shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens in prisons in Iraq when we have the same torture policies going on within our legitimate borders.   

The first article that Thomas cites is this one by Laura LaFay.  It's about Wallens Ridge prison in Virginia and the man who built it, Ronald Angelone, who is a comer in Virginia Republican political circles:   

When Albuquerque, N.M., lawyer Paul Livingston first saw the now-infamous photos of the naked Iraqi prisoner being menaced by American soldiers with dogs in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib Prison, he immediately thought of Virginia.

Livingston represents 66 of 108 New Mexico inmates shipped to Virginia’s Wallens Ridge prison in 1999. The cases, he says, involve inmates who were non-violent offenders and have since been released. Nevertheless, Virginia prison guards beat them, shot them with stun guns and rubber bullets, slammed them against floors and walls, chained them to their beds for days at a time, subjected them to racist verbal abuse, and threatened them with sodomy and vicious dogs. This was done as a matter of policy, Livingston says, “just to show them who was boss and how terrified they should be.”

But while the Abu Ghraib abuse photos provoked international outrage and apologies from President George W. Bush, published reports of incidents in Virginia and other states have left both the president and the public largely unconcerned.

"Largely unconcerned" is an understatement.   Prison conditions, including rape, have become an easy joke in our popular culture.  Largely unconcerned?  We're largely unconcerned about Avian Flu and the use of depleted uranium weapons.  We strongly support the torture of our prisoners at home and abroad.  And the link between those two sets of inmates is a clear one. LaFay's story mentions Ivan "Chip" Frederick, a former corrections guard at the Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, VA.   Last year I wrote about this NYT story that outlines the professional path of Lane McCotter:

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours.  The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system. Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company's operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.

There are no suprises here, which is the most horrible aspect of the story.  Thanks to a "largely unconcerned" public; cruel and unproductive "tough on crime" prison policies and "tough on terrorism" foreign policies (all designed more for manipulating a terrified public to win their votes than for solving any actual social problems related to crime or terrorism) and a corporate media that doesn't see the profit in exposing the medieval conditions of our prison system, we will continue to torture anyone unfortunate or anti-social enough to fall into our clutches.  God bless America.

Comments

[DavidByron]

The public is largely unconcerned about men's welfare on a raft of separate issues. In fact if anyone tries to bring up male issues they are usually attacked on so-called progressive boards by people who pretend to champion issues of gender discrimination.

The usual response I get when I mention male rape from feminists is, "it's just men raping other men (so they deserve it)".

One in four men in the US will spend at least one night behind bars in their lifetime.

[eRobin]

The usual response I get when I mention male rape from feminists is, "it's just men raping other men (so they deserve it)".

That's just nonsense. Anyone saying that is insane.

I didn't mean only male prisoners. Women prisoners experience torture as well. This isn't a gender thing in my book.

[DavidByron]

It's a gender thing because (1) the vast majority of those effected are of one gender and (2) because the lack of attention given to the issue is caused in part by the societal neglect and prejudice against men.

Anyone saying that is insane.

When I say "(so they deserve it)" the parentheses are meant to indicate that part goes unspoken. It's not exactly right either. It's more like, "it's just men raping other men (so they don't really count as victims)"

It's not insanity. It's a corollary of the feminist concept of collective guilt of all men. (aka "the patriarchy") As a sex you have to be either criminal or victim and men are the criminals, while women are the victims - universally. Sex war.

The same logic is why feminists usually see no problem at all with the Violence Against Women Act's discrimination against male victims of domestic violence. Men can never be victims because only women are ever victims. Therefore it makes sense to pass a law saying male victims can't receive any aid from the federal government.

Taken together with conservative's views that men ought to "stand up for themselves" the result is an across the board conclusion that men don't deserve to be helped by society and to the contrary have to be reigned in by society on account of their brutal barbaric nature.