RIGHTS-US: U.N. Official Barred from U.S. Women’s Prisons

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations is caught in the middle of a human rights dispute between the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Michigan over the abuse of women inmates in its prisons.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, has been barred from visiting three Michigan prisons accused of widespread sexual misconduct against its women prisoners.

The Governor of Michigan, John Engler, has stated that the federal government has filed a “baseless lawsuit” in charging his State with violating the rights of women prisoners and is facilitating the U.N. probe motivated primarily by political reasons.

“I view the United Nations as an unwitting tool in the Justice Department’s agenda to discredit the state of Michigan in spite of the objective evidence that the state of Michigan has not violated the civil and constitutional rights of women inmates,” Engler said in a letter to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Coomaraswamy, who has just completed visits to both federal and State prisons, as well as Immigration and Naturalisation detention facilities, in the States of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia, California and Minnesota, was prevented from visiting women’s prisons in Michigan.

Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates at three prisons in Michigan- the Florence Crane Women’s Facility and Camp Branch Facility for Women in Coldwater, and the Scott Correctional Facility for Women in Plymouth – Engler barred Cumaraswamy on the eve of her visit.

The Special Rapporteur said she “regrets” she was not able to have a constructive dialogue with Michigan State authorities because of “very serious allegations of sexual misconduct” in all three prisons. Coomaraswamay was also prevented from meeting with State representatives in Michigan.

In his letter, Engler said that Coomaraswamy obviously was unaware of the lawsuit filed against his State by the Justice Department and the political motivations behind it. “They filed this lawsuit despite extensive efforts on the state’s part to document that the allegations that the Justice Department has made are without merit,” he said.

“Under these circumstances, I am sceptical of the federal governments’ motivation for inviting the Special Rapporteur into Michigan to study the issue of violence against women in prison,” Engler said.

The Governor pointed out he was also sceptical that such a review, done at the invitation of the Justice Deparrment and the federal government, “can reach an objective outcome.”

“I must conclude that the Justice Department hopes to use the Special Rapporteur as a sword against the State in this unncessary litigation,” he added. “I cannot permit, as a matter of both sound legal strategy and good common sense, the State to participate in such an effort,” he declared.

Coomaraswamy said that preliminary investigations pointed to the fact that “sexual misconduct by prison staff is widespread in American women’s prisons.”

“Sexual conduct appears to be pervasive particularly in the state of Michigan,” she said. On the other hand, some States have taken positive initiatives to combat this problem.

Coomaraswamy said the state of Georgia which has inaugurated a comprehensive programme to combat sexual misconduct in women’s prisons. The state of Minnesota, she said, also had an exemplary prison for women that can serve as a model for best practices but she was critical of the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla in the state of California where there have been serious allegations of sexual misconduct.

Whitney Brown of the New York-based Human Rights Watch told IPS that as far as women’s prisons were concerned “Michigan was one of the worst.” She said she knew that Coomaraswamy had been barred from visiting these prisons. The situation, she said, was “bad” and “very upsetting.”

Brown, one of the authors of a detailed 1996 study of sexual abuse of women in U.S. State prisons, is doing a follow-up study to be released in September this year.

The study charged that in U.S. State prisons – from Georgia to California – male officers are sexually abusing female prisoners with total impunity. “State and federal officials in a position to address such misconduct often deny that it exists or fail to take adequate steps to prevent it. As a result, sexual misconduct is U.S. State prisons for women is emerging as an explosive national problem,” Human Rights Watch warned.

The study said that the United States had the dubious distinction of incarcerating the largest known number of prisons in the world, of which a steadily increasing number are women. Since 1980, the number of women entering U.S. prisons had risen by almost 400 percent, roughly double the incarceration rate increase of males.

The study also said that 52 percent of these prisoners are African-American women who constitute only 14 percent of the total U.S. female population. According to current estimates, the study said that at least half of all female prisoners have experienced some form of sexual abuse prior to incarceration.