Amnesty International says that magistrates in Madagascar have failed to effectively play their role in limiting the length of pre-trial detention and preventing or ending arbitrary detentions. Courtesy: CC by 2.0/Jared Rodriguez / Truthout

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2020 (IPS)

The recent killing of 22 prisoners in Madagascar during a prison escape on Sunday, Aug. 23 has brought the extraordinary situation of the country’s prisons under a spotlight. Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has condemned the killings, criticising the current judicial system that has led to Madagascar’s prisons holding more people awaiting trial than convicted criminals.

News sources have reported the death of 20 inmates in a shootout by police and the army during the prison break on Sunday, during which 88 prisoners attempted to escape Farafangana prison. Thirty seven were eventually captured, with the remaining 31 inmates still at large, according to the reports.

Tamara Leger, Amnesty International Madagascar programme advisor, told IPS that the current judicial process requires anyone, even those accused of a crime, to be put behind bars until trial.

This means, many of them “can be waiting for a trial for years, with little or no information on their cases,” she said. “This has led to the extraordinary situation where Madagascar’s prisons hold more people who have not been convicted than those found guilty.”

Amnesty International’s report on the issue claims that the escape was in protest of the “squalid” living conditions, prolonged pre-trial detention, or getting pre-trial for minor offences such as “theft of a toothbrush”, among other issues.

Mass prison breakouts are not uncommon in Madagascar, and human rights experts say the squalid living conditions in the prisons don’t make it easy on those being detained.

Leger said that 75 percent of the children who are currently being detained in prisons across Madagascar are in the pre-trial phase. She added that the authorities’ use of “unjustified, excessive and prolonged arbitrary pre-trial detention” leads to a range of human rights abuse: right to liberty, presumption of innocence, and to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.

Excerpt of the full interview below. Some parts have been edited for clarity purposes.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How does Madagascar’s criminal justice system affect its vulnerable communities?
Tamara Leger (TL): The majority of pre-trial detainees were men (89 percent), who are affected more directly by the lengthy and inhumane conditions of detention and the severe overcrowding. Even though women constitute about six percent of the prison population, and children make up five percent, they are disproportionately affected by some of the system’s consequences through gender-based and aged-based violations.

For example, pregnant women and women with babies do not have access to appropriate healthcare. Children often do not have access to any educational or vocational activities, in violation of Madagascar’s own laws.

The government has failed to prioritise much-needed support for the criminal justice system, which has resulted in poor allocation of human and material resources. Most prisons visited lacked basic resources, critical to the functioning of the prisons, including transport, furniture, sufficient food for detainees and even sheets of paper.

In addition to the severe lack of resources, the lack of training of staff, the poor coordination among the judiciary and the prison institutions, the slow pace of police investigation, and delayed judicial disposal of cases has meant that thousands of people continue to remain detained in prisons for months and years without a trial. Magistrates have failed to effectively play their role in limiting the length of pre-trial detention and preventing or ending arbitrary detentions. Instead, they have adopted a punitive approach — deliberately sending people to pre-trial detention, on a weak and twisted defence of “being seen to be doing justice”, and a conservative approach to using alternatives to detention.

It is mostly economically and otherwise disadvantaged people – the uneducated and underprivileged from rural areas – who are subjected to unjustified, excessive and lengthy pre-trial detentions. The majority of them spend long months or years in prison for non-violent, often petty offences like simple theft, fraud and forgery. With little knowledge or awareness of their rights and even less means to defend themselves, the poor and the marginalised are also the most likely to suffer the most from their detention.

IPS: How have prisoners been affected during the pandemic and what kind of services were provided to them?

TL: According to our research, the pandemic has made the conditions of detention, which were already extremely difficult, even more unbearable. Our sources on the ground report that detainees can no longer receive visits from their relatives and lawyers, which constituted for many their lifeline. Indeed, most detainees relied on their families to receive adequate food during their imprisonment, as the food provided by the prison administration is often extremely poor in quality and quantity.

In addition, detainees fear becoming infected with COVID-19. The overcrowding is such that it is very difficult for the government to implement the necessary measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus within the prisons. Pre-trial detainees and sentenced detainees are held all together in big, cramped rooms by lack of space (international law provides that these two categories must be separated), so it is hardly possible for detainees to practice social distancing. Furthermore, detainees fear that if they do fall sick, they will not have access to appropriate healthcare. 

IPS: The report also claims “We have warned the authorities time and again that the squalid detention conditions in Madagascar, compounded by overcrowding and a lack of resources, would lead to tragedy.” Were these conditions squalid even before the pandemic?

TL: Yes, absolutely. Amnesty International has documented the conditions of detention in our report published in 2018, which you can find here. Amnesty International’s visits to the nine prisons revealed the appalling conditions in which pre-trial detainees are held. Dark and with little ventilation, most cells are extremely overcrowded, posing serious risks to the detainees’ physical and mental well-being.

In 2017, 129 detainees died in Madagascar’s prisons, 52 of them pre-trial detainees. According to prison authorities, the main causes of death are respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases, and what they describe as a general bad state [of health]. Prisons are dilapidated, ill-equipped, with lack of financial, material and general support. Prison staff complained about the lack of resources, ranging from sheets of paper, to computer equipment, furniture and transportation.

None of the prisons visited provide any separation between pre-trial and sentenced prisoners, as provided in international human rights law and standards, with three not even appropriately separating boys from men. The prison administration reported that only 24 out of 42 central prisons have a separate section for minors, and that more than a hundred minors were held with adults, in violation of international and national laws. Girls were not separated from adult women, and even in new prisons being built, the separation between girls and women is not being planned. Across all the prisons visited, researchers observed poor sanitation, absence of healthcare, lack of adequate food, educational or vocational opportunities and limited access to families.

IPS: It appears that prison breaks are not uncommon in the country. Has it always been met with this level of violence from the state?

TL: Unfortunately, prison breaks aren’t uncommon because of the lack of resources and overall, the lack of prioritisation of the prison system in the country. There is an acute shortage of key staff within the criminal justice system, ranging from the number of judiciary police officers, to magistrates, lawyers and prison staff. The budget allocated to the prison administration and the judiciary is insufficient to enable effective functioning of the criminal justice system. While this has been a particularly violent response from the state, security forces in Madagascar unfortunately often resort to excessive and disproportionate use of force, including lethal force, particularly in their fight against alleged ‘dahalos’ (cattle thieves).

Beggars are often rounded up by police and thrown into jail without charges being filed against them for years. This adds to the overcrowding in Indian prisons already reeling under a lack of basic facilities. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Aug 9 2016 (IPS)

A media frenzy ensued in New Delhi last month when a popular television channel highlighted the horrific living conditions of women inmates in ward number six of Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison.

The program – “Fear and Loathing in Tihar” — beamed into people’s homes the prisoners’ abysmal treatment by the administration: 600 of them packed like sardines into space meant for half that number, a lack of basic amenities, and a shocking state apathy towards detainees in the world’s largest democracy."Some [women inmates] even have kids who have to stay with them in those pathetic conditions till they are six years old." --Delhi-based human rights lawyer Maninder Singh

By highlighting the prisoners’ misery, the program also helped shine a light on a broken judicial system where thousands are subjected to prolonged periods of incarceration without ever seeing a judge, or whose perfunctory court appearances stretch for years thanks to a corrupt legal system clogged with too many cases, and too few judges to try them. The injustice of lengthy detention is compounded by the horrific conditions of the jail facilities.

As the world celebrates Prisoners Justice Day on Aug. 10, human rights advocates say the state of Indian detention centres needs to come into focus again. Most Indian jails fail to meet the minimum United Nations standards for such facilities, including inadequate amounts of food, poor nutrition, and unsanitary conditions. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment are also common. The cells are also often dilapidated, with poor ventilation and absence of natural light.

According to a 2015 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India on Tihar Jail, the prison complex is reeling under a prisoner population more than double its sanctioned strength and understaffed by 50 per cent of its required workforce. The key findings of the report suggest that the 10 jails in Tihar were grossly overcrowded with 14,209 prisoners against a capacity of 6,250.

Moreover, against government rules, 51 prisoners awaiting trial were found to have already served more than half the maximum term of punishment for the offences they were booked under, the report says.

Medical facilities, adds the damning report, are non-existent. There’s paucity of doctors, paramedical, ministerial, factory and Class IV staff by 18 to 63 per cent in the prison which despite an in-house 150-bed hospital and additional dispensaries in each of the 10 jails. The CAG found that “the hospital was not equipped to face any emergency situation”.

The subhuman conditions take a toll on human health — both mental and physical, a former inmate told IPS. “Women prisoners prefer to take care of each other when they are indisposed as there are only male doctors doing rounds most of the time,” she said. “I remember once a young woman had a miscarriage and bled for a few hours before she was taken to the hospital.”

In India, a country where U.N. figures indicate that 270 million people – or 21.9 percent of the population – live below the poverty line, justice for the poor is often delayed as well as denied. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

The fate of prisoners on death row is worse. Not only do they inhabit inhumane living conditions, they face unfair trials and horrific acts of police torture, according to a study by the Death Penalty Research Project at the National Law University in Delhi. The study, based on interviews with 373 of the 385 inmates believed to be on death row in India, offers a harrowing insight into the unbearable conditions the prisoners have to live in as they wait for judges to decide their fate.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) report 2015 says that poor budget allocation, the way accused are arrested and non-issuance of bail along with miserable conditions in prisons were leading factors attributed to the existing living conditions of the inmates. It added that the situation calls for a trained administration to bring reformation in prisoners’ lives.

Legal eagles say the biggest bottleneck is the country’s overburdened criminal justice system which has a cascading effect on prisoners’ lives. Overcrowding is the most common. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) records, in 2013, the total number of prisoners was 411,992, of which a startling 278,503 were prisoners awaiting trial. Delay in providing justice, inadequate court infrastructure, and inaccessibility of a large number of prisoners to legal help make matters worse.

As per records, currently over three million cases are pending in various Indian courts across the country. Erstwhile PM Manmohan Singh remarked that India had the world’s largest backlog of court cases. Bloomberg Business Week estimates if that all the Indian judges attacked their backlog without breaks for eating and sleeping, and closed 100 cases every hour, it would take more than 35 years to catch up.

“The severe delay in delivering justice is largely due to the fact that many courts share judges with each other, resulting in extremely slow trial procedures. There’s no effective legal redress mechanism for under trials,” explains Ajay Verma, Senior Fellow, International Bridges to Justice, a non-profit that supports justice and human rights. “These institutional pathologies result in unjust and prolonged detention.”

Delhi-based human rights lawyer Maninder Singh says that many detainees are forced to be in jail longer than the maximum sentence for the offense with which they were charged, with some people spending as long as two decades in detention before being convicted or released by the courts.

Women awaiting trial in particular, adds Singh, are made to suffer as they are too poor to afford justice. “Some even have kids who have to stay with them in those pathetic conditions till they are six years old. Many under trials languish for months without even charges being framed against them. There’s simply no legal recourse available to them.”

After studying the living conditions of jail inmates across India, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) made some key recommendations for prison reform. These include replacing the 1894 Prison Act with a new one, amending prison manuals keeping human rights in mind, reducing overcrowding, one of the biggest problems in most prisons, shifting foreign nationals to detention centres from prisons after their sentence is completed, till they are deported to their respective countries.

Despite the gloom, experts suggest that it’s not as if the situation is irretrievable. What is needed is political will and a more humanitarian approach to a very complex problem. Already, some measures in Indian jails — like rehabilitation and skilling prisoners for their gainful employment post jail term — have come in for accolades. Tihar boasts of a full-fledged cottage industry where training for carpentry, baking, tailoring, fabric painting and other crafts are imparted to empower inmates. The revenues generated from selling products made by the prisoners helps in the prison’s upkeep. Wage earning and gratuity schemes and incentives help reduce the psychological burden on the convicts.

But as Singh and Verma point out, while these measures should be amplified, the State needs to urgently focus on faster disposal of court cases, speedier justice and better conditions in jail to make life more bearable for the inmates.

When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison.

There is an extensive body of research on long-term solitary confinement and its damaging effects. Credit: Bigstock

Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too many places, black boys and black men, and Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated different under the law.”

The visit itself was described as “unprecedented” and “historic.”

But the United Nations has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being steeped in a culture of violence.

Back in 1998, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan prisons to probe sexual misconduct against women prisoners.

Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates, Michigan Governor John Engler barred Coomaraswamy on the eve of her proposed visit.

The late Senator Jesse Helms, former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blocked a proposed prison visit by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in New York, who was planning to observe living conditions in some of the U.S. prisons.

Obama’s visit has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, and the Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Seong-Phil Hong, have jointly called on the U.S. government to facilitate their requests for an official visit to U.S. prisons to advance criminal justice reform.“AI believes this external scrutiny is particularly important in the case of 'super-maximum' security facilities where prisoners are isolated within an already closed environment." -- Tessa Murphy of Amnesty International

“I look forward to working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the special study commissioned by the President on the need to regulate solitary confinement, which affects 80,000 inmates in the United States, in most cases for periods of months and years,” Méndez said early this week.

“The practice of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement inflicts pain and suffering of a psychological nature, which is strictly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,” he said.

“Reform along such lines will have considerable impact not only in the United States but in many countries around the world,” he noted.

Hong, who leads the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said a visit to federal and state institutions “will be an excellent opportunity to discuss with authorities the ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the right to anyone deprived of their liberty to bring proceedings before a court’, and to promote its use by the civil society.”

The Working Group has already drafted a set of Principles and Guidelines that “will help establish effective mechanisms to ensure judicial oversight over all situations of deprivation of liberty.”

The document will be considered by the Human Rights Council in September.

According to published reports, there have been charges of unhealthy living conditions and physical beatings, specifically against minorities, including African-Americans and Latin Americans, in the U.S. jail system.

Last month, the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District announced far reaching reforms, including the proposed appointment of a Federal Monitor to probe continued prisoner abuses in Riker’s Island, described as the second largest jail system in the United States.

Other measures include restrictions on the use of force by prison guards and the installation of surveillance cameras.

Asked whether U.N. Special Rapporteurs (UNSRs) have previously been permitted into U.S. prisons, Tessa Murphy at Amnesty International (AI), told IPS that Juan Mendez hasn’t visited any U.S. supermaximum facility prisons in his role as UNSR.

He has, however, visited Pelican Bay in California as an expert witness in ongoing litigation there.

She also said AI has called on the U.S. State Department to extend an invite repeatedly requested by the UNSR to visit the United States to examine the use of solitary confinement in federal and state facilities, including through on-site visits.

“AI believes this external scrutiny is particularly important in the case of ‘super-maximum’ security facilities where prisoners are isolated within an already closed environment. We continue to call for this access to be provided.”

She pointed out that AI has released several reports calling for access – based on an extensive body of work on long-term solitary confinement and its damaging effects.

Antonio M. Ginatta, Advocacy Director, U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS it is a momentous time in the United States as it re-examines and moves to reform its criminal justice system.

President Obama himself just spoke to the need for this reform, and specifically highlighted the harms caused by solitary confinement.

“Yet the State Department continues to fail to allow the Special Rapporteur on torture access to U.S. confinement facilities to review their use of solitary confinement. It’s as if they missed the President’s speech,” he said.

Ginatta said an invitation to the Special Rapporteur is years overdue.

“In light of the president’s speech and his visit to the El Reno prison, the U.S. Department of State should change course and immediately extend an unrestricted invitation to Special Rapporteur Mendez and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” he declared.

After his prison visit, Obama said: “My goal is that we start seeing some improvements at the federal level and that we’re then able to see states across the country pick up the baton, and there are already some states that leading the way in both sentencing reform as well as prison reform and make sure that we’re seeing what works and build off that.”

Providing details of its meetings with U.S. State Department officials, Amnesty International told IPS that in February it met with Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Director William Mozdzierz in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to emphasise the importance of facilitating external scrutiny by the SRT as well as to hand over a petition to the State Department (with over 20,000 signatures, on the same issue.)

AI said SRT Mendez has provided them with a list of prisons he wishes to visit, including in Louisiana, California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Secretary Mozdzierz, stressed to AI that the State Department has a strong national interest in ensuring that the United States lives up to international treaty obligations.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby emphasised how committed the U.S. government is in providing access for the SRT.

However, Secretary Mozdzierz emphasised that access to state prisons is dependent on the individual governors and state Attorney Generals being amenable, and there are no mechanisms by which the State Department can ensure a positive response.

He also made it clear that he would stress to state authorities the importance of facilitating the SRT’s requests. Both Directors acknowledged that BOP ADX prison in Colorado was ‘unavailable’ to SRT Mendez.

SRT Mendez, who met with AI prior to the meetings above, asked AI to seek an explanation for the reason that he had been told in correspondence with State Department that federal prisons were “unavailable” to him.

Secretary Mozdzierz confirmed that the reason federal prisons were “unavailable” to the SRT was because of ongoing litigation in ADX; Cunningham V BOP, which has been in a structured settlement process since last year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Prisoners at Saliakro Prison Farm in Côte d’Ivoire. Prisoners, who were selected on account that they are non-violent and condemned for short and medium term sentences, have a relative freedom to move within the gated farm. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
SALIAKRO/ABDIJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 1 2014 (IPS)

François Kouamé, prisoner Number 67, proudly shows off a sow and her four piglets. Dressed in his rubber boots, he passes by two new tractors as he happily makes his way to a field where pretty soon cassava and corn plants will start growing. “Look at those sprouts. It is a lot of work!”

Being imprisoned in one of the world’s most impoverished country’s is far from an easy ride. But Ivorian authorities are searching for alternatives to the overcrowded prisons and malnourished prisoners here. And they just may have found the answer — in a farm.

The Saliakro Prison Farm, where Kouamé is currently serving out the remainder of his one-year prison sentence, is the first of its kind in Côte d’Ivoire. He was one of the first detainees to be sent here in December 2013.

The 21 buildings on the farm, built on a former summer camp, are to provide accommodation for 150 prisoners who have been sentenced for less than three years for non-violent crimes. Here they will learn new skills in farming.“Our objective is truly to make prison time an opportunity for a sustainable change in life.” -- Bernard Aurenche, country representative of Prisoners Without Borders

For Kouamé, being on a farm is a relief compared to the six months he spent in Soubré State Prison for cutting trees in a neighbouring cocoa plantation.

“We were sleeping four persons in a space that could contain only one person. And we were granted only a bowl of rice per day,” says the young man.

Now he eats three meals a day, and stays in a clean room with 16 other prisoners. Each man has his own bunk bed, a closet and plenty of space to move about in.

Mamadou Doumbia, 32, is serving a two-year sentence for stealing computers. The quiet and articulate man is relieved to be on the farm. He spent 11 months in Agboville prison, in Agnéby Region close to Abidjan, the country’s economic capital.

He reveals a dark portrait of life in Agboville prison. Rape, malnutrition and pests are some of the many things he says he witnessed.

“I feel like being human again,” he tells IPS.

Though life on the farm is no vacation. Inmates must wake up at 5:30 am and be ready for work no later than 7am. They work till 3pm, only taking a short break for lunch. Evenings are their own to do with as they will, but they have to be in their dormitories by 9pm.

Through the Saliakro project, Ivorian authorities and backers hope to improve inmate conditions, reduce costs and help reintegration.

Overpopulation and malnutrition

Côte d’Ivoire has relatively modern prison facilities compared to the rest of West Africa, where most countries have not invested in new prisons since the 1970s. In neighbouring Ghana, the Jamestown Colonial fort only ceased to be used as a penitential facility in 2008.

In Guinea-Bissau, the country had to wait for the United Nations to build a prison in order to stop cramming prisoners into what is now a beautiful colonial house, renamed Casa dos Direitos or the House of Human rights. Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia all have overcrowded prisons dating back to the 1960s.

Still, Ivorian prisons were planned for another era. In the Abidjan Detention and Correction Centre, known by its French acronym MACA, overpopulation is an understatement. The building, conceived in the 1980s for 1,500 prisoners now has a population of over 5,000.

“Hygiene is very difficult. There are frequent water disruptions,” Jean a prisoner at MACA, who prefers to remain anonymous as prisoners are not allowed to speak to journalists, tells IPS over the phone.

And now, even if the government and international donors start to reopen detention centres in the north, closed by a decade of de facto separation with the south, congestion in state prisons remain dire.

The prison in Man, a town in west Côte d’Ivoire, holds several perpetrators of the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis that resulted in over 3,000 deaths.

While it has been renovated in the last year, newer does not mean less crowded. It was built to hold only 300 inmates but it currently holds twice as many. Didier, who is awaiting trial in Man Prison, says the basic meals of rice have left him hungry. “We don’t [get to] eat three meals. Most of the time we eat only once,” he tells IPS over the phone.

In May, five prisoners from Man died and several others were hospitalised. Dr. Viviane Lawson Kiniffo, the prison’s doctor, told Ivorian media that promiscuity, malnutrition and hygiene were big issues.

Self-sufficiency and reintegration

Back in Saliakro, Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly inaugurates Côte d’Ivoire’s first prison farm in front a selected group of VIPs. “More farm prisons will soon be open,” he says.

Coulibaly has several reasons to be satisfied. Aside from improving inmate’s living conditions, once fully functional, Saliakro Prison Farm will relieve prison budgets by several hundred dollars as, besides feeding its own prisoners, it will produce enough to make a profit from selling produce on local markets.

But the 450 hectares of are not only there to deliver a relief to state budget.

“It is more than about feeding themselves. It is also about getting those prisoners back to a normal life. It is about learning new skills and being able to reintegrate and participate fully in society,” Saliakro’s superintendent, Pinguissie Ouattara, tells IPS. “This is about bringing an alternative to crime, and decreasing the crime rate.”

Saliakro is not on any map: this town does not exist. But it is the contraction of Kro, which means “village” in the local Baoule language and “Salia”, the first name of former superintendent Salia Ouattara who died in 2007.

“Our objective is truly to make prison time an opportunity for a sustainable change in life,” Bernard Aurenche, country representative of Prisoners Without Borders, a French NGO, tells IPS.

He explains that the 150 prisoners are backed by trained agronomists. Participants in the project will deepen their agricultural knowledge and will be paid 300 CFA (about 70 cents) per day for work.

“This will allow them to collect money to grow their own crops once they leave. It is also about reinsertion into real life. And getting confidence.”

One of the tractors that Prisoners Without Borders has bought for the Saliakro Farm project in Côte d’Ivoire. Learning to use modern machinery was an important step in the programme. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

Kouamé is more realistic. He was a farmer before, but tells IPS that he has learned much from the agronomists here. “I have learnt here many things that will make my farm more profitable, notably by diversifying production.”

But the road is still bumpy. Funding, which has been provided by the European Union, now needs to be secured for a longer term. And still, a better selection process of prisoners needs to be found as, so far, selection of participants was not based on any clear criteria.

But prison superintendent Ouattara, who also manages the Dimbokro Prison a few kilometres from Saliakro, is positive.

“It is the beginning. We will need to adjust. But we strongly believe that there will be a positive outcome for those men. Much more than leaving them by themselves doing nothing.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The number of prisoners aged 55 and older nearly quadrupled between 1995 and 2010, marking a 218 percent increase in just 15 years. Credit: Bigstock

By Kanya D'Almeida
NEW YORK, Feb 26 2014 (IPS)

A nurse helps an old man up from his chair. Holding onto her arms, he steps blindly forward, trusting her to lead him to his spot at the lunch table.

One man breathes through a respirator. Another gropes on the nightstand for his dentures. Yet another calls out to a passing doctor that he cannot remember his own name.“I’m 69 years old. Without my cane I can’t stand. What do they expect me to do? Crawl through [the metal detector] on my hands and knees?”

This may sound like a typical day at a home for the elderly but several independent investigations describe such scenes being played out in a much more unlikely place: in prisons across the United States that are now home to thousands of senior citizens.

Due to unhealthy conditions prior to and during prison terms, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) considers inmates over the age of 50 to be “aging”. By this calculation, there are some 246,600 elderly inmates in state and federal joints, a number that is expected to jump to nearly 400,000 by the year 2030, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

A Human Rights Watch report entitled ‘Old Behind Bars’ says the number of prisoners aged 55 and older nearly quadrupled between 1995 and 2010, marking a 218 percent increase in just 15 years.

With over 16 percent of the national prison population falling into the “aging” category, experts say the U.S. prison system is beginning to resemble a gigantic geriatrics ward, at massive economic and humanitarian costs to  society.

Low risks, high costs

Jamie Fellner, senior advisor of the U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch, told IPS that “tough on crime” laws of the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a surge of decades-long sentences for crimes that hitherto carried no more than 10 to 15 years of jail time.

“When you have people serving life sentences, they’re going to die in prison, just like people serving 20-, 30- and 40-year sentences are inevitably going to grow old behind bars,” Fellner said.

Other sources, including a recent report by the Pew Center Charitable Trust, suggest that 1970s-era federal laws such as mandatory minimum provisions, “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” legislation, and heavy parole restrictions have also contributed to the spike in graying inmates.

Whatever the reasons, experts are agreed that the cost of imprisoning anyone over the age of 50 is astronomical. An ACLU report entitled ‘At America’s Expense’ found that, while it cost just 34,135 dollars a year to house the average prisoner, elderly inmates incurred almost double the expenses, reaching 69,000 dollars per prisoner annually.

Taxpayers shell out over 16 billion dollars every year to keep aging prisoners behind bars, an amount that exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Energy and even surpasses the Department of Education’s spending on improving elementary and secondary schools.

Such stark figures have pushed advocates to ask two fundamental questions that prison officials and the Justice Department seem reluctant to address: What is the purpose of incarcerating the elderly, and is there an alternative?

According to Laura Whitehorn, a political activist who spent 14 years in prison and now works on a New York-based campaign known as Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), the extremely low recidivism rate for people over the age of 50 makes a strong case for expediting their release.

For instance, just seven percent of New York state prisoners released at ages 50-64 reoffended, a number that fell to just four percent for inmates over the age of 65. In comparison, the recidivism rate for all age groups hovers at close to 40 percent.

Furthermore, prisoners who have served considerable time could be huge assets to their communities, Whitehorn told IPS.

“The reason the prison advocacy movement is so vibrant now is because most organisations have several to many formerly incarcerated people on their staffs, providing keen ideas for what has to change in order to get us out of the current pit of perpetual punishment and the damage caused by the prison system.

“This is how we came up with the slogan ‘If the Risk is Low, Let Them Go’,” Whitehorn said, adding that, too often, parole boards look at the original sentence rather than a prisoner’s likelihood of reoffending when considering early release.

She recounted the recent case of an 86-year-old man who has served 40 years of a life sentence for a felony committed in the 1970s. Although he suffers from asthma, cancer and a neuromuscular disorder that confines him to a wheelchair, his parole board denied him release last year on the grounds that he was “likely” to reoffend.

Fellner told IPS that she interviewed a prisoner in Mississippi who was so old he had to stick the letters L and R on his shoes to remind him which went on the correct foot. “Do we really consider these people a threat to society?” she asked.

Punitive philosophy

Fellner says the architecture of prisons was developed for the prototypical “tough young criminal”, resulting in institutions that are not easily navigable by infirm or disabled inmates. This inability is sometimes perceived as an unwillingness to cooperate with guards, earning elderly inmates punishments or longer sentences.

A senior citizen at a Pennsylvania state penitentiary told IPS under condition of anonymity that he was forced to spend a week in solitary confinement for refusing to pass through the metal detector without his cane.

“I’m 69 years old,” he said. “Without my cane I can’t stand. What do they expect me to do? Crawl through on my hands and knees?”

Officials at various institutions across the country are now questioning the necessity of keeping geriatrics locked up. Even Burl Cain, the warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary of Angola, recently told the ACLU it was a “shame” that his staff buried more inmates than they released out the front gates.

Of Louisiana’s 5,300 prisoners, 4,000 are serving life without parole, while 1,200 are over the age of 60.

Still, the decision to release elderly inmates is not up to prison officials alone. According to Fellner, the U.S. incarceration system is governed by a highly punitive philosophy that, coupled with strong lobbying by organisations representing the families of victims, makes it tough to effect substantial changes.

“Personal, professional and institutional party politics all make it very difficult to take steps on behalf of someone who has committed a crime,” she said.

“It’s a risk that few politicians are willing to take. Even President Obama only commuted eight citizens this year – there are 200,000 federal inmates and he could only find eight who were eligible for clemency? Despite some important progress, this work is still very much in the margins.”

He has not had human contact or a good night’s sleep in nearly three decades. Every single day, he wakes to the sound of metal doors clanging open and a pair of disembodied hands pushing a tray of food through a slot into his 64-square-foot cell.

L to R: Kimberly Richardson (of the Peoples Institute for Survival), Robert King (who spent 31 years in isolation), and Theresa Shoatz, whose father Russell Maroon Shoatz is also in long-term solitary confinement. Credit: Ann Harkness/cc by 2.0

For the next 23 hours, he will stare at the same four walls. If he is lucky, he’ll be escorted, shackled at his ankles and wrists, into a “yard” – an enclosure only slightly larger than his cell – for an hour of solitary exercise.

This is how Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, a prisoner in the restricted housing unit at the State Correctional Institute (SCI) Frackville in northern Pennsylvania, has spent the past 22 consecutive years.

On Thursday, Shoatz’s lawyers submitted a communication to Juan E. Mendez, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, urging him to inquire into why a “father, grandfather and great grandfather” is being held in extreme isolation despite having a near-perfect disciplinary record for over 20 years.

The appeal comes on the heels of a surge in public debate on the practice of solitary confinement in the United States, where on any given day an estimated 81,000 men, women and children are held in some form of “restricted housing” unit, according to Federal Bureau of Justice statistics.

Authorities in each state have a myriad of euphemisms for the practice: administrative segregation, secure housing units (SHUs), “supermax” facilities, protective custody. Whatever the language, critics say the basic conditions remain the same: extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for years at a time.

According to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the restrictions imposed in “maximum security” facilities often “exceed the fathomable. In Pennsylvania’s most restrictive units, for example, prisoners have all the usual supermax deprivations plus some that seem gratuitously cruel: they are not permitted to have photographs of family members or newspapers and magazines.”

Mendez has already affirmed that holding a human being in isolation for a period exceeding 15 days constitutes a violation of the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Back in 2011, his office called for a complete global ban on the use of solitary confinement “except in the most extreme circumstances and for as short a time as possible”, citing numerous studies – some dating back decades, others as recent as Amnesty International’s 2012 report ‘The Edge of Endurance’ – that have documented the long-lasting psychological impacts resulting from even a few days of social separation.

This past August, a hunger strike involving over 30,000 prisoners protesting conditions in restricted housing units at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California prompted the rapporteur to make an urgent appeal to the U.S. government to “eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement under all circumstances”, stressing that the average U.S. prisoners banished to the hole typically stays there roughly 7.5 years – “far beyond what is acceptable under international human rights law.”

Harold Engel, an attorney with over 43 years of experience and a retired partner of the global corporate law firm Reed Smith, said he co-signed the appeal Thursday in the hopes that an investigation undertaken by the office of the special rapporteur, housed at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, will bring an end to indefinite isolation.

“I first became involved in this case because my daughter told me about Shoatz’s situation and I found it abhorrent,” Engel told IPS.

“As I learned more I realised there wasn’t any clear law on the question of whether keeping someone in solitary confinement under conditions that Shoatz has been kept in violates the eighth amendment of the U.S. constitution [prohibiting the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment] – which, in my opinion, it does.”

Speaking to IPS under condition of anonymity, an inmate who spent several years in solitary confinement in a Pennsylvania prison before being released back into the general population said his life was measured out in a series of arbitrary numbers: he was permitted one hour of exercise on five days out of the week; he was allowed three meals a day but zero contact visits with his family. His cell contained a single cot and one steel sink. Showers were taken thrice weekly, overseen by guards.

“Getting through each day felt like hewing a single stone from a mountain of despair,” he said.

Bret Grote, an activist who has worked for over six years with the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) – an advocacy group comprised predominantly of prisoners’ families, ex-prisoners and their supporters – says he and others have documented “hundreds upon hundreds of instances of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inside the solitary confinement units of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC).”

“The approximately 2,500 prisoners warehoused in solitary by the PA DOC are held in units where physical abuse, psychological deterioration, retaliation for exercising constitutionally-protected rights, food deprivation, extreme social isolation, severely reduced environmental stimulation, theft and destruction of property, obstruction of access to the courts, and racist abuse are normative features,” Grote told IPS.

As Shoatz’s lawyers await an official response from the U.N. rapporteur, they are holding out hope that a full investigation into his case could also bring some respite for the tens of thousands of others enduring such conditions.

Countries in nearly every region of the world are continuing to turn to a U.S.-led model of prison privatisation despite mounting evidence that such systems are often neither cost-efficient nor able to provide adequate services.

The Corrections Corporation of America says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned. Credit: Bigstock

New data released Tuesday notes that nearly a dozen countries – in North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific – are today integrating private, for-profit prisons into their penal systems. Yet the country where that model was pioneered, the United States, is currently beginning a nationwide push to decrease its incarcerated population, leading to a growth industry in exporting corporate prison knowhow.

Increased interest internationally has “helped private U.S. prison companies diversify their investments at a time when America’s prison population growth has stalled,” a new report, released by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, states.

“For example, 14 percent of the revenue for America’s second largest private prison company, the Geo Group, came from international services in fiscal year 2012.”

The growth in global interest in prison privatisation has also been a boon for British companies, particularly G4S and Serco.

All of these companies “have thrived off of the expanded privatization of prisons, immigration detention systems, and other governmental services,” the report states, “while often failing to deliver on the services that were promised.”

Indeed, critics have long accused for-profit prison companies, with explicit requirements to cut costs, of poorer services and conditions than publically run penal systems (see here and here). An attempt by the Israeli government to open a private prison in 2009 was blocked by that country’s Supreme Court, which warned that such a transfer of responsibility would lead to “harsh and grave damage to the basic human rights of prisoners”.

Private prison companies tend to explain the rationale for their operations in terms of efficiency of service. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a founder of the sector in the early 1980s and still the United States’ largest operator of private prisons, says it “combine[s] the efficiency and effectiveness of business with the standards, regulation and oversight of government … at less than it costs public agencies to operate.”

The CCA says it currently houses some 80,000 inmates in 60 facilities, 40 of which are solely company-owned.

Yet increasingly, watchdog groups and governments have called into question this issue of cost-effectiveness. In 2010, for instance, a government oversight office for the state of Arizona found that for-profit prisons were costing the state some 16 percent more than public facilities.

Last month, an unusual report by the hacker-activist group Anonymous warned that CCA was no longer a good investment.

Success stories

Countries currently using private prisons or in the process of implementing such plans include Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Thailand. Yet the sector remains dominated by developed countries, the new Sentencing Project report notes, particularly English-speaking nations.

While the United States continues to hold the largest number of prisoners in private facilities (around 131,000 in 2011), this is largely because the country also detains by far the largest number of people (1.5 million) – some quarter of the world’s incarcerated population.

Still, several other countries have given over a far larger portion of their penal systems to private corporations. According to the most recent data, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom each holds between 10 and 20 percent of their prisoners in private prisons.

These figures are far higher for immigrant detention, an area in which prison corporations have particularly excelled. The United Kingdom, for instance, houses roughly three-quarters of those suspected of immigration-related infractions in privately run detention centres, while Australia has entirely privatised its immigrant-detention system.

Meanwhile, these numbers appear to be having something of a cyclical effect, with greater penetration by private detention companies leading to further interest by other countries.

“Because there are these large, developed countries that have taken this step, that naturally creates interest in other countries,” Cody Mason, author of the new report and a consultant to the Sentencing Project, told IPS.

“These companies, in the United States and in other countries, will regularly travel around and bring members of Congress and Parliament into their facilities, suggesting that their approach will solve their problems. They promote themselves as a great way to deal with overcrowding, substandard services and rising prison costs.”

He continues: “Any country that sees privatisation being adopted by other countries and hears these stories – it’s pretty natural they’ll turn to that approach.”

New markets

Here in the United States, prison overcrowding has become a massive problem over the course of a three-decade “tough on crime” push by legislators. Some U.S. prison systems are currently overbooked by 40 percent, leading to accusations of mass rights infringements.

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made what many are seeing as a historic announcement, directing the federal Department of Justice to begin taking multiple steps to bring down the incarcerated population. Additional moves are afoot in the U.S. Congress to put in place broader, permanent changes to the way the country’s criminal justice system functions.

Such steps may be bringing about a bipartisan end to the “tough on crime” era, but they are undoubtedly rattling the private prison companies based in the United States. While it is not yet clear how these companies’ lobbying efforts may strengthen amidst the new push, Cody Mason writes that for-profit prison companies here have spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions.

Those lobbying efforts have focused particularly on a pending overhaul of the country’s immigration system. Mason’s report notes that private prison companies have “a history of contributing to supporters of harsh immigration detention laws”.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Yet new legislation that has passed the Senate but is currently in limbo in the House of Representatives would almost certainly bring about significant changes to this approach.

“There is sure to be a lobbying response to these issues, especially depending on what happens with the immigration bill – these companies will have a lot of interest in what happens with that,” Mason says.

“Alongside any lobbying, however, they are also looking at new areas of business, and part of that is other countries into which they can expand.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has directed the Justice Department to institute a slew of major reforms to federal charging policies that have long required automatic prison time for even minor drug offences.

Since 1980, the U.S. federal prison population has grown by almost 800 percent. Credit: Bigstock

“As the so-called ‘war on drugs’ enters its fifth decade, we need to ask whether it, and the approaches that comprise it, have been truly effective – and … to usher in a new approach,” Holder stated in a watershed speech Monday before the American Bar Association.

“And with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to warehouse and forget. Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. And many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate these problems, rather than alleviate them.”

Holder announced that “draconian mandatory minimum sentences” would no longer be required for those charged with low-level, nonviolent drug offences with no ties to large-scale gangs.

The “mandatory minimum” policy has been a cornerstone of a decades-long anti-drugs approach that many blame for record levels of incarceration, a massively overstretched prison system, and decimated minority communities. With some 219,000 inmates – a number official researchers earlier this year called “historically unprecedented” – the country currently holds a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Half of those are locked up on drug-related crimes, with more than 80 percent considered non-violent offenders.

Not only have such numbers created a colossal budgetary drain, but scholars have suggested that this level of incarceration is dangerous for society at large. According to landmark research by the Pew Centre on the States, a research group, higher incarceration rates actually produce more crime by affecting families and vesting people with criminal records.

While the U.S. prison system cost the cash-strapped country some 80 billion dollars in 2010, Holder noted Monday that 40 to 60 percent of inmates are rearrested within three years of their release.

“As a nation, we are coldly efficient in our incarceration efforts,” he stated. “While the entire U.S. population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown at an astonishing rate – by almost 800 percent. It’s still growing – despite the fact that federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity.”

Tipping point

The decisions announced Monday follow a department-wide review initiated by Holder early this year, aimed at cutting down on inefficiencies, ineffective policies and inequities in the U.S. federal criminal justice system. The reforms will go beyond drug offences, but ultimately aim to bring down the federal prison population.

Holder announced, for instance, that the Justice Department would come up with a new framework for determining when U.S. attorneys should file charges in federal cases – and when they should not. Simultaneously, the agency will mount a series of programmes to focus on alternatives to incarceration.

This spring the department broadened the cases under which inmates could be considered for “compassionate release”, including due to medical problems or age, a move long urged by rights groups.

The department overhaul will also focus on the startling racial disparity in the U.S. penal system. On Monday, Holder said black men are on average receiving prison sentences around 20 percent longer than white men convicted of the same crimes.

A group of U.S. federal attorneys will now be tasked with examining these disparities and offering recommendations on how to mitigate such inequities.

“This is very encouraging – since the beginning of the explosion of the U.S. prison population during the 1970s, I don’t recall any attorney general making such statements in such a high-profile way,” Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project and a longstanding expert on the U.S. criminal justice system, told IPS.

“Of course, most of these suggestions have been widely discussed in recent years. But to have the attorney general of the United States say that we incarcerate too many people, that we’re having a disproportionate impact on minority communities, and that we need to shift our direction – if nothing else, this will have an important symbolic effect in opening up the political dialogue.”

Indeed, the political dynamic around the United States’ over-incarceration and increased reliance on the federal rather than state criminal justice system is today surprisingly united in favour of reform. Holder says the administration is keen to work with Congress to put in place farther-reaching legislation.

Two such bipartisan bills were recently introduced in the U.S. Senate (here and here), both of which share many of Holder’s core aims. Although Congress is currently in a five-week recess, several lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum released statements Monday in support of the attorney general’s speech.

In addition, in mid-June a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives began combing through the U.S. federal penal code, looking to cull statutes that are seen as overlapping, ineffective or otherwise unnecessary. The effort, the first such undertaking in two decades, is expected to result in recommendations by the end of the year.

Holder is also a key ally of President Barack Obama. Several times during his speech Monday, the attorney general noted that the new reforms have come about in part from extensive discussions with Obama.

“This is clearly the moment for change – it’s long overdue, but we seem to be at a tipping point here,” Mary Price, vice-president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“There are so many voices being raised on this issue right now, by both the usual suspects and some very prominent conservatives. They’ve looked at the experiences of the states, which have been experiencing crushing budget problems and seeing remarkable success in changing their own sentencing requirements.”

The changes will depend in part on shifting greater responsibility for responding to nonviolent crimes onto local communities and state courts, while also vesting greater powers in judges to determine case-specific punishment. Price says state governments have already been acting as “Petri dishes” for the federal government, undertaking innovative experiments in how to wean their criminal justice systems off of incarceration and redirect them towards alternatives.

“It is towards these alternatives that the federal government, too, clearly wants to head,” Price notes. “We can’t just incarcerate our way out of social problems, and in this the states have been leading the way. So we can now expect a new emphasis on developing both alternatives and the mechanisms under which people can be sentenced to them.”

Credit: Bigstock

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 4 2013 (IPS)

The research wing of the U.S. Congress is warning that three decades of “historically unprecedented” build-up in the number of prisoners incarcerated in the United States have led to a level of overcrowding that is now “taking a toll on the infrastructure” of the federal prison system.

Over the past 30 years, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the federal prison population has jumped from 25,000 to 219,000 inmates, an increase of nearly 790 percent. Swollen by such figures, for years the United States has incarcerated far more people than any other country, today imprisoning some 716 people out of every 100,000. (Although CRS reports are not made public, a copy can be found here.)

“This is one of the major human rights problems within the United States, as many of the people caught up in the criminal justice system are low income, racial and ethnic minorities, often forgotten by society,” Maria McFarland, deputy director for the U.S. programme at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

“This is one of the major human rights problems within the United States, as many of the people caught up in the criminal justice system are low income, racial and ethnic minorities, often forgotten by society,”
Maria McFarland, deputy director for the U.S. programme at Human Rights Watch
In recent years, as a consequence of the imposition of very harsh sentencing policies, McFarland’s office has seen new patterns emerging of juveniles and very elderly people being put in prison.

“Last year, some 95,000 juveniles under 18 years of age were put in prison, and that doesn’t count those in juvenile facilities,” she noted.

“And between 2007 and 2011, the population of those over 64 grew by 94 times the rate of the regular population. Prisons clearly aren’t equipped to take care of these aging people, and you have to question what threat they pose to society – and the justification for imprisoning them.”

According to the new CRS report, a growing number of these prisoners are being put away for charges related to immigration violations and weapons possession. But the largest number is for relatively paltry drug offences – an approach that report author Nathan James, a CRS analyst in crime policy, warns may not be useful in bringing down crime statistics.

“Research suggests that while incarceration did contribute to lower violent crime rates in the 1990s, there are declining marginal returns associated with ever increasing levels of incarceration,” James notes. He suggests that one potential explanation for this could be that people have been increasingly incarcerated for crimes in which there is a “high level of replacement”.

For instance, he says, if a serial rapist is incarcerated, the judicial system has the power to prevent further sexual assaults by that offender, and it is likely that no one will take the offender’s place. “However, if a drug dealer is incarcerated, it is possible that someone will step in to take that person’s place,” James writes. “Therefore, no further crimes may be averted by incarcerating the individual.”

Smarter on crime

Of course, the U.S. prison population’s blooming needs to be traced back to changes within the federal criminal justice system. Recent decades have seen an expanding “get tough” approach on crime here, under which even nonviolent offenders are facing stiff prison sentences.

In turn, overcrowding has become a massive issue, with the federal prison system as a whole operating at 39 percent over capacity in 2011, according to CRS. The result has also been significant price overruns, with the Bureau of Prisons budget doubling to nearly 6.4 billion dollars even while hundreds of millions of dollars worth of unaddressed infrastructure problems continue to mount.

Yet the problems being experienced by the federal prison system actually stand in contrast to certain trends at the state level. While some states have dealt with even more worrisome problems of prison overcrowding – including California, which in 2011 was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to take steps to reduce the pressure – recent years have seen movement at the state level to counter overincarceration.

Some of this action may have come from serious state budget crises. Currently, after all, it costs between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars to house a prisoner in the United States.

According to a new report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington advocacy group working on prison reform, prisoner populations in the United States overall declined by around 1.5 percent in 2011. Furthermore, last year lawmakers in 24 states adopted policies that “may contribute to downscaling prison populations”.

“There has been a marked change in the amount of activity at the state level to end our addiction to incarceration,” Vineeta Gupta, deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told IPS.

“Some states are currently having many discussions they would not have had 10 years ago – getting smarter on crime rather than tougher on crime. None of these moves are comprehensive enough to address the large scope of the problem, but they’re very important starting points.”

She continued: “Unfortunately, the federal government has been going in the opposite direction.”

Mandatory minimum

Arguably, the single most important element in explaining the record incarceration numbers both at the federal and state levels could be “mandatory minimum” sentencing requirements, under which federal and state law over the past two decades has automatically required certain prison sentences for certain crimes, particularly for drug offences.

Such polices have eliminated the ability of judges to tailor judicial responses to individual circumstance. Over the years, sitting judges have resigned over mandatory minimum policies, while others have waged high-visibility campaigns for their rollback.

“Particular attention should be given to reforming mandatory minimums and parole release mechanisms as policies that can work to reduce state prison populations,” the Sentencing Project suggests, noting also that “Mandatory minimums do not reduce crime but result in lengthy prison terms that contribute to overcrowding.”

Such analysis echoes parts of the CRS conclusions while also undergirding growing momentum on the issue. According to the Sentencing Project, seven states last year weakened or repealed certain mandatory minimum regulations.

More dramatically, in mid-January, Senator Patrick Leahy, the head of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, told a Washington audience that he would support doing away entirely with federal mandatory minimums, which he called “a great mistake”.

“Senator Leahy’s comments are a very big step towards starting a conversation to address a major driver of the federal growth,” the ACLU’s Gupta says. “The hope is that some of the stuff that’s brewing in the states, where crime in some places is still at an all-time low, can now serve as an example for the federal system.”

Amnesty International has found evidence of horrific abuses inside Mongolia’s prisons, such as torturing and starving detainees to death. Credit: Ranmali Bandarage/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
ULAANBAATAR, Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

Tucked away from the scrutiny of civil society, Mongolia’s jails epitomise the limits of democracy in this county of 2.8 million people, where marginalised members of society often bear the brunt of a corrupt and under-resourced justice system.

“Mongolia is a democratic country and has been for 22 years,” Geleg Baasan, a human rights activist who heads the Centre for Protection of Breaches on Human Rights (CPBHR), told IPS, referring to the country’s development following nearly seven decades as a Soviet satellite state from 1921 until 1990.

“But this democratic transition has not yet (extended) to the jails,” she said. Having been arrested five times during the course of her decades-long career as an activist, she speaks from firsthand experience of a discriminatory and corrupt legal apparatus.

According to Baasan, the most marginalised in Mongolian society tend to slip through the cracks and get lost in the country’s many ‘detention centers’ – pre-trial chambers that are even more dangerous than post-conviction facilities.

The famous activist became especially interested in the country’s prison system when, four years ago, “a child was locked up for seven years for stealing wine and a box of chocolates”.

“People who have committed a horrible crime can pay (to avoid detention) but people who have committed a petty crime go to jail because they don’t have any connections,” said Baasan.

Though Mongolian law states that citizens cannot be arrested without due process, the United States embassy’s human rights report for 2011 found “arbitrary arrest and detention” to be common.

The embassy also cited a United Nations report, which found that two-thirds of detainees in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar who were accused of criminal offenses had been arrested without court authorisation.

On the other hand, some groups were found to be above the law.

The U.S. embassy report noted, “Ultranationalist groups enjoyed impunity due to police complacency and unwillingness to apprehend the offenders. Ultranationalists targeted LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) persons, Chinese, and Koreans with threats, violence, and the extraction of protection money.”

Otgonbaatar Tsedendemberel, director of the LGBT Centre of Mongolia, told IPS that exact statistics, such as the number of LGBT persons who have died as a result of violent attacks, are very difficult to verify since authorities and even family members are keen to cover up the issue.

His organisation currently documents cases of imprisonment and abuses of members of the LGBT community using the U.N. human rights framework on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Baasan agreed that tampering with death records is a common practice within the police force, courts and prison system. “A murder can be made to look like suicide – it happens all the time,” she said.

Conditions on the inside

In 2002, Amnesty International released a report detailing horrific abuses inside Mongolia’s prisons, such as torturing and starving detainees to death.

“Those with no connections usually starve because they can’t get as much food as other people and can’t get out of the prison as fast,” said Baasan.

Holding back food is also used as a way to force pre-trial detainees to “confess” to crimes they may or may not have committed, though this practice has been on the decline in recent years.

A lack of state funding for prisons also means some inmates go without food for longer periods of time.

Civil society and human rights activists have challenged the Mongolian government on these poor conditions and in 2003 a group of organisations and activists demanded that special representatives and social workers be assigned to look after prisoners’ needs.

In response the government assigned 70 staff members from the prison administration as social workers, with nothing more than 30 hours of training.

“They might as well have had no training at all,” Cyril Jaurena, from the Czech NGO ‘Caritas’, told IPS.

In 2011, one of those original social workers, Orosoo Purevsuren, lieutenant martialist of the Court Decision Enforcement Agency (CDEA) working in one of the pre-trial detention centres, came to Caritas in search of proper training.  

Since 2003 Purevsuren has struggled to meet the legal and emotional needs of the prisoners, a gargantuan task given his lack of training and extremely scarce resources.

He told IPS that there are just 78 social workers and 26 psychologists for an inmate population of 5,899 prisoners in 24 prisons. “Counseling has been limited and we are working to address this,” he said.

According to Jaurena, “It can take up to six months for a prisoner to meet a social worker who often does not have answers to their questions.

“Some will say ‘I want to see my children,’ or ‘My wife is trying to sell my house – what can I do?’” Jaurena said, adding that most social workers are powerless to act on these grievances.

In an attempt to tackle this problem, Jaurena began a partnership with the Prosecutor’s Office of Mongolia, which has thus far been unsuccessful in compiling a comprehensive record of prisoners’ grievances.

Other than lamenting the quality of the food, prisoners seldom bring more serious complaints – such as reports of abuse at the hands of prison guards – to the Prosecutor’s Office, making it difficult for prison officials to verify and document human rights violations.

Now, with information supplied by NGOs and other non-state actors, “the prosecutor’s office is preparing to conduct a comprehensive survey, publish the results and hold a conference (about the findings)”, explained Jaurena.

“We are trying to establish international standards,” T. Munkhbayar, of the Prosecutor’s Office of Mongolia, told IPS at the project’s official launch on Oct. 30. “This is the first time civil society has worked with the government in the prison system.”

Caritas will oversee the project, while the CPBHR will mobilise its own pool of lawyers to provide legal training to social workers appointed by the Court Decision Enforcement Agency, assisted by licensed social work experts from the Prison Fellowship of Mongolia, an Australian NGO.

Though she has witnessed a great deal of corruption as an activist, Baasan feels hopeful.

“Mongolia looks very much like a democracy (from the outside) because the government has signed so many international conventions.  I have ten volumes of books about these conventions but they are not enforced and the lawyers that use them are extremely rare.”

She is confident that the election of the Democratic Party on Jun. 28, 2012, represents a turning of this tide. “We have a completely new government and I see it as a new era of democracy,” Baasan said.

(END)

Chile is releasing and deporting foreign inmates, mainly in prison on drug trafficking charges, as part of a broader attempt at improving conditions in this country’s overcrowded prisons.

The law introduced by the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera and passed unanimously by Congress in August pardons prisoners from other countries convicted of non-violent offences, as part of Chile’s new prison policy.

In this South American country of 16.5 million people, there are a total of 100,000 inmates, including prisoners who are on work release and spend only nights or weekends in jail.

According to statistics from the Gendarmería, the security force that guards Chile’s 103 prisons, as of Sept. 30 there were 48,658 full-time inmates held in facilities with a total combined capacity of 33,822.

The large majority of Chile’s prisons are state-run. Only six were granted in concession to private companies to build and administer, although the Gendarmería is still in charge of security.

The new prison policy began to be drafted in the wake of the Dec. 8, 2010 fire in the San Miguel prison in Santiago, where 81 of the 1,875 prisoners held in the facility built for 632 perished.

There are currently 1,700 foreign inmates in Chile. Of that total, 1,117 – of 28 different nationalities – have applied for the pardon, and 740 have been granted it so far.

The process began in August with the repatriation of 256 convicts from Peru.

“This is an expression of the close cooperation between the governments of Peru and Chile in different areas, and it is also a reflection of our strong bilateral ties,” Peru’s ambassador in Santiago, Carlos Pareja, said at the time, adding that his country was “completely satisfied with the results.”

The next group comprised 322 men and 106 women from Bolivia, who were taken to the border from three different prisons in 14 buses on the same day.

The third group was made up of 22 prisoners from Argentina – including one woman and her two-year-old son – who were taken across the Los Libertadores border crossing.

“There are more than 40 prisoners waiting to receive the pardon at this point, including Germans, Brazilians, Colombians, Spanish, Filipinos, Israelis, Italians, Paraguayans, South Africans and Venezuelans,” said David Huina, head of the Interior Ministry’s investigations division.

“To obtain the pardon, prisoners must fulfil a series of requisites. They must not have committed serious crimes like human rights violations, homicide…or sexual crimes against minors,” Huina told IPS.

He added that the beneficiaries must also have good conduct, and must have served out a certain portion of their sentence, depending on the severity of the offence.

After they are deported, the prisoners are banned from returning to Chile for 10 years.

Once they return to their home countries they are given a new national identity document and are released.

However, those who face charges in their home countries will be tried there and imprisoned if convicted.

Huina said that a list was presented to each consulate with the names of those who were pardoned, to coordinate.

“Each country checked the prisoners’ records, and those who were facing arrest warrants were sent in a separate group. Once in their home countries, they were sent to the appropriate authorities,” Huina said.

The official said the legislation was “a national law that grants a humanitarian benefit.” Thus, the pardon is not linked to any bilateral treaties.

According to the Justice Ministry, more than 95 percent of the foreigners released and deported under the new law were arrested for smuggling drugs into Chile. They had served one-third, half or three-fourths of their sentence, depending on the severity of their crime.

The law has not been criticised for its objective, which is to improve the inhumane conditions in Chile’s prisons. However, some observers are worried about the conditions in which the pardon is granted, and about the implications in terms of migration policy.

“When someone commits a crime, they pay for it by going to prison,” said Carolina Stefoni, a sociologist who is an expert on migration and transnationalism at the Alberto Hurtado University.

“But if on top of that they force you not to return to the country, or if the return can only be achieved by facing extremely severe consequences,” it adds another layer of punishment, she told IPS.

This is compounded by “the government’s plan to keep people with criminal records out of the country, which to me is discriminatory,” she added.

Justice Minister Teodoro Ribera stated that “in the case of foreigners who are in the country illegally and have committed crimes in Chile, it is clear that they are going to be expelled once they serve out their sentences.”

In Stefoni’s view, underlying these measures is a deeply-rooted cultural problem that is reflected in the shortcomings of the country’s migration policy.

“The current migration law is not founded on human rights principles, and that gives rise to discrimination,” she said.

“In cultural terms, Chileans have a lot to learn; we have a long way to go to understand that the country maintains and reproduces a number of social diversities, not only involving migration but other kinds as well, and that this diversity enriches the country.”