August 1 USA: Brutality and Neglect of Prisoners is Inexcusable In a civilized society such as ours, there is no excuse for committing acts of brutality, although we expect such behavior from the mentally ill. That mechanism which enables the mentally ill to follow the rules is broken. When they often predictably act out their illnesses in a violent manner, we put them in prison because we believe they are a danger to themselves and others. They are ill and are supposedly removed for recovery in a "time out" facility we call a prison or jail. In a sane world, the medically and mentally ill would be treated and healed as much as possible and returned to society in much better condition than before they were incarcerated. This is what most taxpayers think is happening as they have trust in the public servants which they have commissioned to oversee the errants costing Californians nearly $6 billion a year. But healing is not what is taking place at all. Instead of hiring people committed to rehabilitation of mental and addictive disorders, the State has hired many dysfunctional, often violent, law enforcement types who are worse than those who are imprisoned. We allow law enforcement people to neglect, psychologically tortment, kill and maim prisoners and regard that unspeakable brutality as acceptable behavior. What kind of twisted logic is this and what is being done about it? Since 1960 some of us have evolved from the Neanderthal state while others still drag their knuckles. Let us give them the kind term "knuckledraggers" for future reference. For example, scientists mostly all agree that the mentality of beating a child into submission over anything as simple as him wanting a candy bar in a store is exactly what creates an adult who sees violence as a way of handling even the smallest incident not to their liking. This is a shallow, immature problem-solving outlook usually held by people who were themselves abused as children. Too many uneducated officers, supposedly sworn to uphold the law, feel that "knocking around" someone - whether it be a child, wife or an inmate - is the answer to every issue. This is the exact warped mentality that got most of the inmates exactly where they are today - in prison. And this is the exact mentality that leads anyone who is aware of what really goes on in a prison to believe most of the CO's themselves also belong in cells. If a prison is being run properly and in a humane, healing manner a CO should not have to worry about his means of control leading to "litigation". Intelligent people are not going to buy into a pity party over guards being unable to use 'excessive force' with inmates! Brutality is against the law and with the crude weapons that inmates naturally devise in an environment of constant psychological and physical torment, force against them is as cowardly as shooting fish in a barrel. Brutal guards should be fired and prosecuted over this criminal behavior but this is not happening because the families of prisoners are too uneducated and/or fearful to get together and file enough lawsuits to force this needed reform. The CDC employees who are seemingly the most violent get promotions for this type of aberrant behavior. None of them deny it and are in fact brazen about trying to make excuses for this rampant unlawful brutality. The phrase that a prisoners actions "threatened the security of the institution" allows guards to literally get away with murder and other heinous acts without so much as a scolding. In Central California, the newspapers are so accustomed to inmate deaths, they don't even run the announcements, which enables the brutality to take place even more often. The reason these violent guards are worried now is because they are for the most part lowly, uneducated people put in positions of extreme authority. What kind of person would take a job locking people in cages and punishing them day in and day out for being medically and mentally ill? There is a very fine thread between prison employees and criminals or the atmosphere of violence couldnt exist. For their income levels, guards should be required to have at least an AA degree and medical training, especially in basic first aid. After they stand on a prisoner's throat, an action that happens in every prison in California almost daily, they should be trained well enough to administer CPR to save the taxpayers millions in lawsuit payouts for this animalistic behavior. Most of the guards physically resemble bar bouncers and they are no better than the worst mentally ill inmate on death row with their belief that brutality is acceptable behavior. Even many of the females are on this sick power trip that is destroying people in the taxpayers name and doing anything but protecting the public safety. Revenge or retribution-style justice doesnt work, nor has it ever worked as a real solution to crime. In their little mind-sets, these tin gods strap on a crowd-size canister of pepper spray and a heavy metal club which quickly exalts them to the supreme authorities of their own small domains. Cave men operated in the same manner since the meat went to the ones who were physically the strongest and had the biggest clubs. They do not use proper chains of commands or intelligent people skills because they dont have the mental capacity to even comprehend another way of thinking outside of brute force. Their communication is often in grunts and clicks and their report writing skills are even worse, To many guards, their work is all about force, psychological intimidation and not at all about custodial care. On a constant and daily basis most guards de-humanize and inflict cruel and unusual punishment on people who have no way to fight back for no other reason other than to make themselves feel powerful. They adhere to a 'good ole boy' network and cover one others actions- whether they personally agree with them or not! This is the reason for the Code of Silence and the media ban in my opinion, is to cover up and hide prisoner abuse in order to keep the industry raging on. These guards do not just exert their power on those who have shown a reason to need itthe mentally ill who cannot possibly follow rules. NO! They also pick out and bully certain inmates simply to be their victims for sport. When an inmate or their family does attempt to fight back, they cut them off from all outside contact, knowing full well that most of their loved ones cannot afford the needed legal representation, and they continue to carry out their evil deeds in this sick power "game." Or they punish those who can least tolerate isolation by casting them into prisons within a prison called administrative segregation or the "hole." Reform was promised by this Governor, yet on September 7 a public hearing will be held from 10 am until noon for changes in ad seg rules at the Water Resources Building in Sacramento, 1416 Ninth St at N, that makes the torment of the mentally ill even worse. CDCR is so cocky that they have already put these new regulations into effect under the pretense of an emergency. Instead of having a review of why an inmate was cast into a cruel box at the end of 30 days, there will be no review for 90 days, prolonging the torment which shouldn't happen in the first place. The prison guards and administration are driving people who are already ailing over the edge and getting away with it. How does this benefit anyone? And those who will be most alienated from their sons, fathers, mothers and daughters most likely won't even be at this public hearing because they do not understand the legal language of the rules changes. They react too late, not that their voices would ever actually be heard since they can't write big checks to the lawmakers to buy favors. One can only assume these actions are the result of feeble-minded and misguided persons as an attempt to make up for some need of power missing within their own lives. They are just as mentally ill as the inmates who are entrusted to their care but there is no accountability when the guards act out their illness, even when they murder, maim or cause prisoners to be hurt in many other ways. This is happening every day and it flies beneath the radar of a banned media for the most part. Most of the legislators are put into office by law enforcement labor unions and paid to go along with it. Oversight isn't working. This attitude that for a CO's safety, they should be given free reign to basically beat the life and spirit out of any prisoner who isnt totally agreeable to them is a normal way of thinking in the prison jungle but it is wrongheaded. In the free world, people are sent to prison for that very same faulty judgment! Possibly if the guards from day one exercised some sort of human decency and promoted mutual respect they would not have so many problems. I understand that there will always be those problem inmates who will act out their mental illness, but for the most part the administration and lawmakers themselves have created the issues they have and all for one awful reason: To keep the budgets flowing and to use fear tactics on the public to justify these horrible punishing jobs. Those who are using the tact from the dark ages of locking people up in cages and tormenting them are treating people as if they are livestock. There are no statistics anywhere that prisons, jails, harsh laws and even the death penalty do one thing to prevent or deter crime. Yet there are many studies in restorative justice techniques that are proving to be much more beneficial to the public safety. The overcrowding contributes to the inhumane conditions and the sentencing laws need to be changed by initiative if necessary, but the families are from the poor and uneducated side of town and don't know how to exercise their tremendous power as voters. Prevention of mental illness and addiction would be the most sensible way to reduce crime, as well as eliminating poverty through a strong economy, yet these get little recognition and a low priority from the lawmakers. We as taxpayers allow them to go off on this misguided human bondage industry for the sake of a profit. Weve come a long way in our society, except where crime is concerned. Its time to organize and vote the Knuckledraggers out of power if we are going to become a better civilization. There are 3 million Californians connected to a state inmate. That doesnt include those connected to l.5 million parolees, those in jails, federal prisons or juvenile halls. Those who have insider knowledge to taxpayer-financed abuse need to get together and put a stop to it as the cycle of retribution never ends and comes back in the form of tormented and dangerous next door neighbors. The reason the Knuckledraggers are in power is simply that they know how to raise funds, elect legislators to office who will serve their interests and get out the vote. Isnt this a sad state of affairs that we allow people who are as mentally ill as the inmates to hold the jailers keys over us for the sake of a buck? Whining about it doesnt put an end to the problem. It is still possible to shake off these chains of oppression by using the same organizing techniques they used to get to their present tower of power. All of this inhumanity, none of it a solution to crime simply due to voter apathy. You see big crowds at sporting events and nobody attending important legislative hearings. Prisons arent hospitals and prison goons arent nurses. The work currently being done to expose these abuses throughout America by the National Prison Commission on Safety and Abuse is worth reading. To protect the public safety,we need to get involved and active in eliminating those who believe they are above the law and clean our big houses. http://www.prisoncommission.org/public_hearing_2.asp (source: American Chronicle (B. Cayenne Bird is a 37-year veteran journalist who volunteers her time as founder and director of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect UNION. The UNION is active in prison reform and criminal justice issues. She is a mother and grandmother and focuses on human rights and restorative justice. She is also the host of television series "Cayenne Common Sense" and publishes a daily online newsletter) INDIANA: Minister of mercy----Elkhart resident answers her calling and prays with those on death row The mornings of executions are the roughest. "On those mornings, I get up early to pray," the Rev. Wanda Callahan says. "I say something like, 'Jesus, God, help me. Don't let me fall apart.'" Callahan has been ministering to men on death row for more than 30 years and has witnessed 5 executions, 4 in Florida and 1 in Indiana. It never gets easier. Kevin A. Conner, who was executed last week for killing 3 people in Indianapolis in 1988, didn't want any last-minute appeals or clemency from Gov. Mitch Daniels. He was the fourth person executed by the state so far this year; as many as 8 might be executed by the end of the year. Callahan takes the deaths personally. "I remember the morning Scott Johnson was killed," she said. Gregory Scott Johnson was executed in May for the murder of Ruby Hutslar at Hutslar's Anderson, Ind., home."I was not his minister, but I talked with men who knew him, so I, too, felt like I knew him. On the morning of his execution, I just fell apart. "My son James came in and found me a mess. I remember the words he said to me, 'Mom, don't cry. You can't save them all.' "But I would if I could." 'Why do you even care?' She knows many people don't identify with her quest. "People ask me all the time," she says, 'Why do you even care about these murderers?' "I tell people to go back to the Gospel. Look at Jesus. He cared about everyone and hung out with all kinds of people. If we call ourselves Jesus' disciples, we too have to keep ministering to so-called throwaways of today. And who is more thrown away in our society than the inmates on death row?" Callahan was born in 1924 in Burgettstown, Pa. The 81-year-old former schoolteacher is a widowed mother of 2 sons and grandmother of 5 girls. She says she was always interested in Christianity, but there was not one moment in her life when she knew she wanted to be a minister. It just sort of happened. "Being a witness to an execution was just terrible," she said. "We were led into a room and we could see the electric chair behind the glass. The hood was draped across the chair." The room was full of people, some related to the victim and some to the condemned. "I must say it was the most barbaric thing I have ever witnessed," she said. "When they brought him into the chamber, they sat him in the chair and strapped him in. They then put the hood over his head and the guard left the room. Shortly after, we saw his body make a short jerk, and smoke began to come from around the place the straps were on his hands and legs. "We could smell burning flesh. The last jolt brought smoke from his head, and it was soon over. The room was filled with wails and tears. "But it was the burning flesh that soon caused us to abandon the death chamber." Her wake-up call She has been ministering to the men on death row since she and her late husband, Francis, started in Florida in the early 1970s. When she and Francis moved from Florida to Indiana 18 years ago, she met Barry Nothstine, assistant superintendent of the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. "When she started coming here, she didn't just want to volunteer, she wanted to minister," he said. "And she has been ministering to the men of death row all this time. I don't know where she gets the energy to do it. She is faithful and is a grand lady." As one might guess, Callahan doesn't agree with the death penalty. "Every time we go to the prison, I look into the face of troubled and neglected boys and see many who have grown up as men in the prison system," she says. She says the inmates she ministers to tell her she's an angel of mercy. She opposes capital punishment on religious grounds but also in its practical applications. It's imposed arbitrarily, she said, is irreversible and is applied disproportionately to minority and poor defendants. "Now if I kill you, I probably would not get the death penalty," Callahan, who is white, told a black reporter. "But if you would kill me, you would be more likely to get the death penalty." But it's Callahan's desire to live like Jesus Christ that motivates her. "Jesus Christ ... refused to meet hate with hate and violence with violence," she said. "I pray for the strength to be like him." 'A productive life' Although she is against the death penalty, she knows some of the men on death row deserved to be there. But maybe some do not. "Many of the men on the row committed their crimes when they were as young as 18. They have grown up in the prison system, and many of them have grown," she says. "I believe they should not be executed for what they did when they were young. Who were you when you were 18?" One of the men she knows is Larry William Bellmore. He's no longer serving on death row after his sentence was overturned in 1992 because the judge was influenced by a tattoo. In a letter he wrote to Callahan, he says: "You ask how I felt once I got off death row. It has been almost 6 years since I have left the row, and I have missed those that I have left behind. "I ... have been in a position to see two of my friends driven to the north gate in back of a funeral hearse. People have the tendency to believe the hype that a person on death row cannot live or function around other people and should be continuously under the eyes of the jailer or keeper. "I can say from firsthand knowledge that there are several of us that have come off Death Row and are living a productive life, or as close to a normal, productive life as these walls will allow." Still a calling Although Callahan is officially retired, she stays busy. She fills in for pastors at the churches of the Brethren around town, and she preaches the 1st Sunday of every other month at Faith Christian Church in Goshen. She still visits at least 2 death row inmates in Michigan City's prison, making the drive every other week. "They have learned over the years it would have to be something very important to interfere with my visit," she said. "But most of them know if I can't make it, they know they can call me at home." It bothers her greatly that 15 men have been executed since Indiana reinstated the death penalty in 1977. She fears it will grow worse, now that Mitch Daniels is governor. "My goodness, he's only been in office since January, and already 4 men have died. One can only wonder why he is in such a rush to kill them all and not look or hear their appeals?" Daniels has had little to say publicly about the death penalty. But in a recent interview with Statehouse reporters, he acknowledged mixed feelings. "If I said I had no reservations or conflicting sentiments, I wouldn't be honest," he said. "I believe, and it's clear the people of Indiana believe, that in the most heinous cases, this penalty is appropriate." But the Rev. Wanda Callahan will continue to look into the eyes of those on death row, and instead of seeing the worst those eyes have seen, she chooses to see better. (source: South Bend Tribune) KENTUCKY: FROM CELL BLOCK H Prison pen pals -- Web sites give inmates a connection to outside world Timmy Thurman is a Leo with blond hair, blue eyes and a disarming profile on his Internet personal ad: "I'm likable, fun, and goal-oriented. I love laughing and making people smile. I have diverse musical tastes and can fit in with any crowd. I'm not very good at this and it's very hard to capture a person's true personality through an e-mail or even a letter, but I can assure you this -- I'm Real!" You won't find him on a relationship Web site like eHarmony or Match.com. Thurman is serving time for murder in the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, and his ad is posted on WriteAPrisoner.com. "It's a cool thing, man. You can't really talk to guys in here," Thurman said in a telephone interview. "I like writing a lot, so I figure I'd meet some people that way. It helps time pass in here. Otherwise, it's all slow-motion." Thurman said he had just gotten an e-mail from a woman the night before that included personal information about her as well as these lines: "I just want you to know that if you do write back I will not judge you because of your current situation. I know what it's like to have made bad choices. I've been there. I will tell you more when you write back, and send you a picture." Starting something As the number of U.S. prison inmates has grown to more than 2 million, Web sites such as WriteAPrisoner.com, FriendsBeyondTheWall.com and others have sprung up like online dating services for the incarcerated. Prisoners don't have computer access, and the Web sites only facilitate initial contact. Afterward, inmates and their pen pals typically exchange cards, letters and telephone calls, and sometimes schedule visits. Sometimes lasting friendships develop. For 7 months, Andrea Heinen, a Charlotte, N.C., social worker, has been writing Jonathan Pickett, who is serving time at the Federal Medical Center-Lexington on a drug conviction. "I saw this play, 'The Exonerated' (written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen), about death-row inmates who were exonerated after 20 years," Heinen said. "I got on the Internet looking for information, and WriteAPrisoner's Web site popped up. "I sat there 4 or 5 hours, going through looking at people, seeing what they'd done, and found Jonathan. He's from Tampa, and I have family there. I have a significant other on the outside, we have a child, and Jonathan has a child. He's close to my age, and just looked like a good old country boy, and I'm a good old country girl, so I figure we'd get along." Heinen said she and Pickett write each other 2 or 3 times a week and talk on the phone every couple of weeks. "We're just real honest with each other, decent friends," she said. Pickett said in a telephone interview that he's gotten about 25 responses to his online ad but called Heinen "a true friend, ever since I met her, more than anybody I've met through the Web site before. "If I need her to check on anything on the Internet for me, she's happy to do it. She's visited me. It's just nice to be able to correspond with somebody on the outside, somebody in the real world." 'Nicest men' Leslie Thompson, a Singer Island, Fla., hairdresser writes 4 inmates in 3 states whom she met online. "I started doing it to help the guys, but I think it helps me more," she said. "Now I can't wait to get mail and phone calls from them. I date people on the outside, but some of the guys (inmates) are the nicest men I've ever met." One of Thompson's pen pals is Gregory Williams, incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary-McCreary in Pine Knot, Ky. As a result, she has developed a friendship with his mother, Barbara Rankin. "This has been almost three years now," said Rankin, a retired food-service manager for the Bay City Jail in Panama City, Fla. "Greg told her about me, and we started exchanging cards and letters. She's been trying to get me to come visit, us both being in the state of Florida, but I think her communicating with Greg, keeping in contact, is more important than anything." Rankin said having a pen pal "has a great impact on an inmate's life when they're away from family, and I know that from working in corrections for 17 years." Word of warning Victim advocates have criticized the pen-pal Internet sites, despite prisoner rights to outside contacts, and corrections officials also urge caution. "The concern is that men and women in prison are very, very good at manipulation," said John Rees, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Corrections. "I would just caution the public that these Web sites offer a great opportunity for men and women in prison to scam the public. I was contacted by victims' families about one of the death-row inmates on a Web site, asking people to write them. But we can't control it." Rees says he has had no reports or evidence of wrongdoing connected to WriteAPrisoner.com or any other prisoner pen-pal Web site. Adam Lovell, owner of the Florida-based WriteAPrisoner.com, said, "We take every reasonable precaution we can. We link to corrections Web sites so that people can verify information about their inmate pen pals. And we investigate all reports of fraud and scams to the best of our ability." The site has a lengthy warning about mail fraud, involvement of minors and inmates soliciting money; it also has detailed instructions for reporting these infractions. But prisoner pen-pal sites are similar to regular Internet dating sites, in that they post whatever the paying customer writes. So people surfing prisoner ads should bring the same healthy skepticism they do to relationship sites. For example, the posting of one Kentucky State Penitentiary inmate stated that he was serving time for kidnapping. But he didn't list his two first-degree rape convictions, according to the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup, or KOOL, a link on the Kentucky Department of Corrections' site (www.corrections.ky.gov/kool.htm). Also, his release date and photograph conflicted with the KOOL records. However, inmates may be just as likely to get hustled meeting people over the Internet. "It happened to me," Pickett said. "You ask people who write to send a picture, but of course they can send a picture of anybody, and there was this guy who wrote me pretending to be a female. I really don't want to go into any detail, but he mentioned something in a letter that made it obvious." Drawn to danger Typically, an inmate's crime doesn't deter pen pals, prisoners say. Thurman said of his murder rap, "Some people, I think it attracts them; some others, I think it spooks them, so they ask me about it. They'll be like, 'If you don't mind, if I'm not being too nosy, what happened?' So I run the story down to them." Said Lovell, "People are fascinated by death-row inmates." Serial murderers John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy both married women they'd corresponded with before their executions. Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn child, receives love notes posted on various Web sites, and when Susan Smith, the North Carolina woman who killed her two young sons, posted an ad on WriteAPrisoner.com, servers reportedly crashed trying to handle the traffic. "It generated over a million visitors, and ended up with around 6,000 responses," Lovell said. "She actually asked us to take her off." Making connections Lonely-hearts sites aren't the only ones on the Internet serving inmates and their families. UpNorthServices.com is a shopping and delivery service for people with loved ones incarcerated in New York state facilities. CorrectionsPhoneCard.com offers an innovative way for inmates to telephone the outside world and still be monitored by authorities, and the federal Bureau of Prisons' Web site, bop.gov, allows visitors to locate inmates in federal institutions anywhere in the United States with a few keystrokes. But also, for a nominal fee, anybody from convicted murders to rapists and thieving CEOs can post their pictures and pickup lines on the Internet. Photos on FriendsBeyondTheWall.com and others, for example, show smiling inmates superimposed over pastoral settings, outside stylish homes or next to high-priced luxury cars. Operational since 1999, the New York-based FriendsBeyondTheWall.com charges $35 for a yearlong ad and $55 for a three-year ad, with two pictures and up to 250 words of text. A booming business The sites advertise in prison publications, circulate fliers among state and federal inmates, and those interested in a posting fill out and mail in application forms. They cover everything from inmates' hair and eye color, to astrological sign, to the crime they committed and length of their sentence. WriteAPrisoner.com charges $40 for a yearlong ad, and business is booming. "We average 10,000 visitors a day, and gross about $200,000 a year," said Lovell. "It just keeps growing." Sandy Bishop, a nurse's aide in Falmouth, Ky., temporarily wrote a federal prison inmate through an Internet site because, she said, "This is a small town, you just know everybody, you never get to meet anybody different, unless you go out of town, but I never do that." A single mother with two children, Bishop said, "I've always dated people who have been in and out of jail, which is stupid I know. My mom makes fun of me for writing a guy in prison -- 'Are you that hard up?' -- But I could tell him things going on in my life. He was easy to talk to." Heinen said people have asked her why she corresponds with an inmate. "I tell them I'm sure there are things they do that people don't agree with. Prison inmates are human beings. They've made mistakes, but they're just as much a part of society as we are." ON THE WEB Various Internet sites have emerged serving inmates and their families. UpNorthServices.com is a shopping and delivery service for people with loved ones incarcerated in the New York state facilities. Visit, http://www.upnorthservices.com/ CorrectionsPhoneCard.com offers an innovative way for inmates to telephone the outside world and still be monitored by authorities. Visit www.correctionsphonecard.com The federal Bureau of Prisons site allows visitors to locate inmates in federal prisons anywhere with a few keystrokes. Visit www.bop.gov Other sites include: WriteAPrisoner.com, www.writeaprisoner.com Penpals-N-Prison is at www.penpals-n-prison.com/ FriendsBeyondTheWall is at www.friendsbeyondthewall.com/ The Kentucky Online Offender Lookup, or KOOL, is a link on the Kentucky Department of Corrections site www.corrections.ky.gov/kool.htm (source: Courier-Journal)
