Are You OK Putting Americans In Black Holes For Decades?

Rep. Richmond (LA-02) introduced a bill Thursday that would impact treatment of United States’ prisoners. It would usher in significant reforms to the penal system for a more humane approach to imprisonment and a more rational and fiscally conservative approach to incarceration.

The Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014 would start a national conversation with all pertinent stakeholders about how to best develop and implement national standards for solitary confinement to ensure it’s used infrequently and only under extreme circumstances.

What kind of country is the United States?

“Our approach to solitary confinement in this country needs immediate reform,” said Rep. Richmond.
“The practices imposed on prisoners, including the seriously mentally ill and juveniles, at all levels of our penal system raise significant 8th amendment concerns and it is time we have this conversation about what kind of country we are.”

Richmond thinks Americans are better than what they are presently demonstrating by allowing unjust and inhumane treatment of people deemed as offenders, including approximately 100,000 people held in solitary confinment for decades, a treatment the United Nations and human rights professionals globally say meets the criteria of torture.

”Torture In Your Backyard’ – The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT)

“Do we feel comfortable putting a man or woman in a dark hole for decades on end with no additional due process? Is this practice consistent with our values?” Richmond asks. “I don’t think so. I know we are better than that.”

The legislation has six cosponsors, all Democrats. It comes on the heels of a some states, including Maine, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas passing their own bills to study the practice. Attempts have been made in California, to no avail.

Last August, California’s Governor Jerry Brown got a solitary confinement torture cell installed on the state capitol steps. It was installed so Brown could publicly tell people again that prisoners locked into such a cell day after day, week after week, year after year, is not torture and so the public could gain better appreciation for what it feels like to be tortured in a “Security Housing Unit” ( SHU), rights advocates said in a written statement. (Gov. Jerry Brown Gets SHU Torture Cell Installed on State Capitol Steps, Deborah Dupré, Before It’s News)

In 2011, locked up in barbarous confinement, over 6,000 prisoners across California, most never having committed violent crime, risked their lives to join what became a historic hunger strike in solidarity with Pelican Bay Prison hunger strikers and their core five demands, each based on basic human rights.

Their central demand has been to “comply with the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.”

Since then, mass prisoner hunger strikes have continued. Brutal force feeding, another form of torture, was introduced and lives lost in peaceful demonstrations for human rights.  Nevertheless, Governor Brown dismissed the hunger strikers and the Five Core Demands. Media also remained silent.

Now, finally,after some prisoners ldied in their battle for human rights, it appears as though their and their advocates’ sacrifices have not been in vain, thanks to Rep. Richmond and his bill’s co-signers. 

Silence no more

The Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014 would:

•             Introduce a more humane and constitutionally sound practice of segregated detention in the Nation’s prisons, while accelerating the development of best practices and making solitary confinement reform a top priority in each prison system at the Federal and State levels

•             Establish a commission named the National Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Commission to work with all pertinent stakeholders to study the practice of solitary confinement and recommend best practices for reform to Congress and the Administration

•             Require the Department of Justice to issue regulations on best practices in this area that would bind facilities in the Federal prison system and incent changes in behavior in state and local prison systems

•             Bring about significant changes to the way mentally ill prisoners and juvenile offenders are designated for segregated incarceration

While a United Nations torture expert said in 2011 that solitary confinement should not be used for more than 15 days, Richmond’s bill does not embrace that recommendation. Human rights groups, however, say his bill is a great first step, and recommend its passage.

The Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014 is supported by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

How about you, reader? Do you support this bill? Do you agree with using solitary confinement torture to “punish people for their behavior”? Do you think that such punishment curbs violence? Or do you agree that torture is never acceptable, that it is illegal, amoral and immoral?

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