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16341 Street NW, Suite 1001, Washington, DC 20006 ~ Phone: (202) 7B3-8046, Fax: (202) 783-8046 ~ email: woatusa@woatusa.org, web: www.woatusa.org

The World Organization Against Torture USA is a member ot the international SOS Torture Network

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Morton Sklar, Director

Torture in the United States
Part Four:  Prisons

http://www.woatusa.org/CAT/catreport/prisons.html

PRISON CONDITIONS AND THE
TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

prepared by

Mark Sherman
International Criminal Law Committee, Criminal
Justice Section, American Bar Association

and

Laura Magnani and Bonnie Kerness, Criminal Justice
Program, American Friends Service Committee

with additional contributions by

Jenni Gainsborough, ACLU Prison Project
Cristie Donner, Prisoner Rights Project,
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center
Corey Weinstein and Luis Talamantez,
Pelican Bay Information Center
Kathi Westcott, Coalition Against STOP
Pat Rengel, Amnesty International USA
Charlie Sullivan, Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants
Deborah Robinson, World Council of Churches and National
Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Shannon Murray and Carl Shasky, Maryland Chapter,
National Campaign to Stop Control Unit Prisons
Rick Wilson, International Human Rights Law Clinic,
American University Law School
Robert McAlpine, the National Urban League
Holbrook Teter, California Prison Focus
Tasker deGeneres, Criminal Lawyer, Northbook, Illinois

SUMMARY STATEMENT

While some of the more overt forms of physical torture that tend to be employed by repressive governments and paramilitary groups worldwide are not authorized or practiced in the U.S. at either the federal, state or local levels, there are a number of criminal justice policies and practices that constitute "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of the type prohibited under Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture, and under numerous other legally binding international human rights instruments. Among the areas where the U.S. government is not meeting its obligations to prevent highly abusive conduct of this type are the following:

• punitive violence and brutality in specially created super-maximum and control unit prison facilities;

• indefinite and arbitrary solitary confinement;

• the practice of punitive "cell extractions";

• conditions of detention of immigrants and asylum seekers awaiting deportation;

• prison overcrowding;

• prison rape and sexual abuse;

• methods of prosecuting and detaining juveniles;

• treatment of the mentally ill in prisons;

• police brutality through abusive use of chemical sprays and dangerous methods of restraint and unnecessary use of force, including electro-shock devices;

• misuse of prison labor; and

• reinstatement of "chain gangs" as a form of punishment and harassment.