ACLU
ACLU Confronts Denver Prison’s Abusive Strip Searches
originally posted by Michelle Chen for Colorlines [click here]
Aug 27th
The ACLU has launched a blitzkrieg against the abuse of women in prison, from a health care crisis in a Wisconsin facility to horrid sexual abuse cases in immigration detention. But its case against strip searches at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility plumbs new depths of degradation.
Prison staff have allegedly subjected women to traumatic and humiliating body-cavity searches using enhanced techniques that supposedly guard against hiding “contraband” in a woman’s genitals. The ACLU’s press release states that the group “has received letters in recent weeks from prisoners at DWCF who complain that being forced to comply with the new search policy–under the threat of being doused with pepper spray–exacerbates prior sexual trauma.”
According to one woman’s testimony to the ACLU:
The [labia] lift is treated differently by officers, but generally involves spreading your legs and parting your outer labia so an officer can do a visual inspection of your genitals. I have had to perform this procedure simply standing; from a sitting position with my legs spread eagle and having a flashlight shined at my genitals; from a standing position with a foot perched on a toilet and an officer’s face
inches from my genitals; in front of multiple officers and once in front of an officer and two Life Safety trainees….Being a survivor of sexual trauma the new labia-lift procedure encouraged my post-traumatic stress disorder. I had periodic flashbacks …. I have also witnessed women literally crying when they were subjected to the labia lift…
The ACLU doesn’t categorically object to visual inspections for security. But this distinctly invasive kind of probe, not to mention the unsettling alliterative moniker, seems deliberately aimed at dehumanizing women and rendering them utterly powerless over their bodies. The abusive impulse reflects the perverse power imbalance inherent in the prison system. The racial and gender lines that stratify Colorado’s prisons project the same intricate oppression on a mass scale.
According to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, “85% of women sent to Colorado’s prisons last year were convicted of a non-violent offense”–including many mothers of young children. Nearly half of the female prison population were “diagnosed as needing mental health treatment,” and more than 80 percent were “assessed to be in need of substance abuse treatment.” Moreover, Blacks made up less than four percent of the state population but roughly one fifth of people locked up in state prison.
By compelling women to expose themselves in unspeakable ways, the prison staff teach their captives a lesson: once you’re inside, your body becomes public property.
ACLU Confronts Denver Prison’s Abusive Strip Searches
originally posted by Michelle Chen for Colorlines [click here]
Aug 27th
The ACLU has launched a blitzkrieg against the abuse of women in prison, from a health care crisis in a Wisconsin facility to horrid sexual abuse cases in immigration detention. But its case against strip searches at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility plumbs new depths of degradation.
Prison staff have allegedly subjected women to traumatic and humiliating body-cavity searches using enhanced techniques that supposedly guard against hiding “contraband” in a woman’s genitals. The ACLU’s press release states that the group “has received letters in recent weeks from prisoners at DWCF who complain that being forced to comply with the new search policy–under the threat of being doused with pepper spray–exacerbates prior sexual trauma.”
According to one woman’s testimony to the ACLU:
The [labia] lift is treated differently by officers, but generally involves spreading your legs and parting your outer labia so an officer can do a visual inspection of your genitals. I have had to perform this procedure simply standing; from a sitting position with my legs spread eagle and having a flashlight shined at my genitals; from a standing position with a foot perched on a toilet and an officer’s face
inches from my genitals; in front of multiple officers and once in front of an officer and two Life Safety trainees….Being a survivor of sexual trauma the new labia-lift procedure encouraged my post-traumatic stress disorder. I had periodic flashbacks …. I have also witnessed women literally crying when they were subjected to the labia lift…
The ACLU doesn’t categorically object to visual inspections for security. But this distinctly invasive kind of probe, not to mention the unsettling alliterative moniker, seems deliberately aimed at dehumanizing women and rendering them utterly powerless over their bodies. The abusive impulse reflects the perverse power imbalance inherent in the prison system. The racial and gender lines that stratify Colorado’s prisons project the same intricate oppression on a mass scale.
According to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, “85% of women sent to Colorado’s prisons last year were convicted of a non-violent offense”–including many mothers of young children. Nearly half of the female prison population were “diagnosed as needing mental health treatment,” and more than 80 percent were “assessed to be in need of substance abuse treatment.” Moreover, Blacks made up less than four percent of the state population but roughly one fifth of people locked up in state prison.
By compelling women to expose themselves in unspeakable ways, the prison staff teach their captives a lesson: once you’re inside, your body becomes public property.
Wisconsin Responds to Imprisoned Women’s Mental Health Crisis
originally posted by Michelle Chen for Colorlines [click here]
Aug 24th
A legal intervention could soon help end a medical nightmare for women behind bars in Wisconsin. The ACLU has settled a landmark lawsuit over female inmates’ mental and physical health services. According to the group’s press release:
state officials have agreed to implement a number of significant structural improvements aimed at ensuring that constitutionally adequate levels of care are provided to all prisoners at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution (TCI), and that female prisoners receive the same levels of mental health care as the state’s male prisoners.
Back in 2006, the group filed suit charging:
the state prison system put the lives of women prisoners at risk through grossly deficient health care, provided far inferior mental health treatment as compared to men and failed to provide reasonable accommodations to allow prisoners with disabilities to access basic prison services.
The complaint outlined a litany of deficiencies at TCI: medication errors and delays, incompetent staff, and dangerous nursing shortages. The need for services is overwhelming: the facility, located in Fond du Lac, reported that as of the 2008-09 fiscal year, “approximately 70% of inmates were identified as having a mental health need. Approximately 32% of inmates were identified as having a serious mental illness.”
Women have been deprived of even the most essential medications. According to the complaint, an AIDS patient suffered an explosion in her viral load and acute sickness after running into repeated medication shortages and delays.
The distribution of medications by correctional officers works about as well as one might expect. A sergeant summed up the day-to-day duties this way:
[Officers] might be asked by the inmates what are the side effects. We don’t know that stuff. And they’ll ask me, and I’ll laugh, “I can’t even pronounce it, how would I know a side effect?”
The new settlement mandates that the TCI administration hire a full-time medical director as well as a consultant to monitor health services. State officials will also have to ensure that high-needs inmates can receive inpatient-level psychiatric treatment in a new “off site women’s resource center.”
But TCI’s problems aren’t just a matter of expanding services; they’re a product of the nation’s racially charged incarceration craze. According to the Women’s Prison Association, paralleling a national trend, “Between 1977 and 2004, Wisconsin’s female prison population grew by 863% with an average annual percent change of 9.4% per year.”
According to state records, women of color make up about 37 percent of the population. Black and Native American women make up about 6.5 percent and 1 percent of the state’s female population, respectively, but 29 percent and 7 percent of TCI inmates.
Nationally, much of the explosion in the country’s female prison population can be traced to the war on drugs. Drug problems, in turn, are linked to other social crises that push women into the system, according to an analysis by the Sentencing Project:
- Women in state prison in 1998 were more likely to report using drugs at the time of their offense than men (40% vs. 32%), and nearly one-third reported that they had committed their offense to obtain money to buy drugs.
- More than half (57%) of women incarcerated under state jurisdiction reported that they had experienced either sexual or physical abuse before their admission to prison.
- Nearly three-quarters (73.1%) of women in state prison in 2005 had a mental health problem, compared to 55% of men in prison
The tangled struggles afflicting incarcerated women add up to an epidemic that can’t be cured from within prison walls.
Would You Ask This Man For His Papers?
originally posted by Daisy Hernandez for Colorlines [click here]
Jul 28th
Kudos to the ACLU for this new video exposing the racist underpinnings driving Arizona’s SB 1070 law, portions of which were temporarily halted today by a federal judge.
The two-minute video shows an older brown man doing yardwork in Arizona. He’s done this kind of work for 15 years, he tells us, but SB 1070 makes him afraid that because of the color of his skin and his work, he’ll be asked to prove his citizenship status.
The catch? The brown man is the president of the board of directors for the ACLU in Arizona, Roberto Reveles. That’s probably his own yard he’s cleaning.
But the message is clear. Unless SB1070 is dismissed by the federal courts, anyone who’s brown remains vulnerable.
The Arizona Legal Battle is On
May 17th
The battle over Arizona’s SB 1070 ratcheted up today when a coalition of legal advocates filed a class action suit against the state. The suit charges that the law violates the First and Fourth Amendments, mandates racial profiling and preempts existing federal laws. In addition to asking the court to declare the law illegal based on those charges, the suit seeks an immediate injunction to stop SB 1070 from going into effect on July 28.
The coalition — which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement Colored People, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Day Laborer’s Organizing Network and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, among others — is not the only suit against the new law, but it is the broadest in its claims, says Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.
Guttentag called the law the “most extreme and dangerous of local laws purporting to deal with the immigration issue.”
SB 1070 requires police to inquire into the immigration status of anyone they stop and allows cops to stop people based, at least in part, on suspicion that they are undocumented.
Omar Jadwat, an attorney with the ACLU said, “Arizona’s law is quintessentially un-American: we are not a ‘show me your papers’ country, nor one that believes in subjecting people to harassment, investigation and arrest simply because others may perceive them as foreign.”
The lawsuit begins amidst a deepening national debate not only about the law’s legality but also about its ethics. A growing crop of cities, organizations and businesses have announced boycotts of Arizona until the law is overturned. Meanwhile, prominent figures, including Sarah Palin, have come out in support of SB 1070.
If the U.S. District Court in Arizona rules in favor of the initial injunction, the law will be blocked until the case is finished. But in the meantime, numerous other state legislatures have introduced similar bills. These states could still pass laws even if the court rules in favor of an injunction against the Arizona law.