PRISON ABUSE.   Term Paper ID:28667 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses California's Corcoran State Prison. Guards' use of deadly force. 1998 court case involving shooting of inmate by guard. Denial of prisoners' civil rights.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Discusses California's Corcoran State Prison. Guards' use of deadly force. 1998 court case involving shooting of inmate by guard. Denial of prisoners' civil rights. Paper Introduction: Corcoran State Prison, part of the California prison system, has become infamous as a place where prisoners are abused, where guards used prisoners to stage fights and then bet on the outcome, where complaints by prisoners led to punishment for the prisoners but not for the guards who were committing offenses, and where finally a court delivered a major verdict against the California state prison system. In its first decade of operation, Corcoran State Prison, touted as a state-of-the-art facility, proved to be a very dangerous place for prisoners to be placed. In that first ten years, Corcoran guards shot and killed seven inmates, and only nine months after opening, guards shot and wounded three inmates in eight weeks. These shootings were ruled justified on the claim that the intent was to protect an inmate or guard. Guards Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The guards at Corcoran arenot performing these tasks properly. The panel further criticized the procedure thatno one outside the prison is allowed to scrutinize questionable shootingsand that "no one is required to render a decision concerning the legalityof a shooting" ("Panel Assails Prison for Excessive Force" A25). "Record Settlement Reached in Corcoran Suit." Los Angeles Times (11 Nov 1998), A11.Cockburn, Alexander. The State of California deservesbetter on all levels. When the California Department ofCorrections found all of the abuse allegations groundless, the FBI wascalled in to investigate ("Corcoran State Prison Fact Sheet"). Bill Lockyer, the state Attorney General, told legislatorsthat local district attorneys had admitted to him that they would not darego up against the CCPOA. This isKings County, which has dairies, cotton fields, and two other state prisonsbesides Corcoran. Two prison guards who gave evidence to a subsequent FBI investigation were reportedly harassed by their fellow officers and eventually forced to resign ("Amnesty International: USA Campaign: Chapter 4 Violations in Prisons and Jails").A report from the World Organization Against Torture, U.S.A. By order ofGovernor Pete Wilson, however, this draft was hidden away as the CaliforniaJustice Department concluded that there was insufficient evidence to pursuecharges. In its first decade of operation, Corcoran State Prison, touted as astate-of-the-art facility, proved to be a very dangerous place forprisoners to be placed. SHU guards forced the integrationof deadly rivals among prison gangs, such as the Aryan Brotherhood with theMexican Mafia. Since then, the Departmenthas been investigated by the federal government for alleged abuses ofprisoners, for a questionable shooting policy as to when firearms could beused, and for the presence of the "gladiator games": Officer training--as well as practices employed to accomplish tasks, meet objectives, and realize goals--needs to be evaluated when correctional operations are in question (Stojkovic, Kalinich, Lovell, Pogrebin, Corley, and Roberts 51). Corcoran State Prison, part of the California prison system, hasbecome infamous as a place where prisoners are abused, where guards usedprisoners to stage fights and then bet on the outcome, where complaints byprisoners led to punishment for the prisoners but not for the guards whowere committing offenses, and where finally a court delivered a majorverdict against the California state prison system. TheCalifornia Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) told membersthat they did not have to talk to investigators from the FBI or the U.S.Attorney's office. corrections officials believed that the gangs would brutalize each other into submission, according to internal memos and interviews with SHU staffers. Outside groups such as Amnesty International have also raisedconcerns about Corcoran and specific practices there, such as the followingreport from 1998: Guards at Corcoran State Prison are alleged to have deliberately staged "gladiator" fights between inmates and placed bets on the outcome. Integration, they said, would bust the gangs (Cockburn 8).The SHU opened on December 5, 1988, and by December 29 it had seen itsfirst shooting when a guard wounded an SHU inmate "by mistake" with a 9mmcarbine. http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.org/police/ corcoran.html."The Corcoran Way." California Prison Focus. http://www.prisons.org/newpage11.htm."Panel Assails Prison for Excessive Force" New York Times (27 Nov 1998), A25.Sherman, Mark, Laura Magnani, and Bonnie Kerness. The reports on Corcoran emphasize a number of ways in which theprison system has denied the civil rights of prisoners. According to Mark Arax of the Los Angeles Times, By forcing such explosive combinations . Litigation also represents one of the primary ways that similar forms of neglect and abuse of related to improper medical and psychiatric care of prisoners can be brought to light and remedied. These shootings were ruled justifiedon the claim that the intent was to protect an inmate or guard. Nowhere in the world is the prison population rising faster than in California. The problem is not just legal but political, as will be seen. The agreement, however, did notinclude an admission of liability by individual corrections officials orprison guards, nor did it have any effect on the criminal case to come. 1999. http://www.woatusa.org/ projects/CATreport/prisons.htm.Stojkovic, Stan, David Kalinich, Rick Lovell, Mark Pogrebin, Charles Corley, and James Roberts. In 1998, California's Department of Corrections agreed to settle acivil rights lawsuit by paying $825, to the parents of Preston Tate, 25,the Corcoran State Prison inmate who was killed by prison guards, thelargest such settlement by the California Department of Corrections for ashooting death (Arax and Gladstone A11). Corcoran was conceived in the eighties as amodel of "absolute control," and at its heart stands the Security HousingUnit (SHU), holding 1,5 of those prisoners deemed the most dangerous ofthe state's growing prison population. In April 1989, William Martinez was shot dead in the SHU exerciseyard; in June, William Randoll was shot dead in the SHU exercise yard; in1993, Michael Mullins was shot dead in the general population yard; laterthat year, Vincent Tulum was shot through the neck in the SHU exercise yardand is now quadriplegic; followed by many others. The region is clearly dependent on the prison industryto a great degree, which has been a problem as legal issues arise: When they were selecting the jury for the ongoing trial of four correctional officers in the town of Hanford, fifteen miles from Corcoran, more than a third of the 5 residents called for jury duty said they worked at one of the prisons or had a relative in corrections (Cockburn 8). Even Governor Gray Davis collected $2.3 million from the unionfor his 1998 campaign and has been given more since, and he vetoed a billthat would have shifted parole violators to community-based programs, whichwould have lowered the prison population and so reduced the need forguards. Corcoran is not the only problem prison in the California system, andsince 1995, the state has had to face the consequences of the Madrid v.Gomez, which stated that the Department was negligent and indifferent tothe needs of prisoners at the Pelican Bay State Prison, where allegationsof brutality toward inmates were substantiated. "Correctional Leadership Education into the 21st Century: The California Leadership Institute." Federal Probation 61 (1 Sept 1997), 5 -53. In December of 1998, the Atlantic Monthly reported that in just 2 years the inmate population in the state had grown from 19,6 to 159, --an eight-fold increase--and that the "state holds more inmates in its jails and prisons than do France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined" (McGowan). "Beat the Devil: California's Gulag on Trial." The Nation 269 (22 Nov 1999), 8."Corcoran State Prison Fact Sheet." Sonoma County Free Press Homepage. Works Cited"Amnesty International: USA Campaign - Rights For All." Chapter 4 Violations in Prisons and Jails. It was built at a cost of $271.9 million on what wasonce Tulare Lake, home of the Tachi Indians. . Guards didnot use either physical restraint or non-lethal weapons to stop a fight,and eight Corcoran officers were eventually indicted for arranging prisonfights for recreation. In that first ten years, Corcoran guards shot andkilled seven inmates, and only nine months after opening, guards shot andwounded three inmates in eight weeks. Policies such as those contained in the Prison Litigation Reform Act represent a significant failure of the Government to deal with prison abuses, and an effort to keep these abuses from receiving the attention they deserve and require (Sherman, Magnani, and Kerness).In mid-April 1999, California Prison Focus conducted an investigative visitto Corcoran State Prison and saw 37 men, 27 of whom were housed in theSecurity Housing Unit, and 1 in General Population. Thehistory of the facility suggests how it was conceived as one sort of prisonand would become another. One of the prisonersdescribed Corcoran as a place of "aggravation, degradation andhumiliation," and the report by the organization supported this contention("The Corcoran Way"). Between 1988 and 1994, seven prisoners were shot dead and dozens of others wounded when armed guards fired on them. In 1998 this changed as a federal grand jury indicted eightCorcoran guards for staging gladiatorial combat, among other abuses.Instead of doing its job, though, the Corrections Department, for the firsttime in its history, said it would pay the legal bills of the guards. All these shootings weredeclared justifiable by review committees and boards composed ofCorrections Department employees. Thestate was then investigating a 1995 episode when shackled men arriving fromCalipatria prison were savagely beaten by guards screaming "Welcome tohell!" The response by the Corrections Department was to enforce apermanent ban on reporters' face-to-face interviews with inmates (Cockburn8). Their actions are costing thepeople of the state considerable amounts of money, as the award of $825, to the parents of Preston Tate proves. In addition, four guards were charged in the deathof inmate Preston Tate. According to a draft report in April 1997, an investigative teamappointed by the Corrections Department substantiated the "selective coverup of excessive force" by Corcoran guards, plus the "disturbing" fact thatpotential targets of the probe often investigated themselves. When a bill giving Lockyer the power to policethe prison system sailed through the State Senate, the CCPOA sank it in theAssembly. Areport was released on November 25, 1998 from an independent three-memberpanel which reviewed 31 fatal or serious shootings at Corcoran State Prisonbetween 1989 and 1995 and concluded that 24 involved the unjustified use ofdeadly force. http://www.rightsforall- usa.org/info/report/r 4.htm.Arax, Mark and Mark Gladstone. Davis also vetoed a bill to rescind the constraints on journalists(Cockburn 8). Corcoran State Prison is 17 miles northwest of Los Angeles in theSan Joaquin Valley. This organization has considerable power, which it hasused to chase prosecutors who threaten to prosecute guards for bad behaviorout of office. However, not one top administrator has beencharged with any crime, and Department of Correction officials continue todeny that the prison was mismanaged. "Prison Conditions and the Treatment of Prisoners." Criminal Justice Program, American Friends Service Committee, World Organization Against Torture. The reputation of California is suffering because of the scandal ofCorcoran State Prison and other prison issues in the state, as can be seenfrom the following assessment: Corcoran is probably the most brutal of all of California's prisons, a state that leads the nation in the rush to incarcerate ever greater numbers of people in increasingly harsh conditions. Lawyers acting for relatives of victims obtained prison videotapes that contradicted official accounts of the shootings. The fact thatpeople are imprisoned does not mean they lose their human rights, for theyshould be given proper care and protection, proper food, a clean place tolive, reasonable access to the courts, and to some extent the right toexpress their freedom of speech. The panel, appointed by the California Legislature,consisted of two former police chiefs and a former FBI agent and found thatprison guards did not understand in which situations the use of deadlyforce was authorized and that the prison's policy on the use of deadlyforce was poorly written. In addition, both the prisoners and the people of the state ofCalifornia have the right to feel that their officials are upholding thelaw and the state and federal constitutions, and yet government agenciessuch as the Department of Correction and even the governor's office areclearly failing to perform these tasks and seem more intent on pretendingthere is no problem than on solving it. echoes some ofthese charges: For example, two recent examples of horrific abuses--a staff conspiracy to murder prisoners at the Corcoran State Prison in California, and a staff riot at the Hays State Prison in Georgia- -came to light only because of private litigation brought by abused prisoners. The guards in a prison are there to keepthe prisoners incarcerated, to protect the prisoners from one another, andto protect other guards and prison officials. The facility was opened in1988; it was designed for 3, prisoners, but now holds 5, 3 . By 1996, though, whistleblowing guardswere telling about "gladiator days" at Corcoran, when guards would stagefights between inmates and occasionally kill one of the antagonists. . If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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