Iraq prison abuses reflection of U.S. prison culture
Timothy Jones
Issue date: 5/14/04 Section: Ed-Op
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Shortly after the Abu Ghraib controversy broke wide open, President Bush held a joint press conference with Jordan's King Abdullah. The President recounted his apology to the king for the Abu Ghraib abuses saying, "I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that the people who have been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America." The truth is, "those pictures" should have come as no surprise, as they simply represent the exporting of our own prison system to Iraq. In prisons across our nation, both state and federal, there exists a culture of abuse often comparable to the crimes at Abu Ghraib.
According to a Pentagon report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, "Detainee care [at Abu Ghraib] appears to have been made up as the operations developed with reliance on, and guidance from, junior members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience" (Philadelphia Inquirer, May 9). Lane McCotter, a former Utah Department of Corrections director and now the head of a private prison company, was in charge of the reopening of Abu Ghraib. In an interview with the online magazine Corrections.com in January, Cotter claimed that Abu Ghraib "is the only place we agreed as a team was truly closest to an American prison."
There is ample evidence that prisoner mistreatment occurs commonly in U.S. correctional facilities, not just in proxy prisons placed in occupied territories. Physical violence, sexual humiliation and rape, and medical neglect are documented yearly by human rights organizations sans any effort by the public or their elected representatives to remedy these abuses.
For example, the Lane McCotter who opened Abu Ghraib is the same Lane McCotter who resigned under pressure from his position as director of Utah's Department of Corrections when a schizophrenic inmate died of a blood clot after being shackled to a restraining chair for sixteen hours (New York Times, May 8). Recently, a former inmate, who was once under the jurisdiction of a soldier being charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal, has come forward claiming that the soldier was abusive to him and other inmates as a U.S. prison guard before the Iraq war (WCAU/NBC 10, May 11).
According to a Pentagon report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, "Detainee care [at Abu Ghraib] appears to have been made up as the operations developed with reliance on, and guidance from, junior members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience" (Philadelphia Inquirer, May 9). Lane McCotter, a former Utah Department of Corrections director and now the head of a private prison company, was in charge of the reopening of Abu Ghraib. In an interview with the online magazine Corrections.com in January, Cotter claimed that Abu Ghraib "is the only place we agreed as a team was truly closest to an American prison."
There is ample evidence that prisoner mistreatment occurs commonly in U.S. correctional facilities, not just in proxy prisons placed in occupied territories. Physical violence, sexual humiliation and rape, and medical neglect are documented yearly by human rights organizations sans any effort by the public or their elected representatives to remedy these abuses.
For example, the Lane McCotter who opened Abu Ghraib is the same Lane McCotter who resigned under pressure from his position as director of Utah's Department of Corrections when a schizophrenic inmate died of a blood clot after being shackled to a restraining chair for sixteen hours (New York Times, May 8). Recently, a former inmate, who was once under the jurisdiction of a soldier being charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal, has come forward claiming that the soldier was abusive to him and other inmates as a U.S. prison guard before the Iraq war (WCAU/NBC 10, May 11).
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