Da: "coalit" Oggetto: [listacoalit] Fw: Super-Maximum Security Prisons = Human Rights Watch Data: marted́ 6 novembre 2001 12.39 Hello everyone, If you go into the link 'campaigns', and then 'stop prisoner rape in the US', then 'take action to stop prisoner-on-prisoner rape' if you feel strongly about this. Please read the reports about it, because it is so shocking, and please forward this on to all those who also believe in basic human rights. Regards, Amy Attorney Michael, Reporters.............. After you read this below.... can you tell me if it is possible to sue TDCJ for my son Chad Bennett who has been in this for 2 years and is a non violent criminal that is in prison for "Burgulary of A Habitat" and was accused of being a gang member which we proved he is not. Thanks, Brenda Pitts Bennett (www.geocities.com/copbrutality) ***************************************************************************************************************************************** http://www.hrw.org/about/initiatives/supermax.htm In super-maximum security prisons, inmates are often locked alone in their cells for up to twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day. They eat and exercise alone, live under extraordinary levels of surveillance and control, and have little or no opportunity for education or vocational training. Although U.S. prisons have always had harsh solitary confinement cells to which prisoners are sent for a few days or weeks to be punished, a new generation of these "supermax" prisons are imposing extreme social isolation on prisoners for years. http://www.hrw.org/prisons/conference.html "Not Part of the Penalty": Ending Prisoner Rape National Conference, October 19-20, 2001 American University, Washington College of Law Washington D.C. Despite numerous clear pronouncements from the federal courts that prisoner rape is constitutionally unacceptable, sexual abuse of inmates continues to be a serious and largely unaddressed problem in U.S. prisons and jails. The upcoming conference - held under the auspices of the ACLU National Prison Project, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Interlock Media, Stop Prisoner Rape and the Washington College of Law - is the first ever to focus on this appalling human rights violation. The conference seeks ways to give real meaning to the principle that rape is "not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society." http://www.hrw.org/about/initiatives/supermax.htm A Florida prisoner whom we will identify only as P.R. was beaten, suffered a serious eye injury, and assaulted by an inmate armed with a knife, all due to his refusal to submit to anal sex. After six months of repeated threats and attacks by other inmates, at the end of his emotional endurance, he tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor. In a letter to Human Rights Watch, he chronicled his unsuccessful efforts to induce prison authorities to protect him from abuse. Summing up these experiences, he wrote: "The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it's indifference." Sharing by: Brenda Pitts Bennett www.geocities.com/copbrutality Texas Prison Advocates