Violence In Prisons Essay

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN U.S PRISONS

Sambhu Vasudev Sasikumar

64689

Wri 102-28

American University Of Sharjah

As the number of felons incarcerated in the United States of America is increasing every year, abuse against these prisoners are also increasing. Torture and various inhumane ways are used as a weapon of “reform” by the correctional staff. Prison authorities are not the only abusers as prisoners face abuse from other aggressive inmates as well. The violence in prisons is due to the shift in the image of prisons by the media and different sources that is from a place of rehabilitation and reform prisons have transformed into a place filled with terror, pain, and darkness. Hence, prison violence have become a phenomenon

714), The authors state that there is a disproportionate amount of white inmates and inmates from other races such as African Americans or Hispanics; due to this difference, prisoners are racially discriminated by other inmates and the correctional staff. If a prisoner suffers from racial discrimination in prisons, then it is a violation of their fundamental human rights as a human being. Prisoners in U.S are not the only ones who go through abuse; political prisoners in prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, which is supervised by the United States also face abuse. According to Levan, in Guantanamo Bay, inmates are interrogated through cruel methods, such as food deprivation, physical abuse and waterboarding (Levan, 2012, pg. 62). The author clearly states that political prisoners are abused in the name of interrogation, and they are refused a regular trial with a jury. Abusing political prisoners in the name of interrogation to reform them is a violation of the detainee’s human right as everyone has the right to be presented in front of a

Hence, private agencies are given contracts by the government to supervise these prisons at a lower cost. According to Anna Lukemeyer and Richard C. McCorkle (2006), “It is surprising that even when we controlled for other potentially causal variables, private prisons remained significantly less likely than federal prisons to experience any violence. Furthermore, decomposing violence into inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults revealed that private prisons do significantly better than federal prisons on both of these measures.” (p. 202). In addition to this, the authors also mentioned that private prison has an advantage in avoiding violence among inmates compared to state prisons. (Lukemeyer & McCorkle, 2006, pg. 189). However, according to Levan, due to inexperienced correctional staff in private prisons, evidence have shown that the environment in private prisons is violent, and the number of assaults occurring in private prisons is double the number of attacks happening in public prisons and moreover sexual abuse is prevalent in private prisons.(Levan, 2012, pg. 22) Hence, introduction of private prisons is not an optimal solution to tackle prison violence as it is