Louisiana Jail Locks Up Suicidal Prisoners in 3 by 3 foot Cages

[swag]

http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/louisiana-jail-locks-suicidal-prisoners-in-3-x-3-cages/

Even in the context of the United States’ grim and sometimes brutal prison conditions, a story released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties of Louisiana shocks the conscience. The ACLU is protesting treatment of prisoners in one parish jail, who are routinely locked in cages measuring 3 x 3 feet–one-fourth the legally mandated size for caged dogs in the same parish. What makes this story even more sickening is the fact that this treatment is used on prisoners who are suicidal.

We know that placing prisoners in cells or cages too small to lie down in was one of the forms of torture employed at Abu Ghraib and other interrogation sites since the start of the so-called war on terror. Even there, the detainees were most commonly released after a day or two. At the St. Tammany Parish Jail in Covington, Louisiana, the ACLU found, prisoners suffering from mental illness, and deemed at risk of killing themselves, are sometimes held in the tiny cages for weeks or months.

. . .

After the jail determines a prisoner is suicidal, the prisoner is stripped half-naked and placed in a 3′ x 3′ metal cage with no shoes, bed, blanket or toilet, according to numerous interviews conducted with current and former prisoners. Prisoners report they must curl up on the floor to sleep because the cages are too small to let them lie down. Guards frequently ignore repeated requests to use the bathroom, forcing some desperate people to urinate in discarded containers. The cages are in a main part of the jail, allowing other prisoners to gawk at those confined in these cages. People have been reportedly held in these cages for days, weeks, and months.

[TexasObserver]

1. Even for today's police/prison state, this is horrific.

[Webster Green]

2. What a sick, twisted "society" we live in.

Mutherfucking pigs torturing people again. Nothing new about it either. Our jails and prisons have always been unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

And there are pig jailhouse doctors and pig jailhouse nurses who are just fine with torturing prisoners.

Fucking disgusting! If this is public knowledge, it should be stopped NOW!

[guardian]

3. yeah that's gotta do wonders for their attitude.

3x3 cell. SOunds like self actualizing to me. :sarcasm:

[asdjrocky]

4. Pigs. Fucking pigs. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. These are the kinds of horrors that most people

try to think did not happen in the US... well it does... and there is a reason why... and this goes all the way back to our ways of crime and punishment.

And no, this is not justifiable. We need to get the DOJ into this... something about Civil Rights.

[Newest Reality]

6. Step by step ...

we enter the dark bowels of the Fascist Police State as the iron fist of corporate justice. A little change here and a little there. One atrocity, then two more, etc. Tasers, abuse language and treatment, beatings, violations of rights,

Keep observing even though being horrified alone won't accomplish much at all. It is much worse when it is your turn to be the face the boot stomps upon. With enough new laws and pathogically aggressive cops, we can all be potential criminals, ey?

[Canuckistanian]

7. Um... "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Isn't that statute enforced any more?

[Cresent City Kid]

8. Shocking

For those who don't know, Covington is just across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans, practically a suburb. I expected this to be way out in the sticks, not that it matters, it's still an outrage. I wonder if this was an overreaction to a suicide in the jail. Disgusting.

[Heywood J]

9. The prisoners need to sue the jail, the jailers, the parish, and the state

for violating their Constitutional rights. This is easily considered cruel and unusual by a jury. An eight figure settlement should straighten this out with haste.