Brutality in Prisons
Tuck, Jay Nelson
Brutality in Prisons By Jay Nelson Tuck EXPOSING THE SHOCKING TREATMENT OF AMERICA'S C. O.'S WHILE most Americans, la piacia ignorance 01 #r#nta, bar* bam congratulating themselves, whan they...
...THE Bureau of Prisons filed and forgot the investigators' reports until early this month when Taylor managed to smuggle from the prison a copy of a 36-page sworn writ, drawn up by a prisoner, which listed 72 witnesses to more than 20 instances of the crueliest and most revolting brutality...
...Other inmates who tried to talk to the investigators have said that they were prevented from doing so and Taylor asserted that one man was "beaten into insanity" for making the attempt...
...Murphy managed to smuggle out word of whst wss hsppening and the protects forced Bennett, who had previously denied the very existence of strip cells in the prison, to cause an investigation...
...The autopsy report said his body showed no signs of violence, but the hospital report on his case showed that he had lesions and abrasions all over his back 12 hour* before be died...
...t**t year two objectors, Stanley Murphy and Louis «*yl*r, who Anglicized his name from the Polish *quivalent of Krawczyk, began a hunger strike in the Danbury prison against what they felt to be the unfair conditions and useless work offered to CO...
...Men have been beaten, kicked in the groin, "stomped," kicked literally into jellies, choked and gouged, burned with cigarets and confined for weeks snd months naked in "strip cells" in which there is no bedding or furniture of any kind whatever, in which they were forced to sleep naked, night after night on bare concrete floors, in which they were fed only "mush" consisting solely of bread and sauerkraut or similar mixtures, and in which even the toilets were holes in the floor, flushed from the outside by attendants...
...He said two other witnesses would swear that Rasbury was starved...
...It says two dollars and fifty cents) a month...
...Both refused and both were promptly transferred to the Springfield Medical Center, a prison usually reserved for chronic invalids and mental cases, though the Bureau of Prisons had repeatedly asserted that both were perfectly sane men...
...And in the prisons generally men are prevented from writing freely to their families outside, denied the right t* tell what is happening to them, denied the right to read, what they want or to write anything but censored letters and even, as happened in at least one case, denied the right to petition a court for redress of their wrongs and punished for asking that right...
...That testimony has now been made public and each board member ha* made a report to Attorney General Francis Biddle, recommending further action...
...The order provided for paroles for Selective Service violators to the "¦T, to non-combatant military service, to CPS camp |*to special service under the Department of Justice...
...vestigation of the prison for which he is responsible...
...A good, upstanding post office robber could have it, provided he'd work at any job and at any pay he could get...
...In Lewisburg, six objectors fssted for more than two months in protest against censorship of mail that prevented from talking at all freely with their families...
...There was discrimination even in ordinary parole, supposedly available to any man who has completed a third of bis time with good behavior...
...Mar* than t,N9 American objectors have so fsr fannrtsened in this war—compared with a 1.UI «f fewer than »M during all of World War I— aad a ambers of the** here been subjected to everything from petty peraeenatioa to the moat revetting physical tetare...
...Brutality in Prisons By Jay Nelson Tuck EXPOSING THE SHOCKING TREATMENT OF AMERICA'S C. O.'S WHILE most Americans, la piacia ignorance 01 #r#nta, bar* bam congratulating themselves, whan they thought about it at ail, upon this country's treat-t 0( tonscieatioua objectors, these men have been prisoned in unheard-of nuambera and in some cases aaajerte* to the most bestial brutalities in Federal arisees...
...Even in the moat modern and supposedly well-run of ear Federal prison*—and the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Conn., is a good example—men have been subjected to long periods of solitary confine-ss*at for following their conscientious convictions, convictions to which every democrat will grant they have full right, whether or not he agree* with them...
...Bennett himself headed the investigator* of himself this time, but with a Federal judge and two newspapermen alio on the board...
...James Peck, of New York, a labor newspaperman and formerly of Federated Press, up to last August had been subjected to 52 days of solitary confinement at Danbury, ten of them because he refused to paint a "victory garden" sign on the ground it would violate his conscience...
...Another prisoner named Smith, he said, took an overdoso of sleeping tablets, was refused medication and died, being carried on the records as a suicide...
...Men who had refused army service but FJ**J accept CPS couldn't get anything but army ser-Tj^Md men who had refused CPS couldn't get *ny-Men who were granted special parole under the Department of Justice could have been counted on the fingers of on* hand...
...And in the wont case yet to come to light—that of the Prison Bureau'* Medical Center lit Springfield, Mo., conscientious objector* and other prisoners hsve been subjected to medieval tortures in the nsme of rehabilitation...
...He was later transferred to the reformatory at Chillicothe, an institution run by inmate gangs of toughies snd trusties and featuring the notorious "kangaroo courts...
...At Springfield, both men were badly beaten and Murphy was subjected to atrip cell confinement while Taylor was put in with the institution's worst mental rases...
...The investigators confirmed charges thst the men were confined as a means of punishment and that Murphy had been put in a strip cell, but reported that the charge of beating could not be proven, since it was a case of the prisoners' word against that of the guards...
...REPEATED and strenuous protests concerning these conditions have been made to the Bureau of Prisona ay the National Committee on Conscientious Objectors •f-tae American Civil Liberties U nion, by the War hesister* League and by a few other interested groups...
...After CO's Murphy and Taylor ended their prison fast they were offered parole to hospital jobs with maximum pay of $2.50 (that's not a typographical error...
...A few brief illustrations must suffice...
...He has just been sentenced to 21 more days in "the hole" for protesting the beating of another prisoner...
...Transferred to Bellevue for observation, he was kept there incommunicado for ten days and later, in the Federal detention jail in New York, slugged by a guard, hosed down with icy water and left in a bare stone cell, soaking wet, on one of the winter's coldest nights...
...Nor do the facta cited by any mean* exhaust the list of atrocities in Federsl prison*, though there is not space to describe others in detail...
...Through it all, James V. Bennett, director of the bureau, has blandly chosen whenever he could to deny that the evils existed and when he could not do that I* minimize them with an occasional promise to better them, promises that have not always been scrupulously kept On more than one occasion, Bennett's language » discussing prison conditions has been so ambigious *» te amount to falsehood...
...y had originally been imprisoned for leaving Civilian Public Service camp in protest against the use-wssnesx of the work there...
...An objector could have it only provided he'd work in a hospital, or some equivalent institution, and at no more than $50 a month...
...Lee Durling, a New York objector confined in Danbury, acted in a manner that caused official* to doubt his sanity...
...James White, a military prisoner, died there last December after he had been beaten for several days snd kept tied down to the bare metal springs of his bed...
...The documents, with considerable outside corroboration, were published by the New York World-Telegram and picked up by the VMM generally, egain forcing Bennett te make gat la...
...A prison physician told/the man's family that hi* body was cut and bruised because of self-inflicted injuries, but his records did not show that A prisoner who worked in the hospital record room at Springfield asserted that another prisoner, Norman Kasbury, complained of being ill, was told he was well, wss unable to go to his meals and had nothing to eat for three days before he died...
...J* Wteh had been that each of the first three alterna-[¦»«¦ waa available only to objectors who had refused ! 'ec«Pt them...
...The parole situation for others showed little improvement...
...The board heard testimony from inmate*, two chaplains and a prison psychiatrist which detailed horrible brutalities...
...The fast was not directed against necessary inspection to prevent smuggling of narcotics or escape plots, but against arbitrary censorship of the kind that permits the vicious abuses of the prison system to remsin hidden...
...They won s ruling from Bennett which promised freedom to write the truth about anything in the prison system—and the ruling was promptly violated at the New York detention jail, and with Bennett's knowledge, when two objectors tried to write of what had happened to Durling there and found their lettera confiscated...
...They fagted for 84 days and were kept alive only ¦f forced feeding before agreement was finally reached PI the Bureau of Prisons promised them to put into Presidential Executive Order 8641, which had '"¦He part a dead letter...
...Other abuses too numerous to cite here have been reported from county jails where convicts are confined before transfer to Federal prison...
...There is reason to suspect murder in Springfield...
...Biddle had not announced hia decision at this writing...
Vol. 27 • March 1944 • No. 10
