[atari 2600]

Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo Bay? Have a look-see at the Harrison County, MS jail.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_County,_Mississippi#Corrections_system

Four prisoners have died due to unnatural circumstances there since 2002. One of them was beaten to death in February 2006 in front of cameras in the jail's booking room. In some instances, punishment there is meted out by strapping inmates to a "devil's chair".


Within this link is a horrifying first-hand account from a CNN transcipt of the "devil's chair" from a woman arrested for public intoxication in 2001.

 

Jesse Lee Williams, Jr, before he died in the hospital. The beating was apparently videotaped by four separate jailhouse cameras.

[jico.]

what about the most horrifying prison in the world?

look what they are forced to do in this prison in the philippines !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP6Xb5jlmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAVVVMcTShQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKMTDYtFJl8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxrPxudZjj8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xys0vEpWlkU

they are forced to dance to thriller, radio gaga, in the navy, etc...

[greenlight]

bit off topic atari. I just saw documentary about the oil crisis in usa in '05 and '06. crazy shit. how can this affect your economy and how goverment reacted. usa. i'd like to see it sometime, but sometimes I have feeling, rather not.

[atari 2600]

PRESTON WELLS, FORMER JAILER: I have seen people get punched. I have seen people get kicked. I have seen, you know, basically, just beat them -- that's about as best I can describe it -- I mean, for no reason.

CROSBY: It was not a racial issue. It was across the board. It was just an issue of people having complete power over other people who were in a compromised position, with no power. And that was it, and that was their excuse to just unleash holy terror upon them.

KOCH: Roderick Miller is a former inmate.

RODERICK MILLER, FORMER INMATE: I was punched. I was drug across a bench. I was kicked.

KOCH (on camera): Did they say anything while they were doing this?

MILLER: He repeatedly said he will kill me. He says, "I'm going to kill you."

KOCH: Did you believe him?

MILLER: Yes, I did believe him. I knew I was going to die.

KOCH (voice-over): Miller says, during his single night in jail, he was attacked by two guards, who threatened him, pummelled him, slammed him into a concrete wall, and ripped his shoulder out of its socket, all of it, he says, totally unprovoked. Miller has filed a lawsuit. The guards and the county have denied his allegations.

MILLER: There is no one in this world -- in this world -- who could ever convince me that I deserved any aspect of the beating, the torture, the brutality, and to place me in such fear of my life, that I knew I was going to die, and I was not going to see my kids, my children, my family, no one.

KOCH: Remember, this is a county jail. Most of the inmates have not been convicted of a crime, and many spend only one night here, after being arrested on minor offenses.

That's exactly what happened to this 27-year-old woman, arrested for public intoxication in 2001. This surveillance video shows her being walked into the booking room, resisting officers. A guard throws her down, face first. Later, as she kicks while held in a restraining chair, another officer takes a can of pepper spray, pries open her left eye, and shoots point blank.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:4RxjFudLxHwJ:transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/24/acd.01.html+harrison+county+devils%27+chair&hl=en& ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

[atari 2600]

Posted by Radley Balko on August 02, 2006
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:XWcF8WiI8zcJ:www.theagitator.com/archives/026885.php+harrison+county+devils%27+chair&hl=en&c t=clnk&cd=1&gl=us


This is the pattern, over and over, when it comes to police brutality, excessive force, and botched raid cases. The problem isn't necessarily widespread police abuse -- there are good cops and bad cops, just as is the case in any profession. The problem is the lack of accountability, and the decidedly different standards of justice applied to police as opposed to everyone else. The problem is that when the small percentage of bad cops act up, nobody takes them to task.
Prosecutors eager to push the boundaries of punishment when it comes to other crimes seem to require an extraordinary amount of evidence of wrongdoing before pushing forward with charges of any kind against a police officer. Public officials shut up. There's a halt to information flow. All the while, the famlies of victims are left in the lurch. And public confidence in the system wanes.


As my colleague Tim Lynch has put it:

Some people may prefer a strict application of the law, across the board. Some may prefer a lenient application of the law, across the board. A case can be made for both. I also think a case can be made for strict application of the law as applied to the government, but a lenient application as applied to the people. But the least defensible position, it seems to me, is the one that dominates: Strict justice for the people and leniency for the government.

If prosecutors held civilians to the same standards they hold police officers, my guess is that there would be a lot fewer people in prison.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiX7GTelTPM