Welcome to the USA, where we routinely shackle children!

June 22, 2021 by Guest Blogger 3 Comments

“Minnesota lawmakers could end routine shackling of children in court”. Minnesota legislators are currently debating a bill that would end the routine shackling of children in court. You know what routine means? “Acquisition of skills through practice (as opposed to academic study)”. When public defender Sarah Ellsworth greets a client, a ten-year-old child, in shackles, what does she say? “Small steps. It breaks my heart.” The children need to learn that, if you don’t want to fall on your face and your legs and belly and arms are shackled, you must take small steps. Welcome to the United States where this routine is the lesson we teach certain children.

Up to the present, this routine shackling of children hasn’t been deemed important enough to merit any kind of uniform legislation or guidance. Thus, some counties don’t shackle juveniles, others shackle children at the discretion of the judge, other routinely shackle children. As of July 2019, 32 states including the District of Columbia limited the indiscriminate use of restraints on children in court, but even there the guidelines are fairly inconsistent.

So, some counties indiscriminately shackle and some counties … discriminately shackle. Of course, the whole system is based on discrimination, anyway, as a study released earlier this year suggests. The national youth incarceration rate is 138 per 100,000. The rate in Minnesota is 116 per 100,000. At the national level, for every 83 White children incarcerated, 383 Black children are incarcerated. That’s a disparity of 4.61. In Minnesota that looks like this: for every 56 White children incarcerated, 473 Black children are sent behind bars. That’s a disparity of 8.45. That is the eleventh worst in the country (New Jersey has the worst). Nationally, for every 83 White children incarcerated, 118 Latinx are incarcerated. That’s a disparity of 1.42. In Minnesota, for every 56 White children incarcerated, 89 Latinx children are incarcerated, with a disparity of 1.59 (Massachusetts `leads’ the pack in this disparity race to the bottom). In Minnesota, as across the United States, the routine of shackling is the lesson we teach certain children

When Angel Knutsen was 14 years old, she violated probation and `consumed’ something she shouldn’t have. Her ankles and hands were shackled and attached to a chain around her belly, and then she was loaded into a van. She was 14 years old. She never committed anything but petty nonviolent offenses, for which she was in and out of the criminal justice system for five years. During that period, she figures she was shackled 30 times or so. What lesson did this routine teach Angel Knutsen? “I felt a lot of shame.” She also felt the system was telling her she was a bad person who was destined to do bad things, and so she did. Today, at the age of 21, Angel Knutsen is a certified nursing assistant who wants to teach a better lesson, a better routine.

Minnesota has debated a version of this year’s bill every year since 2013. Why is it so difficult to stop shackling children? Why must these bills be debated year in and year out? Even when they’re passed, why is it that, so often, the language is rife with vagueness and loopholes? Stop shackling children. Period. In fact, stop shackling people. Period. This should not be so difficult. Can we not routinely act better towards one another?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Youth Law)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, Minnesota, shackling

In South Africa, women assert the Constitutional right to breathe fresh air is a State responsibility

June 20, 2021 by Guest Blogger 3 Comments

Section 24a of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa declares, “Everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being.” Everyone means, or should mean, everyone. For decades, coal mining and coal-fired power plants have turned the Mpumalanga Highveld into the site of the most polluted air in the world. Two years ago, Greenpeace reported that the area was the world’s largest power plant emission hotspot. In 2007, the South African government created the Highveld Priority Area to respond to the deadly situation. Nothing changed. If anything, the air became more deadly. This year, women in Mpumalanga, most of them members of the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action, decided enough was already way too much, and, with another environmental justice organization, groundWork, sued the South African government. The women declared they knew what was happening to their children, neighbors, community, and to themselves, and they said that they had pushed every other way conceivable and now, it was time for the South African government to abide by its Constitution. Everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being. Everyone means everyone. The case is known as the “Deadly Air” case. In May, the Pretoria High Court heard the case, and the decision could come out any day.

After the case was heard, Promise Mabilo, coordinator of Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action and one of the claimants, explained, “For me, this case is very important because people around the Highveld are really suffering. I have a son who is suffering from asthma and I feel the pain when I look at him. His childhood had limitations because he couldn’t play with other children, run around or carry heavy objects. I also noticed his school performance dropping because he wasn’t attending school regularly as he would be sick for one week then be okay the next …. The more I see the results of breathing in this polluted air and the people I live with in the community who are also sick and suffering from asthma, I feel abused and violated because I know what the cause is … We wish for the government departments to work together with other departments, such as the Department of Health. We do not just want compliance from the polluters because once we get sick, we even struggle to get proper healthcare because we don’t have money.”

Mbali Vosmang added, “I live with my two children. Princess is seven, and Asemahle is three years old. When they were born, they were not sick but since living Emalahleni, we have become sick. It is very tough to sleep in hospitals due to COVID-19. The beds are full, and our children are put on oxygen tanks from the bench. The Deadly Air case is very important because I do not want others to continue to suffer the same issues as we do.”

When the government tried to explain that cleaning up an area takes time and that the claimants, majority women, were being emotional rather than rational, their attorney, Steven Budlender, responded, “The Constitutional Court has spoken with great force and passion about the need to … make a difference in ordinary people’s lives, and when you speak about 10 000 deaths of predominantly poor people in an area, that’s not emotional, it’s not irrational. It is the fact and the facts give rise to a constitutional violation.”

The facts give rise to a constitutional violation. The women of the Mpumalanga Highveld know the cause of the rampaging death in their communities. It is the air and it is the refusal of the State to care sufficiently. A state that can save its airline industry and its tourist industry is able to address the deadly air, produced by mines and power plants, in its rural areas. In Mpumalanga, in the northeast of South Africa, the women want the world to know, everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being. The women want the world to know, everyone means everyone.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Daily Maverick / Daylin Paul / Life After Coal)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Deadly Air, groundWork, Haunts, mining, Mpumalanga, South Africa, Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action, women

In South Africa, elderly rural women take a patriarchal King to court … and win!

June 13, 2021 by Guest Blogger 13 Comments

Linah Nkosi

In South Africa in 1990, Sizani Ngubane co-founded the Rural Women’s Movement, a coalition of over 500 community-based organizations and a membership of over 50,000 indigenous women and girls. Until her untimely death at the end of last year, Sizani Ngubane, as Director of the Rural Women’s Movement, challenged traditional leaders’ misogyny, sexism, authoritarianism, patriarchy. In the last decades, she focused much of her work on KwaZulu-Natal, and especially on the Ingonyama Trust, a trust with only one trustee. At the time of Sizani Ngubane’s death, that trustee was King Goodwill Zwelithini. He alone controlled close to 30 percent of the land in KZN. Around five million people, about 50% of KZN, live on land the Ingonyama Trust controls. For years, the Ingonyama Trust ran roughshod over local landowners who actually had title, under traditional law, to the land. The Trust was especially vicious and dismissive of traditional women landowners. Last year, some of those women, along with the Rural Women’s Movement, took the Ingonyama Trust to court. This past Friday, the Court decided in the women’s favor. The court decided the Trust must repay the stolen money and land. This is a monumental victory for women, democracy, justice, and a demonstration that a person may die but the spirit lives on. Long live Sizani Ngubane!

In 2018, Sizani Ngubane described the Ingonyama Trust: “The Ingonyama Trust was established to secure the 2.8 million hectares of land in KwaZulu-Natal for white people, who were not sure if the ANC led government would accommodate them after the colonial and apartheid regimes took 87% of the South African land from the indigenous communities …. The Ingonyama Trust’s actions concerning land have been terrible for the communities who reside on land designated as the Trust land … The Trust invites people to bring in their Permission to Occupy (PTO) certificates and other documentary proof of land rights in order to convert them into lease agreements, whose annual rentals escalate by 10%. A PTO Certificate is an apartheid-era land right that is upgradeable to ownership in terms of the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act 112 of 1991. Not everyone has PTO Certificates because under the apartheid regime the issuing of these certificates was only for men. Nevertheless, anyone who has established long-term occupation of land is likely to have customary ownership, especially in instances where the inheritance of the land occurred over generations. The Trust’s standard lease agreement turns the indigenous and/or rural communities from owners into tenants of the Trust, binding them to pay rent that escalates at 10% a year. If one defaults on the rent, one stands to lose the land, including any buildings and improvements one, or one’s family, made on the land.”

Linah Nkosi, 64, lives on a pension. She has a plot of land that’s about seven acres. Linah Nkosi and her sister acquired that land years ago, through the local traditional council. The Ingonyama Trust decided all landholders needed leases. When Linah Nkosi came to sign hers, the Trust rejected her because she’s a woman. The Trust told her to get a man to cosign. Linah Nkosi protested … to no avail. She returned with her male partner, and he signed. Linah Nkosi continued to protest and then, with others, went to court.

Margaret Rawlings, 65, Thembekile Zondi, 62, Hluphekile Mabuyakhulu, 75,and other women tell similar stories. Margaret Rawlings has a title deed that goes back to 1926, and yet traditional leaders and the Ingonyama Trust seized parts of her property, and when she protested, guns went off. Thembekile Zondi was married to a local traditional leader. When he died, a new leader was installed, and he promptly evicted Thembekile Zondi and her daughters from the house that Zondi and her husband had built. To this day, Zondi and her daughters “feel like refugees who have been forced to flee from their own home and watch the usurpers enjoying the fruits of our hard work.” At a community meeting, Hluphekile Mabuyakhulu was told to sign the lease or lose her land and become homeless.

The women who were badgered, dismissed, threatened, injured, stolen from said “NO”. They said the Constitution, justice, decency, the rule of law, and women matter. On Friday, the Court agreed. The Legal Resources Centre, who represented the women in the case commented: “For the seven individuals, this fight is personal. The group comprises of single mothers, factory workers, pensioners, farmers and fathers trying to provide for their families. For many, their ascendents worked the land on which they are now being forced to pay rent. They have – along with the other 5.2 million residents of the Ingonyama Trust land – built their homes and their lives on this land. The applicants represent these 5.2 million South Africans and the threat that this matter poses to their security of tenure on this land.”

This fight is personal, for the seven individuals who took the Ingonyama Trust to court, as it is for everyone everywhere. Around the world, people face eviction from their homes, homes which they built, under all sorts of pretenses. Pandemic billionaires rake in untold wealth and avoid paying taxes, while the majority of the world population suffers economic crisis. Historically racist, sexist and economically discriminatory housing policies continue to build today’s Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, as well as South Africa. Industrial capital was founded on pushing people off their land and then criminalizing them. Post-industrial capital continues to rely on the disenfranchisement and mass eviction of rural populations, especially women. No one, no one man, no one group of men, should control 30 percent of anything, but they continue to do so. That must come to an end. Friday’s judgement was a personal and a global victory. Long live Sizani Ngubane!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: New Frame)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, KwaZulu-Natal, Linah Nkosi, rural women, Rural Women's Movement, Sizani Ngubane, South Africa

Australia is not shocked by its torture of women refugees and asylum seekers

June 7, 2021 by Guest Blogger 1 Comment

“I have been left like a worthless object in a corner of a prison …. Every day, I sink deeper into the swamp of fear and despair. But no one hears me.” Ellie is a 34-year-old Iranian refugee who fled Iran in 2013 to escape family violence. She attempted to reach Australia and apply for asylum. Australia shipped her off to Nauru, where she spent six years in detention. Then, Australia shipped Ellie to Melbourne, where she has spent the past 20 months in detention. Ellie is part of the `deal’ between the United States and Australia to `address’ the `situation’ on Nauru and Manus Island. Ellie is the last woman refugee in Australian detention. Because of Covid, she couldn’t have her interview with the U.S. Department of Immigration, and so was dumped in the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, or MITA, a place of neither transit nor accommodation. Eight years ago, refugee and asylum seekers at MITA went on hunger strike. Their request was simple: “Please release us into the community or please kill as on the mercy basis.” That’s where Ellie has been for the past 20 months. Because the U.S. hasn’t yet processed her application and so hasn’t yet decided on her case, she can’t apply to Canada. Because the Australian Department of Home Affairs has refused to issue a visa, Ellie can’t stay in Australia, and so she is currently scheduled for deportation to Nauru. Where irony died, cruelty reigns.

Over a hundred Australian-based academic researchers and experts in migration and refugee studies, including in Australian refugee law, history and policy sent an open letter to the Minister of Home Affairs: “We are extremely concerned about the effects of closed immigration detention on women refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. We are writing to express particular and urgent concern in relation to the prolonged immigration detention of one woman refugee in the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation closed immigration detention facility who suffers from a range of health issues as a result of her previous detention on Nauru …. For women, in particular, immigration detention can be a place of heightened physical and sexual violence. Women in detention not only suffer the effects of prolonged, indefinite incarceration but they may also live in constant fear for their bodily safety and integrity …. In addition, routine practices such as room inspections and bodily searches within immigration detention can cause particular gendered harms …. For survivors of gender-based violence, such practices of routine or unannounced room checks and body searches can make the already-punitive experience of immigration detention extremely distressing. For such women, being involuntarily subjected to invasive body searches or room inspections also can be directly re-traumatising. It means that they are likely to experience immigration detention as an unsafe place where they lack bodily autonomy and their consent or privacy is disregarded. We respectfully ask that you act immediately to release any women refugees or asylum seekers who are being held in closed immigration detention. In particular, we draw your attention to the situation of Ellie, referred to above, and respectfully request that you grant her a permanent visa so that she can live in the Australian community.”

Since 2013, Australia has effectively kidnapped scores of asylum seekers and refugees and shipped them off to detention center in Nauru and Manus Island. From the very beginning, reports of the torture of women, children, men circulated, and Australia shrugged its shoulders at that torture of the innocents. Australia was not shocked by the torture of refugees and asylum seekers. It was occasionally shocked by their survival. Australia was not, is not shocked, `shocked’, or SHOCKED at the torture of Ellie. “I have been left like a worthless object in a corner of a prison …. Every day, I sink deeper into the swamp of fear and despair. But no one hears me.” Ellie is a 34-year-old Iranian refugee who fled Iran in 2013 to escape family violence. For three years, Ellie has been described as “in limbo”. Ellie is not in limbo. She’s in hell … and absolutely no one is shocked.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: The Guardian / Saba Vasefi)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Australia, Dan Moshenberg, Ellie, Haunts, Manus Island, Melbourne Immigration Transit Authority, Nauru, women refugees

In El Salvador, Sara Rogel was (almost) released from prison. She should have never been there

June 2, 2021 by Guest Blogger 15 Comments

“The witch-hunt, then, was a war against women; it was a concerted attempt to degrade them, dehumanize them, and destroy their social power. At the same time, it was in the torture chambers and on the stakes on which the witches perished that the bourgeois ideals of womanhood and domesticity were forged.” Silvia Federici

Sara del Rosario Rogel García, aka Sara Rogel, has spent the last ten years in a prison in eastern El Salvador for a crime she never committed which wasn’t a crime in the first place but which non-crime event never occurred. Once again, El Salvador is willing, even eager, to sacrifice a young woman’s life in the pursuit of complete control over women’s lives, bodies, everything. On Monday, a judge ruled that Sara Rogel could be released from prison because she no longer presented “a danger” to society. Sara Rogel still sits in prison, however, because the prosecution has five days to appeal. Even if Sara Rogel is released from prison, at the end of the week, it is clear that her `freedom’ will be conditional, as was the case with Cindy Erazo last year, Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz in 2019, Maira Verónica Figueroa Marroquín and Teodora Vasquez in 2018, all women who were wrongly imprisoned … and for what?

In 2012, 21-year-old Sara Rogel was a student and was pregnant, a pregnancy of which, according to her attorney, she was happy. While doing laundry, Sara Rogel slipped, fell, suffered a miscarriage, hemorrhaged, had to be taken to the hospital, where she was initially charged with an illegal abortion and then with aggravated murder. Sara Rogel was sentenced to 30 years in prison. From the moment Sara Rogel was charged to today, feminist groups, human rights advocates, international groups such as the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights protested the violations of Sara Rogel’s basic human rights. At first, to no avail, but finally, this week, a bit of light began to flicker through. For the last ten years, and beyond, Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto the Citizen’s Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, has led, pushed, persisted.

Cindy Erazo, Evelyn Beatríz Crus, Maira Verónica Figueroa Marroquín, Teodora Vasquez, and Sara Rogel, together, spent a total of 44 years in prison … a life time. For what? For having suffered an obstetric emergency? No. When will Sara Rogel be free, and who will pay for the years of captivity? When and where does the witch hunt end? Where is the global outrage at the torture being visited upon women, especially young women, in El Salvador and beyond?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: CNN)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: abortion, Cindy Erazo, Dan Moshenberg, El Salvador, Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz, Haunts, Maira Verónica Figueroa Marroquín, Sara Rogel, Teodora del Carmen Vásquez

American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity

May 29, 2021 by Guest Blogger 7 Comments

On Wednesday, June 2, Senators Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Patty Murray, of Washington State, will introduce, or more precisely re-introduce, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, “To prohibit and prevent seclusion, mechanical restraint, chemical restraint, and dangerous restraints that restrict breathing, and to prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint in schools, and for other purposes.” In 2009, the Government Accounting Office released a major study documenting the severe harm rendered by seclusion rooms in schools, especially for students living with disabilities. In the same year, National Disability Rights Network released a major study, School is not supposed to hurt: Investigative Report on Abusive Restraint and Seclusion in Schools. Since 2009, versions of the Keeping All Students Safe Act have been introduced, all to no avail. And so here we are: “There are no federal laws governing how seclusion and restraints can be used in schools, and there are no sweeping federal laws with specific guidelines for police use of force on children in general.” Loaded with evidence and good intention … and completely stalled in place for twelve years and counting. What is the U.S. investment in torturing and damaging children, and in particular children living with disability? Why is the United States so committed to an endless war on children living with disabilities?

Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education released data that showed that students living with disabilities constituted 12% of all students enrolled. 12 percent. That very small sector of students living with disabilities constituted 71% of all students restrained and 66% of all students “secluded.” This year, the most update study shows that students living with disabilities make up 13% of all students enrolled and constitute 80% of those physically restrained, 41% of those `mechanically’ restrained, and 77% of students subjected to seclusion: “Physical restraint is a personal restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to move his or her torso, arms, legs, or head freely. Mechanical restraint is the use of any device or equipment to restrict a student’s freedom of movement. Seclusion is the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving.” These are the numbers and key words of education for children in the United States.

While restraint and seclusion directly assault children living with disabilities, it impairs all those children who are forced to stand as helpless, and themselves restrained, witnesses. Why is there no federal law, why is there no national will to end this torture of the innocents? Why is this left to the discretion of individual states, counties and cities? Three years ago, almost to the day, we asked, “What crime have these children committed? What is their terrible sin? Why do we continue to send these children into solitary confinement? Why do we continue to torture those who are most vulnerable? When will we stop this practice? What do you think we’re teaching children, all the children in all the schools, when we torture their classmates and then call it `seclusion’ and `restraint’?” Why has there been no answer? American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity. Where is the outrage? Where is the action?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo, Image Credit: ProPublica)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, seclusion rooms, solitary confinement, torture

The eviction rate is too damn high everywhere … especially in Alexandria, Virginia!

April 28, 2021 by Guest Blogger 1 Comment

Remember the rent is too damn high? It was, and it still is, in many areas actually getting much worse. You know what else is too damn high? Rates of eviction. Numbers of eviction are too damn high, and rates of eviction are too damn high. Take Alexandria, Virginia, nestled in the leafier part of what is known as the DMV, DC – Maryland – Virginia.

According to the most recent report from the Eviction Lab, at Princeton University, in the 5 states and 27 cities the Lab tracks, last week, landlords filed for 5,460 evictions. That’s up from 4,937 in the previous weekly report, and the numbers have been rising lately.

In Virginia, according to the most recent Quarterly Report from the RVA Eviction Lab, directed by Kathryn Howell at Virginia Commonwealth University, even though eviction filings and judgements have been down these past three months (and the year prior), primarily thanks to federal and Commonwealth moratoria, there are still “high levels of housing instability and eviction pressures”, especially, and predictably, in Black and Brown neighborhoods, also most devastatingly hit by the pandemic. Who is particularly targeted by evictions, nationally, in Virginia, prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic? Women of color.

While the report notes that, of the northern Virginia jurisdictions, Fairfax County ranks fifth in eviction filings and eighth in judgments, there’s another tale of numbers in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County’s population is 1,146,000; Arlington County’s Population is 236,842; Alexandria’s population is 157,613. In the first quarter of 2021, Alexandria had 129 filings and 35 evictions; Arlington had 73 filings and 31 evictions; Fairfax County had 288 filings and 84 evictions.

Relative to its population, Alexandria’s rate of eviction filing is four times that of Fairfax County, and almost three times that of Arlington County. Why? Residents of Alexandria, ask your City Council, why is the rate of eviction in our city so damn high? The rent is too damn high. The rate of eviction is too damn high.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: New York Times / Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Alexandria Virginia, Dan Moshenberg, eviction, Haunts

Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio stop shackling women (prisoners) in childbirth … and beyond!

April 18, 2021 by Guest Blogger 3 Comments

In Arkansas, on March 23, 2021, the Governor signed Senate Bill 84, the Dignity for Incarcerated Women bill, into law. This law will ban the shackling of women in childbirth and ban solitary confinement for pregnant women. The new law will also allow women and newborn children to stay together for three days. In Ohio, a new law went into effect Monday, April 12, 2021: “Law enforcement and corrections officers can no longer handcuff, belly chain, shackle, or confine a pregnant teen or woman, including during their postpartum recovery.” In Mississippi, on Wednesday, April 14, the Governor signed the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act into law. The law, which goes into effect July 1, prohibits the use of restraints on women giving birth in prisons and jails, prohibits the use of leg restraints on pregnant women and on women for 30 days after giving birth; prohibits shackling pregnant women to other people; prohibits shackling women to other people for the first 30 days after childbirth. The new law will allow mothers and newborn children to remain together for three days. Currently, the baby is spirited away the moment it is born. As one advocate put it, “This was a huge win for Mississippi and definitely incarcerated women.” This was a huge win for Mississippi, for incarcerated women, for all women, for all people.

In 2014, Maryland and Massachusetts stopped shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In 2018, North Carolina ended shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In 2019, Utah and Georgia banned the use of shackles in childbirth. Last year, South Carolina stopped shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In each state, the bill was termed a Dignity for Women bill. Every win for women’s dignity anywhere is a huge win for everyone. It’s time, it’s way past time, to ban shackling women in childbirth, to ban shackling pregnant women, to ban shackling women postpartum. It’s time, it’s way past time, to beat our shackles into ploughshares. Abolish shackles now.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit 1: Radical Doula) (Image Credit 2: New York Times / Andrea Dezsö)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts

New Jersey built a special hell for women, Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women

April 12, 2021 by Guest Blogger 43 Comments

An ombudsman is an official appointed to investigate complaints against “maladministration” by a central government. By investigating, an ombudsman protects against governmental abuse of power. It’s that simple … unless you’re in New Jersey. On Thursday, April 8, 2021, New Jersey Department of Corrections Ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti testified before New Jersey state legislature’s judiciary and women and children’s committees. On Friday, April 9, 2021, DeBenedetti announced his resignation, effective August 1, 2021. Dan DiBenedetti has been Ombudsman since 2009. In that time, he has not suggested a single policy recommendation concerning Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, the `open secret’ open sore of New Jersey. No one from the Ombudsman’s staff has visited Edna Mahan in over a year. According to current and former residents of Edna Mahan, there’s no point in contacting the office of the Ombudsman, because they no one from that office ever does anything. Again, Dan DiBenedetti has been Ombudsman since 2009. Why did it take the state legislature over a decade to recognize that something was wrong, that women were being abused not only by the prison staff but by the entire State apparatus?

Here are just a few headlines from the past 12 months: “Sexual abuse of inmates at N.J. women’s prison is an ‘open secret,’ federal inquiry finds” (April 14, 2020); “31 Guards Suspended at a Women’s Prison Plagued by Sexual Violence” (January 28, 2021); “NJ corrections dep’t settles for over $20 million with victims of Edna Mahan abuses dating back to 2014” (April 7, 2021). The State settled with survivors of Edna Mahan, but the issue is far from settled. The abuses didn’t start in 2014. Staff sexual abuse of women at Edna Mahan go back at least as far as 1994, when Kevin Brodie was `caught’, fired and prosecuted. Not a year has gone by since without a similar incident. As last year’s Federal inquiry noted, “Current and former prisoners at Edna Mahan described sexual abuse of prisoners by correction officers as an `open secret.’ There is no indication that NJDOC officers took reasonable responses to prevent correction officers and staff from continuing to sexually abuse prisoners at Edna Mahan.” That report was filed April, 2020. Since then, no one inspected Edna Mahan and no one outside the usual suspects asked why there was no inspection.

On the books, New Jersey’s Department of Corrections Ombudsman actually has quite a bit of power to investigate and prosecute. The Office can force people to testify under oath. But if you have, as New Jersey does, an Ombudsman who came up through the ranks of the Department of Corrections, who views his investigatory powers as a betrayal of his brothers in blue, and if the State legislature is willing to look the other way until it’s forced to look again, then the books don’t much matter.

Now legislators demand a `clean sweep’: “`Everyone has to go,’ Assemblywomen Aura Dunn, R- Morris, Nancy Muñoz, R- Union, and Assemblymen Christopher DePhillips and Bob Auth, both R- Bergen, said in a joint statement Thursday night. What has to go is Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, and not to be replaced with a `better prison’. The Unites States is a gulag archipelago of women’s prisons, each designed as a special hell, including Julia Tutwiler in Alabama, Lowell Correctional in Florida, the California Institution for Women, Huron Valley in Michigan, Muncy in Pennsylvania, and Edna Mahan in New Jersey. Every one of them is an “open secret”, and every one of them must be shut down, once and for all. Otherwise, at some point, the State legislature will meet, in committee, and discover that the Ombudsman, whose only job is to investigate, has nothing to say about the atrocities we commit by looking the other way.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Picture credit: Keith A. Muccilli / NJ Advance Media)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, Haunts, New Jersey, women prisoners

Prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers are deathtraps. What else is there to say? Do not look away.

April 10, 2021 by Guest Blogger 30 Comments

Where are the women? Where is Andrea Circle Bear? On April 22, 2020, The New York Times reported that 7 of the 10 largest Covid-19 clusters in the United States are prisons and jails. Today, The New York Times returns to the scene of the crime – prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers. Their article opens, “Worldwide, about 2 in 100 people are known to have had the coronavirus. In the United States, which has among the worst infection rates globally, the number is 9 in 100. Inside United States prisons, the rate is 34 in 100, more than three times as high …. Over the past year, more than 1,400 new inmate infections and seven deaths, on average, have been reported inside those facilities each day …. The virus has killed prisoners at higher rates than the general population, the data shows, and at least 2,700 have died in custody.” What else is there to say? Overcrowding, criminally poor health systems, failure – or refusal – to test prisoners, laissez faire as a form of mass execution, a half century of mass incarceration come home to roost. Remember Andrea Circle Bear, who died in federal custody, April 28, 2020, the first woman to die of Covid in federal custody, Andrea Circle Bear who should have never been in prison in the first place? Andrea Circle Bear was in FMC Carswell. How are things at FMC Carswell today? In mid-February, weeks after the winter storms had knocked out electricity across Texas, of 1,288 prisoners, 30 officially were infected with Covid, although many manifest symptoms. Because of lack of planning, or refusal to plan or care, women went for days without heat or water. Women who are quarantined are “treated absolutely horribly”, according to Faith Blake, the name plaintiff in a suit against FMC Carswell. According to the UCLA Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project, FMC Carswell’s cumulative case rate is currently 60 percent. You know what FMC stands for? Federal Medical Center. FMC Carswell is the only medical center for women in entire federal Bureau of Prisons. What else is there to say?

Where are the women? Where is Colony Wilson? Colony Wilson was a prisoner at the Birmingham Women’s Community Based Facility and Community Work Center, in Birmingham, Alabama. On May 11, 2020, Colony Wilson collapsed in a stairwell, in full view of staff and inmates. Staff did nothing for seven minutes and wouldn’t allow others to help her up the stairs to the clinic. According to inmates, Colony Wilson collapsed and couldn’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Staff yelled at her to get up and waited seven minutes. Colony Wilson died on May 11. On May 10, Colony Wilson had complained of difficulty breathing. The incident on May 11 was the second time she collapsed in the span of 24 hours. Colony was never tested for coronavirus, not by the coroner nor by the prison: “Alabama’s prisons have among the lowest testing rates and the second-lowest case rate of all state prison systems — but among the highest coronavirus death rates in the nation.” Colony Wilson was 40 years old when she died … or was executed.

According to the Covid Prison Project, as of April 9, there have been 388,520 cases among people incarcerated in prison and 2,443 deaths of incarcerated individuals in prison due to Covid-19. Remember Colony Wilson, who was never tested for coronavirus, neither by the coroner nor by the prison. Remember Andrea Circle Bear. Where are the women? Do not look away.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: The Guardian/Tannen Maury/EPA)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Andrea Circle Bear, Colony Wilson, Covid-19, Dan Moshenberg, FMC Carswell