Prison violence
Prison violence is a daily occurrence due to the diverse inmates with varied criminal backgrounds that penitentiaries house.
Quotes
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- In testimony to the Sentencing Commission and Congress, and in other public statements about sexual assaults by officers, DOJ leaders said they have asked for harsher prison sentences for officers who abuse the people they are supposed to protect. And the new director of the Bureau of Prisons says she is reviewing how wardens are selected and supervised, and are installing more cameras inside the facilities.
For Kevin Ring, who advocates for people in prison and their families, the scandal at the Dublin prison underscores why independent oversight is needed.
"You are not going to clean it up through individual investigations," said Ring, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "You have to change the culture and you have to get rid of the concealment and bring some transparency and sunlight into the prison system."- Carrie Johnson, “Prison sexual assault victims can now petition for compassionate release”, NPR, (June 7, 2023)
- What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader – I’ll call him Pumpkin – was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs. ... The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyone’s handcuffs except the target’s (they’d put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, he’d be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin.
- Kevin Rashid Johnson, Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)
- The Department of Justice is committed to rooting out sexual assault within the BOP and continuing to prioritize cases involving sexual abuse of individuals in BOP custody.
- Lisa Monaco; as quoted by Carrie Johnson in “Prison sexual assault victims can now petition for compassionate release”, NPR, (June 7, 2023)
- The experts confirm it doesn't matter if you're moved to a different prison, it doesn't matter if they're offered the very best therapy possible, the Bureau of Prisons is a fundamentally unsafe place for a survivor of sexual violence to recover from.
- Erica Zunkel as quoted by Carrie Johnson in “Prison sexual assault victims can now petition for compassionate release”, NPR, (June 7, 2023)
