Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?<\/i><\/p>\n
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4. It\u2019s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you\u2019re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.<\/p>\n
The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. \u2018Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.\u2019<\/p>\n
If a prisoner doesn\u2019t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There\u2019s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.<\/p>\n
Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can\u2019t crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.<\/p>\n
Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.<\/p>\n
Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.<\/p>\n
The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year.<\/p>\n
And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers.<\/p>\n
But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas<\/p>\n
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week.<\/p>\n
Our findings were not based on rumour or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S.<\/p>\n
In many American states, prison regulations demand that any \u2018use of force operation\u2019, such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard.<\/p>\n
The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and that no excessive force was used. In fact, many of them record the exact opposite.<\/p>\n
Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system \u2013 a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush\u2019s commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression.<\/p>\n
In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor.<\/p>\n
Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards.<\/p>\n
\u2018I thought: \u201cWhat hypocrisy,\u201d Carlson told me. \u2018Because they know we do it here every day.\u2019<\/p>\n
All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson\u2019s belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. They pointed to the mountain of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors \u2013 endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America\u2019s own prisons.<\/p>\n
Many of the tapes we\u2019ve collected are several years old. That\u2019s because they only surface when determined lawyers prise them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits.<\/p>\n
But for every \u2018historical\u2019 tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you\u2019re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.<\/p>\n
In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a \u2018restraint chair\u2019. His hands and feet are shackled, there\u2019s a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He\u2019s not. Not yet.<\/p>\n
The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment.<\/p>\n
The tape comes from Utah \u2013 but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who\u2019ve died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair.<\/p>\n
Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of \u2018America\u2019s Toughest Sheriff.\u2019<\/p>\n
His name is Joe Arpaio. He positively welcomes TV crews and we were promised \u2018unfettered access.\u2019 It was a reassuring turn of phrase \u2013 you don\u2019t want to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe\u2019s jails.<\/p>\n
We uncovered two videotapes from surveillance cameras showing how his tough stance can end in tragedy.<\/p>\n
The first tape, from 2001, shows a man named Charles Agster dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Agster is mentally disturbed and a drug user. He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late-night grocery store. The police handed him over to the Sheriff\u2019s deputies in the jail. Agster is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he\u2019s struggling.<\/p>\n
The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair. One of them kneels on Agster\u2019s stomach, pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair.<\/p>\n
Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous \u2013 the manuals on the use of the ‘restraint chair\u2019 warn of the dangers of \u2018positional asphyxia.\u2019<\/p>\n
Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agster is unconscious. The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he\u2019s already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital. Agster’s family is currently suing Arizona County.<\/p>\n
His mother, Carol, cried as she told me: \u2018If that\u2019s not torture, I don\u2019t know what is.\u2019 Charles\u2019s father, Chuck, listened in silence as we filmed the interview, but every so often he padded out of the room to cry quietly in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The second tape, from five years earlier, shows Scott Norberg dying a similar death in the same jail. He was also a drug user arrested for causing a nuisance. Norberg was severely beaten by the guards, stunned up to 19 times with a Taser gun and forced into the chair where \u2013 like Charles Agster \u2013 he suffocated.<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s insurers paid Norberg\u2019s family more than \u00a34 millions in an out-of-court settlement, but the sheriff was furious with the deal. \u2018My officers were clear,\u2019 he said. \u2018The insurance firm was afraid to go before a jury.\u2019<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s determined to fight the Agster case all the way through the courts. Yet tonight, in Sheriff Joe\u2019s jail, there\u2019ll probably be someone else strapped into the chair.<\/p>\n
Not all the tapes we uncovered were filmed by the guards themselves. Linda Evans smuggled a video camera into a hospital to record her son, Brian. You can barely see his face through all the tubes and all you can hear is the rhythmic sucking of the ventilator.<\/p>\n
He was another of Sheriff Joe\u2019s inmates. After an argument with guards, he told a prison doctor they\u2019d beaten him up. Six days later, he was found unconscious of the floor of his cell with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries. After a month in a coma, he died from septicaemia.<\/p>\n
\u2018Mr Arpaio is responsible.\u2019 Linda Evans told me, struggling to speak through her tears. \u2018He seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing.\u2019<\/p>\n
In some of the tapes it\u2019s not just the images, it\u2019s also the sounds that are so unbearable. There\u2019s one tape from Florida which I\u2019ve seen dozens of times but it still catches me in the stomach.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an authorised \u2018use of force operation\u2019 \u2013 so a guard is videoing what happens. They\u2019re going to Taser a prisoner for refusing orders.<\/p>\n
The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital. The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair. \u2018I can\u2019t, I can\u2019t!\u2019 he shouts with increasing desperation. \u2018It hurts!\u2019<\/p>\n
One guard then jabs him on both hips with a Taser. The man jerks as the electricity hits him and shrieks, but still won\u2019t get into the wheelchair.<\/p>\n
The guards grab him and drop him into the chair. As they try to bend his legs up on to the footrest, he screams in pain. The man\u2019s lawyer told me he has a very limited mental capacity. He says he has a back injury and can\u2019t walk or bend his legs without intense pain.<\/p>\n
The tape becomes even more harrowing. The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame. He falls on the floor, crying in agony. They Taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning.<\/p>\n
One of the most recent video tapes was filmed in January last year. A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two \u2018wards\u2019 \u2013 they\u2019re not called prisoners.<\/p>\n
One of the youths hits a staff member in the face. He knocks the ward to the floor then sits astride him punching him over and over again in the head.<\/p>\n
Watching the tape you can almost feel each blow. The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head \u2013 even after he\u2019s been handcuffed. Other staff just stand around and watch.<\/p>\n
We also collected some truly horrific photographs.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of \u2018use of force operations.\u2019 So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners.<\/p>\n
But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks.<\/p>\n
\u2018They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,\u2019 lawyer Christopher Jones explained. \u2018We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies.<\/p>\n
\u2018The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it\u2019s really air-tight.\u2019<\/p>\n
And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes \u2013 autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair \u2013 he didn\u2019t expect to be beaten to death.<\/p>\n
Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die.<\/p>\n
Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing \u2013 the same man who changed the policy on videoing \u2013 has been promoted. He\u2019s now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons.<\/p>\n
How could anyone excuse \u2013 still less condone \u2013 such behaviour? The few prison guards who would talk to us have a siege mentality. They see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they back each other up, no matter what.<\/p>\n
I asked one serving officer what happened if colleagues beat up an inmate. \u2018We cover up. Because we\u2019re the good guys.\u2019<\/p>\n
No one should doubt that the vast majority of U.S. prison officers are decent individuals doing their best in difficult circumstances. But when horrific abuse by the few goes unreported and uninvestigated, it solidifies into a general climate of acceptance among the many.<\/p>\n
At the same time the overall hardening of attitudes in modern-day America has meant the notion of rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment \u2013 even loss of liberty is not seen as punishment enough. Being on the restraint devices and the chemical sprays.<\/p>\n
Since we finished filming for the programme in January, I\u2019ve stayed in contact with various prisoners\u2019 rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered.<\/p>\n
Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantanamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there.<\/p>\n
His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found \u2018no evidence of systematic abuse.\u2019<\/p>\n
But then, as one of the prison reformers we met on our journey across the U.S. told me: \u2018We\u2019ve become immune to the abuse. The brutality has become customary.\u2019<\/p>\n
So far, the U.S. government is refusing to release these Guantanamo tapes. If they are ever made public \u2013 or leaked \u2013 I suspect the images will be very familiar.<\/p>\n
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo \u2013 or even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too familiar. And much is it is taking place in America\u2019s own backyard.
\n____________________________<\/p>\n
Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America\u2019s Brutal Prisons, was shown on TV.<\/i><\/p>\n