Documentary: Prisoners of Katrina - New Orleans

[House of Usher]

Did anyone perchance happen to see the documentary on Sunday about the New Orleans prison cught up in Hurricane Katrina? As if there weren't sufficient injustices done to the free citizens of New Orleans, what happened to the 8,000 prison inmates was diabolical.

The prison in question has a courthouse attached, and is mainly used for remand prisoners, and convicts with appeals pending. As smaller prisons in Louisiana were abandoned, their inmates were moved to the enormous parish prison.

Instead of evacuating the prison, as members of the press had asked if they would, the Sheriff's Office decided to leave the prisoners where they were. After the prison was abandoned by the diminishing number of guards able to get to work while still concerned about their own homes and families, with water levels still rising, men were left in their cells, and others in open areas, for 4 days.

One poor sod was in there for an unpaid $70 fine, waiting for his case to be heard. The maximum sentence for his offence was 7 days in jail. When his own cell went below the water line, he was moved up a floor and put in a 2-man cell with 7 other prisoners. After weight of water had prevented guards opening the door of his new cell, he was left there for 4 days, knee-deep in water. The 8 men sharing the cell presumably only had two bunks to sleep on, and their only source of clean, drinkable water was the lavatory bowl.

8,000 prisoners, most of whom had not been convicted of any offence - were left for 4 days without food, water, medication, or the protection of prison officers, and many feared they were going to die. Some even tore out iron bars with their bare hands.

The details of the evacuation are also terrible. Prisoners who were glad to be evacuated were held under armed guard by a frighteningly small number of wardens, in the full glare of the sun, while they awaited rescue, still without food or water.

When order was restored, the wheels of justice ground slower than ever before. Prisoners, mostly men, but also women, were held for hundreds of days waiting for their court cases to come up, even for minor offences such as vagrancy, drunkenness, and blocking the sidewalk (sleeping on the pavement). Court cases can't be heard unless the accused can be represented, and because most are poor, a public defender has to be appointed to defend them. In New Orleans, public defenders' salaries are paid excluusively out of traffic fines. With many of New Orleans's roads and cars out of commission, and the police having more urgent priorities than traffic duty, with a city to rebuild, there is insufficient money available to pay public defenders because insufficient traffic fines are coming in. Since Hurricane Katrina, 80% of public defenders quit their jobs. Many prisoners don't know the name of their appointed defender, and many defenders have been given clients but haven't been told, so prisoners went unrepresented for months.

Water damage to evidence means many guilty prisoners will be acquitted, and many appeals will be unsuccessful that depended upon forensic evidence might have supported. But thousands of prisoners languished in jail for minor offences, largely consequences of being poor, because their cases couldn't be brought to court in good time.

It was an excellent documentary, and made me quite sick. Every five minutes brought another revelation that made me yell 'Oh no!' at the TV.

[Quirkafleeg]

yeah I watched and was equally shocked...

Of course they are mostly poor and mostly black so don't count and of course it's all (meaning all the horrific things that happened then -- 'you're not coming into our town, poor black people! back into the water with you')been forgotten because of ... TERRORISM!!!

[Dog Deever]

That's pretty awful.
There are many injustices in the prison systems everywhere. There is a lot of mythology about what it's like inside- that it's an easy ride. In comparison to days gone by, it's quite possibly a breeze, and some prisons are undoubtedly 'easier' than others.
Slopping out is a big thing.
Not all of this been addressed- with funds too few to solve the problems. Yet fines to Europe are paid for using razorwire, in contravention of health and safety.
Imagine lying in a cell with no air conditioning in summer, locked up for the night, and some guy bunked up with you has a dickie gut. That stink will be in all night. Some punch out the little panes of glass to let air in- then freeze in winter.
Most just shit or vomit into a plastic bag, which is then hurled out the window.

[House of Usher]

Being poor and black is pretty near a crime almost anywhere in America it seems. In the Louisiana prison system, apart from the hardened criminals (also mostly poor and black) most of the prison population are inside for crimes that are neither offences against property nor assaults.

I can remember a lot of the stories that came out of New Orleans during and after the hurricane, and survivors told of horrendous treatment by the authorities regardless of colour; but it remains that most of the refugees were poor and black, and were denied exit from the city, by armed police and national guardsmen, to prevent them seeking shelter in affluent white towns on the outskirts, in case they became permanent residents.

Bands of refugees were also split up by the police (using gunfire), who destroyed their shelters and confiscated their supplies to redistribute elsewhere.

I haven't heard much news of New Orleans since the evacuation, but according to this documentary the majority of the reduced population is now white where before it was black. The population appears to be richer than before on average, which makes sense because mostly only anyone rich enough to rebuild or who owned property that survived the disaster has been able to or would bother to return. In a word, gentrification.

[Dog Deever]

So much for freedom and the American way. I wonder if anyone except some Americans actually believe that shit anymore. What a fucking place...

[johnnystress]

American prisons are indeed hellholes

Read 'In the Belly of the Beast' for a hoffific insight into one mans experinces

Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679732373/104-9655210-4671940?v=glance&n=283155" target="_blank">In the Belly of the Beast

[Quirkafleeg]

I especially like the way that once they got them out of the city and into a prison out in the sticks they just shoved them all in one exercise yard to sleep out doors... petty offenders, hardened crims, murderers and gang members from rival gangs all crammed together. I bet that was a fun night.

The great mental prison novel is Green River Rising by Tim Willocks. Read that in one sitting.

[House of Usher]

I looked up In the Belly of the beast on Amazon. I must say I found the reviews quite funny.

I wish I had time to read more widely.

[Quirkafleeg]

>I found the reviews quite funny.

"I'd have appreciated this more if he hadn't gotn and murdered someone as soon as he had conned the loonie lefties into letting him out"

[johnnystress]

yeah! i thought they were quite nauseating really, having read the book myself.

It's the typical attitude of "fuck e'm, they shouldn't have done the crime" .
Jack Abbot acknowldges that he is guilty but throughout the book he explores the motivation behind imprisonment, the whole punishment v rehabilitation debate. And it's challenging, thought provoking stuff.

The New Orleans documentary would probably be greeted with the same scorn by some of those reviewers.

[House of Usher]

*tsk* Where's my compassion now, eh?

No critique of prison overturns the fact that there are, and will always be, bad people. Keeping people poor and deprived of legitimate opportunities undoubtedly makes those bad people dangerous and creates a fair few more into the bargain. The blame for crime doesn't lie solely with the criminals. I acknowledge it's far more complicated than that.

My biggest objection to the "fuck 'em" attitude is where people fail to deliberately confuse the proper incarceration and punishment of prisoners and the additional hardship, suffering and danger that come about as a result of the penal state neglicting its duty of care to the prisoners in its custody. When people snigger about prison rape, for example, it's with a seeming acceptance that it's part of the punishment along with being locked up.

[House of Usher]

"where people fail to deliberately confuse the proper incarceration and punishment of prisoners and the additional hardship, suffering and danger that come about"

Sorry, scrub the words "fail to". I changed boats mid-stream there and didn't correct the whole of the sentence accordingly.

[johnnystress]

I dont want to come across as a "moaning michael" i just thought the reviews were trying to be funny, and failing

"When people snigger about prison rape, for example, it's with a seeming acceptance that it's part of the punishment along with being locked up."

This is a good point. I read somewhere where this is rife in U.S. prisons and the authorities turn a blind eye. So prisoners brutalising and raping other prisoners is not seen as a crime. Other countries aren't as tolerant of this phenomenon in their jails. And rightly so.

[Max Kon]

read these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0307338231/026-0531742-5270849?v=glance&n=266239&v=glance target=new>Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--And What We Can Do About It
by Juan Williams
and
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1595550453/026-0531742-5270849?v=glance&n=266239&s=books&v=glance target=new>Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America
by Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson


both highly succesful black men

[shane05]

'So much for freedom and the American way. I wonder if anyone except some Americans actually believe that shit anymore.'

Anyone who knows me knows I'm quick to criticize the US, and hold america to a higher standard than the third world countries it's supporters like to refer to in order to validate this country or dismiss it's flaws. However, I live in a very diverse town and the folks from other countries seem to love it here.  Even the Iranians and Iraqis and people from regions you would expect to hear negativity from. So I guess as long as we keep conditions worse for others around the globe there'll always be people coming to america and living the 'american dream'.