The history of the African Diaspora is a bloody tapestry accentuated by triumphs and tragedies, victories and victimizations.

And according to modern day civil rights activists, it is also a history of captivity that in the 21st century has taken on a new and twisted character with more than a million African Americans sitting in jail cells right now.

Whether innocent or guilty, many inmates will be behind bars for the rest of their lives. Thousands will also eventually leave prison and return to society – a society, experts suggest, that’s not adequately prepared to help them.

Prison reform advocates have stated that while in prison, inmates face conditions that are overcrowded with limited opportunity for real rehabilitation.

Violence among prisoners is also commonplace at some facilities in the country, including sexual abuse, which can place an added emotional burden on any inmate.

Reports of apathetic correction officers also continue to surface from the nation’s prisons. These reports have included allegations of sexual abuse against female inmates and drug dealing at the Philadelphia Prison System’s Riverside Correctional Facility.

What’s worse, according to the Pennsylvania Prison Society, 90 percent of incarcerated men and women are expected to return to their communities after exposure to infectious diseases such as AIDS/HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and other bacterial infections.

“While HIV/AIDS is prevalent, I think the spread of hepatitis C is even more so,” said Catherine Wise, director of communications for the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

She noted that sexual contact between male inmates has contributed to the spread of AIDS in the Black community.

Caged like animals

Khabyr Hadas, an author and African historian, spent five years at both the Camp Hill Correctional Facility and the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia.

In his book, “Afrikan Struggle Inherited,” he describes his experiences in prison as well as the conditions behind bars.

“The guards are instigative and harsh in their words and actions,” he said. “We are allowed three to five minute showers three times a week and get 10 to 15 minutes to eat. We experience strict, racist military type rules and the beast has no problem physically abusing a brother and rushing him to the hole.”

However, crime – especially violent crime – cannot be excused, nor can those who prey upon society not receive a just punishment for their actions.

But while protecting society from criminal elements, experts agree that same society must be prepared to make every effort to rehabilitate the offender – many of whom will re-enter society and will need assistance in acquiring employment, housing and in many cases, reuniting with their children.

Without that assistance it is a certainty that they will re-enter prison, as Philadelphia Mayor John Street said during a recent press briefing.

Street acknowledged that enough is not being done to prepare ex-offenders to re-enter society with a good chance of becoming law-abiding citizens.

He also said the political will on the federal level is not prepared to offer adequate funding to help fix the problem.

“We don’t provide the kind of support that we should for incarcerated people,” Street said. “We’re just not training them. We fail them. In many cases it’s four to six weeks after they’ve been discharged before they’re even contacted by a parole officer. We discharge them from prison and they have no place to go and no jobs.

“They’re being set to fail,” he added. “We’re doing more but it’s not enough. And understand this, there are some individuals who have been in prison under mandatory five-year sentences. Those people are going to be released soon and there’s nothing there for them. People are going to do whatever they have to to survive. We have a federal government that is not geared to fixing this. They’ve slashed our domestic budgets to pay for the war and that puts us in a very awkward position.”

But the lack of jobs for ex-offenders is only one aspect of the problem. Prison reform advocates argue living conditions in many prisons are dehumanizing and unconstitutional.

In Philadelphia District Court, a federal lawsuit has been filed alleging such conditions within the Philadelphia Prison System. If the complainants win their case, hundreds of inmates could be released to alleviate the over-crowding. That’s a solution that District Attorney Lynne Abraham strongly opposes, arguing the last time the federal government authorized such a release in the 1980s, Philadelphia suffered under a crime wave and she has the numbers to prove it.

Problem in Philadelphia

Leon King, commissioner of the Philadelphia Prison System, has not denied that the city’s six facilities were overcrowded.

But, King has made it clear that he didn’t like the implications that he and his staff weren’t doing everything they could to improve the conditions.

“We have no control over who comes in here or when they leave,” he said. “We disagree with Rudovsky’s allegations. It’s not as if we weren’t doing anything. We were being proactive before the litigation.”

David Rudovsky, a prominent local attorney, filed the lawsuit in July, alleging horrendously overcrowded conditions within the intake areas of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility.

King told The Philadelphia Tribune that overcrowding at Curran-Fromhold is a temporary condition and that PPS has a high turnover since most of the inmates are pre-trial.

The complaint describes overcrowding in the prison, with inmates being forced to sleep on the floor, unable to shower and using clogged toilet facilities.

“In the present case, defendants, (named as the City of Philadelphia, Prison Commissioner Leon King and Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson) fail to even provide mattresses; instead, plaintiffs are expected to sleep on the concrete floor, and only when there is room to do so. Due to the large numbers of detainees packed into the holding cells, detainees often do not have room to sit, let alone sleep,” the complaint said. “Plaintiff Lee Bowers was forced to go 72 hours without sleep. Some resort to sleeping under the steel bench. In the case of Bowers, he ultimately folded his body under a steel bench, which caused a blood clot in his leg. He had to be hospitalized for three days, and consequently will require long-term medical care. Such conditions that place detainees in cramped conditions that inhibit or prohibit sleeping warrant an injunction.”

The complaint went on to say that “the severe conditions go well beyond crammed conditions. There is a cascade of degrading and dangerous factors. Inmates are unable to use toilet facilities with any privacy, and the holding cells often contain toilets too clogged to function properly, so that inmates must ask guards to escort them to functional toilet facilities.”

The complaint also alleged that confining detainees in receiving rooms, pens and gymnasiums, which lack operative toilets and requiring that inmates to be escorted by correction officers to bathrooms, violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees due process and equal protection of the law.

Unsanitary and unhygienic conditions place plaintiffs in further danger.

Inmates are unable to shower for days. Preventing inmates from showering is not just a matter of comfort, but contributes to an unhygienic atmosphere likely to lead to the spread of disease and infection.

The overcrowded cells and heat contribute to poor ventilation, leading to adverse health consequences.

“We’re a jail system, not a state prison,” King said. “Our turnaround is rapid. Most of the people here are pre-trial, not those who have been sentenced. They’ve been accused of a crime. If they can’t make bail, then they stay here until their hearings. Right now we’re holding about 8,700 prisoners. And yes, most of them are African-American. About 73 percent of the prisoners are Black.”

King said he was doing everything possible to alleviate the overcrowding. Wise acknowledged she believed that was true.

However, both Wise and Lorenzo North, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said the situation was still dangerous.

“Keeping inmates in severely overcrowded conditions can contribute to violence,” North said. “It’s our job to house prisoners safely. Our concern is for their safety and the safety of our people.”

In Philadelphia’s six facilities, insiders informed The Philadelphia Tribune that there aren’t enough correction officers to properly manage the inmates, which could be a potentially dangerous situation.

The turnover for corrections officers is high, according to North.

“Over the last several weeks things have gotten a little better in staffing,” he said. “Commissioner King has started filling the mandatory posts and the jails have been opening, prisoners are being let out of their cells for exercise and other activities, so tensions have eased off a bit.”

There are other dangers

Overcrowding is only the least of the problems behind prison walls.

According to prison reform advocates, an investigation started last year by a high-level commission, stated violence, sexual abuse, overcrowding and inhumane treatment in U.S. prisons is pervasive.

The privately organized commission, which has attracted interest in its work from the Justice Department and key lawmakers, is headed by former attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and John J. Gibbons, a former federal appeals court judge.

The investigation’s aim is to recommend prison reforms from local to federal levels after holding at least four public hearings across the country.

Statistics cited by the commission charted growing problems in U.S. prisons, where the inmate population has quadrupled in the past two decades to more than 2 million. More than 34,000 assaults were committed by prisoners against other inmates in a 12-month period covering parts of 1999 and 2000. The number of prisoner assaults against staff in that period was 27 percent higher than the previous 12 months.

More than a million people were sexually assaulted in prisons over the past two decades, the commission said. Eleven inmates died in restraint chairs in the 1990s. The commission also stated corrections officers have reduced life expectancies and higher rates of alcoholism than other law enforcement officers.

Only three states – New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois – have independent commissions charged with reporting on prison conditions, and they lack authority to impose reforms, the commission said.

No mandatory national standards exist for prisons, many of which are now run by private contractors.

Overcrowding has contributed to the growth of private prisons. According to the Department of Justice, privately-operated facilities held 5.5 percent of all state prisoners and 2.5 percent of federal prisoners.

In a report published by Human Rights Watch titled “Incarcerated America,” conditions of America’s prisons were described in graphic and disturbing detail.

“Most inmates had scant opportunities for work, training, education, treatment or counseling because of taxpayer resistance to increasing the already astonishing U.S. $41 billion spent annually on corrections and because of the prevailing punitive ideology that applauds harsh prison conditions,” the report stated. “Idle inmates with long sentences, little hope of early release (and hence little incentive for good behavior) and jammed into poorly equipped facilities, sometimes became violent.

“In 1998 (the most recent year for which data was available), fifty-nine inmates were killed by other inmates, and assaults, fights, and rapes left 6,750 inmates and 2,331 correctional staff injured seriously enough to require medical attention,” the report said. “Rivalry and tension between race-based prison gangs lay behind many individual assaults and sometimes escalated into violent riots.

According to the report, men in prison were subject to prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, whose effects on the victim’s psyche were serious and enduring.

Inmate victims reported nightmares, deep depression, shame and loss of self-esteem, self-hatred and considering or attempting suicide.

Victims of rape, in the most extreme cases, were literally the slaves of the perpetrators, being “rented out” for sex, “sold,” or even auctioned off to other inmates.

Despite the devastating psychological impact of such abuse, few if any preventative measures were taken in most jurisdictions, while prison officials rarely punished perpetrators adequately.

The report went on to state that in the United States more than 100,000 children were confined in juvenile facilities. Many of them faced appalling conditions of abuse and neglect. In South Dakota, a class action suit was brought challenging widespread physical abuses against girls detained at the State Training School.

The suit charged that guards routinely shackled youths in spread-eagled fashion after cutting off their clothes, sprayed them with pepper spray while naked, and routinely placed them in isolation for 23 hours each day for extended periods.

Although the state government conducted an investigation of juvenile detention facilities in 1999, it did not implement any reforms to end abusive policies and practices.

Researchers at Human Rights Watch reported recently that sexual abuse against women by correctional officers remained widespread despite new laws prohibiting it and greater public awareness of the problem.

A U.S. government study in December 1999, also found pervasive allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct by corrections officers.

Grief from the inside

The Philadelphia Tribune received a letter from a female inmate at the Riverside Correctional Facility on State Road alleging abuse at the hands of male correctional officers on the 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. shift.

The inmate, whose name is being withheld, alleged that several officers have engaged in sexual relations with female inmates. Those inmates then receive preferential treatment.

Allegations of illegal drugs being sold have also been raised as well as physical beatings.

In Philadelphia, four inmates attempted suicide in July and August. On July 28, Darren Boyer, who was being held at the House of Corrections at 8001 State Road, attempted to take his own life by tying a bed sheet around his neck and trying to attach the other end to his cell door.

As of June 2006, 57 inmates attempted suicide. There were three successful attempts in addition to 83 physical assaults by inmates against other inmates.

North said according to his people, violence among the inmates is increasing.

“Yes, it’s increasing,” he admitted. “In the last couple of months we’ve had more stabbings, more assaults on officers and more rapes. A correction officer’s job is the safety and security of the inmates. We don’t just care about the officers; we care about the inmates too. Because if they get hurt then we’re not doing our job.”

Wise has received reports of violence in state prisons, but that compared to other states, Pennsylvania has a lower number of reports.

“We do get reports,” she said. “But the violence is exacerbated by the overcrowded conditions.”

Is there a remedy?

The lawsuit, Rudovsky, Bowers v. City of Philadelphia, cites unsafe and unhealthy conditions that allegedly violate the constitutional rights of inmates.

Part of the redress that Rudovsky, attorney Jonathan H. Feinberg and others are requesting on behalf of the plaintiffs is that inmates either complete the process of preliminary arraignment within 72 hours or they should be discharged from custody to alleviate the crowded conditions.

“We’re not asking the federal government to make a determination over which prisoners should be released,” said attorney Feinberg of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing and Feinberg, LLP. “Our concern is the overcrowding. Now if the only solution to the overcrowding is that some prisoners should be released, then that’s what will have to be done. It should be noted that there are several hundred inmates who pose no risk to the public safety. We’re talking about plaintiffs with low bail or at the end of their sentences. These are people who pose a low risk to the public.”

But the last time a federal order unlocked the prisons to alleviate overcrowding, Philadelphia faced what amounted to an onslaught of crime, according to Abraham.

That is something the district attorney, who filed a motion challenging that lawsuit, will fight to keep from happening again.

Abraham said that arrested defendants are basically “challenging the conditions of their detention and are asking for a federal court order releasing prisoners if they are not processed more quickly through the local justice system.”

She said her reason for filing the motion was her concern for public safety.

“I will not accept the prisoners’ lawyer’s position that a federal judge should release prisoners to address claims about prison conditions,” Abraham said.

Her filing is based on a federal law passed in 1996, called the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which is designed to limit and discourage litigation by prisoners.

It grants prosecutors the right to oppose prisoner release orders in federal courts and precludes federal courts from ordering prisoner releases unless they are a “last resort” remedy.

But not according to the Abraham, who in her intervention motion, cited a list of crimes committed by prisoners released by a federal court under a prison cap imposed in the 1980s.

That prison cap came in response to similar claims by prisoners of overcrowded conditions. 

Abraham said that because of the previous prisoner release orders, the number of fugitives in the city nearly tripled and bench warrants jumped from 18,000 to 50,000.

In a prepared statement released by her office, Abraham said that from January 1993 to June 1994, Philadelphia police re-arrested 9,732 defendants on new charges after they were released by the federal court.

Those crimes included 79 murders, 959 robberies, almost 3,000 drug-dealing cases, 701 burglaries, 2,748 thefts, 90 rapes, 14 kidnappings, 1,113 assaults, 264 gun crimes and 127 drunken driving cases.  

While litigators work their way through the lawsuit, however, there are actions that the federal, state and local governments can do to alleviate unsafe conditions in the prisons.

More importantly there’s much more that can be done to prepare ex-offenders to re-enter society and not re-enter prison.

“Public education needs to be increased,” Wise said. “People have to be more willing to help ex-offenders re-enter society. If we were able to spend less on corrections and more on social services, that would be ideal. We’re not nearly giving enough funding for rehabilitation in prisons and I’m talking about up to date rehabilitation, up to date job training. Prison is a band-aid for deeper social issues. Another way to look at it is like this: prisons are the answer to the problems but the reality is that they’re the beginning of the social problems. Prison is a quick superficial fix. It’s a quick cure for our other social problems.”