Sickening news about prisoners in a NOLA jail
"A month after Hurricane Katrina, serious questions remain about the fate of hundreds of prisoners in New Orleans. Human Rights Watch says there are 517 unaccounted for, while prisoners and their lawyers say many were abandoned in the flooding jails."
I listened to this on the Democracy Now! podcast and felt sickened. The former inmate they spoke to -- who's just been released on a writ of habeas corpus -- described horrifying scenes, including inmates not being allowed to stand up and go off to relieve themselves as they waited on a football field for evacuation.
This was no ordinary prison. Parish prisons are the equivalent of a county jail in most places. In other words, some of these people were just awaiting charges. Many were in for misdemeanors. Others were death row inmates. All of them got thrown in together as they waited to evacuate. Most of them had to break themselves out of their cells (with the help of others who weren't in cells, because they'd been evacuated earlier from other parish prisons and the NOLA facility couldn't fit them all into cells) in order to escape the rising flood waters. Regardless of their crimes or lack thereof, these people were treated like vermin and left to drown, from the sound of it.
But don't just take my word for it -- read the transcript or download the podcast to get it in their words. These are some serious human rights violations, but I don't see CNN or ABC reporting on this.
I listened to this on the Democracy Now! podcast and felt sickened. The former inmate they spoke to -- who's just been released on a writ of habeas corpus -- described horrifying scenes, including inmates not being allowed to stand up and go off to relieve themselves as they waited on a football field for evacuation.
This was no ordinary prison. Parish prisons are the equivalent of a county jail in most places. In other words, some of these people were just awaiting charges. Many were in for misdemeanors. Others were death row inmates. All of them got thrown in together as they waited to evacuate. Most of them had to break themselves out of their cells (with the help of others who weren't in cells, because they'd been evacuated earlier from other parish prisons and the NOLA facility couldn't fit them all into cells) in order to escape the rising flood waters. Regardless of their crimes or lack thereof, these people were treated like vermin and left to drown, from the sound of it.
But don't just take my word for it -- read the transcript or download the podcast to get it in their words. These are some serious human rights violations, but I don't see CNN or ABC reporting on this.