Old sexism: new perspective
In the United States, about a year ago, the prisoners at the Georgia Women's Correctional Institute, in Hardwick, Georgia, brought a civil suit against that institution. The prisoners allege that the institute's staff has been coercing the prisoners into rapes and countless other sexual assaults. The suit also describes how at least one prisoner became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion as a consequence of those attacks.
Both male and female staff members have been cited as defendants in the civil suit. The kind of behaviour described in the suit has been going on for decades in America's prisons, especially in Georgia's prisons. A lot of people in America simply cannot imagine the kind of abuse cited. Prison administrators go to great lengths to keep it secret. It would still be one of America's many dirty little prison-secrets were it not for the civil suit.
Any corrections staff member caught and convicted in any sexual activity with a prisoner, under Georgia law, automatically is (subjected to being) sentenced to three years in prison. Needless to say, rarely does the latter happen. The recent controversy over the civil suit, suggest that via considerable public outrage, the women in Georgia's prisons are about to get some much deserved relief. Good!
Corrections officials by the score, have announced that they knew nothing of these assaults and abuses prior to the suit. They say that the perpetrators' heads will roll. We shall see. This writer is convinced that in America, the humanity of female prisoners are routinely valued with greater care and concern than male prisoners.
In Georgia, several old and new organisations have been formed to help women in prison cope: Some are designed to help them maintain nurturing-associations with their children; others provide rehabilitative, vocational, academic and emotional support.
Unfortunately, the men in prison at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Centre (GD CC) situated near Jackson, Georgia do not get similar considerations. Everyone knows how inhumanely men are treated in America's prisons. Certainly most Georgians know that brutality, sexual assaults and a host of other dehumanising administrative abuses are the unwritten rule rather than the exception. Thousands of men in Georgia's prisons have been and are being raped and abused not only by other prisoners, but by staff members as well.
Some time ago then, Assistant Warden Fields, was caught in the felonious act of sodomy inside the GD CC's warehouse. He and the prisoner were not caught by another prisoner — a prisoner's account of their liaison would be subject to a validity challenge. They were caught by a highly respected staff member, whose word was not challenged. Immediately thereafter Mr Fields ition as Assistant Warden at GD CC and he was escorted off of the prison property. However, there is no evidence that he was ever arrested, let alone brought to trail and convicted. Hence, my belief that women are valued more than men, in prison.
Many men in Georgia's prisons were sent to prison for rape. Most of those men will be released sooner or later. The citizens of Georgia — indeed, most Americans — seem to be telling those men that rape is acceptable as long as the victims are men.
The collective silence and total disregard for the lives and human dignity of men in prison is "sexism" in one of its most insidious forms, being consciously practiced and perpetuated by an entire nation at the expense of perhaps thousands of future rape victims, female and male, inside and outside of prison.
[The Writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]