by Paul Wright

Since our inception PLN has reported on the myriad means used to torture American prisoners. Torture and the wanton infliction pain have been an integral part of imprisonment since people first decided to start caging each other. In American history it has been a constant. As recently as the late 1970s American prisoners were flogged, electrocuted, beaten, fire hosed and worse, as routine punishments on a regular basis. By the end of the 1970s federal courts had largely ended the most blatant physical forms of torture by court order and injunction. Tellingly, no statute or law bans or prohibits the torture of American citizens by its prison and police forces.

With overt physical torture restricted by federal courts, prison and jail officials resorted to mental torture such as solitary confinement and new means of physical torture and pain infliction were devised, often with a modernistic tone to distinguish them from the tortures of old. We regularly see “new” tortures devices and tools introduced and then waxing and waning in popularity among prisons and jails depending on how aggressively the devices are marketed.

The modern torture toys include pepper spray, electric pain devices such as tasers, a wide variety of restraints, batons, projectile guns of various types that shoot non-bullets and more. Typically, these are marketed and deployed as “less than lethal” weapons yet they still kill people on a regular basis. More importantly is how they are used as tools to inflict pain and torture. Spit hoods, the subject of this month’s cover story, squarely fall into this legacy of restraint devices used to inflict pain. As regular readers know, prisoners and arrestees die of asphyxia on a regular basis with their last words usually being something to the effect of “I can’t breathe.” Rarely do people who die at the hands of the police state from asphyxia do so from asphyxiation alone. Most of the time there are aggravating factors which contribute to their death ranging from tasers, pepper spray and yes, spit hoods.

This issue of PLN is going to press after the election and Donald Trump has been reelected president in a truly historic election. Not only is he the first person to be reelected to the office after a non-consecutive term since 1892, he is also the first convicted felon to hold the office and was able to successfully campaign for office while undergoing a criminal trial in New York, where he was convicted and awaits sentencing, and while being prosecuted in three other cases as well. Apparently, a felony conviction and criminal charges are not the political career enders they used to be. (In Texas, Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar was reelected to office despite being indicted and prosecuted on charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy.)

The Marshall Project did a survey of prisoners and seemed shocked that prisoners overwhelmingly support Trump and would vote for him if they could. Apparently only people who do not work with prisoners or know any/many, are surprised by this. Every study on the voting habits and political views of American prisoners and ex-prisoners shows they tend to be very conservative and skew Republican. It is interesting that efforts at ensuring felons in Florida could vote were lauded at the time as somehow making Florida more of a Democratic Party stronghold but seem to have failed miserably with the felon vote not being consequential enough to merit further analysis or reporting as Florida has not only lost its swing state status but seems to be firmly entrenched as a Republican state at every level of state and federal government.

While the criminal cases against Trump are essentially dead, what his election portends for the other 2.4 million enmeshed in the criminal justice system remains to be seen. In a bizarre sense of déjà vu all over again, the Federal Communications Commission recently issued new regulations against the prison phone industry. Just as they did in 2016 just before Trump took office. Just like then the prison telecoms have challenged the rules. In 2017 upon taking office Trump appointed Ajit Pai as head of the FCC and his first action was ordering agency lawyers not to defend the rules they had enacted. We will see if history repeats itself.

HRDC is conducting its annual fundraiser and we ask you to donate if you can and encourage others to do so as well. We rely on support from our readers to do the advocacy that subscription alone do not allow for and also to challenge mail censorship practices and more. This includes our advocacy for lower phone rates, to end the financial exploitation of prisoners and their families, and much more.

Right now PLN is currently suing state prison systems in New Mexico, Missouri, Illinois and preparing several others as well. Using the guise of mail digitization to combat drugs many prisons and jails are banning books and magazines, including Prison Legal News. HRDC is fighting these efforts and as the article about our recent victory in North Carolina shows, we win almost all of these battles. The downside is it takes time and resources to fight these cases and we need your help and support to do so.

If you are a prisoner and any books or magazines from the Human Rights Defense Center are censored, please contact us and let us know as many times we are not notified of the censorship.

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