Robert Brooks, an African American, was serving 12 years of rigorous imprisonment for stabbing his girlfriend. On December 9, he was transferred from Mohawk Correctional Facility to Marcy Correction Facility in central New York. Surprisingly, he died on the morning of December 10 at a Utica hospital. The body cam footage that was released recently showed how he was beaten by correction officers in the medical examination room until he stopped moving. Later, he was pronounced dead by the hospital.
Attorney General Letitia James described the body cam footage as “shocking and disturbing.” Although it is definitely disturbing, the word “shocking” seems out of place. After all, the US prisons are in no way safe and humane spaces. With a mortality rate of 330 per 100,000 inmates, US prisons are the deadliest among any developed country.
This begs the question: What makes US prisons so dangerous? Many of you will point out that prisons are not holiday resorts but places to lock up dangerous criminals. And you might be right. However, 2/3rd of the people were detained pretrial, i.e., they are still waiting to appear before a judge. It seems like the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply in America as these pretrial prisoners make up 76% of jail deaths.
Most of these people come from poor backgrounds with 30% of them remaining in prison as they can’t afford bail. So, what makes US prisons so dangerous? Almost everything. The prisons are overcrowded, they don’t have enough staff to manage the prisoners, and the issue of corruption is rampant, especially in states like Alabama. Prisoners are beaten, raped, and killed by other inmates, and sometimes by the correction officers themselves. The ones who manage to fend off these threats die by suicide as there is no mental health and suicide prevention treatment.
According to Mental Health America, more than half of the prisoners suffer from some form of mental illness. US prisons handle these prisoners brilliantly by beating them up and putting them in solitary confinement. Out of all the prison suicides, people held in solitary confinement account for almost 50% of the total.
A more disturbing fact is the prevalence of rape and sexual abuse in the US prisons. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, around 80,000 women and men a year get sexually abused in US prisons by other inmates or correction officers. Juveniles are seven times more likely to face sexual abuse in correction facilities with the Department of Justice stating that 90% of victims were abused by female correctional officers.
Why are we not doing anything about it? Well, people have tried but they were thwarted by private prisons at every step. Private prisons have a direct interest in keeping US mass incarceration alive and well. Private prisons house more than 8% of the total prison population, a rise of 47% from the year 2000. The worst are private immigration detention centers which have seen a rise of 447% in the same period. Private prisons aim to maximize profits, and they do it by cutting down the necessary services required to run a prison in humane conditions.
So, it won’t be farfetched to say that Robert Brooks wasn’t the first and won’t be the last victim of the broken US prison system.
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