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Nearly one year after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, the ACLU's National Prison Project recently released a comprehensive, and very disturbing, report that details how thousands of inmates of Orleans Parish Prison were abandoned by prison officials, trapped in flooded cells without food, water or sanitation for days after the storm.
The report, Abandoned & Abused: Orleans Parish Prisoners in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, documents the experiences of these inmates--men, women, and children--who were essentially left to die in their cells as Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman and many of his deputies fled the hurricane's devastation. Several of these prisoners were being held on drug charges or for other minor offenses, including public intoxication, unpaid fines or even jaywalking. Some had yet to be charged at all, and approximately one third were still awaiting trial.
This story was scantily covered in Katrina's wake, and with a quarter million, mostly African American citizens of New Orleans still displaced from their homes, it may seem easy to have overlooked the plight of stranded prisoners. But the facts presented in the ACLU's report show an appalling disregard for the lives of thousands of prisoners, which has now received local, national, and international attention.
Tom Jawetz, Litigation Fellow for the National Prison Project, said, "The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did more for its 263 stray pets than the sheriff did for the more than 6,500 men, women and children left in his care." The ACLU has demanded an immediate investigation into these and other abuses, as well as an audit of emergency preparedness for the facility to see if any improvements have been made.
A few passages from the report illustrate that many of these prisoners were minor drug offenders who truly suffered "some of the worst horrors of Hurricane Katrina":

• "Deputies left their posts wholesale, leaving behind prisoners in locked cells, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests." (p.9)

• "The picture that emerged from all of these accounts was one of widespread chaos, caused in large part by inadequate emergency planning and training by local officials, and of racially motivated hostility on the part of prison officials and blatant disregard for the individuals trapped in the jail." (p.9)

• "At the time of the storm, OPP housed nearly 2000 state prisoners. Some of these men and women were enrolled in drug and alcohol treatment programs as a condition of probation. These men and women were eligible to be released once they completed their rehabilitation programs, and therefore they were more akin to patients than prisoners." (p.15)

• "According to the Sheriff's own data, none of the prisoners housed in the CCC building were charged with rape, and only one prisoner out of more than 700 housed there was charged with murder. Rather, hundreds of the people in CCC during the storm were in on minor charges--including technical parole violations--and were participating voluntarily in the jail's rehabilitation programs in an effort to beat a drug addiction or obtain a G.E.D." (p.51)

• "Many of the women in Templeman IV were being held on minor offenses such as prostitution or simple drug possession." (p.35)

This incident is another shocking reminder of the criminal negligence with which all levels of government responded to this catastrophe. Even more, it is a prime example of the barbarism and racism endemic in the US criminal justice system.
http://www.nooked.com/news/itemtrack...0d12444dac745a

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