Abusive US Prison Systems and Assange’s Denial of Due Process

Sputnik’s John Kiriakou, a co-host of Political Misfits, is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act and served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempt to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

“People forget Julian Assange spent so many years in what amounted to solitary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. And so, you tend to go crazy, not having access to the outside world. There’s almost nothing you can do about it,” says Kiriakou. “Now, we know from a multitude of studies that have been done in prison systems here in the United States, both at the federal and state levels that 85% of incarcerated people in the United States have some form of diagnosable mental illness.”

“Even if they didn’t go into prison with mental illness, they develop it in prison, and it’s because of solitary confinement,” Kiriakou adds.

Kirakou wrote in his piece about a report from the Washington Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights in Urban Affairs which exposed such abuses at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is the same entity that would be responsible for Assange’s health.

Sputnik’s Wilmer Leon noted that while in prison, a prisoner does not only have to fear harm from their fellow cellmates, but are also subjected to trauma inflicted by prison guards.

Sputnik’s Wilmer Leon noted that there has been a “dramatic shift” in the philosophy of incarceration in the US, which can most likely be attributed to the mid to late 1970s as well as the “war on drugs”—first inaugurated by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s—which shifted the philosophy from a rehabilitation model to an incarceration model.

“So true, so true,” Kiriakou agreed. “You know, things began to change in the late 1970s. They changed very much in the mid-1980s. But you’re exactly right. Before the Reagan presidency, if you were incarcerated, you could learn a skill. You could get your GED. If you didn’t have a high school diploma, then you could learn small engine repair, plumbing, electrical work, any number of different things. Now, you can’t do any of that.”

“Where they do teach you a skill, where they do give you medical care and mental health care. And instead of over-stuffing people in bleak prison cells, put them in what looked like apartments so that they can transition back into normal society when their prison sentences are up. We just don’t understand that.”

Leon noted that rehabilitating criminals has been “abolished” and that prisons have now come under an aspect of privatization.

“Furniture making is a good example,” Kiriakou explained. “At the prison where I was incarcerated, FCI Laredo in central Pennsylvania, there was a Prison Industries factory where they manufactured fiber optic cables for the US Navy. Well, when you’re paying people $0.25 an hour and forcing them to work 40 hours a week for that quarter an hour and putting outside businesses out of business because they can’t pay their workers $0.25 an hour. You know, you’re actually doing damage to the community.”

“It just gets worse and worse and worse,” said Kiriakou. “And again, we find ourselves just shocked that we have these problems. And so, the idea is, if these prisoners do their sentences and then they become repeat offenders and the recidivism rate is high, that must mean that our sentences aren’t long enough, and, in fact, our sentences are the longest of any industrialized country.”

“And I wrote a separate piece, not too long ago, saying that in the last 10 years, Congress has created 500 new crimes, not 500 new laws, 500 new crimes, things that were perfectly legal 10 years ago that are now felonies,” he added. And so, the bottom line is, if they want to get you, they’re going to get you.”