The US Gulag

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Military leaders are thinking about whether they will need to put a wheelchair lift into their showcase communal prison three or four years from now, widen some some cell doors, add ramps for geriatric captives.

Not one of the 80 prisoners is now in a wheelchair and most are in their 30s or 40s. The oldest is 68. But briefings by senior military officials here made clear that they are starting to actively think about operating an offshore Pentagon detention center long after President Barack Obama leaves office.

[...]

Obama wants the prison emptied, and a Pentagon plan proposes moving 30 to 40 captives to military detention in the United States and releasing the rest to other countries. But Congress has outlawed any transfers to U.S. soil, and some members are proposing legislation to prevent transfers altogether, to anywhere, prompting speculation that the only way Obama does it is through an Executive Order that opponents of closure warn would be illegal.

  McClatchy

Of the remaining 65 captives, 28 were on a list approved for transfer, spread out across three different sites capable of confining 300 captives.

Two among them were in orange jumpsuits, signaling they were rule-breakers the military considered violent. But the other 63 were categorized as compliant, cooperative, following the rules.

As a sign of the era of cooperation, the senior medical officer, Navy Capt. Richard Quattrone says the same Navy medical unit that tube-feeds hunger strikers introduced 30-minute, health and wellness classes in some prison recreation areas. It began three weeks ago, he said, and 17 captives attended one.

Does that come before or after they're tied down and roughly force-fed through tubes down their noses?

Topics so far included “stress-reduction techniques,” to include breathing exercises.

So, before, for sress-reduction. But maybe after, to breathe again.

At Camp 6, where most captives are kept in cell blocks that allow them to eat, pray and watch TV together, the most frequent request from the prisoners is for replacement Tupperware, says the Army captain in charge, a special education teacher in civilian life. Each cell block has a food pantry equipped with a microwave and they keep melting the containers. “They’ll hit 5 minutes, no matter what,” says the captain, a woman forbidden to say her name, even if she wanted it printed here.

Maybe they should give cooking classes.  The most frequent request used to be for a fair trial, but they finally gave up on that.

Meantime, however, the overall commander defends the need to maintain a dedicated detention center staff of 1,950 to 2,200 troops and civilians. The military is on its own here, no backup at the gate, which leads to a minefield and Cuba. Clarke said he might need his full force “if we had an act of mass non-compliance, a riot, something like.”

Idiot. I thought he was going to justify that many people to guard 80 caged people in the event of an attempted attack on the base. But, two thousand people for an 80-person prisoner riot?

Meanwhile, back in the states...

As of March 2016, 75 percent of Rikers detainees had been awaiting trial for less than a year, but there were 109 whose cases had been pending for more than three years and another 209 who had been waiting for more than two years, according to a spokesperson with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. Jairo [Pastoressa arrested for stabbing and killing a young man during a dispute, awaiting trial for 6 years and counting] believes he is the longest-serving detainee currently on the island. “This system keeps those that have been accused of committing crimes out of sight and out of mind,” City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said in her 2016 State of the City address, in which she announced an independent commission to review whether the population at Rikers can be reduced enough to make its closure possible.

  The Intercept

Yeah. Not very likely, is it?

Kalief Browder [...] last year committed suicide after being held without trial for three years.

Kalief Browder’s incarceration, abuse, and eventual suicide was only the most recent Rikers scandal. In the last few years, countless stories have emerged of violence on the island, between inmates, but also, regularly, by guards. In 2014, an inmate died in a 101-degree cell, and a correction officer pleaded guilty to trying to cover up the incident. That year the Department of Justice concluded a multi-year investigation with a report on the brutal treatment of adolescent boys at Rikers, condemning the jail’s systemic use of force by staff, inmate-on-inmate violence, and the use of punitive segregation.

[...]

According to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, nearly 40 percent of Rikers inmates have a “mental health designation.”

[...]

“If they sentence you, you know they sentenced you to however many years, you get used to the idea, and you do your time,” said [Jairo's mother] Anna, exasperated. “But when they don’t sentence you and they throw you in there — he’s losing his mind.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.