Palestinian children 'abused' in Israeli jail

Recent studies allege a system of abuse targeting children detained by Israel's military court system. Dalia Hatuqa Aug. 14, 2012 Al Jazeera

Israeli military courts imprison about 500-700 Palestinian children per year, according to a new study [AFP]

Ramallah, occupied Palestinian territories - A dirty mattress fills up a space barely two metres long and one metre wide. A suffocating stench emanating from the toilet hovers over the windowless room, and a light turned on 24/7 means sleep is a distant dream. This is the infamous Cell 36 in Al Jalameh Prison in Israel. It's one of the cells that many Palestinian children have either heard of or, worse, been inside when placed in solitary confinement. The children imprisoned here are most often taken from their homes between midnight and 5am. Most don't even see it coming. In one case, in Beit Ummar near Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers detained a Palestinian boy after reportedly taking some of the house's doors off their hinges. Most of the children detained live close to "friction points", areas close to Israeli settlements, roads used by settlers or near the separation wall. And their offence is almost always throwing stones at settlers or troops. "Mohammad was interrogated for two to three hours every day while sitting on a low seat with his hands tied to the chair." These vivid details emerged recently in a report based on the testimonies of more than 300 Palestinian children, which were collected over four years. The study by Defence for Children International, Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted: Children Held in Military Detention highlights a pattern of abuse towards children detained under the Israeli military court system. In the past 11 years, DCI estimates that around 7,500 children, some as young as 12, have been detained, interrogated and imprisoned within this system. This is about 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children every day. Mohammad S, from the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem, was 16 when he was arrested, according to the report. It was 2:30am when Israeli soldiers dragged him out of bed. He was blindfolded and verbally abused and taken to an unknown destination, where he says he was forced to lay down in the cold for an hour. He was later taken to an interrogation centre near Nablus at around 11am, and only then was he allowed to drink some water and use the bathroom, after he underwent a strip search. Tied and blindfolded still, he was then taken to Al Jalameh, near Haifa in Israel. There he was taken to Cell 36, where he was forced to spend his first night sleeping on the floor because there was no mattress or blanket. Mohammad says he spent 17 days in solitary confinement in Cell 36 and Cell 37, interrupted only by interrogations. Mohammad was reportedly interrogated for two to three hours every day, while sitting on a low seat with his hands tied to the chair. Children have taken part in demonstrations aganist the treatment of those held in prison [AFP] The most crucial hours "The first 48 hours after a child is taken are the most important because that's when the most abuse happens," DCI's lawyer Gerard Horton said. Children taken from their homes in the night are blindfolded and bound and made to lie face down or up on the floors of military vehicles, according to the centre's report. Very rarely are parents told where their child is being taken, and, unlike Israeli children from within either Israel or the settlements in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian minors are reportedly not allowed to have a parent present before or during initial interrogation, and generally do not see a lawyer until after their interrogation is over. Specifically, Israeli children have access to a lawyer within 48 hours and those under the age of 14 cannot be imprisoned. Palestinian children, however, can be jailed even if they are as young as 12 and, like adults, can be held in jail without having formal charges against them for up to 188 days. "The key issue is one of equality. If two children, a Palestinian and an Israeli, are caught throwing stones at each other, then one will be processed in a juvenile justice system and one in a military court," Horton said. "They have completely different rights. It's hard to justify this after 45 years of occupation. It's not a question of whether offences are committed. What we are saying is children should not be treated completely differently." As soon as children are taken from their homes, and placed inside an Israeli military vehicle, they are often kicked or slapped, according to testimonies obtained by DCI. Some said they were laughed at and others said they heard cameras clicking. Nightmares Because children are often taken late at night, they are driven to the nearest settlement to wait until Israeli police interrogators open up shop in the morning. This means children are sometimes placed out in the cold or rain for many hours. Requests for water or using the bathroom are most often denied, and children are taken straight to interrogation after a night of little sleep. That's what Ahmad F said happened to him. A 15-year-old from 'Iraq Burin village, just outside Nablus, he was arrested in July 2011. He was taken to the nearby Huwwara interrogation centre, where he was left outside from 5am until 3pm. At one point, soldiers brought a dog. "They brought the dog's food and put it on my head," Ahmad told DCI. "Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but [the dog] started barking. I was terrified." "During interrogation, many children reported being facing with slurs and threatened with physical violence. In a small number of cases, interrogators have reportedly threatened minors with rape." During interrogation, many children reported being facing with slurs and threatened with physical violence. In a small number of cases, interrogators have reportedly threatened minors with rape. In 29 per cent of cases studied by DCI, Arabic-speaking children were either shown or given documentation written in Hebrew to sign. An Israeli spokesperson denied this to Al Jazeera, saying "the norm is that interrogations in Arabic should be either recorded or written in Arabic". Israeli officials did say, however, they had identified 13 cases from the report where children had signed a confession written in Hebrew. Yet the spokesperson maintained that video recordings of those interrogations had been available, should the lawyers acting for the children doubt the accuracy of the written Hebrew statements. After children sign a "confession", they are brought before an Israeli military court. Since 2009, an Israeli spokesperson said, children have faced juvenile military courts. Most often, that's the first time the minor will see their lawyer. The confession is generally the primary evidence against the child, say DCI officials. Other evidence will often consist of a statement by an interrogator, and sometimes a soldier. Because so few are granted bail, children face a legal dilemma: they can ask the lawyer to challenge the system - and by doing so potentially wait, locked up, for four to six months - or plead guilty and get a two or three month prison sentence for a "first offence". Pleading guilty "So, very rarely does anyone challenge the system," said DCI's Horton, as the quickest way to be released is to plead guilty. This goes some way to explain why, according to the military courts, the conviction rate for adults and children in 2010 was 99.74 per cent. According to DCI, some fifty to sixty per cent of the time, children are taken to prisons inside Israel, making it difficult for parents to visit. "Some parents are denied permits on unspecified 'security grounds'. For the others, the bureaucracy can take up to two months to get a permit, which means if their children are sentenced to less time, they will not receive a visit," Horton said. "However, some permits are processed in less than two months, and those children sentenced to more time will also generally receive visits." "Israel's practice of holding children 'for substantial periods in solitary confinement would, if it occurred, be capable of amounting to torture', the report concluded." The allegations of what seems to be a deliberate system of abuse appear to be corroborated by another report published by a group of British jurists. The UK government-backed delegation of nine lawyers, with human rights, crime and child welfare backgrounds, concluded that Israel's soldiers regularly breach the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Fourth Geneva Convention, of which Israel is a signatory. Their report, Children in Military Custody, attributed much of Israel's reluctance to treat Palestinian children in accordance with international norms to "a belief, which was advanced to us by a military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a 'potential terrorist'". The lawyers said this seemed to be "the starting point of a spiral of injustice, and one which only Israel, as the Occupying Power in the West Bank, can reverse". Israel's practice of holding children "for substantial periods in solitary confinement would, if it occurred, be capable of amounting to torture", the report concluded. Of all the children represented by DCI, 12 per cent reported being held in solitary confinement for an average of 11 days. Denial The Israel Security Agency (ISA), also known as Shin Bet, denied that children were mistreated under the military court system, calling claims to the contrary "utterly baseless". The ISA also said that claims regarding the prevention of legal counsel were also completely groundless. "No one questioned, including minors being questioned, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession," said the ISA in a statement when the Guardian first released a special report about the status of child detainees in Israel. A Palestinian youth uses a slingshot to hurl a stone at Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank [REUTERS] The ISA also said that it provides minors special protection because of their age and adheres to "international treaties of which the State of Israel is a signatory, and according to Israeli law, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross". Speaking to Al Jazeera, an Israeli spokesperson accused the DCI report of bias, and refuted the group's finding that the majority of children prosecuted were charged with throwing stones: "This was the basis for only 40 per cent of the indictments filed against minors in the West Bank ... the young age of offenders is not relevant to the gravity of the act: it has been proven beyond doubt that a stone thrown by a 15-year-old child can be no less fatal than a stone thrown by an adult." Stone-throwing can prove deadly, stressed the spokesperson, citing a case from September 2011, when an Israeli settler and his one-year-old son were killed after their car overturned as a result of stones hurled at them. "Two Palestinians from Halhul confessed to throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The stone was hurled from a driving car," the spokesperson said. The official said that children were also involved in grenade throwing, the use of explosives, shooting and assault The spokesperson also denied that the ISA used isolation as an interrogation technique or as punishment to exert confessions out of minors. "There are certain cases in which an interrogee will be held alone for a few days at the most, in order to prevent information in his/her possession from leaking to other terrorist activists in the same detention facility, which could compromise the interrogation of the suspect. Note that even in these cases, the interrogee is not held in absolute confinement, but is entitled to meet with Red Cross representatives, medical staff etc." Furthermore, the spokesperson rejected the idea that pleading guilty was the quickest way out of the system for a defendant, deeming the accusation "misleading, distorted, and premised upon incorrect information". "Should a minor defendant choose to plead 'not guilty' and challenge the prosecutorial evidence by proceeding to a full trial and mounting a good-faith defence, military courts will, in the vast majority of the cases, conduct the hearings very efficiently, sometimes even in a few weeks." Yet, since the DCI and UK reports came out, "there's no substantive change on the ground", Horton said. "The response by the military authorities has been to start talking about making some changes and amending the military orders. But when you look at the details, the changes are of little substance." "In reality, what we are seeing is a de facto annexation of most of the West Bank; it's not a temporary military occupation," he concluded. "The military courts are an integral part of this process used to control the population."

Israel to Detain Migrant Children in Prison

  Friday August 10, 2012 by Kelly Joiner - International Middle East Media Center Editorial Group & Agencies 

African children, whose parents bring them to Israel illegally will now be held in Givon Prison in Ramle, rather than a special facility for migrant youth, in violation of international law concerning the treatment of children and a 2011 Israeli High Court ruling.

Source: Ha'aretz

According to a report in Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the move to place the children in prison came after six boys escaped from the youth facility last week. The children will now be housed in an adult prison according to the Israeli prison service, in order to ensure that no more children escape.

This decision contravenes a 2011 Israeli High Court ruling that children cannot be held in prisons or with adults. The court cited as justification the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to which Israel is a signatory.

The CRC states that at all times, the most important principle regarding the treatment of children is what is in the best interests of the child. The director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Reut Michaeli commented, “Givon Prison is a prison in every sense of the word. Once again we're learning that the good of the child is not the main thing on the state's mind."

Although children are being housed in a separate wing from adults, the facility is still a prison designed for adults. The Israeli prison service claims that the situation is temporary.

However, Israel routinely detains Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons with adults. Numerous international organizations including Defence For Children International have documented this practice which Israel’s own courts have found to be illegal.

Given the fact that this inhumane violation of the rights of Palestinian children continues with several hundred Palestinian children currently incarcerated in Israeli military prisons, as well as the increasing xenophobia of the Israeli population, it is unlikely that migrant children will escape this same fate unless the institutional structures within Israel begin to support human rights for all, not only Jewish Israelis.

Qaraqe: Israel Arrest 700 Child Annually, 90% of them Subjected to Torture

July 18, 2012 PNN

On Wednesday, July 18th, the Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said that Israel arrests 700 Palestinian minors annually. These minors are all under the age of 18, and include children as young as 12 or 13. 90% of the children are also subjected to torture, ill-treatment, pressure, and bargaining.

Qaraqe also said that Israel treats the children as constant threats or "ticking bombs" as the Israeli law puts it. Classifying a child as a "ticking bomb" grants the Israeli prison system the ability to apply certain forms of torture and bypasses International law, effectively stripping the children of their immunity. He also said that since Israel does not respect International law in relation to detained children, the institutions of the international community form a campaign to protect the children of Palestine.

Qaraqe statements came during his speech at the celebration of the completion of summer camps for the children of prisoners and martyrs, organized by the Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture.

More than 200 children, along with the families of prisoners and martyrs and the head of the Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, Dr. Mahmoud Sahwil, participated in the celebration.

Sahwil welcomed the attendees and announced that this celebration, titled "A Step Toward the Future," is a challenge to the occupation; an occupation which works towards the destruction of Palestinians through arrests and repressive measures against the Palestinian people and by depriving children of the natural right to live in dignity.

Gifts were distributed to the participating children after they performed several plays, popular songs, and al-Dabkeh (a traditional dance).

There are currently 280 children detained in Israeli prisons, and a number of these children, especially from the Jerusalem areas, are sentenced with house arrests or deportation.

Israel treats every Palestinian child as "potential terrorist": government-backed UK study

28 June 2012 Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada

The number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention has increased 40 percent since last September.
(Ryan Rodrick Beiler)

A new report funded and supported by the UK government that accuses Israel of violating international law with its treatment of Palestinian child detainees was launched in London by a high-profile group of human rights lawyers on Tuesday.

The report says Israel is in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) on at least six counts and of the Fourth Geneva Convention on at least two counts. It lays bare the system of legal apartheid Israel maintains in Palestine.

But there is pessimism in some quarters that the report’s recommendations will be implemented. The document has been criticized as “toothless” by a prominent Palestinian human rights activist.
“Children in Military Custody” was funded and backed by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and written by an ad hoc group including a former attorney general, a former court of appeal judge and several prominent attorneys known as QCs. The delegation visited Palestine in September and met with Palestinian, Israeli and international nongovernmental organizations, British diplomats and a wide range of Israeli government and military officials.

The report details the military law Israel applies to all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including children, and how it differs from the civilian law applied to Israeli settlers who live in the same territory. It states there it was “uncontested [by Israel] that there are major differentials between the law governing the treatment of Palestinian children and the law governing treatment of Israeli children.”

 

Unequal treatment of children

At the heart of the report are three core recommendations to the Israeli government: start applying international law to the West Bank (which Israel refuses to do), the best interests of the child should come first and, crucially, that Israel “should deal with Palestinian children on an equal footing with Israeli children.”

Israel currently applies two separate and unequal systems of laws in the West Bank. Palestinians are subject to a harsh military regime in which Israeli army officers and police, arrest, interrogate, judge and sentence, while Israeli settlers colonizing the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law.
These systematic inequalities include: the minimum age for Palestinian children to receive a custodial sentence is 12, but for Israelis it is 14; Palestinian children have no right to have a parent present during interrogation, while Israeli children generally do.

The most stark inequalities are evident in the time it takes for the two systems to work. Palestinian children could have to wait up to eight days before being brought before a judge, while Israeli children have a right to see one within 24 hours; Palestinian children can be detained without charge for 188 days, while for Israelis the limit is 40.

In a press release about the report, Council for Arab-British Understanding director Chris Doyle describes witnessing in Palestine “nothing less than a kangaroo court that does nothing to improve Israel’s security while criminalizing an entire generation of Palestinian children.”

 

Children kept in solitary confinement

Drawing on their meetings with nongovernmental organizations such as Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, the authors detail the shocking treatment of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

Arrested in nighttime raids, Palestinian children are often physically and verbally abused, brought before adult military courts, shackled, given little choice than taking a plea bargain, and can be sentenced to as many as 20 years for “crimes” as trivial as stone throwing. Some are even kept in solitary confinement, according to DCI.

When Palestinian children file complaints about their abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers, they are almost always ignored. Israeli occupation authorities were able to give to the delegation “only one example of a complaint being upheld.” The authors report that there are “a significant number of allegations of physical and emotional abuse of child detainees by the military which neither the complaints system nor the justice system is addressing satisfactorily.”

The report compiles some shocking statistics. As many as 94 percent of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank are denied bail, according to nongovernmental organizations. Some 97-98 percent of such cases end with a plea bargain, meaning they go to jail without even reaching the trial stage (as flawed as military courts are).

A key conclusion reached by the report’s authors is that Israel is in breach of articles of UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that prohibit: national or ethnic discrimination; ignoring a child’s best interests; the premature resort to detention, imprisonment and trial alongside adult prisoners; preventing prompt access to lawyers and the use of shackles.

While the report notes “the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion [on Israel’s wall in the West Bank] which concludes categorically that the UNCRC is applicable in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Israeli officials the delegation met with refused to recognize this.

 

“Every Palestinian child a ‘potential terrorist’”

“In our meetings with the various Israeli Government agencies, we found the universal stance by contrast was that the Convention has no application beyond Israel’s own [pre-1967] borders,” the authors write, noting their disagreement.

They emphasize: “[t]he population of the West Bank is within the physical power and control of Israel, and Israel has effective control of the territory. Our visit dispelled any doubts we might have had about this.”

In its conclusions, the report notes that this refusal to fulfill its international law obligations with respect to Palestinian children probably “stems from a belief, which was advanced to us by [an Israeli] military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a ‘potential terrorist.’”

 

Questions about report’s future

Renowned Palestinian writer, activist and academic Ghada Karmi was at the report’s launch on Tuesday. She asked the panel if it would be doing a follow-up visit, or monitoring implementation of the report’s recommendations.

The answer was less than conclusive, with co-author Greg Davies saying they would have to “wait and see” what the Israeli government’s response would be. He later spoke to The Electronic Intifada over the phone about the report’s future: “the format in which that follow-up work takes place, I don’t know at this stage, it’s too early to tell … I’m committed to seeing as far as it’s possible these recommendations coming into effect. If that requires further work I’m prepared to organize that.”
Karmi later told The Electronic Intifada that the report is “toothless in the end” because there is no way to compel Israel to comply.

“Palestinians are fed up of being studied,” she said. What they really want to know is “how will I get help to end” the abuses of the military occupation. Karmi did however conclude the report was a good thing and the delegation was a “very interesting mission” because it was backed by the foreign office, who could not be accused of anti-Israel bias in the same way that Israel has managed to taint UN missions with “the usual slanders.”

 

UK government approached report’s authors

Lawyer Greg Davies was responsible for putting the ad hoc delegation together. He told The Electronic Intifada that while he was doing so, he was approached by the British Consulate in Jerusalem, who offered government funding. Davies replied in the affirmative, but on condition that the group be independent.

In response to such criticisms as Karmi’s, Davies said: “there have been a number of [such] reports submitted… those reports have largely gone unanswered [by Israel] … it was that lack of response that prompted this.”

“There isn’t an enforceability as such without the political will, and that’s where our remit stops,” he said, pointing to an Early Day Motion on the report tabled in parliament Wednesday. EDM 280 welcomes the report and “asks the Foreign Secretary to make a statement to the House [of Commons] setting out his proposals for persuading Israel to comply in practice with international law relating to the treatment of children.” Davies said of the EDM “we welcome that and are hugely encouraged by that.”

 

Advancing the debate

The Palestine section of Defence for Children International, through its reports and its meetings with the delegation, is one of the most quoted sources in the report. DCI-PS spokesperson Gerard Horton admitted to The Electronic Intifada that the report’s recommendations “won’t end the abuse,” but argued that some of them “will make it very difficult for the military court system to function effectively” if they were implemented.

He wrote in an email that the report’s list of forty recommendations include those DCI-PS have been demanding for years (parents present during interrogation; prompt access to a lawyer; audio-visual recording of interrogations; and an end to forcible transfer of children to prisons inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention).

Horton also highlighted the high profile of the report’s authors and backers: “the importance of this report is who wrote it … before real change can occur the debate has to become mainstream. People in the center and center-right have to start taking an interest and expressing a concern. To my mind this report goes some way to advancing that by helping to shift the debate to the center.”

 

“Justice is not a negotiable commodity”

Among the report’s forty specific recommendations are: an end to night arrests, an end to blindfolding and shackling, observing the prohibition on “violent, threatening or coercive” conduct, the presence of a parent during interrogation and “[c]hildren should not be required to sign confessions” in Hebrew, since they do not understand it.

The report notes that since the delegation’s visit, a new military order has upped to 18 the age at which Palestinian children can be tried as adults. Previously, it had been 16 (then another inequality with Israeli children who are treated as children until 18).

But there are concerns this change has been rendered void in practice. While welcoming the change, the report expresses concern “that the change does not appear to apply to sentencing provisions.”
Seemingly deliberate loopholes in the law means that “adult sentencing provisions still apply to 16 [and] 17 year olds” and that children 14-17 years old can be sentenced as adults when the maximum penalty for the offense is five years or more. The maximum penalty for throwing stones (the most common offense) ranges from 10 to 20 years,

Asked by The Electronic Intifada at the Tuesday launch why there were no specific recommendations in the report to end this inequality, Judy Khan QC said it was covered by core recommendation three, which calls for an end to the current inequalities between Israeli and Palestinian child detainees.
In their meetings with the delegation, the Israeli Ministry of Justice “described [such changes] as conditional on there being no significant unrest or ‘third intifada.’” The report objects: “[a] major cause of future unrest may well be the resentment of continuing injustice … justice is not a negotiable commodity but a fundamental human right.”

 

Sharp rise in child detainees

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Lord Justice — senior appeal judge — underlined at Tuesday’s launch that there has been a 40 percent rise in child detainees since their visit in September, so the problem has only got worse since they returned to the UK.

While the report seems to have received some media coverage in the UK, it yet remains to be seen what practical impact it will have. More fundamentally, it does not call for an end to the occupation, considering political solutions beyond the authors’ mandate. It does note however that: “We have no reason to differ from the view of Her Majesty’s Government and the international community that these [Israeli] settlements [in the West Bank] are illegal. For the purposes of this report however we treat them, like the occupation, as a fact.”

But the question remains: a fact for how much longer?

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist from London who has lived and reported from occupied Palestine. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

Voices from Solitary: High Tech Brutality

June 28, 2012 Solitary Watch

by Voices from Solitary 

Robert “Saleem” Holbrook is serving life without parole in Pennsylvania for a crime committed when he was a juvenile. When he was 16, Holbrook was recruited by adults to serve as a lookout during a drug deal that escalated to robbery and then murder. Under the state’s mandatory sentencing laws, he was given LWOP–an experience he describes in an essay called “Crushed Against the Law: A Child Offender’s Encounter with Blind Justice,” published on the blog maintained for him by friends on the outside. It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court’s recent decision banning mandatory juvenile LWOP will affect his sentence. Holbrook has now been in prison for 17 years, and has spent many of those years in solitary confinement. He is a member of the Human Rights Coaltion, which opposes solitary confinement and other forms of abuse in Pennsylvania’s prisons. He wrote the following piece, titled “Control Units: High Tech Brutality” while in the “Special Management Unit” (SMU) at SCI Greene.  — Jean Casella

A prisoner’s whole existence, especially one in a control unit, is defined by numbers, statistics, and information transferred through an endless process of paperwork. When I go to the Program Review Committee here in the Special Management Unit (a control unit) at SCI Greene, my release to general population is repeatedly denied, they claim, because of a history of assaultive behavior. It is useless to defend myself against their rationale, yet I do to probe the predictable response of my captors.

Their justification for the continual confinement of myself and others in the SMU is based on the rational of a separate committee that determined I am an assaultive prisoner who has demonstrated the potential to harm others. Never mind the fact that this determination was made in another prison. Since a separate Administrative Committee determined that I am assaultive, I must therefore be assaultive. Their system of paper- work and statistics is never wrong; their committees are omnipotent and all knowing.

We the prisoners are mere spectators and captives to the process. Our presence is only necessary to secure our signatures on their paperwork or to say something that can be documented and used against us in future hearings. Our signatures place our consent on their paperwork. They permit us to seal our fate by certifying our consent of their process.

Every step of our day in the control unit is reduced to a methodical and omnipotent numbers system. I am housed in cell 23 on the 2nd tier. I receive 3 meals a day, 3 showers a week for 5 minutes each with 1 bar of soap, and 3 shaves a week with 1 razor that must be turned in after 15 minutes. I go to the yard 5 days a week for 1 hour a day with 1 prisoner per cage. I can only have 1 box in my cell containing only 2 pairs of socks, 2 t-shirts and 2 underwear. I can only have 4 books that must be exchanged on a 1 for 1 basis. I can only have 1 jumpsuit, 1 towel, 1 washcloth, and 1 toothbrush and toothpaste that are exchanged every 30 days on a 1 for 1 basis. I can only have 1 visit for 1 hour every week with only 1 visitor. The SMU Committee reviews my status every 30 days.

The prison officials tolerate no alternation in their process. There is no room for negotiation or compromise. The system must run smoothly. Dissent or resistance is crushed by the Correctional Response Teams dressed in futuristic battle fatigues. It is a ruthless war of attrition de- signed to grind a man down to his breaking point.

The previous method employed by the prison system to break prisoners was to break “bones.” They relied on brute force and unrestrained violence. This method did not sit well with the American public when it was exposed. It also tarnished America’s image in the world as a nation of high standards and values. The method was flawed in that it usually only strengthened prisoners’ resistance and made them stronger men. The prison system therefore directed its resources to develop a method of confinement that would destroy a prisoner’s mind and his will to resist.

The new assault was directed not against a prisoner’s body, but rather his mind and senses. The concept of a complete sensory deprivation and isolation was developed. This concept revolved around the ideas that if a prisoner is deprived of mental, physical, and emotional stimulation, his mind will inevitably turn inward and feed upon itself. With no outlet in an isolated environment, the mind is left to its own devices. The result is that a prisoner’s thoughts run out of control. Concentration becomes difficult and prisoners invent fantasies or images of themselves which they cocoon themselves in.

Some never emerge from this world they create. The mind will seek any relief available. It is not uncommon for men to talk to themselves for hours on end. Insanity and madness rule in a control unit. The units are filled with prisoner’s screams, outbursts and pleas for communication. A man’s nerves deteriorate right in front of his eyes. Each prisoner suffers his own personal hell. Everyone is affected in one way or another. Whether the experience affects him for the good or the bad depends upon the man.


It takes an internally strong man to overcome the isolated environment of a control unit, and an even stronger man to retain his sanity and sense of humanity in such a manufactured, hostile atmosphere. Control units are notorious for turning the strong man into a weak man, turning the sane into the insane. It can turn a man upside down and cause him to abandon all the principles and values he holds dear. Conversely, it can reinforce a man’s principles and values, and turn the weak man into a strong man. Given the control units’ track record in driving men crazy, it is not surprising that the majority of prisoners sent into it are either politically conscious prisoners, prison lawyers, or rebellious young prisoners. It is this class of prisoners that occupies the control units in prison systems across the United States.

A substantial portion of mentally disturbed prisoners are also placed in these units by prison officials so that sane prisoners are subjected to constant verbal abuse and physical assault with feces and urine by this unfortunate class of disturbed prisoners. The presence of mentally disturbed prisoners also prevents unity among the prisoners. Prison officials encourage the actions of these prisoners by rewarding them with token privileges and other superficial enticements. Divide and conquer is the norm and the administration can always be counted on to keep friction going amongst the prisoners.

The prison administration, committees, and guards that operate these control units only view prisoners in terms of our institutional numbers and our files that sit on their desks. That human beings occupy their cells doesn’t register. When a man is reduced to a number he is not supposed to have emotions, concerns, hopes or vision. His only function is to process through the system. Prisoners are only to be added, subtracted or multiplied according to the amount of bed space (warehouse space) available in the control unit. Never are they to be rehabilitated, refined or educated. Everything is reduced to a fine number and is supposed to run as smooth as mathematics. Regiment through force and isolation in a prisoner’s life and thoughts will eventually cause him to break and assume his place in the system.  But the control unit method is flawed because it fails to take into account that humans are not fine numbers on paper. They are not desensitized objects. Under pressure they will resist, fight back, capitulate or retaliate.

The man that successfully makes it out of a control unit with his mind intact is a stronger person than he was when he entered it. He is a man who developed and evolved under solitude and hostility. If he is politically conscious he emerges stronger in his convictions. So though the state may be destroying countless prisoners across the country in its control units, it is simultaneously breeding a stronger politically conscious class of prisoner committed to a revolutionary change in the social, political, and economic order, especially affecting Black communities in America.

The politically conscious prisoners (labeled the worst of the worst by the state) coming out of these control units recognize that a major contradiction exists in American society. This nation which exalts itself as a defender of human rights and an oasis of freedom and justice violates these very principles within its borders. The operation of units designed to rob a prisoner of his mind and strip him of his so-called human rights violate the very principles America proclaims to represent. International agencies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights have condemned control units as inhuman and cruel and unusual punishment.

In spite of world communication condemning such practices, the U.S. prison system is increasing the construction of these units throughout the country. Construction of these units is encouraged and financially supported by the federal government, the same government that condemns so-called totalitarian nations such as China, Cuba, etc. for human rights abuses against their citizens and prisoners.

Since the American government and its judicial system refuse to abolish control units, and a substantial portion of the American public is indifferent to the treatment of prisoners, major international human rights agencies, civil rights organizations, religious organizations, etc. should petition the U.S. government to abolish these inhumane units. Petitions should also be sent to the U.N. and World Court of Justice seeking an indictment and condemnation of America’s control units. Though it is extremely unlikely the U.S. would abolish its use of control units, an indictment would make it far more difficult for this country to play the “human rights” card when attempting to isolate nations it is at odds with. This could cause the U.S. to seriously examine its policy of operating control units.

Prisoners, their families, and organizations that work with prisoners must participate in this campaign to abolish control units and expose their abuses. No longer should the U.S., which condemns the human rights abuses of other nations, be permitted to lecture to the world about human rights, freedom and justice from a podium of righteousness all the while standing on a platform of hypocrisy.

20 Palestinian detained children started a hunger strike in Hasharon prison

June 14, 2012 by occupiedpalestine 

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[ PIC 13/06/2012 - 11:50 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– Twenty Palestinian children, detained in Hasharon prison, launched on Tuesday June 12, an open hunger strike protesting the harsh prison conditions and the prison administration’s neglect of their demands.

A 17-years-old child Ahmed Lafi, who was one of the strikers, told the Ministry of the prisoners in Gaza that 20 detained children started an open hunger strike to protest the bad and deteriorating living conditions in the prison, where they are not allowed to visit each other and are deprived from their study.

He also revealed that “the prison administration continues to torture and humiliate the child prisoners even after the agreement signed between the strike leadership committee and the prison administration.”

Ahmed Lafi also stressed that the prison administration holds in solitary confinement every prisoner trying to demand his rights amid the bad conditions he witnesses in the jails.

He pointed out that Israeli intelligence use the most extreme torture methods to extract confessions from the children in violation of all international conventions and rights of children.

There are 190 Palestinian children under the age of 18 in occupation jails in very harsh conditions. These minors are treated the same way as adult prisoners; insufficient food, search raids on their rooms by intelligence officers, provocations, medical neglect and denial of education.

‘Criminalising Children In The Care System’ by John Bowden (UK)

 June 9, 2012 325 Magazine

June 11th Day of Solidarity with long-term prisoner John Bowden called by ABC Leeds.

Criminalising the behaviour of working class children and feeding them into the Criminal Justice System is a practice that has existed for generations and is now responsible for Britain having the unenviable reputation of Europe’s worst jailer of children in terms of the numbers imprisoned.

“State raised convicts” form a substantial part of the adult prison population and all share a common genealogy of Children’s Homes, Approved Schools, Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions, and finally the long-term prison system. Many children who through no fault of their own enter the so-called Care System are percentage-wise seriously at risk of graduating into the Criminal Justice System and a life disfigured by institutionalisation and social exclusion.

There are currently 10,000 children in local authority care, their number doubling in the past four years, and the government’s current “Austerity” agenda with its attack on state benefit and services will so deeply impoverish an already desperately poor section of the population that the number of children from this group entering the Care System is bound to increase significantly.

A leading magistrate and member of the Magistrates’ Association Youth Courts Committee, Janis Cauthery, has openly condemned the care system for operating as a doorway into the penal system by regularly prosecuting children for behaviour such as pushing, shoving, and breaking crockery. Behaviour that in normal circumstances would simply be punished by parents is frequently being referred to the police by Children’s Homes and children are being charged with criminal offences and placed before the criminal courts. Ms Cauthery has warned that children in care who receive criminal records for what is in reality normal adolescent behaviour are being drawn into a “vicious cycle” of crime, joblessness and imprisonment, that would go on to seriously affect the lives of their own children. Ms Cauthery said: “Many of the young people we see coming to court have never been in trouble before going into care. These young people are often charged with offences that have occurred within the care home, including damage (e.g. to a door, window, or crockery) and assault (often to one of the care home staff involving pushing and shoving). This behaviour is mostly at the lower end of offending, and in a reasonable family environment would never be dealt with by the police or courts. We worry about these children being criminalised”. She added: “Surely the home has a duty to try to help the young people and find other solutions rather than resorting to the courts for minor offences which, in a normal family environment, would not be thought of as offending behaviour”. She went on to warn that the maltreatment of children in care might be the reason for the “anti-social behaviour” in the first place, which is what classically happens in total institutions when inmates resist and challenge brutal regimes.

Recent high-profile cases when neglect by social workers has seriously contributed to the deaths of children already at serious risk from abusive or drug-addicted parents has created a public mood and climate favourable to the placing into care of even more poor and disadvantaged children, and for many of them an entry route into the penal system. The massive empowerment of social workers in the wake of tragedies like the Baby P case to remove more children into care, often for contentious and contested reasons, makes it reasonable to ask the question if many of these children actually face even greater abuse and the risk of destroyed lives by being placed INTO care.

There is clearly a greater propensity on the part of staff supervising the behaviour of children in care to view any non-conformist or disruptive behaviour on the part of such children as potentially criminal and therefore requiring intervention by the police and courts at the earliest opportunity, which also absolves such staff of the responsibility of working closely and consistently with young people in dealing with such behaviour in an emotionally supportive setting. How much easier to just offload such “difficult” children onto the courts and Young Offender System, where an awful self-fulfilling prophecy then takes place along with the process of criminalisation and institutionalisation. Ultimately, the wider society reaps the cost and consequences of this abandonment of vulnerable children to the Criminal Justice System.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
June 2012

New report documents systematic abuse of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention

March 22, 2012 Electronic Intifada

Israeli forces arrest and detain four youth near Beit Ommar, January 2011.

(Palestine Solidarity Project)

Since 1967, Palestinians from the West Bank have been living under Israeli military law and prosecuted in military courts. The United Nations (UN) estimates that during the last 44 years, around 726,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been prosecuted and detained under these emergency laws. In the past 11 years alone, around 7,500 children, some as young as 12 years, are estimated to have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned within this system. This averages out at between 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children, each and every day.

A new, important yet disturbing report published on Tuesday by Defence for Children International - Palestine section has found that Israel’s routine arrests, detentions, interrogations, abuses and torture of Palestinian children are in breach of various UN and international laws, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention against Torture, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all of which have been ratified by Israel.

Based on the testimonies of more than 300 children interviewed between 2008 and 2012, DCI-Palestine’s report states in the summary that “there is a systematic pattern of ill-treatment, and in some cases torture, of children held in the military detention system, with the majority of the abuse occurring during the first 48 hours.” 3 of the 311 children who provided testimonies were arrested while they under 11 years old, but the majority of the children interviewed were detained while they were 16 and 17 years old.

According to the report, 95 percent of the children interviewed stated that their hands had been tied during interrogation, 90 percent had been blindfolded, 75 percent reported physical violence used against them, 33 percent had been strip-searched, and 29 stated they had been shown and/or forced to sign documents — including confessions — written in Hebrew, with no translation or translators available.

12 percent of the children had been put into solitary confinement.

DCI-Palestine also reported that majority (60 percent) of Palestinian children testified that they had been arrested by heavily-armed Israeli forces who snatched them from their homes between midnight and 5am, and then taken to an “unknown location for interrogation.”

The report adds:

The arrest and transfer process is often accompanied by verbal abuse and humiliation, threats as well as physical violence. Hours later the children find themselves in an interrogation room, alone, sleep deprived, bruised and scared. Unlike Israeli children living in settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian children are not accompanied by a parent and are generally interrogated without the benefit of legal advice, or being informed of their right to silence.

… Within eight days of their arrest, the children are brought in chains to a military court where, in most cases, they will see a lawyer and their parents for the first time. Although many children maintain their innocence, in the end at least 90 percent will plead guilty, as this is the quickest way out of a system that denies children bail in 87 percent of cases. Within days of their arrest, nearly two-thirds of the children are transferred to prisons inside Israel in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits such transfers. The practical consequences of this is that many children receive either limited, or no family visits, due to freedom of movement restrictions and the time it takes to issue a permit to visit the prisons.

… Out of 311 testimonies, no child was accompanied by a lawyer during their interrogation, and only two children (0.6 percent) were accompanied by a parent. This is significant because third-party scrutiny of the methods of interrogation can be an effective measure to limit the use of torture, illtreatment and other coercive techniques during questioning.

DCI-Palestine’s report also includes in-depth testimonies from some of the Palestinian children, interviews with medical and psychological experts, and testimonies from former Israeli soldiers — now with the group Breaking the Silence — who participated in the arrest and interrogation of children.