Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Le prigioni del "Faro della libertà"

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0304/p09s01-cogn.html
If US Plays Global Prison Ratings Game, It Ought To Play By Its Own
Rules
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON - The US State Department issued its annual review of human
rights around the world last week - grading each nation on its
performances in a number of categories.
Only one country escaped scrutiny: the US itself.
While monitoring human rights and holding other countries accountable
is a valid and valuable exercise, there is something disquieting about
the US earnestly preaching to countries like Iceland and New Zealand
while completely ignoring its own practices.
One of the areas the report monitors is the functioning of prison
systems. So we had the bizarre spectacle of a nation that incarcerates
2.2 million people - one-quarter of all the world's prisoners -
casting a baleful eye over Iceland, which has a grand total of 110
people incarcerated. Sixteen prison cells in Iceland have no toilets,
the report noted with stern disapproval.
New Zealand deserves even more criticism, according to the report, for
imprisoning a disproportionate number of the indigenous Maori
minority. Maori make up 15 percent of the general population, but 50
percent of the prison population. Yet the US has the same problem
right here at home: Prison and jail populations are 40 percent black,
while African-Americans account for just 12 percent of the total
population.
New Zealand also has a handful of inmate assaults each year. In
California prisons, alone, there were 11,527 such assaults in 2001,
and 13 resulted in fatalities. New Zealand had one prison suicide in
2003. The US doesn't even track such data. But a Louisville Courier
Journal investigation in 2002, for example, found at least 17 suicides
in Kentucky jails during the previous 30 months.
By standing in its own glass house while hurling rocks at others, the
US runs the risk of being seen as self-righteous and hypocritical.
Americans like to think of themselves as a moral example to the world
when it comes to human rights, but clearly much of the world does not
see the US that way at all.
The US incarceration rate as a proportion of the population is 5 to 10
times as great as that of other democracies.
The State Department report did not address the problem of inmate rape
or controversial policies involving solitary confinement in New
Zealand and Iceland. Indeed, perhaps these are rare in either country
- but these constitute two of America's most pressing corrections
system controversies. (Most authorities believe that in American
prisons thousands of men and women are raped each year, and President
Bush signed a congressional act last year mandating that the
Department of Justice begin studying the issue. The US also has at
least 20,000 prisoners in isolation, according to a 2002 Human Rights
Watch report, and most states and the federal prison system operate at
least one high-tech, high-security prison where inmates are kept in
continuous solitary confinement for months or years.)
Of course, the US prison system is far from the worst in the world,
but it is the largest. Human rights groups estimate that up to 11,000
prisoners die annually in Russian prisons, mostly as a result of poor
sanitation and lack of medical care. Abuse and rape also are said to
be endemic. Conditions in Chinese prisons are also frequently harsh
and degrading. Detainees are kept in overcrowded cells with poor
sanitation and lack access to proper medical care and often even to
adequate food.
However, to say that the US is better than Russia and China in such
matters misses the point. As the introduction to the State Department
report proclaims: "Promoting respect for universal human rights is a
central dimension of US foreign policy. It is a commitment inspired by
our country's founding values and our enduring strategic interests. As
history has repeatedly shown, human rights abuses are everybody's
concern. It is a delusion to believe that we can ignore depredations
against our fellow human beings or insulate ourselves from the
negative consequences of tyranny."
These are fine and stirring words. But if the US wants others to take
it seriously, Americans also need to take a long, hard look in the
mirror, and then start fixing things at home. Only then will their
words to the rest of the world carry conviction.
. Alan Elsner is a national news correspondent for Reuters and author
of the new book, 'Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's
Prisons.' The views expressed here are his own, not those of his
employer.

 in Kentucky jails during the previous 30 months.
#_ La violenza fisica e`risultato molto piu`di ubbriachezza e rivalita`tra
polinesiani che non coi pakea, ma esiste molta violenza sessuale(tanta)
neanche denunciata o esposta completamente, sia nella casa che al di
fuori....e`un fatto raccapricciante la violenza su bambini , perfino neonati
!!! Materale psichiatrico ? Mahh!
[CUT]
#_Tralascio tutto il resto anche perche` mi trovo un po' in Tilt colla Luna
Piena, sono online da troppo e voglio farmi un'altra pennichella.
Spero di non essere stato noioso e soprattutto senza senso.
Ad un'altra occasione.
Giano


Rieccomi qua,
Per chi fosse interessato alla cultura Maori, un buon Portale e`questo:
http://www.aotearoa.maori.nz/tomokanga/