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Sunday, May 09, 2004

Prison abuse in the U.S. 

(via Josh Marshall) NY times columnist Fox Butterfield compares what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq to the routine mistreatment of prisoners here in the U.S. In fact, some of the same people may be responsible:

The man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq.

"Private prison company"? I had no idea these existed. Another wonderful libertarian idea.
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