The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission recently came out with a report that found inmates reported being sexually abused by their captors more than other inmates.

More prisoners reported abuse by staff than abuse by other prisoners: 2.9 percent of respondents compared with about 2 percent. (Some prisoners reported abuse by other inmates and staff.)

It also found that "Many victims cannot safely and easily report sexual abuse, and those who speak out often do so to no avail."

Air Force veteran Tom Cahill, who was arrested and detained for just a single night in a San Antonio jail, recalled the lasting effects of being gang-raped and beaten by other inmates. “I’ve been hospitalized more times than I can count and I didn’t pay for those hospitalizations, the tax payers paid. My career as a journalist and photographer was completely derailed. . . . For the past two decades, I’ve received a non-service connected security pension from the Veteran’s Administration at the cost of about $200,000 in connection with the only major trauma I’ve ever suffered, the rape.”

As someone who has received letters from inmates about abuse in prison, expressing private pain as well as frustration at systemic problems, I have been interested in this topic for a long time. When I was working in Nashville, I wrote a story about the question of giving inmates access to condoms since the prevalence of HIV and other diseases are higher in prisons than the general population -- and given the fact that 95 percent of inmates will eventually return to the community. The state said that to allow condoms would be to condone sexual acts, which are banned by prison policy. I'm not sure what the rules are like here.

Pierce County corrections officers honored the memory of one of their former coworkers Friday with a graduation gift to his daughter.

The gift of $4,600 was presented to Sarah McKeown during an event Friday afternoon at the Pierce County Jail.

McKeown's father, 38-year-old Tom McKeown, died in a fishing accident on the Nisqually River in September 2004. He'd been among about 10 fishermen casting along the bank when he stepped off a hidden drop-off near the center of the river. His waders apparently filled with water, pulling him under.

At the time, Sarah was 13. She said she would "make her father proud," according to corrections officers.

Here's a write up about the graduation gift from Pierce County corrections Capt. Martha Karr:

The generous staff of Pierce County Corrections raised a total of $4,600.00 for Sarah's graduation gift! This was truly a remarkable show of compassion and support for this young lady. When Corrections Officer Tom McKeown died in his fishing accident in 2004, Sarah at age 13 gave an emotional speech that she would "make her father proud". She accomplished this with graduating with honors, being the schools ASB President, and being accepted at Georgetown University.

She will be arriving this Friday at noon with her mother Sun Ho. We will be hosting a ceremony in the main jail staff dining at noon to present the graduation gift and enjoy cake and coffee. They will then be given a tour of the jail to see where Sarah's father and Sun Ho's husband Tom worked and to meet many of his past co-workers.

I came across the following in a federal prisoner lawsuit today and couldn't help thinking of Linda Blair in The Exorcist:

He experiences very difficult breathing, often times having to turn his neck 180 degrees to inhale, accompanied by great pain and discomfort.

Sadly, no photos of the feat were included.

There are no riots going on at the Northwest Detention Center on the Tacoma Tideflats.

A cluster of articles at the Tacoma Website for Students for a Democratic Society appear to be an April Fool's gag. The site frequently features news about the detention center, which groups associated with the site have opposed for various reasons, including human rights and environmental concerns.

The giveaways: quotes from "Tiffany Lizealot," supposedly a spokeswoman for the GEO Group, the private company that runs the facility. (Lies a lot, get it?)

Also: it also quotes "barista Lorie Dankers" -- Lori Dankers (no e) is a spokeswoman for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She is frequently quoted in real stories about the detention center.

Here's the post:

Riot at NWDC*
Posted April 1st, 2009 by Anonymous
in

*SDS is unable to confirm the accuracy of this post as of 7:35am*

Jesus Cervantes-Corona
AFD Newswire
TACOMA. WA
On April 1st, some 1,200 detainees staged an uprising at the privately run Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, to demand better medical treatment after a detainee died at the facility, allegedly of natural causes. The Northwest Detention Center has been functioning since 2004 and is owned and operated by the GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, Florida, under contract with the federal government.

=> Read more!

Here's a link to the report that underlies my story on a near-escape from McNeil Island prison in December.

The 13-page document shows how offender Donald Dravis made it onto the outbound ferry by telling a corrections officer he was a worker who had left his ID in his truck.

An outside review team found that escape protocols weren't followed and raised questions about a use-of-force incident that happened once they had Dravis back in custody -- In the words of the report: "Upon being escorted into the gate house, Offender Dravis was placed against staff mailboxes while escorting officers awaited instructions from the Lieutenant and Shift Sergeant. Offender Dravis tensed and shifted his weight at which time he was escorted to the ground."

No decision about staff discipline have been made.

Here's the story by the Associated Press. A link to the full report is at the bottom.

By RACHEL LA CORTE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Washington ranks near the bottom in the country for the number of people it incarcerates, but like many states, it's having to find ways to pay for a steadily growing number of people on probation and parole.

One in 30 adults is under correctional control in the state, according to a report released Monday by The Pew Center on the States.

With more than 165,000 people either incarcerated or on parole or probation, Washington state ranks 17 out of all the states. But Washington ranks 44th for the people it puts behind bars - just over 32,000 are incarcerated in either prison or jail.

The vast majority are either on probation or parole - more than 133,000, or about one in 37 people, ranking the state 12th in the nation.

=> Read more!

Here's the press release from the state Department of Corrections:

McNeil Island Corrections Center Passes Audit

OLYMPIA – The McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) in Steilacoom scored 100 percent on mandatory standards and 99.3 percent on non-mandatory standards in an American Correctional Association (ACA) accreditation audit that took place Jan. 26-28.

Located in Alexandria, Va., ACA is the only national organization that accredits correctional facilities.  ACA standards are considered the benchmark for the effective operation of professional correctional systems.

Prisons Director Dick Morgan said the high scores affirmed the ability of MICC employees to balance the delivery of comprehensive services to offenders with maintaining prison security.

“ACA audits look at every aspect of a prison’s operations,” said Morgan. “The employees at MICC work hard every day to ensure this facility is well run and safe for the public, our staff and offenders.”

The accreditation process includes a tour by certified ACA auditors who look at the quality and adequacy of the facility’s programs, activities and services as well the responses to any violent incidents that have occurred. In addition, employees and offenders are interviewed to obtain varied perspectives of the facility’s operations and quality of life. 

A vote by an ACA panel on full accreditation for the prison is expected in the spring.

Ten of DOC’s 15 prisons have received ACA accreditation to date.

The state Department of Corrections is investigating how an inmate at McNeil Island Corrections Center was able to escape briefly Monday.

Donald A. Dravis Jr., 43, was found on a ferry docked at McNeil Island on Monday night and was taken into custody without incident, agency spokesman Chad Lewis reported today. The ferry was later able to leave the dock.

Dravis was handcuffed and returned to the prison for a medical evaluation and detainment. He's in segregation, Lewis said.

Officials were reviewing how Dravis was able to get out of the secure prison. He was out for a matter of minutes.

"Prison officials are conducting a review to determine how Dravis made it to the dock, which is a few hundred yards from the main prison entrance," Lewis reported in a press release.

Inmate movement was suspended inside the prison after the escape to see if anyone else had gotten out. All other inmates were accounted for.

Dravis is serving time on convictions for first-degree and second-degree child molestation. His prison sentence is up in June 2012, though (before Monday's incident) he could get out as early as July 2011, depending on the amount of good time he's earned, Lewis said.

Dravis could face additional penalties if he's found guilty of trying to escape.

"If he is found guilty by a DOC hearings officer of attempting to escape, some or all 'good time' he has earned could be taken away," Lewis said.

Came across this interesting tidbit among my prison mail today.

A McNeil Island inmate writes:

Tonight we roared when Obama sent my $5 donation back saying, "We accept no money from prisoners!"

Plywood covered four of the picture windows in the Wells Fargo home mortgage office in Old Town Tacoma on Sunday. Inside a woman with a purple vacuum strapped to her back sucked shards from the carpet.

The vandalism of the storefront at 2215 N. 30th St. appears to be part of a larger social protest rather than a random act of mischief.

Vandals have targeted the San Francisco-based financial services company’s offices and ATMs in several states in opposition to its stake in The GEO Group – a private company that operates prisons including the Northwest Detention Center, a federal immigration lockup on the Tacoma Tideflats.

The News Tribune received an e-mail Saturday, claiming the weekend attack was “done in solidarity with the 13 people recently detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Shelton, WA and the people recently detained in San Francisco, CA.” It’s not clear if any other local branches were hit, but the e-mail only mentioned one.

“They are blinded by their greed and will allow the most dreadful things to arise in their quest for profit,” the e-mail continued. “... While the bankers count their money, the jailers in the detention center treat the people inside like subhumans.” (The full e-mail is posted after the jump.)

Attempts to reach officials with Wells Fargo and GEO Group’s corporate offices Sunday were not successful. Tacoma police took a phone report on the incident, spokesman Mark Fulghum said.

Wells Fargo owns 8 percent of GEO Group’s stock, making it the third largest shareholder, according to federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings and fatpitch.biz, a Web site that compiles stock ownership information.

Wells Fargo held more than $51 million in GEO Group stock in its Advantage Small Cap Value fund at the end of September, according to the bank's Web site.

In July, a study – released by the International Human Rights Clinic at Seattle University’s law school and the Seattle-based group OneAmerica, With Justice for All – alleged mistreatment at the Tacoma facility ranging from excessive strip searches and overcrowding to a lack of due process, the Associated Press reported.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called the report “a work of fiction.”

Throughout the summer vandals have smashed windows, spray painted polemics and destroyed cash machines at Wells Fargo branches in California, Oregon and Washington, according to the September/October issue of Earth First!

The article says a branch in Tacoma was hit June 10 and “stop prisons” was spray painted on the wall. An independent media Web site also listed an August attack in Minneapolis.

=> Read more!

This Wall Street Journal article looks at how tins of mackerel are being used as currency at some prisons now that cigarette bans are in place across much of the country.

When Larry Levine helped prepare divorce papers for a client a few years ago, he got paid in mackerel. Once the case ended, he says, "I had a stack of macks."

Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California's Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel -- the "mack" in prison lingo -- was the standard currency.

"It's the coin of the realm," says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish.

In today's paper I had an article about McNeil Island prison being fined $28,400 for exposing inmate workers and employees to asbestos-laden dust because proper precautions weren't taken.

I just spoke to Tom Hili, one of the certified asbestos supervisors mentioned in a Department of Labor and Industries report on the problems. He was in training and unavailable for comment at the time the story was written.

According to Hili, his involvement with the project was very minor. After the tile was ripped up, he brought a glue product to put on it to prevent the spread of asbestos fibers and put sealed bags containing the tiles into a storage closet.

He said he was never interviewed by L&I about the projects because he "really wasn't involved" in them.