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UPDATE: 06/27/2012 – The Prison Law Office (PLO), Berkeley represented the prisoners of California. PLO pointed me in the direction of this full gallery of images that were available to defense and prosecution teams.
On May 23rd, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmed – with a 5-4 majority – a federal court order requiring California to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of design capacity. California has two years to shrink the number of prisoners by more than 33,000. California currently has 143,335 prisoners, which is still significantly less than the 166,000+ the state housed at its peak five years ago.
Brown vs. Plata (formerly Schwarzenegger vs. Plata) was a landmark case in U.S. legal history and, I would hesitate a guess, the largest release program of convicted individuals ever enacted. And it is the right decision.
You can download the full SCOTUS decision as well as other documents from the case at SCOTUSblog.
I want to draw attention to one particular aspect of the ruling: Justice Kennedy’s inclusion of photographs in the appendix.
Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, joined by justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Scalia wrote a dissent joined by Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice Roberts.
Two of the photographs Kennedy included show prisoners being housed in a gymnasium. These are open dorms and clearly unsuitable for such numbers. The lawsuit however, was centred on standards of medical care; it was stresses of overcrowding that led to the drop in healthcare standards to the point of “cruel and unusual punishment” and the associated violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Justice Kennedy in a sincere way was trying to illustrate a point. An editorial at The New York Times is on board:
Looking at the photos, there should be no doubt that the conditions violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
That’s a bit prescriptive for me but I’ll forgo that.
The images are quite unremarkable inasmuch as they are the norm. News media has shown images from California prisons like these for years. So much so, the California Department of Corrections provided a gallery of official “Prison Overcrowding Photos” (now with added fisheye lens!)
In 2006, Max Whittaker photographed overcrowded gymnasiums at Folsom prison. In 2007, Justin Sullivan went to Mule Creek State Prison. After the verdict, Gary Friedman‘s photo gallery ran in the LA Times.
The third picture (below) shows something a little different. It depicts the apparatus of inadequate care. According to the Court’s opinion: ‘Prisoners in California with serious mental illness do not receive minimal, adequate care. Because of a shortage of treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets. A psychiatric expert reported observing an inmate who had been held in such a cage for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic. Prison officials explained they had “‘no place to put him.’”
It’s impossible to say what sort of reaction publication and underlining of these three images means for anyone reading-up on the case. Dahlia Lithwick for Slate asks Do photographs of California’s overcrowded prisons belong in a Supreme Court decision about those prisons?:
“Whether those photos will change anyone’s mind about the morality of prison overcrowding is open to debate. Whether they should may be the more important, and more interesting, question.” Lithwick wonders, “Should the court be using visual aids to prompt emotional responses or be inviting citizen fact-finding in the first place?” The weakness of this question is in its presumption that it is only through an emotional reaction that a viewer will conclude make-shift open dormitories and cages are unacceptable. Surely, logic dictates that these are not beneficial management strategies, let alone conducive to rehabilitation.
Photographs of overcrowded prisons in California have been available for a long time for anyone who cared to search. These three are representative of the failed system, and quite honesty Kennedy had thousands to choose from.
For a full round up of the ruling visit the phenomenal Prison Law Blog.
UPDATED: 06.12.2011
Previously, I was under the impression that only three photographs were used in the Brown vs. Plata deliberations, but according to Mother Jones, the two images below were also items of the appendix.
Poor positional play confounded by an absence of pace meant I found myself on the wrong side of a challenge for a soccer ball on Sunday morning. I won the ball, but didn’t stay on my feet. My right hand met the ground before my body.
Twenty-four hours later, with discomfort and swelling unabated, I chose to visit the ER to find out what the unglamourous tumble meant for my right wrist. On my way out the door, predicting a long wait at the hospital, I grabbed Trevor Paglen & A. C. Thompson’s book Torture Taxi (2006).
Morning Commute (Gold Coast Terminal), Las Vegas, NV, Distance ~ 1 mile, 6:26 a.m. © Trevor Paglen
I’ve talked about Trevor Paglen’s work before (albeit inadequately), and still maintain the best education on Paglen’s work is his Google lecture from 2009.
Paglen and Thompson, through an arduous but publicly-available paper trail, uncover the use of civilian aircraft in the Bush administration’s Extraordinary Rendition Program. Over 200 terror suspects were moved around the globe, not to mention the staff, transport teams, interrogators and American torturers. That’s a big operation. So while best attempts were made to keep is secret, Paglen and Thompson found and depicted its traces.
Unmarked 737 at “Gold Coast” Terminal Las Vegas, NV. Distance ~ 1 mile 10:44 p.m. © Trevor Paglen
For me, the surprising thing was that this activity was, as Paglen phrases it, “hidden in plain site”. Military aircraft must gain prior clearance before entering another nation’s airspace, whereas civilian aircraft need not satisfy the same protocols. Also shocking is the fact that the CIA out-sourced it’s torture to convenient and “friendly” nations whose poor human rights records allowed for the application of unrestrained torture methods.
The CIA preferred Morocco and Mubarek’s Egypt to host and brutalise their human cargo.
In one passage, Paglen describes a particularly sadistic regime of torture in which Moroccan interrogators armed with scalpels visited and revisited Binyam Mohammed’s penis at two week intervals:
On the 21st of January, 2004, the Moroccans told Mohammad he was going home. […] Mohammad heard the sound of an airplane, then of men speaking American-accented English. As they had done in Pakistan, the American’s stripped Mohammad’s blindfold and clothes off, and Mohammad saw that he was again surrounded by black clad Americans wearing face-masks. ‘There was a white female with glasses’, he recalled, ‘she took the pictures. One of the soldiers held my penis and she took the pictures. This took awhile, maybe half an hour. She was one of the few Americans that ever showed my any sympathy. She was about 5’6”, short, blue eyes. When she saw the injuries I had, she gasped. She said, “Oh my God, look at that,” then all her mates looked at what she was pointing at and I could see the shock and horror in her eyes.” But Mohammad wasn’t going home. The Americans were taking him to Afghanistan.
Mohammad suffered for eighteen months in Morocco and the same period in Afghanistan at the hands of America’s contractors of violence. Since he was picked up off the street in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002, Mohammed was transported across the globe through multiple jurisdictions and tortured to within inches of his life countless times. Your tax dollars at work.
In May 2011, the U.S. Supreme court rejected the case of Binyam Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a lawsuit brought by Mohammed and four other victims of the rendition program against Jeppesen a subsidiary of Boeing Aircraft. The plaintiffs claimed that Jeppesen provided the transportation that brought them to their respective places of torture.
The decision leaves standing a federal appeals court ruling upholding the “state secrets'” privilege claimed by both the Bush and Obama administrations to prevent to testimony in matters regarding national security.
A defeat for human rights and the legitimacy of the law as it exists.
A man left with only two teeth in his lower jaw after being tortured with an electric truncheon, Chad, Africa, year unknown. Photograph: Courtesy Hermann Vogel
Paglen and Thompson interweave the horrific accounts of prisoner’s experiences with the mundane logistics of CIA front companies scheduling aeroplanes.
As I waited for the orthopedic’s analysis of my X-ray images, it was quite clear my injury, whatever it was, was is inconsequential.
Last year, I came across Brogdon, Vogel, and McDowell’s A Radiologic Atlas of Abuse, Torture, Terrorism, and Inflicted Trauma. This is a book centred on specialised imaging and imagery of political violence; it applies to the most pressing of basic global human rights and yet it is unlikely to be used or acquired by a photo enthusiast. The A Radiologic Atlas of Abuse, Torture, Terrorism, and Inflicted Trauma is an encyclopedia for use by medical and legal professionals likely involved in the investigation of war crimes or domestic abuse.
From the summary:
‘The results of aggression against humans can be hideously obvious, but may also be entirely concealed from casual inspection. Often […] only radiologic exploration of the inner recesses of the body can reveal the evidence of such violence. Victims of aggression range from the tiniest infant to entire populations. Hopefully you will never encounter every situation covered in this book. However, should you come across any, you will want a copy within reach.’
As I read Paglen’s horrific accounts of torture, it occurred to me a machine had just peered through my lower arm and a doctor was about to describe the exact nature of my injury. I wondered about the permanent marks left inside the tissues of torture victims and I wondered about the chances of these injuries ever being documented and, consequently, seen.
As with the extraordinary rendition program, one presumes the visual evidence will always be hidden, suppressed. Or non-existent.
Hermann Vogel, co-author of A Radiologic Atlas of Abuse, Torture, Terrorism, and Inflicted Trauma, has considered similar issues. Thirty years ago, Vogel began collecting x-rays of torture injuries. His collection now numbers 120 X-ray images. Vogel explains:
“X-rays reveal what the naked eye cannot see. A forensic investigation will reveal fractures, foreign objects and needles, but x-rays provide plausibility. Does the story match the pattern of injury? Does the age of the injury correlate with the time-span of when the torture occurred? Does the torture method correspond with the region, organisation, military or militia responsible?”
“In some countries, X-rays can be used as evidence in court and a few of my X-rays have helped prove that torture has occurred. They are also increasingly being considered as part of the [political] asylum process.”
The world saw the digital photographs made by soldiers asked to perform as prison guards at Abu Ghraib, but this was only a single prison (and the most audacious at that) operated by American forces in the global war on terror. Given that only lowly operatives were prosecuted for that shit-show, imagine what scientific X-ray images and the political will could achieve if they were delivered to a international court of law. And imagine George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee in the dock.
Sometimes, images with no author carry the most power.
But let’s not be blind. Torture in our name continues today. Vogel surmises:
“I can imagine that no one has access to x-rays from the American detention camps like Abu Ghraib, although I would also assume that American torture methods are so advanced now that any injury is undetectable. Pure psychological torture, which includes months of solitary confinement and days of sleep deprivation, is very popular worldwide because it does not leave behind any physical traces. Torturers have nothing to fear if nothing can be proved.”
There are some documentary photographers, namely Gilles Peress, motivated in their work by the prospect of their photographs doubling as evidence. Compared to Vogel’s collection of images, and compared to the thousands of X-rays that were never made of torture victims in America’s imperialist wars, this expected influence of their photographs is optimistic in the extreme.
FOOTNOTE: A BLOGGING COLLABORATION
This post was transcribed by Aline Smithson over Skype. During my recovery, we’ll collaborate once a week for six weeks on extended posts. This is done in the interets of shared learning and proof that the photo-blogging community is alive, strong and charitable. Thanks Aline!
Screengrab: Pete and Aline at work.
Ted Kaczynski’s Sunglasses. © U.S. Marshals
It may well have been one of the weirdest auctions in American history. Last month, courts order federal authorities to auction off Ted Kaczynski’s belongings in order to raise money for his victims. The auction closed Thursday 2nd June.
Kaczynski, dubbed the Unabomber, pleaded guilty in 1998 to a 20-year spree of bombings that killed three people and wounded 23.
U.S. Marshals used Flickr to post 51 images of the items included in the macabre auction — the first time the site has been used by U.S. Marshals for a sale — to presumably both reach out to and assist potential buyers.
In the press release, U.S. Marshals explained,”We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life. The proceeds will go to his victims.”
David Kravets writes for Threat Level blog, “Kaczynski’s so-called “manifesto” in which he railed against technology, sold for $20,053. In all, the auction raised more than $232,000. ”
Found via the liberator magazine.
P.S. The U.S. Marshals also have auctions of camera equipment.
© David Maisel, from the series Library of Dust
A new database should help infamous cremated remains find their way back into the possession of family members.
David Maisel‘s Library of Dust is well-known by now. Maisel got early access to a basement of decaying copper cans that hold the cremains of nearly 3,500 former mental institution patients who lived and died – and remained unknown and/or unclaimed – at Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital.
Maisel’s images reflected the keen interest the story garnered across the US (see Oregon’s Forgotten Hospital, Oregonian and Long-forgotten Remains of Oregon’s Mentally Ill, New York Times).
I placed Maisel’s work in the context of a longer visual history of the institution.
Last month, Oregon authorities – pushed by a committed volunteer Don Whetsell – announced a new venture to locate surviving families. The Los Angeles Times reports:
“Officials now hope that the launch this year of an online database detailing the 3,476 canisters yet to be claimed will help other relatives reunite, or unite for the first time.”
Photojournalist Vance Jacobs talks about teaching a workshop in a maximum security prison in Medellin, Colombia.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY
In November 2009, I described Jacobs’ prison workshop as an exercise in self-documentation overturning stereotypes and the ‘exotic fetish’.
Stephanie De Leng‘s Inside HMP Manchester is a very low-key but intriguing exhibition (by appointment only) currently on in Liverpool.
De Leng says:
“I have been allowed inside HM Prison Manchester, formerly known as Strangeways, to document its workings, staff, and prisoners who are willing. This is a delicate project built on trust, and follows in the wake of a TV documentary in the coming months. It is the first time that a photographer or camera crew have been allowed inside this prison since the 1990 riots. A lot has changed since then in a very positive way, and for my part I intend to document it honestly, and not in a grim trying to dish the dirt way. There is a lot of good to say, or show in my case.”
So far, de Leng – trying to avoid “bland corporate” style portraits – has focused on photographing the staff. She hopes to slowly bring more and more images of the prison to wider audiences over a period of time. Softly, softly. I’m intrigued.
Officer Alan Blocksidge, Butler Trust winner and MBE for his work rehabilitating drug addicts within HM Prison Manchester. Photo Credit: Stephanie de Leng
Inside HMP Manchester
De Leng’s photographs will be on show at Baltic Creative as part of LOOK2011, the inaugural Liverpool Photography Festival based around the theme “Is Seeing Believing?”
LOOK2011 says:
“It has been 21 years since the ‘Strangeways’ Prison riot, the 26 day roof top protest that changed the face of the prison system. The riot in April 1990 resulted in the partial destruction of the old Victorian wings and the injury of 147 prison officers and 47 prisoners. The disturbance inspired copycat riots at a number of other prisons, including HMP Bristol and HMP Dartmoor. A five-month public enquiry ensued, resulting in The Woolf Report which served as an ongoing blueprint for the reform of the prison system. ‘Inside HMP Manchester’ is intended to make the viewer set their normal prejudices and assumptions aside, and to look at justice from another angle.”
The exhibition is by appointment only. Except on May 13th, when Baltic Creative will be open between 6 – 9pm for the Light Night. Stephanie de Leng will be present to discuss her works. The Baltic Creative Center, 22 Jordan Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, L1 0BW, UK. 0151 703 2005
STRANGEWAYS ELSEWHERE ON PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY
Former Governor of Strangeways: “Give UK Prisoners the Vote.” And in the US?
If you are in Liverpool over the next couple of months, then you should drop in to any number of the exhibits put by LOOK2011 the inaugural Liverpool Photography Festival.
The theme for the festival is “Is Seeing Believing?” Of particular interest is Confined at the Bluecoat.
Confined is an exploration of the idea of confinement in contemporary life by photographers Juergen Chill, Edmund Clark, John Darwell, Dornith Doherty, Ben Graville, David Maisel and David Moore. Subjects range from imprisonment and detention, the ethical treatment of animals, ecological conservation and the history of psychiatric care.
I have a personal involvement in the show. Exhibitions curator Sara-Jayne Parsons asked me to pen some words for the Confined catalogue. And, after interviewing David Moore about his Paddington Green Police Station series I encouraged him to contact Parsons and together they decided to exhibit the prints. It will be the first time Moore has publicly shown his Paddington Green Police Station photographs.
Unfortunately, I won’t be making it over to the UK soon, but I hope those of you who are in Blighty make it to the exhibition, not to mention all the other LOOK2011 exhibits, lectures and workshops.
Confined is on show at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX, from Fri, 13 May 2011 – Sun, 10 Jul 2011, 10.00 AM – 6.00 PM, Tickets: Free. (Visitor info)
As I have mentioned here, NON-SUFFICIENT FUNDS, an exhibition of prison art by my students is ongoing in Seattle.
Prior to the show, the gallery asked that I try to make some portraits of the artists. I am not a photographer, so I was fortunate enough to secure the expertise of friend and Seattle Times photojournalist Erika Schultz.
The wall on which the portraits and their accompanying bios hung have been incredibly popular among the audience. Erika’s portraits are phenomenally unexpected. In this instance, text and image combine and challenge the damaging stereotypes of prisoners that usually hamper prison reform.
The non-existent genre of “prison photography” just expanded by one project.
PHOTOS AS EMOTIONAL CURRENCY
Not surprisingly, Erika’s portraiture has gripped the attention of the students too. For a US prisoner, sitting for a professional portrait is very, very, very rare. Photographs play a crucial part in the unorthodox family relationships that persist despite prison walls. The students are aware of this and incredibly eager for prints, which I will provide.
You should see more of this project on Erika’s blog.
Prison Photography 