WHEN it comes to being discriminated against, there is no race, age, gender or girth who gets walloped as much as the prison inmate. Human beings behind bars evoke very little sympathy from the population at large. The consensus is if these low-lifes did the crime, they should do the time -- and experience agony in the process. Prisoner brutality
isn’t just physicalThere are limits, however, to how much inhumanity the public will tolerate. These limits were apparently transcended on Aug. 9 in New York when Abner Louima, picked up for disorderly conduct outside a nightclub, was allegedly beaten and sodomized while in police custody.
Only hardened hearts didn't gasp at the charges: Officers dragged the 30-year-old Haitian immigrant into a bathroom, where one of them pushed the handle of a toilet plunger into Louima's rectum, and then his mouth.
Thousands of incensed New Yorkers marched on the 70th Precinct in Brooklyn to scream their indignation. Mayor Giuliani hammered the precinct commander and two dozen officers with either suspensions, transfers or reductions in duty.
Meanwhile, in Crystal City, Texas, about 60 female inmates from Hawaii are quietly serving their sentences in the south Texas correctional center because of isle prison overcrowding. And if anyone would ask, "Howzit going down there?," one inmate has an answer. She shared it in a letter to Meda Chesney-Lind, a criminologist at the University of Hawaii.
Chesney-Lind and Barbara E. Bloom, a professor at Sonoma State University, co-wrote a May 24 article, "No room at the institution," for the Star-Bulletin's Insight section. Their commentary criticized spending so much money on incarcerating females because most of them aren't a danger to the community.
The co-authors pointed out that, while women comprise less than 10 percent of those arrested for serious crimes, more and more are being jailed nationally, mostly due to "get-tough" policies for drug offenses and prostitution.
A few weeks ago, Chesney-Lind received a letter postmarked "Crystal City, Tex." In part, the note read, "Thank you sincerely for what you wrote. It touched us deeply. My reason for writing is there are 36 of us here in Texas who are eligible for extended furlough, but we can't find a way to return to Hawaii.
"We have children and family in the islands, whom we miss very much. Our children are our bond, and we are not there with them. It tears us apart, especially during weekends when we were allowed visitation in Hawaii.
"We call our families and children, but what makes it sad is -- when their voices are heard, and when they hear our voices -- most of the time on the telephone is spent crying. We desperately miss our kids. We want to be there with them. Can you help us?"
WHY should anyone help them, the jaded majority will respond. These women shouldn't have broken the law in the first place, the finger-waggers will scold. Now they must suffer the consequences: Living in a world that has more compassion for the one-time physical brutality of one individual than for the daily, unrelenting psychological torture of separating parents from their children.
Too bad for them, society says. Their penance is to writhe, although an enlightened director of public safety might be concerned about the effectiveness of such "rehabilitation."
In the meantime, moms and dads on the other side of the bars -- who can readily relate to such parental angst -- try desperately not to empathize.