The video belows shows highlights of the press conference held on Friday, December 4, 2009 at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. Five families whose loved ones were killed in prison, their attorneys, five clergymen, a former CDCr Forensic Psychologist and others spoke out about the death toll taking place in the prisons beneath the radar of most media.
After you view it, the last thing you will be thinking about is clicking on the stars to rate it, but that's how You Tube works, the video with the most star ratings gets moved to the top of the viewing selections, so please do it so that more people can see these victims of the crisis.
There is almost a total lack of accountability for torturing and killing a state prisoner except for the rare victory of a lawsuit. The parents of Joseph Sullivan were awarded $475,000 in damages for the wrongful death of their son Joseph at Chuckawalla Prison. That is no compensation at all for the loss of a loved one through medical neglect and torture.
The full video of all the speakers will be in the newsblaze.com channel soon, this one has highlights only.
The overcrowding has caused deliberate indifference and medical neglect to be a pattern which results in the death of a prisoner every day. The media is banned, so the public cannot see this death toll visibly. But the three judge panel in the Coleman-Plata case knows of this death toll, and it is imperative that prisoner releases begin right now. None of the people who have been killed had a death sentence.
Attorneys Abraham Goldman and David Springfield successfully litigated the Sullivan case. They have made an especially compelling statement here.
http://www.1union1.com/Dec4_springfield.html
I will be adding more remarks from the speakers to this article as they are submitted.
Comments
Solution: Tell your little criminal to stop breaking the law. Prison should be "HELL."
It's against state and federal law to make the prisons "hell." No matter how hard anyone tries, it is impossible to punish a mentally ill person into being well. They shouldn't be in prison at all, but in more healing places. This would uplift all of society. Jerry Brown needs to prosecute those breaking the laws surrounding the treatment of prisoners, otherwise, he's the criminal
Solution: Accountability of state employees who murder and immediate release of the 80,000 non-violent prisoners who should never have been incarcerated in the first place.
youtube.com/watch?v=6gv1fRkTtu4
add the www.
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After viewing the video, please go to it directly on You
Tube and click the stars to rate it so that we can get the word out that there is a serious death toll taking place in prisons. Lives depend on it.
You don't have to be related to a prisoner to be outraged by lawlessness in prisons or the violation of the Constitution, which sets limits on the power of government. The deprivation of liberty is a punishment authorized by law. The denial of life-sustaining treatment violates the law. The needless infliction of pain by agents of the government violates the law. It's past time that correctional authorities ferret out those in their ranks that bring their profession into disrepute and cost taxpayers 10's of millions in settlements and verdicts.
And for people who don't think prison is punitive enough, it's long past time to get a clue. If you care, visit a prison. I promise, afterward, you won't want to trade your freedom for three hots and a cot. And you might have greater respect for those correctional officers who risk life and limb to keep our communities safe, as well as the prisoners they confine and the families who ache with concern for their incarcerated loved ones.
The prison staff now hold Kangaroo Courts inside the prison walls to force medicate prisoners. These Administrative Law Judges are hired by the prisons. The prison psychologist are hired by the prison. The "Keyhea Law" is totally violated by the prison. There is no formal plan of treatment with psychotropic medications. If the prisoner does not have a psychotic condition to warrant these medications. The prisoner will go totally nuts on these drugs, and they will have a life time of adverse medical conditions. This sounds like what Hitler did during World War II. They ran experiments on prisoners. This is happening in the California prisons. We need to re-think our punishment drug treatment.
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