Following up on a previous Boing Boing post about reports of prisoner abuse in Louisiana during the post-Katrina crisis:
Lawyers for inmates there say prison guards abused some of the nearly 8,000 prisoners evacuated from flooded cells.
The allegations are contained in affidavits filed by lawyers who have interviewed thousands of inmates in recent weeks. The complaints include accusations that some guards left prisoners locked in their cells while floodwaters rose to their necks, and that others engaged in regular beatings and other abuse.
The lawyers also estimate that as many as 2,000 people arrested for minor crimes just before the hurricane are still in prison five weeks later. They said that under normal circumstances, such low-level offenders would have seen a judge and been released within days. State and local officials say flooding has destroyed much of the court system and legal records in New Orleans.
On Friday, lawyers for the inmates filed papers requesting that the federal Department of Justice immediately seize control of a temporary holding facility in Jena, La., where more than two dozen inmates have complained of beatings, racial slurs and sexual taunts.
(…) Guards used racial slurs, forced prisoners to get up on tables and "hop like bunnies" and threatened to force them to perform sex acts on guards, the affidavits said. The lawyers said that prisoners showed bruises, cuts and chipped teeth that were consistent with their accounts of beatings.
Link to New York Times story.
Related previous post:
Katrina roundup, 09/24/05
