For the last fortnight, Steve has been cleaning up one of Liverpool’s more troubled estates. The square of land he is clearing was formerly used by prostitutes to entertain clients. The grass has been cut, mattresses, needles, and broken glass cleared. Some of the houses on the estate are boarded up and when the community payback team first visited earlier this year it came with police protection. Today residents don’t have a bad word to say about the offenders and their hard work. ‘They’ve done far more than the council ever did,’ says one.

Steve is making his amends to his own community. He was sentenced by Judge David Fletcher of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre to five weeks’ community service. The judge told him it was that or jail after he was convicted of possession with intent to supply heroin. ‘He’s a fair man,’ reckons Steve.

So, is clearing an overgrown patch of ground making him think twice about his own offending behaviour? ‘Oh yeah,’ Steve replies, perhaps inevitably. ‘It has made me see things in a different light. Before I started I was a dead bad dope head. I don’t even drink or smoke spliff any more.’

Believe Steve or not – and no one is naive about the project’s prospects – a lot has been invested in trying a different approach with minor offenders. So is there any more to ‘community justice’ than forcing our disaffected youth into the 21st-century equivalent of chain gangs?

An unprecedented experiment

The many supporters of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre say community payback is the least interesting thing about the initiative, although the court, which pilots a range of criminal justice initiatives, has a special power to sentence offenders to ‘intensive’ five-days-a-week community payback as opposed to the usual one or two-day schemes.

The court represents an unprecedented experiment in the criminal justice system. Launched in 2005 at a cost of £5.2 million, it covers four local authority wards (Anfield, County, Everton and Kirkdale) with a combined population of around 65,000. Parts of the area have a worklessness rate of up to 70 per cent and more than their share of social problems. The court takes its inspiration from one on the other side of the Atlantic, the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn.

The Red Hook court is credited with contributing to the regeneration of a part of Brooklyn that Life magazine once labelled as one of America’s most ‘crack-infested’ areas. It now has the safest police precinct in Brooklyn. In 2002 the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf visited Red Hook and was suitably impressed. A trip by the then home secretary, David Blunkett, followed and he returned convinced that a new approach was needed.

Three years ago the government’s vision was for a network of ‘problem-solving’ US-style community justice centres tackling offending behaviour but also listening to what communities expect from their courts. North Liverpool is the only court centre built on that model, despite a proliferation of so-called community justice centres that have adoped elements of that approach.

The North Liverpool Community Justice Centre, based in a former secondary school on Boundary Lane in Kirkdale, is designed-for-purpose and has none of the air and smell of neglect that pervades typical magistrates’ courts. The courtroom is all pale pines and shiny chromes and there is a smart glass-walled interview room outside. Upstairs there is a modern open plan admin office with a Citizens Advice Bureau.

The centre is close to the heart of the community that it seeks to serve and a ten-minute walk from the troubled Fountains Court. There are some 60 staff, including all the main support services (such as probation officers, Citizens Advice, drug treatment officers and so on) on site. This means offenders’ cases are dealt with without delay and their other needs, from addiction treatments to housing benefit claims, can be dealt with promptly.

Crucially, one judge, David Fletcher, presides over all cases. His court sits as magistrates’ court, youth court and crown court. Fletcher has special sentencing review powers under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which enable him to keep tabs on the offenders’ rehabilitation by regularly reviewing community sentences.

Converts and sceptics

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, has been to both Liverpool and New York. A sceptic at first, she’s now a convert. Crook calls the approach ‘completely radical’. ‘We’ve tried whipping, branding, executing, transporting, prison and now we have orange flak jackets. We have tried all these things and they really don’t work. We have to see these things in a more holistic way and try and solve the problem that is the best way to protect victims.’

Crook says at the heart of this new approach is ‘a change in attitude, a change in purpose which is fundamental to what Fletcher is doing. Our court system is so obsessed with punishment. It takes any responsibility away from offenders and usually the punishment is so disproportionate that it makes the offender feel like they have become the victim. So they have no sympathy, no empathy, and they do not feel sorry. They feel like they have been hard done by.’

John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates Association, is based at Dale Street magistrates court in the centre of Liverpool and four miles from the North Liverpool centre. His response is cooler. ‘We accept the principles and, I’d say: “Can we have it in all our courts, please?” We know what the answer is – “No” – and it is down to cost. We aren’t going to get it.’ He makes the point that it is unfair for the residents of Anfield to have the kind of support denied to people who live in other deprived parts of the city.

Thornhill is sceptical about the government’s apparent enthusiasm for ‘community justice’ given its track record on closing down magistrates’ courts. ‘At the moment the government is saying that there are no plans to close more. However, I am pretty certain that they will,’ he says. ‘You can’t have members of the community, witnesses, victims and offenders travelling 70 to 80 miles for justice. That’s not community justice.’

Successful testbed

Sadly, it seems that one of the boldest experiments in judicial thinking is being quietly buried. Tucked away in the recent Green Paper ‘Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice’, policymakers ruled out future centres ‘in light of the costs involved’. ‘It continues to be an extremely valuable and successful testbed for the community justice approach as a whole, but we do not believe that the costs involved in building new centres can be justified at present,’ the paper states.

Instead ministers promise to use Liverpool to ‘testbed’ new ideas. They want to roll out a range of community justice measures in 30 pilot areas, including ‘community prosecutors’ with ‘a specific role to engage with communities’, ‘community impact statements’ giving locals ‘the chance to feed in their views, and ‘citizens’ panels’ for local people to have a say on community payback schemes. The same package of reforms announced the appointment of a ‘victims’ champion’, Sara Payne.

Frances Crook detects a depressing retreat from what she sees as the more enlightened approach apparently heralded by the Liverpool court. ‘The idea of flak jackets and community payback is more about bringing the ethos of the prison out into the community,’ she says. ‘It’s about belittling, demeaning and punishing. It is not about involving communities and solving problems but about gawping at people in the street.’

I visited the Liverpool court twice this year, first as part of the Access to Justice project being run by the Legal Action Group and the second time with a video producer from the Guardian. Observers attest to Judge Fletcher’s role in the success of the court; some talk about his ‘charisma’. That’s probably pushing it – but as Crook reflects, there aren’t many judges like him on the bench. His skill is his ability to communicate directly with the steady stream of people that come before him and making a connection with them. As one of the court staff puts it: ‘For many of them, it’s probably the first time someone has listened.’

Sad parade

On my first trip I watch Judge Fletcher deal with a parade of offenders whose lives are blighted by drink, drugs and poverty. The last two cases of the morning session are ‘Mr Evans’ and ‘Tommy’ – Fletcher calls the youths by their first names.

Evans is a well known face to the court. The 47-year old is a chronic alcoholic and a one man crime wave. As the judge later puts it, he has ’32 years of criminal experience’ behind him and some 160 offences to his name. He appears sober but on past hearings he has been clearly drunk. ‘Somewhat late in life he’s become a heroin and cocaine user,’ says Judge Fletcher. ‘All that feeds into his inability to secure regular accommodation and the financial benefits to which he’s entitled that contributes to a chaotic lifestyle and doing silly things such as stealing two quid worth of ham. The only way his recidivism will be stopped is if one deals with the major issue, which is the alcohol problem.’

Next up is Tommy, 15 years old and also in breach of his court order. ‘I reckon I might have seen him 30 times. He has been coming here since he was about 13,’ says Fletcher. He lives what the judge calls ‘an almost feral lifestyle’ with his mother. His major conviction to date is for assault. He beat her up.

The judge believes that ‘a fairly intensive supervision order’ could help turn his life around. But he says: ‘The problem is at 16 years he’s no longer the responsibility of social services and could end up in Men’s Direct.’ This is a local shelter mainly used by alcoholics, including Evans. Tommy, for all his problems, appears not have a drink or drug problem. The inappropriateness of the two living in the same doss house is shocking.

What can Fletcher do for someone like Tommy? ‘I think we’ve managed to keep the lid on most of the things that he has done,’ he says. ‘There is little by way of parental support and that gives you a massive problem frankly.’ Fletcher believes that he and the agencies can keep him on the rails. ‘I don’t think he’s going to become a really serious criminal. I have seen people his age who are big-time drug dealers.’

Therapeutic jurisprudence

Fletcher talks of ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ and the idea of judge as ‘social worker’, notions likely to induce apoplexy with the Daily Mail and probably some government ministers. What does he mean? ‘It’s based upon the judge being much more proactive and having a much greater say in the way that sentences are carried out as opposed to judges being “the sentencer” and simply applying the law,’ he explains.

The judge notes with satisfaction that the phrase ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ has been used in the legislation that has established a new Melbourne neighbourhood community justice centre.

Isn’t he just a soft touch? Fletcher says not. In fact, he points out that the rate of guilty pleas in Liverpool is much higher than the average.

So does this brand of community justice actually work? A recent report looking into the reconviction rates for offenders dealt with by the North Liverpool and Salford community courts suggested not. They found that the rates were marginally worse than for offenders who went through an ordinary court in Manchester. Of those offenders who went through the North Liverpool court, some one in four (38.7 per cent) were convicted of a further crime within a year.

Fletcher argues that the ‘bald’ statistics don’t do justice to the work that his court is doing. The Ministry of Justice appears to take the point. ‘The report looked at re-offending in the first year of the initiative when community justice was in a very early stage of development,’ says a MoJ spokesman. ‘The initiative will need more time for the effects to bed in to give a true picture of re-offending rates.’

The view from the US is that community justice does work. American criminologist George Kelling developed the ‘broken windows’ theory, which contended that clamping down on low level crime contributed to reducing larger scale social blight.

‘There’s a pretty strong consensus that community courts have become an integral part of the program to reduce fear and maintain order and also to reduce serious crime as well,’ Kelling reckons.

Greg Berman, director of the Centre for Court Innovation in New York and lead planner for Red Hook, is one of the authors of a new paper about community justice in England and Wales (tellingly called ‘Lasting change or passing fad?’) He calls the government plan to extend the principles and practices from Liverpool to other magistrates’ courts without spending the kind of money that it did on Liverpool ‘a complicated challenge, to say the least’. ‘Depending upon my mood, I’m either optimistic or pessimistic that it is achievable,’ he says.

The main difference between the US and the UK is that community justice centres in the US are genuine ground-up community initiatives. By contrast, in the UK the ‘community justice’ is a central government policy initiative imposed from above. That, Berman argues, ‘undermines buy-in from frontline police officers, magistrates, lawyers and probation officers’. Interestingly, it was a community group from North Liverpool (led by Everton councillor Frank Prendergast) that led to the area being chosen. They sent their own proposals to the Home Office.

There are some 2,500 such courts now in the US and, according to Berman, many cost-benefit surveys have been done to ascertain whether they are worth the significant costs. One report into eight specialist drug courts in California reckoned there were cost savings of $3.50 for every dollar invested. That estimate just relates to savings to the criminal justice system – and not wider costs of avoided property damage, hospital bills, and lost wages.

Judge David Fletcher sums up the role of the North Liverpool court by saying that it is responding to public demand. ‘The idea is to satisfy the public demand for a just result but at the same time doing that in a way that is actually responding to what the public really want.’ And what’s that? ‘It’s is not for the man to be locked up for the rest of his life but that the man stop offending.’

The names of all offenders have been changed

Jon Robins is a freelance journalist: www.jonrobins.info

The events will be painfully familiar to many students of Nottingham University, where on 14 May last year Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were arrested on suspicion of terrorist activity. Though found innocent of terrorism, Yezza (‘Hich’ to his friends) remains in custody on a nine-month sentence for immigration offences. He potentially faces deportation.

HM Prison Canterbury refuses to pass on Red Pepper’s letters. So Rizwaan Sabir and Musab Younis – co-editors of Ceasefire magazine alongside him – spoke to us about his case and its significance in light of recent events.

How do you know Hich?

Musab: Hich was well known on campus. He edited Ceasefire, and I met him at an editorial meeting. He’s been at the university for over ten years. Coming from Algeria as an undergraduate student, he subsequently did postgraduate studies here, and then got a job at the university. He’d been on the student union executive, the university senate – he’s the kind of guy who knew everyone and was well liked.

Rizwaan: I met Hich after a Palestine protest on campus. We worked on the same corridor and our acquaintance turned into friendship.

So how did you both come to be accused of terrorism?

Rizwaan: He was very clued up on history and politics, so I started asking him for help on my assessed work. I shared articles with him, and asked for advice on whether it was useful to reference certain types of documents for my academic studies. At the time, I was researching my MA dissertation, which was about the Al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq. Around 24 January that year I downloaded the ‘Al Qaeda Training Manual’ – which can be purchased on Amazon! I had downloaded it from the US Department of Justice website for my research. I saved the document, and sent Hich a copy.

Months later, on 14 May, we were arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act – for ‘the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism’.

What happened once you had been arrested?

Rizwaan: We were held for six days without charge. There was questioning every day, and my house got raided. My family were evicted for 24 hours as forensics experts went through everything. It was all a harrowing and disturbing experience, but one that highlights the systemic flaws in the way the security apparatus are permitted by law to conduct their operations.

Then what happened, after Hich was cleared of the terrorism charges?

Musab: He was immediately re-arrested – we didn’t even get a chance to see him. It’s similar to what’s happened to these 12 men in the north west. We heard he was going to get deported in the next few days, and set up our campaign with 10 to 15 people working 24/7 on preventing it happening.

What kind of support did you get?

Musab: Huge amounts of support on campus, because Hich was well known. Also, people were shocked and angry at the circumstances, and the way the immigration authorities and the police thought they could just whisk him out of the country, without any kind of hearing.

They tried to deport him without trial?

Musab: Absolutely. We had to fight to get a trial. We heard he had gone into detention on a Thursday, and the deportation was scheduled for Monday. We got in touch with lawyers to get an emergency injunction. It worked. We stopped the deportation and asked the Home Office to release Hicham from custody while they reconsidered the case. They refused, and we had to go to an immigration tribunal to seek bail for Hicham. This was successful. A month after his arrest he was finally released on bail.

What was the experience like for Hich?

Musab: It was very stressful, very unexpected, because he clearly hadn’t done anything wrong. He expected to be released quickly, and refused legal support because he thought that once he’d explained to the police what was happening they’d release him.

He’s back in prison now – what for?

Musab: The recent arrests put this in context. We feel the government’s policy is if they arrest a foreign national under terrorism powers and they can’t file charges – if the person is innocent – their policy is to deport them. The immigration charges they brought were manufactured and political, and that was very much the opinion of our local MP, Alan Simpson. They have charged Hich with ‘avoidance of immigration action by deceptive means’. That’s something we are disputing. We also have serious problems with the way his trial was conducted and we’re launching an appeal.

How is Hich doing now?

Musab: He’s doing well. He’s not the kind of person who will wallow in self pity. He is very lively and amusing character, and is busy in there and his spirits are strong. He has a good legal team behind him, and we’re still all determined to fight the deportation.

What have conditions been like at the university since the arrests?

Rizwaan: It has become a very hostile environment. There has been a general clampdown on political expression, and this affects academics
as well.

Musab: The terror arrests themselves created a climate of fear and paranoia on campus, especially when people found out this was to do with Rizwaan’s political research. It felt like they were targeting political activists.

What are your feelings on the recent terror arrests in the north west?

Musab: It compares very closely, almost identical in fact. They were arrested under spurious terrorism charges, but then because they’re foreign nationals the government tries to deport them. Both events created a climate of fear in the communities they took place in. I’m from Manchester, and know people in Cheetham Hill, and I was also here in Nottingham. Within the Muslim community and also within the student community there’s fear and anger over the way the government is dealing with this. The Free Hich campaign is determined to link with other groups supporting people like the north west 12, and fight this policy.

Rizwaan: When I found out all 12 were innocent I was very angry. I saw the news breaking on TV when they were arrested – I heard them talking about the ‘imminent threat’ and how they’d ‘thwarted’ an act of terrorism. And I thought, this is nonsense. It’s an ‘intelligence-led’ operation, which usually means very flimsy evidence.

So do you think this is a much broader political issue than a few police mistakes?

Musab: Absolutely. The spotlight has been on how police behave at protests recently. But the issue is much broader than that. The issue is the way the police, the home office, the intelligence services, parliament and their whole counter-terrorism strategy is fundamentally flawed. It is clearly not reducing the threat of terrorism but is catching innocent people and ruining their lives.

Rizwaan: The Muslim community has been facing such demonisation, and such pressure from the security services. Rather than countering radicalisation it’s achieving the contrary. Public opinion is against the police. If you look at Cheetham Hill, people don’t trust the police – and why should they trust them? Why should I trust them? When I was in detention, I was no more than a statistic. Not everyone is as lucky as Hich, not everyone could organise that much support. People sent back to countries in the Middle East and south Asia – predominately Pakistan – get picked up by the intelligence services and get tortured.

What can be done about it?

Rizwaan: I’m fortunate. I allowed the experience to make me a stronger person, and not disrupt my education. Resentment is something I do feel, but the question is how we use it – some channel it through violence, some through civil society. I’m with the latter. The legislation needs to be changed. The ambiguity, the overzealous wording and the police’s power trip – all this combined jeopardises free speech, free inquiry and journalistic freedoms.

Musab: With the right organisation and the social movements that are building up, we can create a coalition that can fight this and win.

n For more information on how you can support Hicham Yezza visit www.freehicham.co.uk and www.ceasefiremagazine.co.uk

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The Easter terror raids were not the first in the north west. Earlier this year, Lancashire police arrested nine men travelling with the Viva Palestina aid convoy. All were subsequently released without charge. A few years earlier, police claimed to have detained a terror cell targeting Old Trafford. All turned out to be guilty of nothing more than being Muslim and Manchester United fans. The latest baseless raids have sparked a (perhaps belated) reaction that moves coalition-building against this ugly aspect of the war on terror forward a step. A series of public meetings across Manchester in recent weeks drew together an array of left organisations, alongside the Muslim and Pakistani communities, to voice opposition to the deportations and begin exploring how to create an effective opposition to the anti-terror laws.

The Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offences, including keeping former members of the Black Panthers, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behaviour documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary stands out – both for its brutality and the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top.

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt nearly a decade ago. These twenty-five inmates – who were not involved in the escape attempt – testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. They were also threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons and forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years.

While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle – without admitting liability – two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates will have to spend that money behind bars – more than 90 per cent of Angola’s prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.

Systemic violence

During the attempted escape at Angola, in which one guard was killed and two were taken hostage, a team of officers – including Angola warden Burl Cain – rushed in and began shooting – killing one inmate, Joel Durham and wounding another, David Mathis.

The prison has no official guidelines for what should happen during escape attempts or other crises, a policy that seems designed to encourage the violent treatment documented in this case. Richard Stalder, at that time the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, was also at the prison at the time. Yet despite – or because of the presence of the prison warden and head of corrections for the state, guards were given a free hand to engage in violent retribution. Cain later told a reporter after the shooting that Angola’s policy was not to negotiate, saying, ‘That’s a message all the inmates know. They just forgot it. And now they know it again.’

Five prisoners – including Mathis – were charged with murder, and currently are on trial, facing the death penalty – partially based on testimony from other inmates that was obtained through beatings and torture. Mathis is represented by civil rights attorneys Jim Boren (who also represented one of the Jena Six youths) and Rachel Connor, with assistance from Nola Investigates, an investigative firm in New Orleans that specialises in defence for capital cases.

The St Francisville hearing was requested by Mathis’ defence counsel to demonstrate that, in the climate of violence and abuse, inmates were forced to sign statements through torture, and therefore those statements should be inadmissible. Judicial District Judge George H Ware Jr ruled that the documented torture and abuse was not relevant. However, the behaviour documented in the hearing not only raises strong doubts about the cases against the Angola Five, but it also shows that violence against inmates has become standard procedure at the prison.

The hearing shows a pattern of systemic abuse so open and regular, it defies the traditional excuse of bad apples. Inmate Doyle Billiot testified to being threatened with death by the guards, ‘What’s not to be afraid of? Got all these security guards coming around you everyday looking at you sideways, crazy and stuff. Don’t know what’s on their mind, especially when they threaten to kill you.’ Another inmate, Robert Carley testified that a false confession was beaten out of him. ‘I was afraid,’ he said. ‘I felt that if I didn’t go in there and tell them something, I would die.’

Inmate Kenneth ‘Geronimo’ Edwards testified that the guards, ‘beat us half to death’. He also testified that guards threatened to sexually assault him with a baton, saying, ‘that’s a big black … say you want it.’ Later, Edwards says, the guards, ‘put me in my cell. They took all my clothes. Took my jumpsuit. Took all the sheets, everything out the cell, and put me in the cell buck-naked … It was cold in the cell. They opened the windows and turned the blowers on.’ At least a dozen other inmates also testified to receiving the same beatings, assault, threats of sexual violence, and ‘freezing treatment’.

Some guards at the prison treated the abuse as a game. Inmate Brian Johns testified at the hearing that, ‘one of the guards was hitting us all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums – the drumming sound that – from hitting us in the head with the stick.’

Solitary confinement

Two of Angola’s most famous residents, political prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have become the primary example of another form of abuse common at Angola – the use of solitary confinement as punishment for political views. The two have now each spent more than 36 years in solitary, despite a judge recently overturning Woodfox’s conviction (prison authorities continue to hold Woodfox and have announced plans to retry him). Woodfox and Wallace – who together with former prisoner King Wilkerson are known as the Angola Three – have filed a civil suit against Angola, arguing that their confinement has violated both their eighth amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment and fourth amendment right to due process.

Recent statements by Angola warden Burl Cain makes clear that Woodfox and Wallace are being punished for their political views. At a recent deposition, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain, ‘Lets just for the sake of argument assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the murder of Brent Miller.’ Cain responded, ‘Okay. I would still keep him in [solitary] … I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them … He has to stay in a cell while he’s at Angola.’

In addition to Cain’s comments, Louisiana attorney general James ‘Buddy’ Caldwell has said the case against the Angola Three is personal to him. Statements like this indicate that this vigilante attitude not only pervades New Orleans’ criminal justice system, but that the problem comes from the very top.

The problem is not limited to Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola, similar stories can be found in prisons across the US. With the abandonment of prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Katrina to the case of the Jena Six, Louisiana’s criminal justice system, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, US prisons seem to be functioning under plantation-style justice.

Torture and abuse is illegal under both US law – including the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment – and international treaties that the US is signatory to, from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992). Despite the laws and treaties, US prison guards have rarely been held accountable to these standards.

Once we say that abuse or torture is okay against prisoners, the next step is for it to be used against the wider population. A recent petition for administrative remedies filed by Herman Wallace states, ‘If Guantanamo Bay has been a national embarrassment and symbol of the US government’s relation to charges, trials and torture, then what is being done to the Angola Three … is what we are to expect if we fail to act quickly … The government tries out it’s torture techniques on prisoners in the US – just far enough to see how society will react. It doesn’t take long before they unleash their techniques on society as a whole.’ If we don’t stand up against this abuse now, it will only spread.

Despite the hearings, civil suits, and other documentation, the guards who performed the acts documented in the hearing on torture at Angola remain unpunished, and the system that designed it remains in place. In fact, many of the guards have been promoted, and remain in supervisory capacity over the same inmates they were documented to have beaten mercilessly. Warden Burl Cain still oversees Angola. Meanwhile, the trial of the Angola Five is moving forward, and those with the power to change the pattern of abuse at Angola remain silent.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He can be reached at neworleans[at]leftturn.org.

Additional research by Emily Ratner

Resources:

The Angola Three

Safe Streets Strong Communities

Families and Friends of Louisiana\’s Incarcerated Children

Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana