Against Prisons: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

A second problem is the inherent bias in the penological discourse when it comes to having an empirical look at the prisons of the world. Many researchers have either roots in the prison-industrial complex or they are dependent on the good-will of governments or private prison operators - all of which may make them lean towards the status quo. Moreover, most researchers look at their own countries and neighboring countries when it comes to prison research - and since something like an estimated 80% of all criminologists and penologists come from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium or any of the other countries that make up the world's 36 richest countries, our knowledge about the prison system is likely to be biased in favour of generalizing conditions that are not typical for the system in general, but only for a privileged section of it. For any person to be a prisoner, though, chances are that he or she would not be imprisoned in of the 36 richest countries of the world, because their prisoners make up only a minority of all prisoners in the world (for a list of the richest and poorest countries cf. Pasquali 2015). Chances are, when you are a prisoner, that your prison is located in one of the poor countries like, e.g., Russia (wealth-rank 51 of a list of 185 countries), Romania (rank 61), China (83) or Egypt (96). If you are less lucky, your prison might be in one of the very poor countries such as the Philippines (118), India (125), Pakistan (134), Bangladesh (140), Haiti (166) or the Democratic Republic of Congo (185 out of 185).

In poor countries the same is true, but on a different scale. This is due to insufficient economic resources and the state‘s inability or unwillingness to secure even minimum standards of prison conditions. Because of the low salaries of prison employees, corruption is endemic. As a prisoner in a poor country, you will have a high likelihood of suffering from infectious diseases, from the lack of hygiene, from inadequate medical and psychological assistance, from unhealthy diets, and - most importantly - from lack of respect by undertrained and often incompetent, but bossy guards and semi-professionals. There are not many published reports detailling the psison conditions in poor countries. As a matter of fact, the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has visited the prisons of many poorer countries, but only few of them has agreed to the publication of the reports. Consider the following report from a Latin American country (ranked 106 on Pasquali's list):

Similar reports are available for some of the poorer countries in Latin America. Here is an example for a country ranked 106 on Pasquali's list:

:55. Overcrowding remains a cause of concern. Tacumbú has capacity for approximately 1,200 inmates but houses far more than double that number. The Subcommittee is aware that the Government has made an effort to increase the number of beds in Tacumbú Prison, but would point out that those efforts will not be sufficient, since the prison structure is inadequate. ... The Subcommittee is of the view that Tacumbú National Prison should be closed as soon as possible and requests confirmation from the State party of the above-mentioned announcement, together with information on the timetable for its closure...

:61. The Subcommittee is extremely concerned by information received from credible sources which indicates that corruption is not confined to a given prison or operational level. On the contrary, it seems to exist in almost all of the country’s prisons and to be very well coordinated and organized. The Subcommittee has repeatedly been apprised of consistent allegations that certain political circles are profiting from this nationwide form of organized corruption.  

Not unsimilar is one of the few SPT reports published for African countries (for a country ranked 51st on Pasquali's list):  

:The situation is summed up by the SPT the the words that "the situation of of the imprisoned persons is "extrémement préoccupant" (SPT Rapport sur la visite au Gabon, 2014).

The situation is not so different in some of the poorer countries in Europe. Consider the report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) (on a country ranked 61 by Pasquali):

:Regarding the situation in prisons, numerous credible allegations consistent with physical ill-treatment (punches, including with reinforced gloves, kicks with the knee and feet and blows with a truncheon) were received by the delegation. They were mainly inflicted on prisoners under a maximum security regime (“RMS”) and in the closed regime units of Arad and Oradea prisons by members of the intervention group (wearing balaclavas or masks). Medical evidence compatible with the allegations made was found in a certain number of prisoners' medical files in these two establishments. As regards material conditions in prisons, the report notes an overall high-level of overcrowding, with barely 2m² of living space per person in Târgşor Women’s Prison; these conditions were further aggravated by the fact that prisoners generally spent 20 to 22 hours a day in their cells. Furthermore, the report contains recommendations to reinforce the numbers of prison and health-care staff in the establishments visited and to offer work and/or socio-educational activities to prisoners under RMS and closed regimes.