Patricia Lee Sharpe
Just in case you thought I was being too sweepingly critical of the U.S. in my recent torture and brutality piece, here’s another instance of sadistic abuse aka the torture of human beings who cannot defend themselves. In this case, the victims are young people remanded to juvenile detention centers. They are being battered and raped, and their torturers keep their jobs. These minors may not be angels, but abusing them like this will never prepare them for a successful return to society.The worst states for such brutality are Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to an NYT editorial, but the atrocities occur much more broadly, and there seems to be little zeal for doing much about them. For example, despite a 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, states tend to argue that “zero tolerance” costs too much.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read statements to the effect that prison employees need "better training" to handle adolescents. For that matter, most parents could use a little more training. But what decent human being needs to be told that rape and battering are not right?
And what kind of people are we, if we worry about penny pinching when misguided kids are being tortured?