This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Western Massachusetts
Wimmin prisoners win lawsuit against Mass DOC
This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Wimmin prisoners win lawsuit against Mass DOC
MIM Notes 158
March 15 1998
Wimmin at Framingham prison in Massachusetts won a lawsuit against the
Department of Corrections for brutalizing and harassing the inmates. On
September 1995 masked prison guards dressed in black forced 112 inmates
and pretrial detainees from their beds and publicly strip-searched
(including vaginal and anal searches) 16 of them as a part of a training
exercise. This month the DOC settled the suit by agreeing never again to
use such techniques and paying the wimmin $80,000 in damages. The DOC
still insists it did not break any laws.
During this raid the guards destroyed prisoner's property while searching
their cells, denied wimmin medical care when they requested it, and
refused to tell the wimmin the purpose of the whole "training exercise."
After hours of detention in common areas the prisoners returned to beds
and clothing covered with officer's boot prints.
The DOC promised not to unnecessarily humiliate or subject its charges to
severe emotional distress. Their promises state:
- Correction officers will not conduct searches in garments that conceal
their identities.
- Guards will refrain from deliberate actions that inflict emotional
distress on inmates.
- Random urine tests will no longer be conducted between 11pm and 7am.
Inmates who request medical attention during raids will be grated the
attention in a timely fashion.
- Strip searches will be done in relative privacy and with as much
dignity as possible. The searches will not be conducted by members of the
opposite gender or in the presence of people not conducting the search.
- Correction officers will not unnecessarily destroy or disrupt inmates'
property.
These rules of behavior would be a huge step forward for the Massachusetts
Department of Corrections if they were applied to the prisons in the
state. Currently both men and wimmin in prison in Massachusetts face
regular brutality and negligence at the hands of the guards. This legal
victory lays the groundwork for future lawsuits from other inmates
experiencing similar harassment. Forcing the MDOC to pay damages is a
strategy that could force improvements in the conditions in prisons if we
can make it costly for the guards to brutalize the inmates.
MIM agrees with the strategy of pursuing these winnable legal battles both
as a way to expose the criminal injustice system and to win small gains
within the system. But this strategy must be coupled with the fight to
overthrow the entire system. Only by eliminating imperialism will we be
able to establish a just system where poverty, national origin and
political activism are not crimes.
Note: Boston Globe 2 February 1998.
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