Preventing Prisoner Rape

Here in Adelaide we have recently formed an organisation called Preventing Prisoner Rape which is aiming to raise awareness about the issue of rape in prisons, to try to bring in appropriate law reform and changes to prison administration, and also to reach out and support prison rape survivors.

I'll just fill you in on a little of the history.

In the early 1990s I worked within welfare and education at Long Bay Prison and was horrified by some of the stories I heard from young guys there who had been subjected to assault.

The stories I heard facilitating groups with transgender inmates were also horrible. At the same time I was asked by Dulwich Centre, an independent counselling, community work and publishing house here in Adelaide (which had been involved in responding to the Deaths in Custody Royal Commission in partnership with Aboriginal Health) to put together a book about prisons - or more accurately alternatives to prisons.

This became the book 'Beyond the prison: Gathering dreams of freedom'. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I undertook research for this book and this took me to various places including New York City where I met Stephen Donaldson, one of the key early members of Stop Prisoner Rape in the US.

I have stayed in touch with the work of this grass roots organisation ever since and recently visited their headquarters in LA. Stop Prisoner Rape in the US has had amazing success in the last few years in making the issue of prison rape a national issue. So much so that a federal law has now been passed and every state government is required to take a 'zero tolerance policy' to rape in prison.

Stephen Donaldson (who has since died of AIDS -he acquired HIV through rape in prison) would be amazed at what has been achieved. There is now money and research and more importantly significant action being taken to address the issue of prisoner rape in the US.

I actually find it very inspiring what they have achieved. When I met Stephen the organisation was just operating from his apartment.

Anyway, there is a group of us here in Adelaide who are now determined to try to do something similar here in Australia. I want to let you know about what we are doing at present:

* We have developed a draft prisoner rape support package that we wish to make available to current prisoners or ex-prisoners who have experienced sexual violence in detention.

* We are seeking stories, documents, records, reports of prison rape from across Australia so that we can start to build a case that this is an issue that needs to be taken seriously and addressed in this country.

* We have approached a number of lawyers to see if they would be interested in investigating the possibility of introducing legislation inspired by that which has been and is being developed in the US.

* We are just beginning to make links with other groups committed to prison reform, prison action, prison abolition, prisoner support and so on.

* We have good links with the Stop Prisoner Rape people in the US who wish to support us in anyway that they can and we may arrange for one of their workers to visit and give a speaking tour in the future.

We would really value hearing from any of you about ideas, suggestions, stories, connections about this issue.

It was only yesterday that I heard of the work of Vickie Douglas from the Prison Reform Group in Tasmania and I had contact with Vickie I also hope to meet up with more of you in the future in person, or on the phone, or via email.

I know very little about the situation in Tasmania but look forward to learning more. I have considerable respect for all the work that you are involved in.

Warm regards,

David Denborough
On behalf of Preventing Prisoner Rape
Staff writer
Dulwich Centre Publications
Email: writings@compuserve.com

By David Denborough posted 25 May 05

Tasmania PAR banned from Risdon

Vickie Douglas founded Prison Action and Reform after the gross failures of the system took the life of her young son after he was raped.

Craig Annesley: Miscarriage of Justice

While doing the Order full-time, I was raped in gaol in March 1998, 2.5 weeks later I was taken to a Rape Clinic at Westmead. The Police attended and were to meet me 2 days after to take my statement. This second meeting never happened. I lodged a victim's compensation claim over this incident only to have it refused, as I was a convicted inmate at the time of the alleged offence? That is discrimination as far as I'm concerned.

Related:

Torture not acceptable on anyone: Community!
Australia: A former chairman of the National Crime Authority has spoken out in favour of torture for John HoWARd and the Neo-Cons no doubt, saying it should be used against terrorists and in domestic criminal situations but not against QC's?

PRISON ACTION & REFORM INC: Tas Prison Complaints
TASMANIA: Prison Action & Reform was formed in response to the five deaths in custody that occurred between August 1999 and January 2000. Chris Wever, Vickie Douglas, Rose Macaulay, Judith Santos and others came to together to fight for reform in an outdated, increasingly cash-strapped and uncaring system. Of the original members, three lost loved ones to the Tasmanian prison system.

Torture can never be justified
I am forwarding the following statement issued by AMCRAN in regards to a paper: "Not Enough (Official) Torture in the World? The Circumstances in which Torture is Morally Justifiable" written by Professor Mirko Bagaric, Head of Deakin Law School & Julie Clarke, Lecturer, Deakin Law School, in which they justify torture.

Tasmanian prison support visit
Prisoners from Risdon Prison and Prison Action & Reform (PAR) in Tasmania have requested support from the Australian Prisoners Union and Justice Action following the siege in the prison ending on May 9.

Torture okay: propaganda paper
Mean in Black John HoWARd and Pastor Peter Costello with Professor Mirko Bagaric, and fellow Deakin lecturer Julie Clarke, torture okay for them. Question?

Prison Action & Reform challenge the Attorney General
Members of Prison Action & Reform are furious with the latest lies from the Attorney General -- Judy Jackson, and demand that she produce evidence to support her ludicrous claims.

Tasmania PAR banned from Risdon
Vickie Douglas founded Prison Action and Reform after the gross failures of the system took the life of her young son after he was raped.

Chronology of a Tasmanian Prison System: A Documented Report
We believe that the people of Tasmania - both victims of crime and the general public - have the right to know that the Tasmania Prison Service is delivering a humane and just system of containment that is conducive to the reintegration of inmates back into Tasmanian society.

Risdon prisoners' seize prison to protest mistreatment
Apparently one prisoner had been mistreated and held in isolation in an SHU (Segregation Housing Unit) [Solitary Confinement] because, he'd had and altercation with a screw. SHUs cause severe mental harm - regarded as torture - and are a cruel, inhumane and degrading way to keep prisoners.

No Safe Place
In a brief four month span from August 1999, five men died in Tasmania's Risdon prison. Their deaths have put the state's corrections system in the dock and led to the planned demolition of a jail which even the State's Attorney-General now calls an "appalling facility".

Craig Annesley: Miscarriage of Justice
While doing the Order full-time, I was raped in gaol in March 1998, 2.5 weeks later I was taken to a Rape Clinic at Westmead. The Police attended and were to meet me 2 days after to take my statement. This second meeting never happened. I lodged a victim's compensation claim over this incident only to have it refused, as I was a convicted inmate at the time of the alleged offence? That is discrimination as far as I'm concerned.

Association for the Prevention of Torture
The Optional Protocol requires 20 ratifications to enter into force. All States Parties to the UN Convention against Torture should seriously consider ratifying the OPCAT as soon as possible. National Institutions and others promoting the human rights of people deprived of their liberty need to be informed of their potential role as national preventive mechanisms under the OPCAT.

Corrected or Corrupted
A psychiatrist from the prison Mental Health Team attached to Queensland Health made the comment that 25 per cent of inmates suffer from a diagnosed mental illness.

ICOPA XI International Conference on Penal Abolition
We are excited to announce that ICOPA X1, the eleventh International Conference on Penal Abolition will happen in Tasmania, Australia from February 9 - 11,2006. Please pass this onto all networks.

Ex-Prisoner Locked Out of Prison
The NSW Department of Corrective Services (DCS) has revealed a policy which bans ex-prisoners from entering prisons.

Justice Action: Access to our community
NSW: Justice Action went to the NSW Supreme Court before the last Federal election on the constitutional right for prisoners to receive information for their vote. The government avoided the hearing by bringing prisoners' mobile polling booths forward. We pursued it after the election. This is the report.

Contrasting Natural and Collectivist Social Orders

Balance Versus Dominance and Transgender issues

When entering a modern day prison; one could be forgiven for thinking that they are stepping back in time, before equal opportunity rights and psychological advancements in science ever existed. A world where not much has changed the accepted paradigm.

This has been my struggle for over 2 years.

Anywhere else in the world a person of my polarity could be accepted for their choice of name and lifestyle. For there are laws to say so. However its apparent that the ruling elite, those people payed by the community are more comfortable to run a modern day prison according to their own beliefs.

It's sad that people are sent to prison for punishment with the prospect to reform their attitudes, yet the environment itself is resistant to change. How can prisoners be taught to accept societies laws when their rights are denied?

I suffer the unsettling addressing of a male each and every day because of one particular phrase that remains unchallenged inside the Sentence Management Policy Manual.

It states in a pre-1950's fashion that if a prisoner has a penis they will be seen, treated as male.

The prison system clearly accepts a physiological attribute above a psychological one, when world-renowned sex and gender experts have documented that the human brain itself is the most important sex organ.

There is not enough enlightenment of this in many levels of today's prison system.

What have I done about this and many other issues

I have written many letters to the Department, yet come up against the same stone wall.

My plight was ruthlessly splash over a tabloid newspaper. An unfavourable notoriety was used to justify no assistance from an uninformed public.

Now I'm suffering depression when I need only little in life. I'm being denied the basic right of all humanity which is to express my identity as 'I see fit' and harmonious.

I want to eventually be a citizen of this society that says it's free and democratic.

It starts here, in the house of corrections.

By Ms Paula Denyer and Just Us 22 February 05

Related:

Contrasting Natural and Collectivist Social Orders

Balance Versus Dominance

The diagram above shows the major differences between the collectivist social order that is associated with takerism and the older, natural, social order of peoples such as the Australian aborigines and the tribes of the Amazon, who successfully followed Leaver principles for tens of thousands of years.

On the left, we see that individual species, humans and others, have inalienable rights. These rights are not granted and they cannot be withdrawn. They stem from the divine order that creates matter, structure, and life.

On the right, there is the concept of human-created collectivism, and bigger and bigger governments, all the way to a global, totalitarian state. The distinguishing feature is that, here, the 'order' in society is made by men, it is not natural. Nor is it divine.

Whereas natural rights, on the left, cover all living things, the artificial rights that are given and taken by nation states, on the right, only apply to humans. The dominant idea is, as Daniel Quinn observes, "Humans belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community (there's us and there's nature)."

Historically, there have been periods when legal distinctions between animals and humans have been blurred. For instance, in medieval Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous trials and executions of animals occurred. One source identifies 34 recorded instances of pigs having been tried and cruelly put to death. Besides pigs; rats, chickens, goats, and bees were similarly tried.

Some of the pigs were fully dressed in human clothes at the time they were, inevitably, found guilty. In one case a vicar excommunicated a flock of sparrows that infested his church. All this happened despite the theological stance that animals had no soul, and no morals or conscience. They could not really be guilty of transgressing the Rule of Law.

Clearly, there was a period of confusion in the West when remnants of the beliefs (some would say superstitions) of the old, pre-taker, tribal societies existed alongside the new doctrines and dogma of man-made collectivism and religious interpretation. Today the distinction has all been resolved. Even the UN groups that deal with animal matters are clear that animals do not have natural rights. They are merely 'there' to be exploited.

Thus, the Whale Shark, the largest fish in the world, was recently protected by the UN group that monitors trade in endangered species. The UN did this, not because they recognised that the whale sharks have any natural rights, as part of a divine creation, but because some countries, including the Philippines, India, and Britain, argued that these enormous fish are worth more as eco-tourism attractions than as shark fin soup.

It was a purely economic decision, the rights of the whale shark did not enter into consideration. This is unsurprising, since the United Nations is a Taker institution that was established by nation states to look after their interests - not those of the animals and plants on this planet.

In a Taker society that is run on collectivist lines - and they all are - the power of life or death rests with the state. In a true tribal society, one that exists with nature on Leaver principles, the power of life or death is in the hands of the natural order of things, as determined by the design of the material world. Social groupings of the human animal, into tribes, live by the rule of reason, obligation, and the rectification of wrongs.

Collectivist governments, on the other hand, gravitate to the total dominance of all matters, including the determination of life and death. In the natural world, where human tribes belong, there is balance and reason instead of dominance. Leavers do not 'conquer' the land and annihilate all those who don't happen to agree with them. Takers do exactly that, until they overextend their reach and exhaust the capacity of their economy and their forces.

The Rule of Reason

In his novel, The Story of B, Daniel Quinn outlines the difference between tribal law and what passes for just law-making in collectivist societies. He illustrates his points with an example relating to adultery, a common enough occurrence in every human community. He writes.

* "Tribal laws are never invented laws, they're always received laws. They're never the work of committees of living individuals, they're always the work of social evolution. They're shaped the way a bird's beak is shaped, or a mole's claw - by what works. They never reflect a tribe's concern for what's "right" or "good" or "fair," they simply work - for that particular tribe."

* "Here's how the Alawa of Australia handle adultery...." (The example is quite lengthy. Look it up - on page 314 of the paperback edition, 1997 - if you want to know the details. L )

* "Nothing like invented law, which just spells out crimes and punishments, tribal law is something that works. It works well for all concerned. A man and woman whose love is as great as this must of course have each other. But for the sake of the tribe they must be gone - out of sight, out of mind forever.

The children of the tribe have seen with their own eyes that marriage and love are not the trifling matters they have become among "advanced" peoples like us. The husband's dishonour has been avenged - and there will be no snickering among his comrades about it, for they stood side by side with him to lambaste the adulterer."

* "Every part of this process is the law, and every actor in it is a participant in the law. The law for these people isn't a separate statute written in a book. It's the very fabric of their lives - it's what makes the Alawa the Alawa and what distinguishes them from the Mara and the Malanugga-nugga -who have their own ways of handling adultery, which are best for them. It can't possibly be said too often that there is no one right way for people to live, that's only the delusion of the most murderous and destructive culture that history has ever produced."

Quinn makes the point that the emphasis in tribal law is always on correcting the harm done. The Rule of Law that applies in collectivist societies, even before they become totalitarian states, places its emphasis on punishment.

Even in cases where courts award damages the compensation is always in a monetary form; loss of an arm is worth so much, damage to reputation is worth so much. The philosophy seems to be that every harm can be expressed as a sum of money, and that there is no need to do anything more than fix the price of the damage.

This simplistic and mechanistic view, is characteristic of materialist cultures. But it is totally foreign to the tribal peoples of the Amazon forests or the Australian wilderness. They have laws that aim to repair feelings and lessen animosities.

Their aim is to keep their tribes functional and to maintain respect for the rights of the other creatures and life-forms that share their world. Tribal laws reflect a very different mindset, and a system that is much longer lived and successful than modern approaches to law-making and justice.

Divine Order Versus Secular Structures

The word 'God' in the above diagram refers to the divine order of creation, rather than the concept portrayed in the various interpreted religions of the world. God, in the context of the diagram, is the same as the "Great Spirit" (etc) of pre-taker tribal societies.

This is the God of earlier times, not necessarily the God of the sages who wrote the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The diagram simply contrasts the secular structures and man-made order of modern nation states and interpreted religions with the natural order that tribes, flocks, herds, hives, and all other collections of creatures follow.

Every social group has rules of conduct and ways of achieving order. The key difference between the two sides of the diagram is that on the left the rules evolve within what is practical, while on the right the rules are determined by elites. Whether those elites are in religious institutions or state institutions they determine how others in the society should live.

In 'modern' society the parrot people of the media often tend to reinforce the notion that the way the churches and the various layers of government say we should live is the way we were meant to live. This is an implicit message, for as Daniel Quinn notes, we are seldom aware of the paradigm that he terms 'Mother Culture,' even though we live by it all the time.

On the left of the diagram is the natural world where all creatures are free to determine, for themselves, how they live. They do this within the practical bounds set by the divine structure of nature and the cosmos.

A bird is designed to fly, so it can migrate from one continent to another without regard for any rules other than those imposed by climatic conditions and the availability of food and water along the route.

Migrating birds often fly in vee formations, because this arrangement allows them to all have clear, undisturbed, air. Only the laws of aerodynamics govern how the migrating flock travels. There are no imposed rules about the way birds are allowed to fly.

On the right of the diagram the situation is quite different. There are rules in many denominations of the Christian religion that prevent women from becoming ordained ministers.

There are rules in some countries, such as China, that allow each couple to have only one child. There are rules that prevent people who flee Afghanistan, and travel to Australia in unseaworthy river boats, from living freely in that country.

Instead, men women and children are held in what are effectively prisons, at the pleasure of the Federal government. There are rules that prevent more than limited amounts of money from being taken out of one country and into another.

There are rules about rules about rules. And all these rules and laws are human inventions. None of them are natural and divine. Yet, they must all be obeyed, because that is the way we were meant to live. The nature of their rules is a key difference between the natural order on the left of the diagram and the man-made order of collectivist states, on the right.

(Lothar)