Cruel but not unusual punishment
A few months ago, the Miami Herald chronicled the deaths of dozens of children resulting from the gross ineptitude, neglect, inaction and shortage of resources–monetary and human–of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF).
The June 23, 2012 death of Darren Rainey, a mentally ill inmate at Dade Correctional Institution, who was locked in a shower-like “decontamination facility” by guards who then turned on the water full blast at a scalding 180 degrees and left him there for more than an hour, revealed that DCF is not the only house of horrors run by the state of Florida.
The Department of Corrections (DOC) is also in the running when it comes to cruelty, cover-ups, and a reckless disregard for human life. The Rainey case can serve as Exhibit 1 (of many), although Rainey’s death was especially gruesome. Some inmates in the facility heard Rainey’s desperate cries for mercy, but there was no relief of the torture. By the time prison authorities found the inmate, it was evident that he had suffered a slow and an excruciatingly painful death. Among other things, his skin was separating from the rest of his body.
The Rainey case is illustrative in several ways. One is impunity. It has been two years since Rainey’s grisly death and nobody has been held accountable. Two of the guards on duty at the time have even been promoted. The warden of the facility where the incident took place, Jerry Cummings, was once demoted for permitting unsafe conditions that led to the murder of a prison guard. The punishment amounted to a slap in the wrist, and soon he was back as warden at Dade Correctional.
The source of such impunity is institutional. Until now, the Department of Corrections basically has policed itself and has been loath to punish one of its own for the sake of the life or well-being of a mere convict. Amid the Rainey scandal, at the end of last week the DOC announced it was turning over investigations of inmate deaths to an outside agency, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). This definitely seems like a step in the right direction, but given DOC’s track record and the fact that the FDLE will be on the outside looking in at a secretive and opaque institution, the prison system, I would not be surprised if the DOC folks don’t find some ways around FDLE scrutiny, at least some of the time.
The slaughter of Rainey is also indicative of the level of sadism involved in the commission of these largely unpunished crimes. Here is a press account of another horrific extra-judicial execution inside prison walls:
“In what was possibly the department’s most infamous death case, nine corrections officers at Florida State Prison in Starke stormed the cell of Death Row inmate Frank Valdes at about 3 a.m. on July 17, 1999. The officers took turns wildly beating Valdes, stomping on him so fiercely that many of his organs and bones were crushed.
“Then, according to other inmates, the guards threw his corpse into a hallway, cleaned his bloody cell with bleach and put him in another cell before calling 911.
“For months after the beating, DOC officials called Valdes’ death a suicide, insisting he inflicted his own injuries by diving headfirst off his bunk, striking the bars of his cell. The autopsy, however, clearly showed bootprints embedded in his skin.”
The Rainey and Valdes cases are especially heinous and exemplify the combination of impunity and cruelty that underlie such outrages. But their killings are not unique. There are currently at least seven deaths of inmates in Florida under investigation by law enforcement officials.
Although each of these crimes involves individual and institutional culpability, broader public policies and societal attitudes also play a key role. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, including China. The figure reflects a real number, not a per-capita statistic. In general, penalties for given types of crime are also significantly stiffer here than in other rich countries, and the United States is the only economically advanced Western nation that still practices capital punishment. And, although it appears that there is a recent modest change in attitudes, the American public generally applauded the reinstatement of capital punishment and “lock them up and throw away the key” policies that have resulted in a vast and very costly prison industry.
In the 1960s, economists like John Kenneth Galbraith and politicians like LBJ dared envisioning the United States evolving into a “welfare state” or a “Great Society.” Alas, instead, we have become the punitive society.
