Politics: Your Rights, Or Not
The New York Times got its hands on a new DOJ Inspector General's report on civil rights abuses under the USA Patriot Act. I'm not sure what to make of the numbers. The IG boils the complaints down to about 34 cases that are unimpeachable, documentable, credible civil rights complaints in the last six months. This includes "accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten." During that same six months (actually 12/16-6/15), more than a thousand complaints were made, but many could not be proven, or were easily dismissed.
Buried in the story are some pretty important allegations. First, it is made amply clear that the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General is overwhelmed with work since 9/11. It's a pretty safe bet, then, that the threshold for investigations and actions by the department is pretty high. (Projecting, you can assume that civil rights action would only come is a prisoner was, say, threatened by his treating physician, perhaps with the doctor saying, "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of you" to the prisoner during a physical examination. Read the story. This actually happened.) Second is the fact that the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons is attempting to cover up civil rights violations of prisoners in its care. The article explains that the IG's report doesn't explicitly scold the Department for this behavior, but it notes that an internal inquiry into allegations of repeated prisoner abuse had been closed, and the accused officer initially cleared, without anyone interviewing the inmates or the implicated officer.
Hmm. I feel safer already.
The New York Times got its hands on a new DOJ Inspector General's report on civil rights abuses under the USA Patriot Act. I'm not sure what to make of the numbers. The IG boils the complaints down to about 34 cases that are unimpeachable, documentable, credible civil rights complaints in the last six months. This includes "accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten." During that same six months (actually 12/16-6/15), more than a thousand complaints were made, but many could not be proven, or were easily dismissed.
Buried in the story are some pretty important allegations. First, it is made amply clear that the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General is overwhelmed with work since 9/11. It's a pretty safe bet, then, that the threshold for investigations and actions by the department is pretty high. (Projecting, you can assume that civil rights action would only come is a prisoner was, say, threatened by his treating physician, perhaps with the doctor saying, "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of you" to the prisoner during a physical examination. Read the story. This actually happened.) Second is the fact that the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons is attempting to cover up civil rights violations of prisoners in its care. The article explains that the IG's report doesn't explicitly scold the Department for this behavior, but it notes that an internal inquiry into allegations of repeated prisoner abuse had been closed, and the accused officer initially cleared, without anyone interviewing the inmates or the implicated officer.
Hmm. I feel safer already.
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