There are safe alternatives to the dangerous rides prisoners experience in police vans, so why are they not being used?
The prisoner transport vehicle has been called a casket on wheels by Baltimore city prosecutor Janice Bledsoe and she couldnt be more correct. At least 25 of my almost 100 rides as an inmate at York Correctional Institution convinced me that I was about to die. It is too bad it took the death of Freddie Gray for the prosecutors to finally acknowledge the risk prisoners in transport vehicles face.
I would estimate that at least 10 times while being transported as an inmate, my head hit the trucks low ceiling like the flight attendant who died in the Denzel Washington movie Flight. The three occasions on which I was allowed to appear in court by video made me downright giddy because it meant I wouldnt sustain the mottled purple reminders of the ride on my skin. Yet, almost half a million people who continue to ride in the same type of vehicle that killed Freddie Gray to attend court proceedings.
On 8 December, the Prison Policy Initiative released research that revealed that 451,000 people wait in American jails, unsentenced,until their round of court trips determines their punishment. Because our nations justice system is too sprawling and disjointed to collect the numbers, no one not even the National Center for State Courts knows how many people go through Freddie Grays wild ride every weekday.
These inmates could avoid being rattled out on the road if we used the video-conference infrastructure that allows prisoners to appear in the courtroom on a television screen rather than in person. These connections already exist between courthouses and jails in at least 47 states, installed years ago to avoid the risks and cost of prisoner transport. Why hasnt all prisoner transport been scrapped for the cheaper, safer alternative of video appearance?
Prisoner transport poses danger to more than just the inmate. The public is at risk whenever an inmate escapes, and that is most likely to happen when he or she is moved from point A to point B; transport is the weakest link in the chain of human custody. The state of New York reported 309 escapes from prisoner transport annually in its most recent analysis. Local schools went into lockdown in Montana last month when a man charged with attempted murder escaped from detention while he was being moved. It makes no sense for us to put the public at risk when safer alternatives exist.
The slams and bangs on metal partitions I endured while being chain-tethered to as many as six other people (none of them seat-belted) were so bad that I actually dreaded leaving prison. On the day I finished my sentence, I chose to stay later and leave in my familys car rather than split early in a state vehicle.
Prosecutors overwhelming ease and success in securing convictions only 5% of defendants insist on a trial, the remaining 95% plead guilty to the charges against them depends on weakened adversaries. We transport defendants to court through torturous rides to make them supple for the system. Theres no other explanation for putting prisoners and the publics safety at risk.
The connection between the horror of these rides and the guilty pleas that put an end to them isnt recorded statistically, but its acknowledged among inmates. During my rides, I would estimate that I heard at least 60 women decide to agree to less than advantageous plea bargain arrangements just to avoid being transported to court again.
Its that bad and its happening everywhere, not just in Baltimore City. The irony of the prosecutors closing statement in the Freddie Gray case is that, as she delivered it to the jury, there were probably men and women in the same courthouse who arrived via one of the trucks she vilified, waiting to be prosecuted by one of her colleagues.
Like Janie Bledsoe, we must call these wild rides what they are: a dangerous practice that puts the lives of prisoners at risk and smoothes the way to the convictions that prop up our nations crisis of mass incarceration. We owe it to Freddie Gray to shake up this system until it protects everyones safety.
Originally found athttp://www.theguardian.com/us
The post We owe it to Freddie Gray: inmate transportation 'wild rides' must end | Chandra Bozelko appeared first on Automotive Guide To Everything.
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