LASHAWN Thompson, a 28-years-old black inmate, was found dead in his cell in an Atlanta jail with more than one thousand insect bites all over his body.
His corpse was discovered in a filthy psychiatric jail cell in September. He had been completely ignored by the medical staff.
The United States is home to the world’s largest prison system with close to two million people behind bars.
The conditions in US jails and prisons are often inhumane with overcrowding, violence, and inadequate health care plaguing the system.
Many prisoners are also subjected to long periods of solitary confinement, which can cause severe mental and physical harm.
An enormous number of prisoners are held in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails.
There are also countless military prisons, civil commitment centres, and state psychiatric hospitals and prisons.
The US – a country that claims to be championing human rights – jails more people per capita than any other nation.
Thompson, who suffered from mental health issues and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was placed in a psychiatric ward in jail three months before his death.
Prisoners in the US face significant barriers to accessing adequate health care.
Many suffer from chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, but are often denied the necessary medication and treatment.
The result is that many prisoners suffer unnecessarily and are at risk of dying from preventable illnesses.
A US prison charity speaking to the media said: ‘They are overcrowded, they are underfunded, in many cases, the way they’re designed, the newer ones even, the way they’re designed.
‘They’re putting a bunch of people in these pods, in these areas, these community areas, with the cells attached, where they pretty much have to police themselves within the pods within the tiers, which is what you see in places like El Salvador, maybe, in countries where they just put people away in these facilities and then they basically just lock them away.
‘And that’s kind of what you’re getting these days on a smaller scale.
‘What happened with Lashawn Thompson is unbelievable! It is immoral, it is amoral, and, it must not be allowed to continue.’
After a massive outcry, seven US police officers and three hospital employees have now been charged with second-degree murder over Thompson’s death.
The result of the official autopsy returned a verdict of ‘undetermined’ as his cause of death.
An independent autopsy, which could clarify matters, costs from $20,000 to $50,000, which is far beyond the means of his family.
Meanwhile, another prisoner Dylan Kammeraad was severely beaten by officers at a Michigan jail. He was a former MMA fighter.
In 2019, Terry Whitehead was beaten by former corrections officer, David M. Shorts; these punishments happen at all times of the day.
One factor contributing to the crisis in US jails and prisons is the lack of focus on rehabilitation and reintegration.
Many prisoners are released back into society without the necessary skills or resources to succeed in civilian life, leading to high rates of recidivism.
Moreover, many former prisoners are unable to secure employment or housing due to their criminal record, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and crime.
And without greater investment in education, job training and mental health care, this cycle is likely to continue.
Lashawn Thompson’s attorney Ben Crump said: ‘All of a sudden you’re pulled over. You’re taken into custody. Often your family is not notified for hours, if not days, thereafter.
‘And because of the pretrial system that exists in America, if you do not have money to bond out, or if you do not have someone who can post a cash bond for you to be released, you have to stay in custody until such time as you can go to trial.
‘During that period of time, as you can imagine, you’ve often lost your job, if you had a job; you’ve lost your car, if you had car payments; you’ve lost your apartment if you needed to pay rent; all of your possessions have been either thrown out or auctioned off.
‘Even if you are found not guilty and do not proceed to prison your life often has to be restarted from scratch as a result of charges against you because of the barriers to justice that exists in America.’
The family of the African-American man who starved to death in the Arkansas jail because he was unable to pay his $100 bail, are suing Sebastian County, which runs the detention centre where Price Junior died.
51-year-old Larry Eugene Price Junior, died at the Sebastian County Detention Centre in August 2021, after his medication was taken away and he had to eat his own faeces and drink his own urine, according to reports.
The families asserted in court: ‘When Mr Price entered the jail, he was a well-nourished, 6’2” tall man who weighed 185 pounds. When EMTs transported him to the hospital, they estimated his weight to be 90 pounds.
‘There is no excuse for an atrocity like this to happen to a mentally ill man in an American jail. None. In addition to acute dehydration and malnutrition, the medical examiner observed the profoundly shrivelled (or pruned) condition of the soles of Mr Price’s feet.
‘Mr Price’s grotesquely wilted skin was caused by “prolonged moisture exposure” from the pool of contaminated water on the concrete floor and bunk of his solitary confinement cell.
‘The United States Constitution has long prohibited inhumane conditions of confinement like this.
‘In addition to being cruel and unusual, it was also hazardous. In fact, because of the pooled water in Price’s cell, the jail’s first responding officers opted not to use the readily available electronic defibrillator, which might have saved Mr Price’s life.’
The disproportionate impact of the US prison system on marginalised communities must be addressed.
Black and Latino individuals are incarcerated at significantly higher rates than white individuals, often as a result of systemic racism and poverty.
The result is that these communities are disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of the prison system, including the perpetuation of poverty and the destruction of families.
Prison reform campaigner Scott Creighton explains how mass incarceration especially affects African American communities.
‘I know a lot of people who are activists in this cause who have been incarcerated before, and I’m one of them. I was incarcerated for a year in Richmond and for about a month here in Tampa.
‘This is a long time ago. But I can tell you that from that time, and in areas where you don’t particularly think of African Americans as being in the majority – in the prison population they certainly are.
‘So I’ve seen this firsthand. Yes, it is a disproportionate percentage of the population in the prisons, in jails, in the penal system. And the cost on the communities is extensive.
‘There’s the cost of family members having to take care of them; there’s the cost of constantly worrying about the future of what’s going to happen to you.
‘There’s the cost that when young people see it as more likely in their community, their future will be in a prison rather than in a college and it is based on the reality in which they live.
‘The cost of that is extensive.’
Meanwhile, another black man, Maurice Jimmerson, has been held in a US jail without trial and without representation for 10 years after being charged in connection with a double murder in Georgia.
This, once more, reveals the failure of US so-called justice especially towards black and people of colour.
Jimmerson, now 32, and four others were arrested by police in 2013 for murder. A jury acquitted two of them, but for a decade, Jimmerson has spent the majority of that time in a county jail, legally innocent.
Several factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic, a 2021 courthouse flood, and the decision by the previous judge to try Jimmerson and his co-defendants separately, caused the delay, Gregory Edwards, the local district attorney told the local news station.
Jimmerson has been left without an attorney for the past eight months due to particularly bureaucratic errors.
