The American Psychology Association recently issued a scathing report of the collusion between members of their organization and government torturers as a part of the War on Terror, begun under the second Bush administration. The investigation found fault with psychologists, which caused the organization to forbid its members from assisting in future interrogations. But, the prison system, along with all the rest of the criminal justice apparatus, was exempted from the new rules. A disappointing, but not surprising, decision.
For all of their pious rhetoric about doing no harm, medical professionals of all stripes have been aiding and abetting the cruel and inhumane practices of the prisons for all of my thirty-six years, and no doubt long before. Doctors and nurses have always turned blind eyes to the victims of beatings and abuses. Psychologists and psychiatrists have written reports designed to justify continued and unjustified imprisonment. None of this is new. What those not familiar with the actual workings of the prisons fail to understand is — these places attract a lot of people with certain preconceptions; the bullies and petty dictators of the world, and in here, on this side of the electrified fences, there’s no serious oversight for them to contend with.
Plus, the professionals aren’t going to bite the hand of Big Brother that’s been feeding them. Doctors and psychiatrists inside a prison make enormous amounts of money and don’t have to worry about being sued for malpractice, thanks to the Prison Litigation Reform Act and the United States Supreme Court. The American Psychology Association missed a great opportunity to knock a hole in the prison industrial complex. Had they also forbidden their members from participating inside these places, it would have started a delegitimizing of a system that desperately needs the collusion of professionals to maintain its facade of respectability. But, they couldn’t risk the thousands of very well paid positions that would have been lost.
At the end of World War Two, German soldiers on trial for the war crimes of their government claimed that because they were following lawful orders, they should not be held to account. This so-called Nuremberg defense was rejected. A soldier, and presumably a doctor or a psychologist, even a prison guard, cannot participate in immoral and unethical conduct and then blame it on the system. I wonder if they’ll see the irony when the moment of accounting comes; when they find out the horror of being on this side of the fence. This is Kenneth E. Hartman, Executive Director of The Other Death Penalty Project, from inside California’s prison system.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
