Horror Stories From Prison When a federal judge acting under pressure from an appeals court recently released the Texas prison system from the federal oversight which it has been under for years, many concluded that things must be "okay." However, that is far from the truth. Brenda has liver disease and is so swollen she looks like her stomach is going to burst open. She can't breathe because of the fluid in her body from the disease. She is always nauseated She bleeds from the rectum and from the mouth. She calls for help and prison staff ignore her. Some days she can get up and move around and other days she is just too sick. She is at the end of her disease and in a lot of pain. The other inmates try to help her but there is not much they can do. She has been refused medicine many times. She has been placed in what is called a medical dorm, but it is only called that because it is where they warehouse sick inmates. No one there is qualified to care for someone as sick as Brenda. She needs to be in a hospital. Of Brenda’s situation, another prisoner wrote, "She is swollen with fluid, her stomach is so far distended it appears it may bust. She vomits blood, runs a fever and must now sleep sitting up, because the fluid in her body is suffocating her. When she lays down she chokes continuously and although she saw Dr. West on Tuesday July 2,02 and he told her she would be hospitalized soon... we can all see this effort will be made much to late to help Brenda. I can't even describe what we are seeing happen to her, while medical ignores it." Chad is a twenty eight year old prisoner with Lyme Disease. Despite six years of pleas for some kind of treatment, nothing happens. Even if his Lyme Disease cannot be cured, Chad’s joint swelling, and pain can be treated, his seizures can be controlled with modern medicine. His psychiatric condition has deteriorated significantly. While he has been previously assigned diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder and Hyperactivity Disorder and treated with appropriate medications for both those conditions, he is not currently being treated with psychiatric medications. An outside psychiatrist says that it also seems quite likely he is suffering from a seizure disorder. The temperature in the segregation unit where he is incarcerated exceeds 110 degrees Fahrenheit at times in the summer. An outside physician decries his treatment as "barbaric." These are real people suffering real pain. Unfortunately, they find themselves in the prison system of the state of Texas where such "barbaric" treatment is the norm, not the exception. Prisoners have been left to die in their cells. They've starved in infirmaries, languished in their own feces before dying. Care in the prisons is so bad, inmates say, that they join experimental drug trials at a university hospital in Galveston to avoid the care offered in jailhouse infirmaries. Prison system doctors, relegated by then to administrative functions, took notice of criticism and began an emergency audit in 1996 of the medical charts of the inmates who had died that year. The doctors reviewed 24 charts and concluded that 16 dead inmates had received improper care. A couple of examples. Alexander Oris, "starved to death in infirmary," according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's internal review. Michael Anderson vomited for three days and had no bowel movements for six days before he died and "appeared to have been neglected in his cell." The system administration afterwards said they had made improvements. Yet two years later an attorney representing Texas convicts in a long-running federal lawsuit over prison conditions hired corrections system doctors from other states to conduct another review of prison deaths. These doctors came to conclusions strikingly similar to those in the prison system's own study two years earlier at Stiles. They examined 59 deaths from across the state and found that 20 of the inmates received poor or very poor care. Sixteen of those 20 deaths were either "preventable" or "possibly preventable." Care for diabetes and hypertension was "strikingly poor," the doctors testified. Dr. John Robertson, who at the time headed the prison health-care system in New Mexico, said he found that inmates would arrive at prison clinics with "what by most any reasonable expectation would be close to a medical emergency, and very little would be done about it." A federal judge wrote in 1999 that he had heard evidence of "significant, even deadly, inadequacies" in the medicine practiced on inmates. Two examples. Ophelia Rangel was left "lying in feces, menstrual fluid and urine" until she died of "severe dehydration," the doctors concluded. Robert Lee Brown died of a stroke and a heart attack after prison health officials ordered medicine to treat hypertension that caused a "precipitous lowering of blood pressure." The federal Food and Drug Administration had warned against this method of treating hypertension in 1985. Did the state know about these problems? "I don't think it's possible they could be unaware of it unless there's no coordination or no looking at the data we looked at," Robertson testified. "It would be impossible not to know that there were serious problems in the system and problems that, really, again, transcended all units and locations." In the year 2000, prisoners at the Stiles Unit where many of the sickest prisoners were housed began filing large numbers of complaints about medical care at the facility. A few years back Texas put its prisoners in everybody’s favorite money saving scheme - an HMO. In that system the University of Texas Medical Branch treats 80 percent of the inmates in 71 prison clinics and a hospital in Galveston. Texas Tech University in Lubbock takes care of the remaining inmates, using prison clinics and community hospitals to provide care in West Texas. One of the goals of an HMO is to limit care in order to save money, and that can leave prison inmates, who tend to be sicker than the general population because of their poverty and their drug and alcohol abuse, in a particularly vulnerable position. Any number of people can deny them care, from a poorly trained health care aid to a physician's assistant at a pill window. Doctors at prison units can override the recommendations of Galveston specialists and take away medications, work restrictions and even crutches, walkers and back braces. Among the problems which have resulted since implementation of the HMO plan: *Inmates have been discouraged from getting medication. *Doctors at local units have ignored what specialists said about inmates' conditions. *Infectious diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis and drug-resistant staph have soared. *An internal medical audit revealed serious lapses in treatment for HIV and AIDS. *The Huntsville facility kidney dialysis unit lost its accreditation. *At least eight prison unit physicians have had their licenses restricted by state medical boards. With the advent of managed care in 1994, all medication had to be taken at pill windows, and no one was allowed what were called "KOP," or Keep On Person, pill packs. In most units, the pill window is open only twice a day, once from 3 to 5 in the morning, and once in the evening, usually from 4 to 6 p.m., which tends to fall during mealtime. There is a water fountain at the pill station where the inmates must take their medicine under the eye of a guard. If 70 to 80 inmates require medication, the wait for a pill can be onerous and long, especially if an inmate is disabled or ill. And if the line is too long and all the patients are not served by closing time, the window is simply shut, and those who didn't get their medication have to come back later. In some cases, inmates have to choose between eating dinner or getting their pills. Chronically ill patients, such as those infected with TB, sometimes simply give up hope and don't bother to take their medication. For many inmates, it's not worth the hassle of going to the infirmary and waiting three days to see a doctor for something like the flu, a cold or a headache. As a result, drug costs drop. Prisoner complaints not surprisingly have skyrocketed. Said a nurse who worked in this system, "… from the beginning you are taught to treat them mean… There was never anything wrong with an inmate. Anybody that treats them nice is called an inmate lover…A nurse is supposed to look at an inmate," she says, "but sometimes they'll turn down a request if they judge the inmate has already been seen. They'll write a 'no-show' on appointments because the inmate can't get out for security reasons. A guard might fail to get them out for various reasons, or there might be a lockdown. A lot of focus is on getting rid of the sick-call requests." Most measures of health-care quality in Texas prisons are secret, according to state law and rulings by state Attorney General’s Office. Databases of inmates' medical grievances, findings of doctors who review the deaths of inmates, inspection reports of dialysis facilities, correspondence among prison health-care administrators and inspections of prison health-care facilities are all private in Texas. As mentioned above, since 1993 University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) has operated both, the prison hospital and most of the prison clinics. But the care in the clinics, in the prison was not the same at the hospital in Galveston. Inmates knew it, and they also knew there was one sure-fire way to get to Galveston: Join an experimental drug trial. Become a biomedical research "guinea pig" for UTMB. Until late 2000, UTMB conducted dozens and possibly hundreds of trials without telling state prison officials what it was doing — violating a long-standing prison system rule. Inmates knew about the trials, however, and as they came to understand the failures of the prison health-care system, they agreed to join the drug tests. Their decisions weren't so much willing as they were fatalistic. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential," reads the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which was drafted in direct response to the sheer barbarity of Nazi-era medical experiments on Jews and other captive groups. "[The] person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion. " Because little in prison is done without any element of force, the Nuremberg Code should have ended most research on prisoners. It didn't. However, following many exposes and investigations by the early 1980s, such practices had been greatly diminished. Texas, however, was at the forefront of the few states continuing this notorious tradition. Federal officials found "scant evidence" in a July 2000 inspection that the University of Texas Medical Branch had followed regulations for protecting prisoners enrolled in medical research trials. Convicts had not been fully informed of the risks in some tests. In one study, the federal regulators alleged, prisoners with ovarian cancer were asked to sign a consent form that vastly overstated the benefits of participation. In more than half the 25 UTMB research projects it reviewed, the federal Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) found problems. According to federal regulations, research in prisons must fit into one of four permissible categories: studies of the possible causes and effects of incarceration and criminal behavior; studies of prisons as institutional structures or of prisoners as incarcerated persons; research on conditions affecting prisoners as a group; and research involving a therapy likely to benefit the inmate involved. In all cases, studies are required to present no more than a "minimal" risk to the prisoner. Yet in many of the clinical trials reported to OHRP, those regulations were clearly violated. A September 14, 2000 letter from the feds to UTMB listed numerous research projects that did not fall into any of the categories of permissible research on prisoners, finding "scant evidence" that the university’s institutional review board followed federal regulations when it reviewed and approved the studies. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request offer insight into the types of studies conducted on prisoners at UTMB. Listed studies included those on induction of labor among pregnant inmates; a study of different methods of obtaining biopsies from inmates; a Phase I clinical trial (used to test a new drug or treatment for the first time in a small group) involving an experimental HIV vaccine; and another using a new experimental therapy of the intrahepatic (directly into the liver) delivery of a powerful chemotherapy drug. Perhaps most shocking was a Phase I study, ongoing since 1997, that used prisoners to test a radically experimental approach to treating lung cancer. In that study, the prisoner was anesthetized and then connected to a machine called the BioLogic-HT System. According to the consent form, the test subject would agree to be heavily sedated and then to have tubes inserted into veins in the leg and neck to obtain blood. The blood removed from the volunteer would then be heated by the machine and returned to the body, inducing a dangerously high body temperature of 108.5 degrees and resulting in a sustained "hyperthermia" for two hours. The consent form for the study cites a long list of serious potential side effects, including brain and spinal cord damage, loss of limbs, heart attack, hallucination, memory loss, burns at body pressure points, congestive heart failure, internal bleeding, seizures and death. While consent forms for experimental studies typically do list a wide array of possible complications, this form carried the additionally disturbing warning that the university would not compensate a research subject in case of injury. Participants in the study signed a form that read: " I understand that I cannot ... receive financial remuneration for any injuries resulting from my participation in this project." Federal regulations specifically prohibit any language in informed consent documents whereby a subject is made to release, or appear to release, the investigator or the institution from liability for negligence. Yet while UTMB was given specific guidance on how to improve its reporting, reviewing and informed consent procedures, at no point, confirms the OHRP, were any of the prisoners in these studies interviewed about their experiences as test subjects. Paperwork was submitted by the university in response to concerns raised by the OHRP. On the basis of that paperwork—although no further site visits were made—the researchers were given the go-ahead by the OHRP in mid-January 2001 to resume their work, although it is unclear which of the objectionable studies were allowed to continue. Keith Curry, a Washington-based psychologist issued damning findings in a report he prepared for prisoners' attorneys in the Ruiz prison reform lawsuit. Curry, who works for Applied Forensics LLP, is an expert witness who has worked on prison mental-health cases in several other states. Curry reviewed the records of 68 convicts who had been in segregation from one month to 17 years. The average was 5.2 years. In all, prison officials say, a little more than 6,700 mentally ill inmates are in administrative segregation statewide. Curry reported finding mentally ill convicts whose medication had been improperly halted and were too disoriented to appeal. A shortage of trained staff meant that mentally ill inmates weren't properly monitored by prison medical personnel. Routine blood tests weren't taken or logged into medical records, despite a requirement that tests be given with certain drugs. Inmates suffered painful and debilitating side effects from their drug treatment, but received no proper treatment in response. He says, "The provision of mental health care in Texas prisons is abysmal." Curry adds, "People who are coming out of this system are infinitely worse than when they went in. A system like this is not good for (inmates) and not good for Texas." Some folks are benefiting though with public money being sent to UTMB to provide health services to Texas prisoners. Some $668,000, for example, went right into the pockets of 60 UTMB physicians as bonuses, despite the protests of the prison board. Some Texas tax money appears to have been spent helping UTMB bid on providing health services for jails in New York City and for prison systems in other states. And a quarter of a million dollars goes to two highly paid -- and apparently underworked -- administrators who were once employed by the prison system. On and on, I could go and this is only medical conditions. You can imagine what other conditions are like. And this is only Texas. The end of federal oversight does not mean conditions are now acceptable. As the letter below (as well as the first two stories above) show, all is far from well. If you know anyone who can look into the situation of medical care in Texas prisons, get them to do it. If you are a healthcare worker of any kind, get your union, your professional organization, whatever, to take a stand on prison healthcare and the brutality of Texas prisons. One other action you might consider. Send an Email to the "Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations" at complaint@jcaho.org and ask them to look into the services provided by University of Texas Medical Branch to Texas prisons. .................................. Letter from Mary Vallier 5/31/2002 My name is Mary Vallier TDCJ #762401, I have been in the system for two years, and one other stretch. I was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis C. I was released in April of 99 and returned on a violation in December of 2000. Since my incarceration here my health has seriously declined due to lack of proper medical care. I am in the end stages of cirrhosis now, and all they tell me is that there is nothing they can do for me, well thetas what they have told me since I was diagnosed. There are things they could do for me ,but don't. I applied for special needs parole and was denied. I had to take it upon myself to apply for that. All medical ever tells me is that I am dying and I have to accept that, well I've always been a fighter, but the fight is getting harder. These people over medical here, in my opinion, would not make good animal doctors. You just cannot imagine the mental anguish I go through daily knowing that my life is in the hands of a bunch of un professionals. I fully intend to fight until I draw my last breath, to try and help others in the same situation and see justice done for all of the ones that have suffered due to the neglect of medical care here. The only medication I have been on for years are vitamins and water pills. I have only had one ultra sound on my liver, no biopsy. They only speculate on the serious aspects of my condition, due to my critical labs and symptoms. I have taken so many water pills that my kidneys don't work on their own. If there is anyone out there that reads this letter. I am not asking for sympathy, only empathy, Just because a person makes mistakes in their life don't mean they deserve to die in the process. Hopefully there will be an attorney or even a judge that will look into these matters, everyone in the system can't be telling a lie. I really do think that these accusations against the State prison Medical Facilities and U.T.M.B. should be looked into. Ask yourselves if you had a loved one in the system would you want then to be neglected this way? Take a chance on us, we are only women trying to survive on the inside. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. If there is anyone out there that may be willing to help, please contact me. I go home August 23rd address upon release has been provided Update: Mary was rushed by ambulance to hospital and she was sent home as she is dying.. they denied her special needs parole when she had asked and made her spend her last days in mental anguish, neglected and without decent medical care. Update...I wrote to Mary, and the letter came back. It said Deceased... Mary Vallier #762401 1401 State School Road Gatesville Texas 76599 Interested Attorneys: 910 Chance St. Wichita Falls, Texas 76306 Sources: Family members of prisoners, Houston Press, Texas Prison Labor Union, Austin American Statesman, In These Times, Cox News Service, Austin Chronicle (Please See Update Below) Update: The following information came in today. This is in regards to Brenda mentioned above. From James West, M.D. Cluster Medical director Gatesville Cluster Re: Offender Brenda Doss TDCJ-ID #1013935 Brenda Doss is a 43y/o cirrhotic with a history of bleeding esophageal varices. For the last 4 weeks she has been having shortness of breath and nocturnal dyspnea secondary to ascites, possible early failure and consuming 3 liters of fluid a day. I have put her on a fluid restriction and increasing doses of Lasix and Enalapril to mobilize her fluid. To date she has lost 8 pounds. Today I added Spironolactone to her medications. I will see her weekly until she is no longer dyspneic. Record review shows no complaints of vomiting blood in the last 6 months or more. I never told her she would be hospitalized soon. She has a G.I. clinic follow- up scheduled. She is being seen on a weekly basis now because of her complaints of shortness of breath, not because of any pressure put on the medical staff. She was seen in Galveston 8 times last year and she has been seen in our clinic 10 times by a primary care provider this year. I hardly think that this represents her being "left to die" or "ignoring" her condition. Chart search shows no recorded fever in the last 6 months. Dr. James West MD ................ From Brenda to an outside advocate: I just wanted to drop a line to say a few things about me and my illness. I may not spell some of the things that good, but you'll know what it is. These are the illnesses I have 1)I am a diabetic 2)I have hepatitis b and c 3)Amonia in my blood 4)Cirrossis of the liver(liver failure) 6)My stomach is so full of fluid look like I have 2 babies 7)Gall stones 8)I get so weak, some mornings I can't even get up unless I feel like throwing up. The doctor gave me some finagrin for it. 9)High blood pressure 10)High colesterol 11)Nuropthy in my legs and feet 12)My feet are cracking, which is not good for a diabetic. I tried to tell the doctor, she didn't do anything for me, she just brushed me away every time I complained about it... My eye is bloodshot really bad and I told the nurse today when I went to get my insulin. She wouldn't examine me, she told me to drop a sick call. One thing is I am scared to write this letter, will you make sure you won't let the people do anything to retaliate. But also I am so scared to die in here. Please help me. I am so sick my eyes are black underneath. I am laying down as I write because every time I sit up I get dizzy. Please help me. I don't want to die in here. They say that there is nothing else they can do for me…. I was throwing up blood and a nurse came in to check me. Well guess what she brought me..2 antacids and for me to drop a sick call. I signed the papers for you to get my medical records…Thanks Brenda ................ Dr. West does not choose to acknowledge many of Brenda’s complaints. In regards to those complaints he does acknowledge ("…shortness of breath and nocturnal dyspnea secondary to ascites, possible early failure…), he says he will "… see her weekly…" Remember this is a person who has diabetes, liver failure, hepatitis B and C. A once a week visit is totally inadequate care. Even taking Dr. West at his word does a prison cell sound like the place for Brenda to be?

 

Torture Inc. Americas Brutal Prisons http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq? By Deborah Davies They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It's terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you're not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying. The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. 'Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.' If a prisoner doesn't drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There's a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg. Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can't crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes. Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking. Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards. The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year. And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers. But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for Channel 4 that will be broadcast next week. Our findings were not based on rumor or suspicion. They were based on solid evidence, chiefly videotapes that we collected from all over the U.S. In many American states, prison regulations demand that any 'use of force operation', such as searching cells for drugs, must be filmed by a guard. The theory is that the tapes will show proper procedure was followed and that no excessive force was used. In fact, many of them record the exact opposite. Each tape provides a shocking insight into the reality of life inside the U.S. prison system – a reality that sits very uncomfortably with President Bush's commitment to the battle for freedom and democracy against the forces of tyranny and oppression. In fact, the Texas episode outlined above dates from 1996, when Bush was state Governor. Frank Carlson was one of the lawyers who fought a compensation battle on behalf of the victims. I asked him about his reaction when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last year and U.S. politicians rushed to express their astonishment and disgust that such abuses could happen at the hands of American guards. 'I thought: "What hypocrisy," Carlson told me. 'Because they know we do it here every day.' All the lawyers I spoke to during our investigations shared Carlson's belief that Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few rogue individuals, was simply the export of the worst practices that take place in the domestic prison system all the time. They pointed to the mountain of files stacked on their desks, on the floor, in their office corridors – endless stories of appalling, sadistic treatment inside America's own prisons. Many of the tapes we've collected are several years old. That's because they only surface when determined lawyers prise them out of reluctant state prison departments during protracted lawsuits. But for every 'historical' tape we collected, we also found a more recent story. What you see on the tape is still happening daily. It's terrible to watch some of the videos and realize that you're not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying. In one horrific scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a 'restraint chair'. His hands and feet are shackled, there's a strap across his chest, his head lolls forward. He looks dead. He's not. Not yet. The chair is his punishment because guards saw him in his cell with a pillowcase on his head and he refused to take it off. The man has a long history of severe schizophrenia. Sixteen hours later, they release him from the chair. And two hours after that, he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment. The tape comes from Utah – but there are others from Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Arizona and probably many more. We found more than 20 cases of prisoners who've died in the past few years after being held in a restraint chair. Two of the deaths we investigated were in the same county jail in Phoenix, Arizona, which is run by a man who revels in the title of 'America's Toughest Sheriff.' His name is Joe Arpaio. He positively welcomes TV crews and we were promised 'unfettered access.' It was a reassuring turn of phrase – you don't want to be fettered in one of Sheriff Joe's jails. We uncovered two videotapes from surveillance cameras showing how his tough stance can end in tragedy. The first tape, from 2001, shows a man named Charles Agster dragged in by police, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles. Agster is mentally disturbed and a drug user. He was arrested for causing a disturbance in a late-night grocery store. The police handed him over to the Sheriff's deputies in the jail. Agster is a tiny man, weighing no more than nine stone, but he's struggling. The tape shows nine deputies manhandling him into the restraint chair. One of them kneels on Agster's stomach, pushing his head forward on to his knees and pulling his arms back to strap his wrists into the chair. Bending someone double for any length of time is dangerous – the manuals on the use of the 'restraint chair' warn of the dangers of 'positional asphyxia.' Fifteen minutes later, a nurse notices Agster is unconscious. The cameras show frantic efforts to resuscitate him, but he's already brain dead. He died three days later in hospital. Agster's family is currently suing Arizona County. His mother, Carol, cried as she told me: 'If that's not torture, I don't know what is.' Charles's father, Chuck, listened in silence as we filmed the interview, but every so often he padded out of the room to cry quietly in the kitchen. The second tape, from five years earlier, shows Scott Norberg dying a similar death in the same jail. He was also a drug user arrested for causing a nuisance. Norberg was severely beaten by the guards, stunned up to 19 times with a Taser gun and forced into the chair where – like Charles Agster – he suffocated. The county's insurers paid Norberg's family more than £4 millions in an out-of-court settlement, but the sheriff was furious with the deal. 'My officers were clear,' he said. 'The insurance firm was afraid to go before a jury.' Now he's determined to fight the Agster case all the way through the courts. Yet tonight, in Sheriff Joe's jail, there'll probably be someone else strapped into the chair. Not all the tapes we uncovered were filmed by the guards themselves. Linda Evans smuggled a video camera into a hospital to record her son, Brian. You can barely see his face through all the tubes and all you can hear is the rhythmic sucking of the ventilator. He was another of Sheriff Joe's inmates. After an argument with guards, he told a prison doctor they'd beaten him up. Six days later, he was found unconscious of the floor of his cell with a broken neck, broken toes and internal injuries. After a month in a coma, he died from septicaemia. 'Mr Arpaio is responsible.' Linda Evans told me, struggling to speak through her tears. 'He seems to thrive on this cruelty and this mentality that these men are nothing.' In some of the tapes it's not just the images, it's also the sounds that are so unbearable. There's one tape from Florida which I've seen dozens of times but it still catches me in the stomach. It's an authorized 'use of force operation' – so a guard is videoing what happens. They're going to Taser a prisoner for refusing orders. The tape shows a prisoner lying on an examination table in the prison hospital. The guards are instructing him to climb down into a wheelchair. 'I can't, I can't!' he shouts with increasing desperation. 'It hurts!' One guard then jabs him on both hips with a Taser. The man jerks as the electricity hits him and shrieks, but still won't get into the wheelchair. The guards grab him and drop him into the chair. As they try to bend his legs up on to the footrest, he screams in pain. The man's lawyer told me he has a very limited mental capacity. He says he has a back injury and can't walk or bend his legs without intense pain. The tape becomes even more harrowing. The guards try to make the prisoner stand up and hold a walking frame. He falls on the floor, crying in agony. They Taser him again. He runs out of the energy and breath to cry and just lies there moaning. One of the most recent video tapes was filmed in January last year. A surveillance camera in a youth institution in California records an argument between staff members and two 'wards' – they're not called prisoners. One of the youths hits a staff member in the face. He knocks the ward to the floor then sits astride him punching him over and over again in the head. Watching the tape you can almost feel each blow. The second youth is also punched and kicked in the head – even after he's been handcuffed. Other staff just stand around and watch. We also collected some truly horrific photographs. A few years ago, in Florida, the new warden of the high security state prison ordered an end to the videoing of 'use of force operations.' So we have no tapes to show how prison guards use pepper spray to punish prisoners. But we do have the lawsuit describing how men were doused in pepper spray and then left to cook in the burning fog of chemicals. Photographs taken by their lawyers show one man has a huge patch of raw skin over his hip. Another is covered in an angry rash across his neck, back and arms. A third has deep burns on his buttocks. 'They usually use fire extinguishers size canisters of pepper spray,' lawyer Christopher Jones explained. 'We have had prisoners who have had second degree burns all over their bodies. 'The tell-tale sign is they turn off the ventilation fans in the unit. Prisoners report that cardboard is shoved in the crack of the door to make sure it's really air-tight.' And why were they sprayed? According to the official prison reports, their infringements included banging on the cell door and refusing medication. From the same Florida prison we also have photographs of Frank Valdes – autopsy pictures. Realistically, he had little chance of ever getting out of prison alive. He was on Death Row for killing a prison officer. He had time to reconcile himself to the Electric Chair – he didn't expect to be beaten to death. Valdes started writing to local Florida newspapers to expose the corruption and brutality of prison officers. So a gang of guards stormed into his cell to shut him up. They broke almost every one of his ribs, punctured his lung, smashed his spleen and left him to die. Several of the guards were later charged with murder, but the trial was held in their own small hometown where almost everyone works for, or has connection with, the five prisons which ring the town. The foreman of the jury was former prison officer. The guards were all acquitted. Meanwhile, the warden who was in charge of the prison at the time of the killing – the same man who changed the policy on videoing – has been promoted. He's now the man in charge of all the Florida prisons. How could anyone excuse – still less condone – such behavior? The few prison guards who would talk to us have a siege mentality. They see themselves outnumbered, surrounded by dangerous, violent criminals, so they back each other up, no matter what. I asked one serving officer what happened if colleagues beat up an inmate. 'We cover up. Because we're the good guys.' No one should doubt that the vast majority of U.S. prison officers are decent individuals doing their best in difficult circumstances. But when horrific abuse by the few goes unreported and uninvestigated, it solidifies into a general climate of acceptance among the many. At the same time the overall hardening of attitudes in modern-day America has meant the notion of rehabilitation has been almost lost. The focus is entirely on punishment – even loss of liberty is not seen as punishment enough. Being on the restraint devices and the chemical sprays. Since we finished filming for the programmed in January, I've stayed in contact with various prisoners' rights groups and the families of many of the victims. Every single day come more e-mails full of fresh horror stories. In the past weeks, two more prisoners have died, in Alabama and Ohio. One man was pepper sprayed, the other tasered. Then, three weeks ago, reports emerged of 20 hours of video material from Guantanamo Bay showing prisoners being stripped, beaten and pepper sprayed. One of those affected is Omar Deghayes, one of the seven British residents still being held there. His lawyer says Deghayes is now permanently blind in one eye. American military investigators have reviewed the tapes and apparently found 'no evidence of systematic abuse.' But then, as one of the prison reformers we met on our journey across the U.S. told me: 'We've become immune to the abuse. The brutality has become customary.' So far, the U.S. government is refusing to release these Guantanamo tapes. If they are ever made public – or leaked – I suspect the images will be very familiar. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo – or even Texas. The prisoners and all guards may vary, but the abuse is still too familiar. And much is it is taking place in America's own backyard. --------- Deborah Davies is a reporter for Channel 4 Dispatches. Her investigation, Torture: America's Brutal Prisons, was shown on Wednesday, March 2, at 11.05pm. .