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| GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA—Camp Delta, where 520 "enemy combatants" from 42 countries are being held as an outgrowth of the war on terrorism, is isolated on an old gunnery range 100 yards from the Caribbean Sea. Daytime temperatures can reach 100 degrees, but the sea breezes offer some relief to the men living in 8- by 7-foot concrete and metal-gated cells. Detainees are kept in their cells for all but two brief periods a week to bathe and exercise. They get three hot meals each day. Five times a day, the PA system broadcasts the Muslim call to prayer. Each cell contains a Koran, suspended by a surgical mask so as not to touch the ground, and a sign pointing to Mecca, the cultural and religious center of Islamic faith. A green mesh curtain surrounds the compound, so visitors cannot see in and prisoners cannot see out. Four terror suspects recently released from Camp Delta claim to have been beaten; shackled hand and foot up to 15 hours at a time in wire cages open to rats, snakes, and scorpions; fed yellow water and food dated 10 years past its shelf life; interrogated at gunpoint; sleep deprived; and psychologically tortured; among other claims of inhuman treatment.1 Is this the typical treatment that prisoners receive? And aside from the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, do inmates of prisons in the United States have any rights? According to the Supreme Court's ruling in Ruffin v. Commonwealth in 1871: "A convicted felon has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all of his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords him. He is for the time being a slave of the state."2 Until only recently, the opinion expressed in Ruffin v. Commonwealth, which maintained that prisoners have no legal rights, accurately reflected the judicial attitude toward correctional affairs. The conditions of incarceration and every aspect of institutional life were left to the discretion of the prison administration. Because prisoners were "slaves" of the state, privileges were matters of custodial benevolence, which wardens and turnkeys could "giveth or taketh away" at any time and without explanation. The courts maintained a steadfast hands-off position regarding correctional matters. They unequivocally refused to consider inmate complaints regarding the fitness of prison environments, abuses of administrative authority, the constitutional deprivations of penitentiary life, and the general conditions of incarceration. Not until the 1960s did the ideology expressed in United States ex rel. Gereau v. Henderson,3—that "prisoners are not stripped of their constitutional rights, including the right to due process"—begin to take noticeable form. The "hands-off" doctrine began to lose its vitality, and during that decade and the years that followed, prisoners were given the right to be heard in court regarding such matters as the widespread violence that threatened their lives and security, the problems of overcrowding, the nature of disciplinary proceedings, conditions affecting health and safety, regulations governing visitation and correspondence, and limitations on religious observance, education, work, and recreation. When the prisoners' rights movement began almost four decades ago, higher courts became the instruments of change in correctional policy. But only a few years after the movement had begun in earnest, there was a major event and human tragedy that served to dramatize the problems associated with prisons and inmate life. That event was the inmate uprising at New York's Attica Correctional Facility on September 9, 1971. Although the riot at Attica occurred more than 30 years ago, it continues to be a case study of the conditions and situations that tend to bring about most prison unrest—even now as American corrections moves through the 21st century. 1. The Economist, March 20, 2004. |