On
today's Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviewed Corrine Carey from Human Rights Watch, who are investigating some 517 prisoners unaccounted for in the wake of Katrina. According to the
HRW representative:
We went through that list and came up with 517 people who were still unaccounted for. We're certainly not saying that those people drowned in the facility, but there are credible reports, consistent reports from inmates of being left in that facility in locked cells. And so, we'd like to know from the Orleans Sheriff and from the Department of Corrections what happened to those 517 people....
[B]y Monday, when the storm hit, guards were no longer in the facility. The inmates were left to fend for themselves during the storm. The most disturbing thing is that the water began to rise in many of the buildings. Some inmates tell us that the water had come up to their chest level, and they were still in locked cells.
More on the flip.
According to inmate Dan Bright, also interviewed on the program:
DAN BRIGHT: We were strictly abandoned. They just left us. When we realized what was going on, it was too late. It was total chaos. The water was up to our chest. You had guys laying in the water trying to climb to the top of their bunks. You had older guys who didn't have any medicine who we were trying to help. And the way we got out was we had to kick the cell door for maybe like an hour or two. And the cell doors, they sits on this hinge. You have to kick it off the hinge. And when you kicked it off the hinge you have to slide out the door. And Templeman III is -- I'm trying to explain it as best I could. It's two levels. You had an upper level and bottom level. The guys on the bottom level was totally stuck in this water. Lights was out. So we had to get out on the top level and come down and help those guys. And the police, they had left.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. You're saying that the police, the guards, were gone?
DAN BRIGHT: The guard was gone.
AMY GOODMAN: There was only the prisoners?
DAN BRIGHT: There was only -- that's us.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were locked in.
DAN BRIGHT: Right. Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: And so how did you escape?
DAN BRIGHT: Well, we had to kick -- like I said, we had to kick the cells maybe like hours. You had to squeeze out of the cells. We found pipes, anything that we could find to pry the cells open downstairs to help the guys downstairs. We broke the windows to try to signal for help. No one came to our rescue.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you made your way out of the windows?
DAN BRIGHT: We made our way out of the cells and to our own -- the lower levels where most of the water was at. And we broke that window and climbed out....
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you. So, some of you made it out. What about people who were locked in cells?
DAN BRIGHT: They couldn't get out. We couldn't help all of them.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you hear them?
DAN BRIGHT: Yeah, they were crying to get them out. We couldn't help everybody. The water was constantly rising.
AMY GOODMAN: The water was constantly rising. So, when you got out, what did you do?
DAN BRIGHT: When we got out, they had maybe like ten deputies outside the building with boats.
AMY GOODMAN: They had deputies outside the building but none of the deputies inside the building to help you?
DAN BRIGHT: None. It was like, if you get out, you get out. If not, too bad.
A man named Neal Walker, who is familiar with the prison system in New Orleans and interviewed close to 50 prisoners after their eventual transfer, was also interviewed.
NEAL WALKER: Orleans Parish Prison, for your listeners, is really not a prison. It's a jail. It's a temporary detention facility. Other parts of the country you refer to county jails. We call them parish prisons in Louisiana....
Now, some of these prisoners were in fact serving misdemeanor sentences, and others were picked up for parole violations, but the vast, vast majority of the prisoners being held at Orleans Parish Prison were pretrial detainees. They had only been charged. They had not been tried and convicted.
Now, the complex itself includes... [the] central lockup, which is a one-story facility where prisoners are processed after their arrest. And I heard accounts of that building being completely underwater. The prisoners were looking at it from the windows at Templeman III and could see that central lockup was completely underwater.
AMY GOODMAN: Completely underwater?
NEAL WALKER: Right.
I'm thinking maybe this explains the resignation of the New Orleans police chief.
517 prisoners unaccounted for. Maybe they'll turn up, maybe some escaped, but it would seem likely that dozens may have been left to drown in locked cells.
What is that famous quote that goes roughly, if you want to understand a nation, look at its prisons?
I apologize if this was diaried elsewhere-- I did do a search and didn't see it.