As Lance Tapley points out, denying prisoners access to human-rights protections is a mistake (see "Less Than Equal," October 2). Prisoners lose their right to liberty -- not their right to be treated with dignity. Indeed, when the state removes someone's freedom, it takes on an absolute responsibility to protect that person from abuse and discrimination.
Blanket policies to reject grievances by prisoners, like the one practiced by the Maine Human Rights Commission, are an affront to the rule of law and to the very rights that the Commission is meant to protect. While ostensibly intended to avoid frivolous complaints, such policies hurt prisoners who have legitimate claims about their treatment and allow abusive officials to act with impunity.
The best way to ensure that prisons are safe and orderly -- for inmates and staff alike -- is through transparency and oversight. The Maine Human Rights Commission should amend its process and ensure that prisoners' grievances are fully addressed.
Lovisa Stannow
Executive Director, Just Detention International
Los Angeles
Related:
Less than equal, Time for law to end torture, Africans suffer while the world stands by, More 
- Less than equal
This story has a bias. It’s in favor of human rights for all people.
- Time for law to end torture
In a collaborative effort between human-rights activists and incarcerated Mainers, a bill to end the use and abuse of solitary confinement has been drafted and will be submitted to legislators soon.
- Africans suffer while the world stands by
Raised on a steady diet of “Never Again,” members of Brown University’s Darfur Action Network found it infuriating to watch the international community stand idly by as murder and rape in Darfur continued unabated.
- Letters to the Portland editor, June 20, 2008
We would like to thank and congratulate Jeff Inglis for his vivid and thoughtful account of his night in the replica of a cell from Guantánamo that was placed in Portland’s Monument Square.
- Corrections changes
Like a movie hero, the NAACP’s new, young national president, Benjamin Jealous, swept into the 900-inmate Maine State Prison in Warren on Monday, quelling protests among the prisoners and, at least temporarily, rescuing the organization’s prison chapter from being snuffed out by state corrections officials.
- Human-rights campaigner to tour Maine
On the heels of news that Maine's unemployment rate is on the rise (2600 jobs were lost here in February), the state will host one of the nation's most powerful speakers on economic human rights this week.
- Amnesty International liberates City Hall
Old-school Jamaica Plain and Cambridge hippies had better step up their game.
- Secret, unaccountable, and co-opted
The state prison in Warren has been hammered in recent months by an inmate murder and other violence, a prisoner hunger strike, legislative investigations exposing mismanagement and poor guard morale, and a request by human-rights groups for a federal probe of prisoner mistreatment.
- Promoting human rights at home
“We have a holier-than-thou” attitude in the United States about human-rights violations abroad, said Bart Carhart, a student organizer of the new Amnesty International chapter at the University of Southern Maine.
- Federal investigation requested
Stirred into action by the murder of a wheelchair-bound prisoner, human-rights activists have asked the federal Department of Justice to investigate the treatment of Maine State Prison inmates.
- Under attack
Recent decisions by President Barack Obama and Maine Governor John Baldacci have dampened progressive hopes that the Republican-inspired war on civil liberties might be winding down.
- Less
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Letters
, Politics, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Political Policy, More
, Politics, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Political Policy, Prisons, Human Rights Policy, Maine Human Rights Commission, Maine Human Rights Commission, inmates, prisoners' rights, Less
