Prison Guards Answerable to No-One!

Just when we thought we’d experienced every kind of despicable behavior possible from our keepers, the prison guards, a new worrying habit by some of their number is slowly coming to light and causing deep resentment amongst the prisoners. Last week the latest in a series of distressing stories of abuse toward visiting female friends and relatives was reported in a written complaint to the building chief here by an irate prisoner.

The prisoner’s wife had been waiting to be let in along with a larger group of visiting relatives on a Tuesday visiting session. One of the guards instructed her to wait to one side while the remainder of the visitors were briefly searched and shown through to the visiting area. Once they had stepped through out of sight the officer began to search this particular lady’s body with his hands and at the same time made lewd, suggestive and sexually explicit remarks to her and proposed that she meet up with him later at a nearby motel. The implication was made that should she not comply with his wishes, her husband would suffer at the hands of his guard and his colleagues who could “make things very difficult for him”,

The woman was eventually allowed through to the visiting room where she picked up the phone to her husband in floods of tears and visibly shaken. She related the story of what had just occurred to her husband but begged him not to take it any further for his own safety but he was so upset by the episode that he insisted she tell him the officer’s name and immediately wrote a formal complaint to the director after the visit was over.

The next day the prisoner was summoned to the building chief’s office where he was told that his complaint would have serious implications for him should he try to proceed. It would be better all round if he were to “overlook” this small indiscretion by a junior officer and allow the chief to have a word with the culprit himself. Of course should this happen again in the future he, the chief, would be more that happy to pass the complaint on up through the chain of command, but for this occasion he was not prepared to take any further action and the  matter should from then on be considered closed.

This kind of behavior by a uniformed officer is sickening enough on its own but it is far from an isolated event. This was the latest in a string of sexually orientated abuses toward female visitors which only makes it all the more shocking. There have been reports of at least four similar events this year alone and they are just from prisoners housed in this building. Nor is a single officer to blame but a number of those whose duty it is to screen visitors according to prison security regulations.

These guards seem to think they are untouchable and indeed are correct to some extent. From a prisoner’s standpoint, it is virtually impossible to lodge a complaint against any officer here. There is a formal complaints structure on paper but in reality it is stacked so far in favor of the authorities that it is impossible to complain about anything at all without their complete consent.

Complaints made to officers within the building are never passed up the chain of command and quite often the complainant will be threatened or singled out for ill treatment. Written complaints addressed directly to the department of corrections are intercepted in the mail room and never reach their intended recipients.

The bottom line is that genuine complaints by prisoners go unheard and those that do complain are persecuted and thus Bang Kwang’s officers believe that they can get away with anything as far as their wards are concerned. Furthermore they are safe in the knowledge that they will be protected by their senior officers who perpetuate their unacceptable behavior by failing to report such incidents or burying complaints using threats to scare off the aggrieved party.

The building chiefs actions concerning this particular incident are perhaps more despicable than the behavior of the officer whose ‘indiscretions’ he so deftly kept a lid on. While authorities in this prison remain answerable to no-one, the prisoners, their families and friends remain dangerously unprotected.