Texas: Leader of national prison sexual abuse

In a recent article by The Houston Chronicle, it was reported that Texas leads the nation in prison sex abuse, having  five of the 10 U.S. facilities with the highest rates of sex abuse. Included in the five facilities in Texas is the Mountain View Unit near Gatesville, which houses female inmates. An inmate, Garrett Cunningham, at the Luther Unit in Navasota in 2000 said he was sexually assaulted by a prison guard twice his size, but he said nothing until five years later because he was threatened to be sent to a harsher unit.

“Many men and women in Texas experience sexual abuse at the hands of officer and other prisoners,” Cunningham said. “Their pleas for help go unanswered by administrators and staff.”

Just last year, a prison guard admitted to fondling immigrant women detained in the facilities where he worked. Robert Luis Loya attacked three women in the spring of 2008 at the Port Isabel Detention Center operated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said he snuck into the isolation rooms in which the women were held and ordered them to strip down so that he could fondle them. Often times he told them he was checking on them for a doctor and never turned on the lights. Loya was sentenced to three years in prison and five years of supervised release.

Although Loya will serve for his crimes, many other corrections officers do not, as they are often not caught. However, actions are being put into effect to help prevent Texas’ high rate of sexual abuse. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to enact the ” use of video to prevent sex abuse; housing changes and transfers for victims; sanctions for any inmates or staffers engaging in abuse and written agreements with outside law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to investigate allegations of sex abuse.”

Motherhood in Prison

With high populations of women in prison across the nation, it may not be a surprise that many often are already pregnant at the time they are incarcerated. In the past, mothers in prison would have to leave their child to be cared for by the state or with a relative, most often a grandparent. However, within the past five years, new programs that allow women to care for their child in prison for a set amount of time have been created. In an article in Our Bodies, Ourselves, they reported that states have opened nurseries for those mothers so they could care for their babies for up to 18 months. Also, other community-based residential parenting programs are available, allowing women to serve criminal justice sentences with their infants in a non-prison setting. The women are usually allowed to leave to attend doctor and social service appointments and other community programs, often receiving drug or alcohol abuse treatment.

For the most part, only women who have not committed previous crimes of child abuse or neglect are eligible candidates for the programs, and they have to sign a waiver that they release the facility from any responsibility of  illnesses or injuries that may happen to the child. A total of nine states have adopted these child nurseries which include California, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, New York, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia.

Drug and violent offenses charges main reason for women to prison

In recent years, the rate of women being incarcerated for drug offenses has risen significantly. From the late ’70s  until this past decade,  the drug charges rose from 11 percent to at least 30 percent. Possession had the highest rate, while delivery charges followed closely behind. Also, a great portion of the women in prison have been incarcerated because of violent offense charges, the most common being murder or manslaughter and robbery. However,  women in prison over drug offenses are high because the sentence terms given have been extended for these types of charges over the years.

Primarily, many assert, is that the length of sentence given to violent and/or property offenders has stayed constant since the 1980s, and sentence
length of drug offenders has increased… The average maximum length of sentence given to female drug offenders has indeed increased substantially between 1986 to 1997, from 54 months to 84 months, or 55 percent.

Also, the National Institute of Corrections Library shows that the county that has the highest possesion rate is Harris county, with nearly half of the charges coming from this area at 45.88 percent, beating out the other counties tremendously.

Women in prison: A brief statement

As the rate of women in prison continues to grow due to a range of charges from violent offenses to drug offenses, so do the social issues that come with the increase of imprisoned women, including being a mother in prison as well as the abuse these women have to endure.

Texas Women’s imprisonment rate continues to increase

Within three decades, the rate of women incarcerated in Texas prisons  has increased more than 10 times.  From 1977 to 2004 the amount of Total Female Sentenced Prisoners went from 919 women to 11,048 women, a 1,141 percent increase.  Currently, Texas, ranked fifth,  is one of the top ranking states in imprisonment of female offenders.

Annually, the percentage rate of women being incarcerated has been 13 percent, save for the year of 1992-1993 where the percentage was nearly tripled and stayed at a high percentage rate thereafter. However, the Women’s Prison Association Web site said:

Rather than a tripling of the state’s female prison population in the course of a single year, it is likely that the apparent jump is a result of years of undercounting—possibly of state prisoners housed in local jails due to a shortage of state prison beds.

In most cases, many of the charges these women are imprisoned for are drug related. Statistics show that women in prison are more likely than men to be serving a sentence for a drug charge.

Houston a hub for modern-day slavery, human trafficking

As a large and diverse city that continues to grow in population with people immigrating daily, Houston has become a hub for human trafficking. Annually, 18,000 people are trafficked into the US, many of which are directed to Houston, an ABC 13 broadcast said.

The Houston Chronicle reported that just Tuesday,an ongoing sex-trafficking ring conducted by Gerardo “El Gallo” Salazar came to an end when Mexican authorities arrested him. He was said to have been accused of using beatings, threats and rape to force young immigrant women into slavery in Houston. These women were said to have been locked in apartments and homes during the day and sold repeatedly in cantinas at night, sometimes for as little as $50. Salazar was arrested in his hometown outside of Mexico City on counterfeit charges initially and later confessed to being wanted in Houston. However, he will likely be subject to a request for extradition to Houston to face charges that include sexual assault of a child and sex trafficking. For five long years, Salazar had been a fugitive.

Also, Khou.com and ABC 13 reported last month that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents charged 23 people and shut down 14 businesses for allegedly trafficking hundreds of undocumented immigrants for cash. The owners allegedly made more than $650 per person while holding them against their will in stash houses.

“The companies would pay commissions to smugglers to bring in smuggled aliens to them,” John Morton, Assistant Secretary of Homeland security for ICE, said in the ABC 13 interview. “They would also buy and trade passengers on commission between each other.”

Two-hundred and nine undocumented immigrants were discovered with some in an area guarded with weapons, pit bulls and surveillance cameras.

In an attempt to combat this growing problem the Houston community suffers, the Star-Telegram has reported a new state task force that will take a stand against human traffickers. Attorney General Greg Abbott in the article said The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force will coordinate, fortify and expand law enforcement tools to prosecute traffickers and help better identify victims of “modern-day slavery.” It will connect investigations and intelligence throughout the state.

Millions raped and dead in conflict for metals used in cell phones

The Second Congo War of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been one of the world’s deadliest conflicts since World War II,  and despite the singing of a peace accord in 2003, wars still occur in the eastern part of the country. Most of these wars have taken a toll on small villages that sit on land valuable for mining precious and rare metals often used in cell phones.

Much of this mining is done illegally and funds a conflict that results in millions of deaths of the Congolese. Dr. Denis Mukwege, founding director of the groundbreaking Panzi General Reform Hospital in Bukavu, DRC, said genital terroism is the cheapest form of warfare, as it’s effective.

Gangs with HIV and SIDS are sent to rape a village, with the ripple effect calculated to destroy thousands of people, Dr. Mukwege said. The goal is to remove all the families in order to facilitate the control of the mines that produce a very rare and valuable mineral used in cell phones.

What’s more, companies making profits from selling these cell phones and other electronics have done little to ensure that the metals in their products are not gathered from mines controlled by armed groups such as the Rwandan-linked FDLR militia and the government’s own army. They are the main warring parties that control much of the trade in minerals that produce tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. Companies could stop this by demanding evidenc

Electronics companies could stop this by demanding evidence from these processors that their products are conflict-free, as a condition of purchase, Globalwitness.org says.

In an attempt to take some control of the situation, the UN Security Council recently passed a resolution that paves the way for the imposition of asset freezes and travel bans on companies that support armed groups in the eastern Congo involved in the illicit mineral trade.

US, UN help create jobs for Haitians in recovery effort

Relief efforts for the earthquake in Haiti continue as food, water and other essential assistance are being disbursed, but how can Haitians begin to help their own community and themselves get back on their feet? The United States, with the Haitian government, has created “cash for work” programs in Port-au-Prince that allow Haitians to make money by becoming involved in earthquake clean-up and rebuilding inhabitable sites.

“[Jobs programs] are very important for both creating space to build latrines and also creating sites where people can settle in a more effective and sustainable way,” said Rajiv Shah, administrator of USAID, the government’s principal relief and development agency. “The jobs will assist in transitioning back to the private sector.”

Along with cleaning up Haiti, Haitians are able to put money in their pockets, leaving them able to buy food or other necessities for their families.  Assistance experts say this is important because the programs put decision-making back with families and reactivates local markets.

“We’ve learned from experience that people prefer money to goods or food,” says Alexandros Yiannopoulos, a food security expert with Oxfam. “That way they can buy what they need, and who better to decide that than the people themselves.”

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has also began jobs programs and hope to create jobs for 100,000 Haitians in weeks to come. Workers for these programs are paid $4.50, the equivalent of Haiti’s minimum wage, for a six-hour work day.

Child and Organ Trafficking on the Rise in Haiti

Following the January 12th 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, the country has been destroyed, and its people have been left destitute and without family or friends, especially many of the children. With the apparent absence of parents or relatives, child and organ trafficking has become a grave issue in Haiti that their government has been dealing with. Just today, 10 Americans from an Idaho-based charity were detained and charged with trafficking when they tried to bus 33 Haitian children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Although their intentions to assist the children may have been good, they had no government paperwork or passports for the children to leave the country. In addition, they only believed the children to be orphaned, reports giving no indication the group had proof of this assumption. The government plans to interview these children in an attempt to reunite them with any surviving family members. If children are to be crossed at international borders, the proper paperwork must be filed, even more so if there is an intent to adopt. What may be even more heart wrenching is the trafficking of organs. Already, people in search of all types of organs have begun to traffic adult and child victims of the earthquake. The government is trying to deal with this, too.

It’s All About Me

Hey, everyone! I’m Gavie. I’m a senior Print-Journalism major who will graduate in May. Yay! I’m originally from Corpus Christi, but moved to Houston in 2006. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going once I graduate. But I hope I’ll see some amazing things. For now, though, I’m always busy with school and work but still manage to squeeze in time for my friends and the people who mean the world. They keep me sane. I think that’s all for now. Enjoy! <3