overseer violence at all ends of the criminal just-us system...,

theroot |  On Monday President Barack Obama, surrounded by members of his President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing—created in the wake of last year’s grand jury decisions in the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner—announced policy recommendations to local law enforcement as a response to the outrage generated by a nationwide epidemic of police violence.

“We have a great opportunity,” said Obama, “coming out of some great conflict and tragedy, to really transform how we think about community-law-enforcement relations so that everybody feels safer and our law-enforcement officers feel, rather than being embattled, feel fully supported.

“We need to seize that opportunity,” he added.

The president’s words came one day after the New York Times reported on a pattern of systemic prisoner abuse at the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York. The story offered readers a glimpse into a world where a predominantly African-American inmate population is routinely brutalized by the prison’s mostly white staff of guards. One young black man, George Williams, received a beating in 2011 severe enough to break his legs and force the prison to send him to two different hospitals for treatment.

On Monday, the same day that Obama spoke of hope and promise for better understanding between law enforcement and the black community, the three guards charged with Williams’ brutal assault resigned (with their full pensions) in a misdemeanor plea deal that avoided jail time.

There is an important connection between the task force report and Attica. Attica, which became a metaphor for state repression following a 1971 prison rebellion that left 39 men (29 prisoners and 10 hostages) dead, reveals the breadth and depth of corruption in a criminal-justice system that requires fundamental transformation and not just mere reform. Reports of abuse in Attica are far from isolated events, as recent exposés on brutality at New York City’s Rikers Island prison attest.

We can no longer afford to ignore the fact that the pervasive culture of police brutality and the law-enforcement approach that produced the crisis in Ferguson, Mo., continues—at times even worsens—in our prison system. Those convicted of crimes, according to our system, have precious few rights that correctional facilities must respect, including the right to dignified and humane treatment.