There is increasing anger over a government "taking the mickey out of us", after Boris Johnson imposed new Covid restrictions while also launching an investigation into a lockdown-busting Downing Street party. The mood on the streets of Wellington was one of frustration at a perception of 'Do as I say not as I do', following revelations about the alleged Downing Street party — and leaked footage showing officials laughing about breaking Covid rules.
But, despite the resentment the majority of the public said it would not affect their approach to following the rules — which they will accept to make sure people remain safe. Nikki Marsden, 41, from Ketley, Telford, told of her own heartbreaking sacrifice, and anger at the thought that government officials were laughing at them for following the rules.
She said: "I could not visit my nan who was in hospital at the time they were having their parties and she passed away just after that. Despite her own frustration at the hypocrisy she said she would still 'do the right thing'. She said: "We need to follow the rules regardless but maybe they should be following the rules themselves. You cannot tell people what to do and then not follow it yourself. Nikki added: "No one wants to be doing it and if the people giving the rules out are not following them no-one else will.
Her father, Dave Marsden, 71, questioned why government adviser Allegra Stratton — shown laughing in the leaked footage — had resigned if no rules had been broken. He said: "It is ludicrous. If they have not done anything wrong then why has the lady resigned? The members will assist residents' movement, dress and hygiene, as well as meal set-up and COVID testing.
Murphy did not specify where Guard members would be deployed, but a Sussex County spokeswoman confirmed Thursday morning that Woodland would be one of the locations to receive help from the National Guard.
The New Jersey attorney general's office said it will continue to investigate nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and their response to the COVID pandemic. Skip to content. Nursing Home. Jewish groups were once again forced to denounce yet another attention-seeking Republican attempting to use the genocide of millions of Jews and other minorities for political gain. Image via Facebook.
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For the First Time in Jan. Published 14 mins ago on January 13, By David Badash. He might get robbed. He might get raped. He might get stabbed. Then there is the alternative, the only one that Winn, like many other prisons, offers to inmates like this: the protective custody wing in Cypress. He would be put in a cell, maybe alone, maybe with another man, for 23 hours a day. He would be branded a snitch just for going there, which means that when he eventually left, the odds of getting stabbed would be high.
He storms past me, back to the key. Real talk. During our training, Kenny warned us how easy it was to be manipulated into sex by inmates.
A federal institution. This story came up several times as an example of a guard who had to face the consequences of his weak will. Nothing was ever said about the inmate who gave Roberts blow jobs. She had identified as a girl from age Her father beat her repeatedly, and by the time she turned 13 she had left home and begun stripping on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
During her first year, she was serving a stint in seg for a dirty urine test when, she later testified, Roberts shackled her, brought her to an office, and told her to give him a blow job. Over the next two years, China said, she was raped several times by inmates, but she kept it to herself. There, an officer ordered her to take another urine test by peeing in a cup while standing.
After a long standoff, Roberts showed up and told her she could sit on the toilet. The other guards left. As she peed, Roberts entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Roberts slapped her in the face. She dropped to her knees and did what he asked.
She held the semen in her mouth and spit it out onto her shirt. An agent came to the prison, took the shirt, and interviewed Roberts. She was released from prison 11 months later. Roberts also denied her allegations when the FBI interviewed him, but the bureau found that the semen on her shirt was his. I have not been able to track down China. Roberts served his sentence and was released in Nearly half of all allegations of sexual victimization in prisons involve staff.
In the BJS survey , CCA prisons reported a rate of substantiated staff-on-inmate sexual assault similar to that of public facilities. Another federal report found that former inmates of private state prisons are twice as likely to report being sexually victimized by staff members as inmates who were in public prisons. Prisoners also sexually harass and abuse officers. A recurring issue is inmates standing at the bars and masturbating at women guards sitting in the key.
I regularly see the macho culture of prison transcend the division between guards and inmates—male officers routinely ignore the harassment of their female colleagues. Man, you was down here every day shaking your stuff! Not long afterward, the inmate was released, and he sent a letter to the prison, telling them to look at the surveillance footage from that night.
CCA fired the guard for sleeping on the job and for leaving the tier door open, Kenny recalled. He gone home. He got her for us. It worked out on both ends. They are frustrated because no one is doing it. Why should the guards put themselves on the line? You guys ever heard that term? We want them institutionalized , not individualized. Is that sort of a mind game? But you know what? We do not want them to feel as though they are individuals.
We want them, for lack of a better term, to feel like a herd of cattle. Parker says the DOC wardens have been pestering him. Parker, to be strong enough to take clothing away from an inmate? Are they that scared, Mr. His tone softens. After the meeting, everyone moves slowly down the walk. They need to tighten up on the tier doors, re-man the towers, and reinstitute the inmate work out in the field and the inmate programs, and give these fools something to do besides sit in their beds, eat, watch TV, and figure out how to fuck with us.
Today, the supervisor tells Edison to join Bacle and me in Ash. Having a new guard come to Ash is like having a visitor to our twisted household. The question makes me nervous. You get your ass on the bunk. You get stupid, you get beat down. You get big and stupid, you get gassed and beat down. Either way, you learn your fucking place.
Edison has been here for a year and a half. He is an Army Rangers veteran and was once a small-town police chief. When I went to work, I went to war. When I got off, I still went to war. I carried two clips on me regardless of what I was wearing. I carried at least my Glock 40 underneath my arm, and usually I had a Glock.
Go ahead, play with me. We walk the floor. He stops. We stop. I see rapists. I see robbers. Twenty-five years, federal mandatory. Getting busted with a joint near a school will typically land you about six years , not I unlock the door of B1 tier and Edison walks in. An inmate is standing at the sink, brushing his teeth. The inmate keeps his back turned to Edison. The inmate walks out, still brushing his teeth. Be dumb! I walk down the tier and do count. When we leave the tier everyone comes up to the bars and yells at Edison.
The captain and a sergeant enter the unit. The captain tells Edison to step aside so he can talk to the inmates and try to ease the tension. That pacifies. The sergeant, whose name is King, pulls me aside. As a kid, he spent time in juvenile hall.
Like Edison, he is an Army vet, and he credits the military for correcting his delinquent ways. After 22 years in the service, he got a job in a juvenile correctional facility in Texas. One day, he told a boy to get off the basketball court and the kid grabbed his throat and tried to strangle him. Sixteen years old, 6 foot 3. During count, I tally bodies, not faces. If I look at faces, it means I have to keep the numbers straight while constantly calibrating sternness and friendliness in my eyes for each individual.
When I go down the tier, I make a point to walk in a fast, long stride with a slight pop in my left step, trying to look tough. I practiced this in the mirror because inmates comment every day on a twist in my walk that I never knew existed. Sometimes prisoners whistle at me as I pass. In my normal life, I try to diffuse any macho tendencies.
Now, I try to annihilate anything remotely feminine about me. As I walk and count, I tighten my core to keep my hips from moving. I steel myself for A1 tier. I ignore it. Another comments that I look like a model. You like that dick. This has been going on for weeks, but this time something snaps. I stop count and march back to the guy calling out to me, a thirtysomething black man with pink sunglasses and tattoos crawling up his neck.
You are always focusing so much on me, maybe you like the dick! Bitch ass! He refuses. I get his name from another officer and write him up for making sexual comments. I try to cool down. My heart is still hammering 10 minutes later. Slowly, my rage turns to shame and I go into the bathroom and sit on the floor. Where did those words come from? I rarely ever shout. I am not homophobic.
Or am I? I feel utterly defeated. I go back to A1 and call Pink Shades to the bars. And I apologize. You feel me? I understand that you gotta live. You got to survive. Those words hurt you. I feel you. I mean I was singing a song, but you probably took it the wrong way. It triggered something in you. Something about being here reminds me of being in junior high, getting picked on for my size and the fact that I read books, getting called a faggot.
I tear up his disciplinary report and throw it in the trash. When I walk back down the tier for the next count, no one pays any attention to me. Man down! His eyes are closed and his left leg is moving back and forth slowly. Mason starts to cry. His left hand is a fist. His back arches. They finna come see you now. A stretcher finally arrives. The nurses and their orderlies move slowly.
Earlier today Mason was playing basketball and fell to the ground in pain, he explains. He went to the infirmary, where they told him that he had fluid in his lungs.
Three inmates pick up Mason in his sheet and put him on the stretcher. His hands are crossed over his chest like a mummy as two prisoners wheel him away.
Days later, I see Mason dragging his feet, his arms around his chest. I tell him to take my chair. He sits and hunches over, putting his head in his lap.
We call for a wheelchair. A nurse happens to be in the unit, passing out pills. She looks at me sidelong. If he were sent to the hospital, CCA would be contractually obligated to pay for his stay.
For a for-profit company, this presents a dilemma. Medical care within the prison is expensive, too. CCA does not disclose its medical expenses, but in a typical prison, health care costs are the second-biggest expense after staff. On average, a Louisiana prison puts 9 percent of its budget toward health care. About 6 percent have a communicable disease such as HIV or hepatitis C. One day, I meet a man with no legs in a wheelchair.
His name is Robert Scott. He consented to having his real name used. My feet hurt. His medical records show that in the space of four months he made at least nine requests to see a doctor. When he visited the infirmary, medical staff offered him sole pads, corn removal strips, and Motrin. He says he once showed his swollen foot, dripping with pus, to the warden. If you make another medical emergency you will receive a disciplinary write-up for malingering.
Eventually, numbness spread to his hands, but the infirmary refused to treat him. His fingertips and toes turned black and wept pus. Inmates began to fear his condition was contagious. A resulting altercation drew the attention of staff, who finally sent him to the local hospital.
Part of being locked up. Inmates have this thing that if they have a sniffle they are supposed to be flown to a specialist somewhere and be treated immediately for that sniffle. Yet CCA has found ways to minimize its obligations. At the out-of-state prisons where California ships some of its inmates, CCA will not accept prisoners who are over 65 years old, have mental health issues, or have serious conditions like HIV.
In , the company and Immigration and Customs Enforcement settled a federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU that asserted immigration detainees at a CCA-run facility in California were routinely denied prescribed medical treatment.
CCA admitted no wrongdoing. He removed the wires himself with nail clippers while guards watched. CCA has also been the subject of medical malpractice cases involving pregnant inmates. When the inmate went into labor, she was put in a cell with no mattress and left there for three hours as she bled heavily onto the floor. CCA employees did not call an ambulance until approximately five hours after the prisoner asked for help.
Her newborn baby died shortly thereafter. In court proceedings, the warden testified that surveillance footage showed no signs of an emergency. But before the footage could be reviewed, CCA claimed it had been accidentally erased.
The court sanctioned the company for destroying evidence. The next morning, the inmate was shackled and taken to a hospital, where doctors found that she was already dilated. While prison guards watched, she gave birth and was immediately sedated.
When she woke up, medical staff brought her the dead baby. At least 15 doctors at Winn have been sued for delivering poor medical care. The prison hired several of them even after the state had disciplined them for misconduct. He was put on probation, but CCA kept him on. Winn hired Stephen Kuplesky after his license had been temporarily suspended for prescribing painkillers to a family member with no medical condition. Robert Cleveland was working at Winn when he was put on medical probation for his involvement in a kickback scheme with a wheelchair company.
He was later disciplined for prescribing narcotics from his home and vehicle. Data collected by Prison Legal News on more than 1, state and federal suits against CCA shows that 15 percent of them were related to medical care.
This sample is not a complete list of complaints against the company; in alone, CCA faced more than pending cases. Between and , the company settled another cases. My reconciliation with Pink Shades encouraged me. Every time I have a problem with a prisoner, I try the same approach and eventually we tap knuckles to show each other respect.
Still, these breakthroughs are fleeting. We can chat and laugh through the bars, but inevitably I need to flex my authority. My job will always be to deny them the most basic of human impulses—to push for more freedom. Day by day, the number of inmates who are friendly with me grows smaller. There are exceptions, like Corner Store, but were I to take away the privileges Bacle and I have granted him, I know that he, too, would become an enemy.
My priorities change. Striving to treat everyone as human takes too much energy. I am vigilant; I come to work ready for people to catcall me or run up on me and threaten to punch me in the face. I show neither fear nor compunction. Sometimes prisoners call me racist, and it stings, but I try as hard as I can not to flinch because to do so would be to show a pressure point, a button that can be pressed when they want to make me bend.
Nearly every day the unit reaches a crescendo of frustration because inmates are supposed to be going somewhere like the law library, GED classes, vocational training, or a substance abuse group, but their programs are canceled or they are let out of the unit late.
Inmates tell me that at other prisons, the schedule is firm. Here, there is no schedule. We wait for the call over the radio; then we let the inmates go. They could eat at a. They could eat at 3 p. School might happen, or maybe not. Sometimes we let the inmates onto the small yard attached to the unit. Canteen and law library hours are canceled regularly. Guards bond with prisoners over their frustrations.
Prisoners tell us they understand we are powerless to change these high-level management problems. Whenever I open a tier door, I demand that everyone shows me his pass, and I use my body to stop the flood of people from pouring out. Some just push through. I catch one. You hear me?
He walks back in, staring me down. I shut the door, ignoring him. An inmate comes around the key. Bacle is following him and calls for me to stop him.
I know him, the one with the mini-dreads. I feel threatened, frankly, whenever I see him. He tries to walk past me. I lock eyes with him. He turns back and walks slowly away. I walk behind him. I open his tier door. He walks in, stands just inside, and stares me down hard. I grab the door and slam it shut— bang!
I turn and step back into the throng of inmates milling around the floor. I stop and turn around. He just stares. I grab the radio on my shoulder, then pause. Was I ever taught what to do when something like this happens? I know how to press the button and speak into the radio, but whom do I call? I go back to chasing the others into their tiers. In the back of my mind, however, there is a voice: Did you see him say anything?
Are you sure what you heard? He wanted to intimidate me and it was about time I threw someone in the hole. They need to know I am not weak. One morning, Ash smells like feces. On D2, liquid shit is oozing out of the shower drain and running down the tier. We let inmates out to go to the small yard. As they flow out of the tiers, I see a large group run to A1 tier.
Bacle pushes the tier door shut and calls a Code Blue over the radio. Inside the tier, two prisoners are grappling, their bodies pressed up against the bars. Drops of blood spatter the floor. The surrounding scene is oddly calm.