Corrections?

INCITE—A true story of two men betrayed by their adopted children and tortured for a crime they did not commit.





The following is an excerpt from the Introduction:





For most of my life, I was a member of the elite, holier-than-thou crowd. I was blind to the abject abuse and inhumane treatment of the admitted and the presumed guilty. Amazingly, even in this era, cruelty rages within the penal system. “To understand the humanity of a society, look to their prisons,” said the Russian writer Dostoevsky.



Our institutions are inappropriately labeled as a “corrections system.” I can speak with certainty only about conditions at the Intake Service Center at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution (ACI). We were victimized by the prison staff and state marshals, and underwent unspeakable exploitation. I became privy to many horror stories from other inmates, many of whom I am proud to consider friends. I heard about scores of life-threatening maneuvers occurring in other ACI buildings and at numerous prisons throughout the country.



Although closed circuit cameras were in use in the unit where I was housed, the surveillance was not sufficient to restrain the C/Os (Corrections Officers) from unsavory practices. Spitting in the food trays was routine. Drenching guys with pepper spray was just a teaser: they then got dragged into the elevator to have their daylights pounded out. Guards incited attacks on inmates by their peers as standard procedure. Unkind conduct was unquestionably the norm. Malice and a dictatorial philosophy colored every insalubrious facet of daily “living.”