Karimov’s human rights record is abysmal. He has been known to boil political dissenters alive. He has repressed religious rights, ostensibly as part of the war on terror. When it comes to human rights in Uzbekistan, there aren’t any. Karimov has detained human rights workers and ordered his troops to fire into crowds of demonstrators. Political opponents end up in prison and are tortured or killed.

The violent restriction of human rights grows from the paranoia so commonly seen among totalitarian dictators. Karimov even banned the playing of billiards because he was afraid that people would talk about politics while playing. While that may sound humourous, it goes a long way towards demonstrating the depth of Karimov’s paranoia.

Despite all of the well-documented problems in Uzbekistan over a decade of Karimov’s rule, the United States and allies such as Britain welcomed Karimov into the war against terror. In exchange for military aid, the US received the use of the Karshi-Khanabad air base and facilities for 800 US troops. The Bush administration ignored criticism of having such a brutal regime as an ally until last year.

Even with the criticism of their relationship with Karimov, a relationship that echoed the Reagan administration’s relationship with Saddam Hussein, The US maintained a relationship with Uzbekistan while choosing to ignore Karimov’s abuses in exchange for his cooperation. While the need for an ally in the war on terror is often cited, Uzbekistan is strategically located between Russia and China and has sizable natural gas reserves, estimated in 2005 to be 1.875 trillion cubic meters, and a small amount of oil. Considering the strategic importance of energy in the area, relations with Uzbekistan could have more to do with natural gas reserves than the war on terror.

The relationship between Uzbekistan and the US, as well the European Union did finally begin to sour in 2005, however. A small armed uprising in the province of Andizhan was followed by a large, peaceful demonstration. Reports vary, and there may or may not have been a few armed militants among the protestors, but the Uzbek military responded to the demonstration by firing into the crowd. The true extent of the casualties is not known, but human rights experts have responded to the incident as being on a par with the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government crackdown on political opponents and human rights advocates since the massacre is brutal and repressive, with torture, disappearances, and politically-motivated murder becoming commonplace.

After the incident in Andizhan, pressure began to grow in the EU for sanctions to be put in place against Uzbekistan and the accounts of officials in the Karimov regime frozen, although no comprehensive action was taken. There was little reaction in the United States, with aid ( $91.6 million in 2005) continuing to flow, but some harsh words about human rights from the Bush administration caused Karimov to kick the US military out of the Karshi-Khanabad air base. Since that time, both Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Congressman Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey) have introduced bills calling for an end to all aid to Uzbekistan and the freezing of foreign accounts and travel restrictions for Uzbek officials.

Karimov is now currying favour with Russia and China, who have far less interest in human rights abuses than western countries claim to have, and are even more likely to ignore, or partake in, gross abuses to gain access to energy reserves or strategic military advantage.

The spectre of further human rights abuses and the poverty that is so pervasive under totalitarian regimes points to an unhappy future for the people of Uzbekistan, but making things worse is trying to eke out a living in a country that has suffered serious environmental damage.

During the Soviet era the excessive use herbicides, pesticides, defoliants, and other chemicals combined with the diversion of water for irrigation from two major rivers devastated the environment. The diversion of the Amu Darya and Syrdariya Rivers has caused the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest inland body of fresh water, to shrink in size. The Aral Sea is now less than half the size it was in the 1960s, holding only about one third of the water it once did.

Widespread irrigation has contaminated what water still exists with agricultural chemicals. Naturally occurring soil salt, has become concentrated from excessive irrigation. The dried lake bed where large portions of the Aral Sea used to be now produces dust storms full of agricultural and industrial chemicals which, combined with the salt, blow for up to 800 miles. The contaminated dust in these storms kills plant life, causing desrtification.

The environmental devastation continues. Although Uzbekistan is a signatory to several environmental treaties, including clean air and water agreements and the Kyoto protocol, less than half of the smokestacks in the country have filtration devices. The most common method of chemical disposal remains dumping it into a rudimentary sewer system if one exists in the area.. Only about 50% of urban areas and 25% of rural villages have sewers in Afghanistan, so chemicals are often just dumped in the nearest ditch or river.

The result is that most of the underground water supplies are contaminated and the rivers and ditches are basically open sewers. Water-borne illness is common and chemical-related disease is not unusual. Respiratory illness is common in both rural and urban areas.

All indications are that the environmental situation will continue to worsen under the reign of Islam Karimov. Those who speak out against it risk imprisonment, torture, and death. Complaints from international agencies have little impact on the Karimov regime and local activists are silenced, so the environmental issues worsen with the human rights abuses.

There is no end in sight to the suffering of the people of Uzbekistan. The west failed to help them for strategic and economic reasons. Russia and China have shown even less of a compunction to use their influence to better human rights or environmental conditions. Unless some way is found to intervene, Uzbekistan will continue to be one of the worst places on earth in the foreseeable future.

When the story about torture in Abu Ghraib broke, most of the world was appalled. Members of the American military were not only torturing Iraq prisoners, but they were photographing each other committing the torture.

Some tried to write off the torture as mere pranks, the kind of thing that goes on in college dorms all of the time. Being forcibly sodomized with a broomstick is not a prank though, it is rape. Being forced to stand in the hot sun with your arms outstretched under threat of electrocution is not a prank, it is torture.

The Taguba Report, commissioned by the US government, lists the many abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in detail.

Among the findings were: Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; Forcing detainees to remove their clothing andkeeping them naked for several days at a time; Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture; A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

According to many, both in government and in the press, we haven’t seen the worst images of the abuse and torture that were carried out at Abu Ghraib yet. There are stories of much worse brutality, including the rape of women and children, by members of US military and intelligence organizations. There have also been several cases, not just in Abu Ghraib but in the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, of prisoners being beaten to death.

The government claims that there were just a few “bad apples” carrying out the abuse, but this does not stand up to scrutiny. Documents obtained in March 2005 by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act contain reports of “ghosting” prisoners, making them disappear, when the Red Cross inspections of the prison were carried out. Some of the ghosted prisoners died from abuse.

Statements by Brigadier General Karpinsky and others also refer to “releaseaphobia”, the fear of releasing innocent detainees. Many of the Iraqis being detained at Abu Ghraib are innocent and were originally picked up for questionable reasons, such as being in a certain area when a sweep was made. To hold them after their innocence has been determined is again against both international law and US military codes.

There is growing documentation of children being held at Abu Ghraib. Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz was arrested and held at Abu Ghraib for 74 days. Al-Baz told the Scottish Sunday Herald, “I saw a camp for children there. Boys, under the age of puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp.” He went on to describe an ill 15 year old boy being repeatedly soaked with hoses and a 12 year old girl being stripped, soaked with water, and beaten.

A transcript of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski’s interview with Major General George Fay includes the description of an 11 year old boy being held in the prison. “He told me he was almost 12. He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying.”

There are other accounts of children being held in what has become on of the world’s, and history’s, most infamous prisons. Some of these reports contain details of children being mistreated to force confessions out of their parents, a clear breach of international law and US military conduct.

Seymour Hersch, who was instrumental in the original prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, has claimed that the Pentagon has videotape of children being raped at the infamous prison.

Speaking at an ACLU event, Hersch said, “Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

The videos and additional images have yet to be released, but Hersch’s claims have been at partially supported by statements by Donald Rumsfeld that, “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” and by a statement by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham that, “The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here. We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.”

One of the defenses those who would sweep the nightmare of Abu Ghraib under the carpet use is that Saddam Hussein also used the prison for detaining the innocent and torturing people. It’s true, he did. Human rights groups reported on those crimes at the time and have continued to report on them since.

Saddam’s guilt does not absolve the US of guilt. Saddam Hussein is an acknowledged monster. Saying that he committed torture at Abu Ghraib first in no way forgives those who still abuse prisoners. The abuse at Abu Ghraib is part of a widespread pattern that indicates a systemic problem. Systemic problems start at the top, and there is little indication that this one has been fully addressed.

High Res Images for this article (as slideshow)

When the US government needed a place to keep suspected al Qaeda members and Taliban fighters, they chose an airbase in Cuba to do so. It seemed an odd place, an American airbase in what the American government considers an enemy country. The very existence of a place those who prefer to use military slang call “Gitmo” seems unlikely.

Guantanamo Bay first came into the American consciousness when the first US casualties of the Spanish-Cuban American War were suffered there in 1898. In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt, using the Platt amendment, forced the Cuban government to lease Guantanamo Bay to the United States for 2,000 gold coins per year. Cuba was, at that time, under a puppet regime controlled by the US and the Cuban president was an American citizen named T. Estrada Palma. In 1906 the lease was renegotiated and the 2000 gold coins became $2000 USD.

In 1934 Cuba rid itself of the Platt amendment and negotiated a new lease on Guantanamo Bay with the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Cuban government at the time was again US-friendly and one of the three Cuban signatories on the new lease was Fulgencio Batista, who would later become the sole dictatorial leader of Cuba. The new lease stated that both the US and Cuban governments had to agree to cancel the lease.

Batista’s reign was one of such oppression that Fidel Castro still looks good by comparison. Under Batista there were few freedoms and both the CIA and the Mafia were influential in the Cuban government. US corporations set up shop, treating the Cuban people almost as slave labour. The oppression inflicted on the Cuban people by the Batista regime led to the revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959.

When Castro came to power the lease on Guantanamo Bay should have been cancelled. That the US chose to remain there was, and remains, a breach of international law according to some. That it is an ongoing sore spot not just with the Cuban government, but with other nations in the area and has been a detriment to US negotiations several times over the years. Cuba does not recognise the American claim on the bay, but lacks the power to do anything about it. The result is that the US government writes a cheque for the lease every year and the Cuban government refuses to cash that cheque.

In 1961 when Eisenhower cut off all diplomatic ties with Cuba, the base at Guantanamo Bay was flooded with refugees. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, US military personnel had to be evacuated. In 1964 the Guantanamo base was forced to become self-sufficient when Castro cut off power and water to the base.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have done little to end the controversy over Guantanamo Bay. In a 1991 coup in Haiti that saw the duly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide thrown out of power, over 40,000 boat people fleeing Haiti were picked up by the US Coast Guard. Due to the political uncertainty of accepting so many refugees at once, and the high rate of HIV/AIDS in Haiti, many of these refugees were sent to what became de facto prison camps in Guantanamo Bay until they could be processed.

In 1994 Castro granted a temporary amnesty that allowed many to leave Cuba. While many of these people were legitimate refugees, Castro also released Cuban criminals and extremely mentally ill patients from psychiatric care. Those refugees that did not find their way directly to the US base at Guantanamo were also picked up by the US Coast Guard and sent to the camps for processing.

The conditions the refugees were held in were harsh and, in many cases dangerous. The conditions at Guantanamo, the methods used to process the refugees, and the forced return to Haiti of some of those fleeing drew harsh criticisms from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Guantanamo Bay was beginning to garner a reputation as a place where the United States infringed on human rights and played fast and loose with international law.

Even with the history of Guantanamo and the controversy that has surrounded it over the years, most people outside of Cuba were unaware of the presence of a US naval base there. Perhaps it is because the American people don’t know much about Guantanamo Bay that the US government seems encouraged to use it as a place where international and even US domestic laws do not apply.

Perhaps it is because the Guantanamo Bay facility should not, logically, even exist that the Bush White House feels that they can break the Geneva Conventions there with impunity.

There is no doubt that the government of the United States is breaking those conventions. It is doubtful that the Geneva Conventions would have been so comprehensive and respected had the United States not taken a leading role in the creation and updating of the conventions after World War Two, yet it is the United States that now puts the Geneva Conventions and other aspects of international law at risk by ignoring them.

We are told that the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay are “unlawful combatants” and not deserving of the same rights as others captured during times of war. There is no such thing as an unlawful combatant. It is a term made up by the Bush administration in an attempt to skirt laws written to protect people from abuse and torture. The men held at Guantanamo must be categorized either as prisoners of war, or charged with crimes and afforded the same rights and protections that a US citizen would be afforded in the US court system.

The history of US involvement in Guantanamo Bay has been questionable since 1903. It is as if the bay is haunted by the ghosts of transgressions past, and that haunting encourages the worst instincts of American leaders to come to the forefront, leading to the commitment of ever more serious transgressions.

Full Resolution Images

You might be coolin’, you might be stylin’
But you won’t be smiling on Riker’s Island.
LL Cool J & DJ Polo

Like many a New York city neighborhood, Riker’s Island is a mix of transients and long-term, firmly entrenched residents. But this neighborhood is only accessible by land via a single bridge in Queens.

It’s a self-contained community of some 16,000, boasting its own ball fields, chapels, grocery stores and barbershops, its own power plant, bakery, car wash, and greenhouse.

What makes this New York neighborhood unique is that Ryker’s Island, America’s largest penal colony, isn’t a ‘hood that most of its overwhelmingly black and latino residents choose to live in.

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Purchased from a farmer named Rycken in 1895, Riker’s has been one of New York City’s fastest expanding lots. Over the past 60 years, Riker’s has expanded from its original 90 acres to its present 400 (with the help of landfill), and in the past 20, its complex of various detention centers has grown from 6 to 10.

It’s a fitting image for the U.S. prison system overall. In 1969, there were 150,000 individuals incarcerated. By 2001, that number had mushroomed to 2.1 million. That’s 7 out of every 1,000 U.S. residents, a higher rate of incarceration than any other nation in the world, a ignoble distinction previously held by Russia.

Even without the statistics, this is a growth industry that you can see. Here is a new detention facility shown while under construction.

Although overcrowding remains a problem, spending on prisons has kept up with the breakneck pace of the burgeoning prison population. State and local governments that build prisons receive a steady stream of new “constituents” for census and federal aid purposes without the hassle of a free population that can vote.

There were 351 new facilities built in the 1990s, often with state bond money that have exceeded funds for education. Otherwise put, since 1980, spending on incarceration has risen 571% compared to 33% for K-12 education.

The flipside of that statistic is that the prison population increased 400% while the number of graduating seniors dropped 2.7%.

Yet crime rates have not significantly increased during this time period.

The U.S. population’s fear of crime, however, has increased dramatically.

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Riker’s has a colorful history — much of it red. Originally, the island was a dumping ground for the city’s unwanted refuse, only becoming a dumping ground of the human kind in 1935, when Riker’s cells closed its doors on its first inmates.

Technically, Riker’s is not a prison but a jail, since two-thirds are temporary detainees while awaiting bail. Some 40% of the island’s detainees have bails of $1,000 or less, indicating the extreme conditions of poverty these potential convicts face.

It’s a penal colony of the impoverished. Nine out of ten inmates are black or latino, in jail waiting for a trial because they are poor and were arrested by the police.

By slashing spending on healthcare, other corporate prison systems (not shown) have come under fire for allowing dangerous viral infections like Hepatitis to rage unchecked throughout their inmate populations. Then, when the prisoners are returned to society, they bring their infections to the general population, increasing the cost of health care.

The way that the brutality and fear of the prison system is returned to society upon release is not unlike this.

In the past twenty years, hundreds of inmates and guards alike were injured in riots and turf wars between the Bloods, an African-American gang, and the Latin Kings and Netas, Latino gangs that had long dominated the island. Prisoners’ blood regularly decorated jail hallways, and officers dubbed the jail for teenage boys “Vietnam.”

“For some wardens, jail management meant shipping their most violent inmates to another facility under the pretext of reducing overcrowding,” wrote Jennifer Gonnerman in an special report for the Village Voice. Riker’s image has since been cleaned up.

By 2000, the number of stabbings on Riker’s had been cut by some 93%, in part thanks to the model of corporate accountability espoused by former commissioner for the NYC Department of Correction Bernard Kerik that tightened regulations for inmates and guards alike. Inmates wear color-coded ID badges that let wardens know at a glance whether or not they have been caught with a weapon or contraband.

Meanwhile, guards in meetings with the commissioner who failed to answer basic questions about the prison’s administration and culture, whether the name of a particular gang’s leader or the stock situation in the commissionary, were reportedly shown the door.

Inmates can access some opportunities for meaningful work and recreation, as through the small yet innovative Greenhouse Project, directed by the Horticultural Society of New York. The inmates get lessons in gardening and woodworking (to build planters and flower boxes), and benefit from job counseling from the organizers.

The gardens are still surrounded by barbed wire, but it’s a welcome change from the menial jobs otherwise available to most inmates. Grads of the program, and the prison system itself, can get work earning up to $10 an hour loading plants grown on Riker’s intended for rooftop and school gardens.

Most of Riker’s inmates are not destined to live the simple, idyllic life of a gardener, however: the prison cell door is a revolving one.

Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice show that more than 60% of inmates are rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, and almost half are reconvicted. Whatever rehabilitation efforts being made on Riker’s and its many sister “cities” around the country, they do not seem to be working.

Bo Lozoff, founder of the Human Kindness Foundation, an interfaith organization that writes and distributes free tapes, videos, books and letters to prisoners worldwide, believes the U.S. prison system is doomed to failure in that it violates every sacred principle of life, namely compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness and responsibility.

If the golden rule holds true, a system based on fear, retaliation and punishment is unlikely to bring about a change of heart for those behind bars. “We’ve been lead to imagine a legion of heartless monsters plotting to get out and hurt us again,” Lozoff writes.

“The truth is, most prison inmates are confused, disorganized and often pathetic individuals who would love to turn their lives around if given a realistic chance.”

An industrial city founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, the Siberian city of Norilsk, Russia is the northernmost major city in Russia. After Murmansk, it’s the largest city above the Arctic Circle. It’s also the most polluted.

Right now, in June and July, the sun stays up all day, but the furnaces in the Nadezhda Metallurgical plant run round the clock all year long, smelting nickel and other ores and spouting a steady fountain of toxic, sulfurous smoke. Two million tons of sulfur dioxide per year since the 1950s. That they reported.

As a result, the Norilsk region is the home of the world’s largest pollution induced forest decline. For forty kilometers around the smelters, the soil contains 10-1000 times the normal background level of heavy metals.

As a result, the snow is yellow and black.

As a result, move to Norilsk to work, and your life expectancy will drop by ten years.

“Norilsk is the world’s biggest nickel and palladium producer, having overtaken Inco several years back. Since data first emerged from the ex-Soviet Union in the early nineties, it has established itself as one of the world’s single biggest ambient air polluters – if not the biggest. Indeed, despite early technological assistance from outside Russia (notably from Finland’s Outokumpu Oy), its contribution to the country’s sulphur dioxide burden has increased in relative terms.” Mines & Communities

“[Norilsk] is a city where the bus driver tells you, ‘If a Norilsk man gets sick in Moscow, the way to cure him is to move him closer to the car’s exhaust.’” Howard Weaver

“In my estimation, about 400,000 people took part in the construction of this complex. Due to the cold and the bullets, about one-fifth of them died,” Anatoly Lvov says. “At the same time, tens of thousands of volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder with the prisoners, and they object to those who say Norilsk was built on people’s bones. The prisoners who survived also are proud to have built this.” Howard Weaver

"In 1997, with the old combine in disarray, one of Russia’s richest men, Vladimir O. Potanin, bought its mines and factories and began a modernization that has cut the work force nearly in half, to 60,000, and jettisoned many of its obligations to support the city’s basic services." New York Times

“Officials say the environmental depths of Norilsk pollution was reached in 1984, but the plants even by official admission still emit many times the allowable norms and acid rain is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and tundra nearby. Water pollution also is severe, with officials admitting to more than 100 polluted kilometers of river.” Howard Weaver

“The Norilsk Mining Companies… produce one seventh of all the factory pollution in Russia. Each year they churn out over two million tonnes in waste gas, and 85 million cubic meters of dirty water, according to the few figures provided by the Russian government. Its impact, ecologists say, is felt in Norway and Canada, and is killing off the forest tundra for hundreds of miles. Locals say the snow is yellow for 30 miles around the town.” Mines and Communities

“They took everything from me,” said Olga I. Yaskina, who was sent to the
Gulag in Norilsk in 1952 when she was just 16 for writing a letter to a friend in exile that said: “Don’t cry. The sun will rise for us again.”

She never left after she was released from the prison camp three years later. Now 67, she receives a pension and works as a concierge at an apartment building, supporting herself and an unemployed son on little more than $300 a month.

She stays not because she wants to but because she has no better alternative. “I have nothing left on the continent,” she said.

New York Times

"The [charitable donations] represent a “goodwill gesture” to the people of Montana from the Russian company that bought controlling interest in Stillwater Mining Co. in 2003. The donation marks ZooMontana’s largest corporate donation to date. Frank McAllister, CEO at Stillwater, said the idea was born when the company was in the midst of transactions with Norilsk two years ago.

“We were concerned about our image and needed to explain to the community exactly who Norilsk is,” he said.
Billings Gazette

Thanks to Dave Greten

This is a place referenced in The Atlantic Monthly by Bernard-Henri Levy’s excellent series retracing the steps of Tocqueville. This former plantation is located on a bend in the Mississippi River just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It’s the largest prison in the United States. It holds over five thousand inmates and employs more than fourteen hundred guards.

It’s a prison. It’s always been a prison. When it opened as a sugarcane plantation in 1699, the prisoners came from the African nation of Angola as slaves. Hundreds would die every year.

That’s why today there is an Angola, Louisiana.

Locally they call it The Farm. Having the Mississippi River on three sides makes a natural barrier obviating things like guard towers, but there is plenty of razor wire surrounding the 18,000 acres of lush cropland and perfectly manicured lawns.

Typical of a prison, you can observe how the clustered housing units conform to a design that makes it cheap and easy to observe the residents from a central point in each building.

"Albert described his cell for me: less than three meters square, it has a steel bed platform bolted to one wall with a thin mattress atop it. A small table is bolted to the opposite wall, and the third wall is occupied by a combination toilet and sink. He … has two steel boxes under the bed in which he keeps all of his earthly belongings. He spends 23 hours a day there. Three days a week he is given an hour in the "yard," not much more than a small cage with a dirt floor, where he can exercise alone. The other four days a week, he can use his hour for a shower or to walk along the cramped cellblock." Inside Angola Prison

"By 1973, violence was an everyday part of life at the Farm. Men were attacking each other with double-bladed swords, knives, hatchets, and even homemade shotguns. It was common practice for men to go to sleep at night with thick catalogues and steel plates tied to their stomachs underneath their shirts. Angola was a prison of gang warfare and chaos. Between 1972 and 1975, there were 40 murders and more than 350 serious stabbings in the prison. Throughout the 80s, violence continued with stories of kidnappings, escapes, and slain guards." BootsnAll Travel

In these images you can make out the large oval shaped arena used for the famous annual Angola Prison Rodeo, said to be the longest running prison rodeo in the world. The call it the "Wildest Show in the South".

It started in 1964 solely as entertainment for the correctional officers. Wild, indeed.

It’s very popular in the Baton Rouge region and that’s why the arena you see seats ten thousand fans. Every Sunday in October.

Ninety percent of the men at The Farm are violent offenders, with almost half of them convicted of killing another person. This is a prison reserved for those who have been sentenced to life imprisonment, or death.

Did you know that there is no parole in Louisiana?

The only way out of this prison is to die.

In this image you can see the straight tree-lined road that leads into The Farm.

To the north, the few named streets in town show the start of a very small residential community, presumably for the corrections officers.

"America’s rate of imprisonment is the highest on the planet, since we recently passed Russia, our only real rival, according to an analysis by Washington’s nonprofit Sentencing Project. We have become the nation of jailers." Newsweek

"Contrary to popular perception, violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States since 1980. In fact, violent crime rates have been relatively constant or declining over the past two decades. The exploding prison population has been propelled by public policy changes that have increased the use of prison sentences as well as the length of time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release." Human Rights Watch

"There are four prisons in the Leavenworth, Kansas area. They are the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth, the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in Leavenworth and the Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas." U.S. Army Arms Research Library

"Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has locked up a big share of the private prison market. The company operates more than 60 correctional, detention, and juvenile facilities with a capacity of some 70,000 beds in about 20 states and Washington, DC. CCA contracts with federal, state, and local authorities to manage the facilities, about 40 of which are company-owned. CCA also owns three facilities that are managed by other companies. Federal correctional and detention authorities account for more than 35% of CCA’s sales." Hoover’s

"Some 34 states have gone with the supermax corrections model over the past two decades, at great cost and despite periodic lawsuits alleging that treatment at these prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. By 1999, some 57 supermax prisons in the United States were housing some 20,000 prisoners.
On almost every measure… Prison system violence either stayed the same or actually went up following the opening of a supermax." Southern Illinois University

"If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it’s 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17." Christian Science Monitor

In this image of the northernmost point in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas you can see the new U.S. Military Prison where citizen-soldiers are locked up for crimes committed while in the military. Not returning for foreign duty after your term of service has expired? Failed to report for a selection? It’s called the United States Disciplinary Barracks, and the construction plans smartly left room to grow.