Georgia Inmate Beating Was on Facebook Before Guards Knew

[jimmy olsen]

Absolutely pathetic

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inmate-beating-was-facebook-guards-knew-n334221

Georgia Inmate Beating Was on Facebook Before Guards Knew

By Lisa Riordan Seville

  Disturbing photos of a teen beaten at a Georgia prison — apparently captured on an inmate's cellphone — made it onto Facebook before corrections officials even knew he had been hurt, the victim's family told NBC News on Wednesday.

Cortez Berry was assaulted at the Al Burruss Correctional Training Center in Forsyth in what his family says was an gang attack. The assailants apparently posted cellphone pictures to Facebook showing Berry crouched below two shirtless young men, his eye swollen shut and his neck threaded through a makeshift leash.

After seeing the pictures online, his relatives say they made panicked calls to the facility that went unanswered until Berry's aunt, Shavonda Wright, drove to the prison and knocked on the door.

"I rang the buzzer, nobody came," said Wright, 34. "So then I called and I said you have to go check on my nephew. I said there is something wrong with him because we have seen disturbing photos."

The Department of Correction said the attack was under investigation. It confirmed Berry is the teen in the photo, making him the latest high-profile victim of a prison system advocates and families say is out of control — and highlighting the growing presence of cellphones in prison.

Earlier this month, NBC News reported the DOC confiscated more than 13,500 cell phones last year. In some cases, they have been used to extort families of other prisoners.

READ: NBC Investigates report on cellphones behind bars 

The Augusta Chronicle reported that Berry's girlfriend got a call demanding $300 to keep him safe, but the caller hung up. Wright and Harris said they received no demands, but that Berry told them the beating was gang-motivated.

He told his aunt that on Friday afternoon, the day before he turned 18, a group of men tried to get him to join a gang known as the Gangster Disciples or GD Nation.

"They said bro, you might as well go ahead and join the GD, because you're about to turn 18," Berry said, according to Wright. At 18, he would be moved from the juvenile to the adult areas of the facility.

Berry said he refused, then they jumped him and posted the pictures on Facebook with the caption "WEN YHU DISRESPECT DA NATION...IT BRINGZ NUTHIN BUT PAIN & SUFFERINGG.."

When Wright visited her nephew the day after the assault, she was shocked.

"Oh my God, eyes swollen, his eyes bloodshot red," she said. According to Wright, no one noticed her nephew had been beaten for hours, until she arrived Friday night and demanded they check on him.

"No guard was there to help him," she said. "That's not right. I'm a taxpayer. I'm paying you to keep everyone safe in the prison."

Berry — who is five feet tall and 115 pounds, according to correction records — was 14 when he was charged with aggravated assault, robbery and theft of a motor vehicle and sentenced to probation in juvenile court.

In November 2013, he violated his probation, and was sent to a juvenile facility. Georgia treats all 17 year olds as adults in criminal proceedings, so on his next birthday, he was sent to Burruss.

His mother said his time there was fairly calm. He received one disciplinary action, when he didn't want to have his haircut, but "never had any problems there" beyond that, Harris said.

DOC statistics indicate that in comparison to other Georgia prisons, Burress doesn't generally raise flags. The facility, which held 86 juveniles as of June, reported no serious injuries last fiscal year and confiscated just 31 phones.

The agency website shows Berry now has been moved to Smith State Prison, a notoriously violent facility in the pastures of southeast Georgia. Smith has seen more homicides in the past five years than any other in the system, an analysis by the Southern Center for Human Rights found last year.

At least 35 prisoners and one officer have been killed in Georgia's prisons since 2010, according to a report by the Southern Center for Human Rights and data from the Georgia Department of Correction. Other Georgia prisoners have survived being slashed with homemade machetes, burned and brutally beaten.

"I'm afraid for him," said Berry's mother. "Because it's been all over social media, because the world has seen it. So if they have cellphones in that prison, they have seen it. I'm afraid they might kill him."

Berry's family sees the presence of cellphones in prison as a double-edged sword.

"If the photos didn't make it to social media, we probably wouldn't have known," said Wright. "That's the only way that we got the information."

First published April 2nd 2015, 6:19 am

[Tonitrus]

It's probably overdue that our entire system and theory of incarceration as a means of dealing with and reforming criminals needs some rethinking.

It seems like we stick with mostly old and traditional ideas out of inertia, or a lack of any better ways to deal with things.  While many decry the idea of capital punishment (I kinda see it as a necessary evil), are giant warehouses of prisoners really the best and most reasonable way we can do things?

And nope, I don't really have any better ideas myself. 

At least, not until we have access to habitable prison planets that we can exile people to... 

[Martinus]

Well, you can start by doing away with private for-profit prisons. This is some sort of mind-boggling abomination.

[Tonitrus]

Well, you can start by doing away with private for-profit prisons. This is some sort of mind-boggling abomination.

I agree.  Incarceration, like the police, is one of those civic institutions that should never be privatized, even if makes financial sense.  Some things need to be a government/civic responsibility on principle.

[Eddie Teach]

While many decry the idea of capital punishment (I kinda see it as a necessary evil), are giant warehouses of prisoners really the best and most reasonable way we can do things?

Unless you're going to greatly expand the number of capital crimes, capital punishment hardly serves as an alternative to the giant warehouses.

[Martinus]

Well, you can start by doing away with private for-profit prisons. This is some sort of mind-boggling abomination.

I agree.  Incarceration, like the police, is one of those civic institutions that should never be privatized, even if makes financial sense.  Some things need to be a government/civic responsibility on principle.

I think the good rule of thumb is to determine whether the institution in question has a stated goal of preventing/fighting some negative phenomenon (whether it is law violation, crime, crime recidivism, disease, fires etc.). If the answer is yes, then making it for-profit creates a very strong incentive to act in direct opposition of such stated goal (see Ferguson, firefighters setting fires or the entire pharma industry) and should be avoided, or at least heavily regulated to make sure no such conflict of interest arises.

[Tonitrus]

While many decry the idea of capital punishment (I kinda see it as a necessary evil), are giant warehouses of prisoners really the best and most reasonable way we can do things?

Unless you're going to greatly expand the number of capital crimes, capital punishment hardly serves as an alternative to the giant warehouses.

True.  While I think CP should be expanded in some cases, I also know that that is unrealistic (short of a major shift in societal thinking).  But there has to be a better way then just stuffing people into giant warehouses on a long-term basis.

But as I conceded, I don't have any better idea, and neither really do the anti-CP folks.

[Martinus]

While many decry the idea of capital punishment (I kinda see it as a necessary evil), are giant warehouses of prisoners really the best and most reasonable way we can do things?

Unless you're going to greatly expand the number of capital crimes, capital punishment hardly serves as an alternative to the giant warehouses.

True.  While I think CP should be expanded in some cases, I also know that that is unrealistic (short of a major shift in societal thinking).  But there has to be a better way then just stuffing people into giant warehouses on a long-term basis.

But as I conceded, I don't have any better idea, and neither really do the anti-CP folks.

The better idea is actually the de-escalation, not the escalation of punishments. So only the most serious and violent offences should involve imprisonment - everything else should be dealt with through community service, police supervision and other punishments that are more humiliating than demoralising.

Also, ending the war on drugs would free up a significant part of prison space.

[Tonitrus]

Well, you can start by doing away with private for-profit prisons. This is some sort of mind-boggling abomination.

I agree.  Incarceration, like the police, is one of those civic institutions that should never be privatized, even if makes financial sense.  Some things need to be a government/civic responsibility on principle.

I think the good rule of thumb is to determine whether the institution in question has a stated goal of preventing/fighting some negative phenomenon (whether it is law violation, crime, crime recidivism, disease, fires etc.). If the answer is yes, then making it for-profit creates a very strong incentive to act in direct opposition of such stated goal (see Ferguson, firefighters setting fires or the entire pharma industry) and should be avoided, or at least heavily regulated to make sure no such conflict of interest arises.

Agreed again, though leaves out the "bettering society" items like infrastructure and education (unless you include illiteracy as a negative).  But in those cases, I think it's good having the for-profit alternative around, and giving people the freedom to chose.

Except for toll roads/bridges.  Those are evil.

[Tonitrus]

While many decry the idea of capital punishment (I kinda see it as a necessary evil), are giant warehouses of prisoners really the best and most reasonable way we can do things?

Unless you're going to greatly expand the number of capital crimes, capital punishment hardly serves as an alternative to the giant warehouses.

True.  While I think CP should be expanded in some cases, I also know that that is unrealistic (short of a major shift in societal thinking).  But there has to be a better way then just stuffing people into giant warehouses on a long-term basis.

But as I conceded, I don't have any better idea, and neither really do the anti-CP folks.

The better idea is actually the de-escalation, not the escalation of punishments. So only the most serious and violent offences should involve imprisonment - everything else should be dealt with through community service, police supervision and other punishments that are more humiliating than demoralising.

Also, ending the war on drugs would free up a significant part of prison space.

I agree in some cases, but I also think that those crimes that are so heinous that they require shutting someone away for the rest of their life, probably also merit just doing away with said person expeditiously.  On the flip side, the burden of evidence for that should be quite significant.

But there are also some crimes we don't think of as deserving CP these days that I would include, such as the serious forms of rape. 

[The Brain]

A start would be to stop accepting lawlessness in prisons.

[grumbler]

But there are also some crimes we don't think of as deserving CP these days that I would include, such as the serious forms of rape.

Be very, very careful in proceeding with this concept.  It implies that there is "non-serious rape," which i know you don't really mean to imply.  Better wording will save later pain.

[dps]

Well, you can start by doing away with private for-profit prisons. This is some sort of mind-boggling abomination.

I agree.  Incarceration, like the police, is one of those civic institutions that should never be privatized, even if makes financial sense.  Some things need to be a government/civic responsibility on principle.

I agree.  Yes, I'm an advocate of small government, but I think that the justice system (including both the police and the penal system) is one of the basic, legitimate functions of government, not something that the free market should handle.

OTOH, did I miss something in the article?  I didn't see anything that indicated whether or not this particular prison is a private prison?

[Valmy]

(see Ferguson, firefighters setting fires or the entire pharma industry)

Ferguson? Where did privatization factor there? And pharma has never been a public service here really.

should be avoided, or at least heavily regulated to make sure no such conflict of interest arises.

Well I would be surprised if they were not already heavily regulated.

OTOH, did I miss something in the article?  I didn't see anything that indicated whether or not this particular prison is a private prison?

It isn't. Not really sure where this conversation came from.

[Iormlund]

... or the entire pharma industry ...

What's the problem of having a properly regulated private pharma industry? Don't tell me you too buy into the whole 'they have a cure for cancer buy won't release it' conspiracy?