Prisoners Petition and Complaints Summary

Prisoners Petition and Complaints Summary
In March 2012, a non-profit organization, which is the Centre for Human Rights, and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) filed a petition at the United Nations on behalf of solitary confined California prisoners. According to the petition, 4000 prisoners were said to be held in custody because of alleged gang tie crimes. The lawyers asserted that some people spend many years in prisons even without having committed any crimes. The lawyer’s report claimed that several prisoners were locked into solitary confinements because of participating in hunger strikes (Sputnik News Agency, 2016).The petition criticizes the condition of California prisoners by saying that the prisoners live in a GULAG instead of a modern democracy.
The Lawyers’ petition to the United Nations included violent treatment by guards at the prison, bad foods and medical poor medical assistance being offered to the prisoners. The report also states that in the previous year (2011), about 12, 000 inmates in California went on hunger strike in demand for better conditions in the prisons. The report further emphasizes that the incident is not the first to be reported in the United States’ prisons especially for the fact that the country is the world’s number one with the highest number of prisoners. The high number of prisoners in America is described as equivalent to a quarter of all detainees in the world. With this high number of prisoners, the country spends billions of dollars annually in prisons, and this number has increased by three times in the past 20 years (Sputnik News Agency, 2016).

The prisoners’ aspect in the United States is not only a concern of the country’s law enforcement department, but it is now growing into being a social concern. According to the information from the Pew Agency, the composition of inmates in the US prisons is not the same as the ethnic composition in the country. The distinction is also seen in the punishment of the whites and the black criminals. In drug-related crimes, the whites are usually released on probation while the blacks are usually apprehended, and these incidences cause ethnic mayhem. The official penitentiary reports in the country have not been providing authentic details of detainees and their growing numbers in American prisons since September 11. The most recent petition is coming after a lawyer representing hundreds of inmates in California prisons filed a petition to intervene on the issue of solitary confinements in the country’s prisons. An exact number of 400 inmates is said to be in confined detention for many years for having been involved in gang ties (Sputnik News Agency, 2016).
Domestic Gangs should be held as equally Accountable as Foreign Terrorists
Gangs in the United States are said to cultivate connections to terrorist operations in the country, and this threatens America’s Homeland Security. Press reports have supported this proposition, proving beyond reasonable doubt, that local gangs are colluding with terrorists to perpetuate criminal activities in the country. At the same time, there have been a good backup report from scholars and terrorists’ analysts regarding the same issue leading to gangs being classified equally with terrorists. There has been evidence of meetings between top Al-Qaeda leaders and local Hispanic leaders after the September 11. Subsequent attacks in the United States’ are said to have been greatly facilitated by links between local gangs and ISIS groups. (Bjelopera, 2012). This means that means used in cracking down terrorists should be the same means used to crack down local gangs.
In the criminal justice systems, offenses stated against these two group are inseparable since the crimes committed are perpetuated through similar channels. The media and scholars around the world have raised concerns about the associations between gangs and terrors. Even though the local gangs and the terrorists have different objectives and strategies, they are proved to form alliances which tend to give an easy breakthrough to a country’s security. Gangs conduct studies that help them come up with an analogy of modeling terrorists’ activities and groups. In this sense, gangs and terrorists symbiotically relate to continuing causing problems in the country. It is also discovered that the local gang members retire or leave the gang to join terrorist groups (Rogers, 2007).
There are propositions that gangs should be equalized with terrorists because they too kill and rape innocent women and children, as well as, dealing with drugs. They care less about the society and the future of other people. Their acts terrorize the society just like the terrorists. It is, however, disappointing to note that the constitution defines gang acts as very different from terrorists’ acts. This means that for the gangs to face the same punishment as terrorists, the constitution has to chance to accommodate the new propositions (Bjelopera, 2012). Views from the public domain indicate that hundreds of Americans lost their lives through mass shooting involving the gangs. They suggest that the gangs should be wiped out the same way terrorist are being wiped out in Afghanistan.
As far as murder and killings are concerned, the motive of the killings do not matter, but the act itself is a crime against humanity. Reasonably, the law distinguishing crimes against humanity based on the motive of the groups committing such crimes should not have a place in the modern democratic system of governance. The fact that gangs are aware that the law does not consider them terrorists encourage their growth in numbers across the country. This motivates them to continue with their activities. The situation will be worse if the gangs are given more rights in prison like those that sets them free from solitary confinements (Rogers, 2007). In fact, gang terrorist should not be granted probation or released on bond as a way of discouraging participation in gang activities with the assumption that there are favorable rights for suspected gang criminals.
The criminal gangs are claimed to be channels of recruiting children into terrorism. They begin by teaching children how to use guns and even how to make bombs. Because they do not participate actively in an actual terror attack does not imply that they cannot be termed as terrorists. Recruitment of such a kind lays a foundation for terrorism and threatens the security of the United States. Surprisingly, these gangs are also coaching children how to evade and psychologically challenge police officers when the happen to be caught. The gangs are usually more organized and apply sophisticated techniques to commit their offenses. They are more organized than people think (Rogers, 2007). They also use NLP to develop a terroristic method for managing their ‘street soldiers’ and evading law enforcers. These are similar tactics used by terrorists to accomplish their missions.
There are, however, gang sympathizers who have objected this idea by saying that terming gangs as foreign terrorists are another tactic used by the government to eliminate people they can’t control. They have also claimed that even if the final implications of their actions are similar, their agendas are totally different because terrorists have political agendas in their missions, but gangs usually arise from certain social-economic backgrounds and even have ethnic connections. The gang sympathizers have also defended the issues by claiming that gangs have never brought down a building; something that is associated with terrorists and that the number of people killed by gangs cannot be compares to thousands killed by terrorists (Bjelopera, 2012).
Despite the claims of gang sympathizers, the acts committed by gangs are against the International Bill of Human rights and are against the international criminal justice system that prohibits crimes against humanity. Gangs should be equally treated as terrorists because of the end results of the acts of two groups. Every group can have its motives, but, as long as the acts profane the doctrine of human dignity and peaceful coexistence, they qualify as terror acts. The idea that terrorists can only be Muslims cannot hold a place in this context because it tends to protect the local Americans of their evil by terming terrorists as foreigners. With this regard, there should be a proper re-examination of the Constitution which tends to protect the evil acts of domestic gangs by not terming them as terrorists. The gangs should, in fact, be held very much accountable in the case of a terror attack. In the prisons, they should be given punishment similar of even worse than the one given to terrorists as a way of discouraging local Americans from engaging in criminal activities.
References
Bjelopera, J. P. (2012). The domestic terrorist threat: Background and Issues for Congress.
Congressional Research Service.
Rogers, J. (2007). Gangs and terrorists in the Americas: An unlikely nexus. Journal of Gang
Research, 14(2), 19.
Sputnik News Agency (2016). Prisoners’ rights violation in the US. Retrieved December 05,
2016, from https://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2012_08_25/Prisoners-rights-violation-in-the-US/