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Show Right perspective No monopoly on rotten prisons BY BRIAN MASON Last week this paper ran an interview by Patsy Truxaw of the College Press Service with Thomas Thom-as Harkin, staff aide to a House committee studying our military involvement in Southeast Asia. In this interview, Harkin tells what he and three other investigators found in the South Vietnamese prison on Con Son Island. He described de-scribed them as "tiger cages" pits "four to five feet wide, about nine feet long and about ten feet deep," in which prisoners were kept shackled about the legs. Prisoners Pris-oners received no exercise and poor food. Many were being held for simply speaking out against the Thieu regime. To try to counter-balance t h e findings of the House investigation investiga-tion committee, H. Ross Perot, the wealthy Texan who has spent much time, effort, and money on behalf of American Prisoners of War in North Vietnam, has set up a display in the basement of the Capitol Building in Washington purportedly simulating conditions in a North Vietnamese prison cell. In one cell is a model of a starv- ing GI. Rats scurry in a nearby i cell. The purpose, of course, is to remind Congressmen (and others) oth-ers) that the North Vietnamese ', prisons holding American soldiers i are not necessarily any better than 1 South Vietnames prisons. But Americans perhaps should not complain too loudly about conditions in prisons overseas. Unfortunately, Un-fortunately, this is one of those times in which it is very appropriate appropri-ate to recall the admonition of Jesus when he said, "Thou hypocrite, hypo-crite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the 1 mote out of thy brother's eye." i Our own prisons have many ; problems that must be corrected. For example, in the District of Columbia jails, as of May 15, al most 30 per cent of the 3,275 inmates in-mates had waited over 30 days to be tried of the crime of which they were accused. Half of these had been waiting over 60 days. Twenty men had been held without with-out rial for more than 'two years and four had been held for more than three years. In Philadelphia earlier this month, 103 persons were injured in a riot at Holmesbury Prison. This prison was designed to hold 600 men, but When the riot broke out, the prison was trying to house 1,300 prisoners. Actively practiced racism is rampant in some prisons as an article in the August edition of Ramparts magazine points out in a story on the Soledad, California Prison. Most people are aware of the violent homosexual attacks which have occurred in other prisons. pris-ons. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Bur-ger and the American Bar Association Associ-ation have both proposed a major study of the nation's prisons. This study is sorely needed. Prison is not a place where everything ev-erything should be peaches and cream. Nevertheless, the dignity and worth of the human being must at all times be respected. The existence of "tiger cages" in the prisons of South Vietnam can not be justified. The Saigon government gov-ernment has announced that it will "demolish' 'the "tiger cages" immediately. Hopefully it will fulfill ful-fill that promise and not substitute something equally as bad in their place. Certainly, pointing the finger at others or even at oneself does not allow one thereby to ignore the problem at hand in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, it does show that bad prison conditions exist elsewhere else-where besides under President Thieu. That such conditions d i d exist by itself does not constitute sufficient justification to deny the Thieu regime our support. |