“[The riot] was under control very quickly,” said Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts attorney David Milton. “Nevertheless […] there was a weeks-long campaign we called the ‘Retaliatory Violence Campaign’ in which 100 prisoners were brutalized and subjected to all manner of extreme and malicious force—not for any legitimate security purpose, but to punish everyone for the actions of a couple people involved in assaulting the officers.”
Inmates at a Massachusetts prison have filed a lawsuit alleging that guards at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center engaged in a brutal “Retaliatory Force Campaign” that left dozens injured.
According to the Boston Herald, the so-called “Retaliatory Force Campaign” was run between January and February of 2020. It “consisted of officers attacking more than 100 prisoners using extreme, malicious, and cruel methods of force designed not to restore order, but to inflict pain, fear, and trauma.”
The violence inherent to the campaign allegedly included the “beating and kicking of prisoners; gouging [of] eyes; grabbing [of] testicles; smashing faces into the ground or wall; deploying Taser guns, pepper ball guns, and other chemical agents; ordering K9s to menace and bite prisoners; and excessively tightening handcuffs and forcing prisoners’ arms into unnatural and painful positions, among other positional torture tactics.”
The campaign was initiated after “long simmering tensions between a small group of prisoners and officers in the N1 Unit … culminated in an altercation, during which several officers were injured.”
The at-fault inmates were removed from the prison, and the situation, attorneys say, was quickly under control.
“It was under control very quickly,” said Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts attorney David Milton. “Nevertheless […] there was a weeks-long campaign we called the ‘Retaliatory Violence Campaign’ in which 100 prisoners were brutalized and subjected to all manner of extreme and malicious force—not for any legitimate security purpose, but to punish everyone for the actions of a couple people involved in assaulting the officers.”
The lawsuit, notes the Herald, was certified as a class action last week. In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Margaret R. Guzman said that the class shall be comprised of “all individuals who were incarcerated at SBCC who were subjected to uses of force from January 10, 2020, to February 6, 2020.” She also approved a subclass of “all Black and Latinx individuals incarcerated at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center who were subjected to uses of force” and who were purportedly targeted for “especially brutal and degrading treatment, such as yanking and ripping out of dreadlocks and braids and shouting racist comments and slurs as the officers assault them.”
Jesse White, a Prisoners Legal Services attorney representing the class, told WBUR that the prison has a decades-old reputation for violence—and that it’s about time that something be done to improve inmates’ conditions.
“Violence has been a persistent issue there since it opened,” White said. “It’s definitely time to do something different at the prison, and certainly, what we need to do is not make conditions worse than they already are.”
Sources
Advocates say Souza prison was deteriorating before violence
Massachusetts Department of Correction hit with lawsuit alleging brutal violence against inmates
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