US Prisons and Jails abusive and unchecked

30 jailers punished for inmate beatings, report says
Sheriff’s Department watchdog releases study on inmate abuse. Sheriff Baca plans to install more video cameras in jail to document misconduct
By Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi – Los Angeles Times – October 13, 2011, 5:06 p.m

In the last two years, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials have disciplined more than 30 jail employees for beating inmates or covering up the abuse, according to a report from the agency’s watchdog obtained by The Times.

Other deputies “get away” with unnecessary force against inmates because “they craft a story of justification … which may be impossible to disprove,” according to the report by the Office of Independent Review, which monitors discipline in the Sheriff’s Department.

The report comes in response to growing allegations of inmate abuse inside the nation’s largest jail system and has been released as the FBI investigates several cases of potentially criminal misconduct by deputies.

The report documents a dozen cases in which deputies were either fired or suspended in connection with inmate beatings. But those who were punished may be only a fraction of those who actually used excessive force. Investigations into excessive force, especially those that involve relatively minor injuries to an inmate, can be “lackluster, sometimes slanted and insufficiently thorough,” the report said.

The report by Michael Gennaco, who heads the Office of Independent Review, is expected to be made public Thursday. But even as the watchdog circulated his findings, department officials revealed Wednesday that several more deputies not mentioned in Gennaco’s report had just been disciplined in connection with the beating of an inmate. …more