Press Release: First 200 Documents of Prisoner Abuse Letters-Project are online

Press Release:

April 26, 2014

The first 200 documents of the Nevada-Cure Prisoner Abuse Letters-project are online.

These are documents sent to Nevada-Cure. These documents contain affidavits, grievances or other statements written and shared with permission of the writer. NV-CURE has posted them on our website. 

To view the list of complaints, with the documents hyperlinked to each complaint, visit these three tabs on the Nevada-Cure website:

Page 1: with introduction and Docs 1-50:
http://www.nevadacure.org/p/nevada-prisoner-abuse-documents.html

Page 2: Documents 51-120:
http://www.nevadacure.org/p/blog-page_19.html

Page 3: Again with intro, and Documents 121-200:
http://www.nevadacure.org/p/blog-page_13.html

This is an ongoing project, that involves educating the prisoners on the project, receiving their documents, scanning them and documenting them on Excel sheets, and uploading the documents with the annotations onto the website. The documents have been used to discuss with the Director of the NDOC the patterns of abuse, the people who commit abuses and what NDOC plans to do to stop these from occurring. This material can also be used as research material for press, attorneys, students and other researchers as well as family, friends and the human rights defense community. These documents reflect hundreds of hours of work by NV-CURE volunteers and reflect our interest in educating the public on events transpiring behind NV prison fences.

NV-Cure keeps the documents as an archive of abuses, which can also be used when necessary, if the Special Litigation Unit of the DOJ needs to have insight into the abuses occurring in the Nevada Department of Corrections prisons. 

Please help support NV-CURE in these efforts with your tax free donations to our organization - and keep this project alive.  Thank you.

Nevada-Cure

Contact:
Nevada-CURE
540 E. St. Louis Ave.
Las Vegas, NV 89104
 

Email: [email protected]
Website: Nevadacure.org
Tel.: 702.347.1731

Facebook

Twitter: @NevadaCure

Prisoner at NNCC retaliated against for his complaint about Human Rights Abuses

On August 20th 2012 Nevada-Cure sent this message out via email about retaliation against a prisoner held in NNCC (Carson City, NV). Philip Tragale has asked the Courts for a Guardian and/or Lawyer to protect prisoner Daniel Stenner who is blind and mentally handicapped. Mr Tragale filed the text here underneath to the District Court in Nevada on June 6th 2012.

We have another case Mr Tragale filed which contains complaints about a few employees of NDOC who are alleged to be abusive towards prisoners. We will soon post that case here too.

Please write to your Legislator and Director Cox of NDOC to ask them to have an independent commission look into these alleged abuses, and have them stopped.

NV-CURE has not conducted an independent evaluation of Mr. Tragale's claims. However, such an investigation must be conducted by a person that is fair and impartial. The truth and actual events must be made public and scrutinized by the Legislature. Please e-mail / write NDOC Director COX and members of the NV Legislature with your views and opinions on this matter.
Thank you.

The text is published here.

News from NV-CURE

02/19/2012

 

This is an article written especially at the request of prisoners for their Newsletter (Nevada Prisoners' Newsletter, NPN), which is for and by prisoners.

By Natalie Smith, Secretary, NV-CURE

By now, many of you are aware that Nevada Cure (NV-CURE) has been reorganized under new leadership and we are taking a proactive approach to problems within the Nevada prison system .Our new president, John Witherow, spent 26 years in Nevada’s prisons and is acutely aware of the problems prisoners face.

NV-CURE’s Investigation into Abuse of Prisoners

As the NPN is going to press, NV-CURE is sending  out seven (7) more cases of excessive force/abuse of prisoners to Director Cox.

 At our meeting in December, Director Cox expressed an interest in disciplining bad guards, the ones whose names repeatedly make their way to our mailbox as the perpetrators of cowardly acts of violence, sometimes against chained and shackled prisoners, some of whom are old or sick, handicapped or mentally ill.   We have to give the department the first opportunity to correct the problems, even though that method has failed in the past, before we go to a higher authority to force them to correct the problems.

Abuses addressed in the mailing to Cox include a 70 year old prisoner who has tumors and a pacemaker beaten inside the medical unit of NNCC, guards using force only before the video camera arrives, five guards attacking a restrained prisoner while yelling racist slurs and acts of brutality in retaliation for prisoners “seeing” guards committing other atrocities.  Another case involves a prisoner having his face bashed into the wall, and even after his face split open guards continued to bang his face into the wall. This behavior must not be tolerated. Please continue to provide NV-CURE with affidavits of any such incidents you are a victim of or witness to.

According to correspondence we have received, some prisoners condone the actions of the abusive guards, perhaps because the mentally ill are irritating, perhaps because it makes some people feel safer to be on the side of the guards;  or, perhaps those prisoners are receiving “favors” from their sponsoring guards; however,  remember that not all our correspondence is from mentally ill or “weak” prisoners. Once the floodgate of abuse is open, any and all prisoners may fall victim to vicious attacks. Speak up when you see an act of abuse committed against a weak prisoner or someone with a mental illness. Remember, guards are not your friends and condoning their abuse only leads to more abuse. You may be next on the list of prisoners disfavored by guards!!! The old boy system of protecting abusive guards must STOP, regardless of whether you personally like or dislike the prisoner being abused. Join us in the struggle for JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS FOR ALL!!!

Free! Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook!

The Center for Constitutional Rights offers FREE copies of their “Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook”. It can be downloaded by family and friends from their website at ccrjustice.org or you may order it directly by writing to CCR at :

Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook
c/o The Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012

Order it, read it, know your rights! The Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook is a primer on how to bring a federal lawsuit to challenge violations of your rights in prison via a section 1983 civil rights lawsuit

Become a Member! Invite your family and Friends to Join us!

NV-CURE invites all prisoners to become members. All we ask is a $2.00 donation of stamps. Please send your name ,number and address and $2.00 in stamps to:

Nevada Cure
Law Office of Gallian, Wilcox, Welker, Olson & Beckstrom, LC
540 E. St. Louis Ave.
Las Vegas, NV  89104
702.347.1731 - nevadacure.org

Conference Call Number and Code
712-451-6000
Code: 493815 #

Please ask your family and friends on the streets to become involved with NV-CURE. There is a lot of work to do and we need as much help in the struggle for justice and fairness for all. Nothing will get done without typing, mailing, attending prison commission meetings and more. NV-CURE meets on the last Wednesday of each month at the above address and we invite the attendance and participation of all. For family and friends not in the LV area, they can call in and join the meeting on a conference call by calling conference call number listed above and entering the code.

We welcome any and all suggestions from prisoners. Write to us with your ideas and issues. We will present your information at the monthly meetings.

Unfortunately we do not have the financial resources to accept collect calls or to copy and return documents. We will, however, accept pre-paid calls at the above number.

Letter to NDOC Director Cox about mistreatment at ESP

Sent: October 19th 2011.

Director COX,

Please read the attached letter recently received by Hope For Freedom from a very young ESP prisoner regarding mistreatment and inhumane conditions of confinement. We receive similar letters every week describing horrific events and abuse, misconduct and indifference by staff. The abuse, mistreatment and inhumane conditions described in those letters must be addressed through legitimate and reasonable action to alleviate these problems.

From the attached letter, it is apparent that ignoring the complaints of prisoners and their abuse and mistreatment only leads to additional misbehavior and causes further problems.  That is why ESP is perpetually a long term lock-down facility. When a person is labeled the “worst of the worst” and constantly abused and mistreated, he responds accordingly. People in the community would go to prison for treating a dog in the same manner NDOC ESP staff are treating prisoners at ESP. Staff charged with control of recalcitrant prisoners must be the ones to act with intelligence, reason and restraint. That is not happening at ESP.
 
The NDOC confines thousands of prisoners serving life sentences, many without the possibility of parole, and it is only a matter of time before those prisoners conclude that the only avenues realistically available to them to resolve their problems are destruction and violence. It happened in Attica, New Mexico and Lucasville, to name only a few of the most devastating prisoner uprisings, and it can happen anywhere at any time when prisoners are abused and treated unfairly.  We must prevent that from happening again. Intelligent and reasonable steps must be taken to prevent such an event from occurring at an NDOC facility. Abuse and repression is not the answer to the operation of safe and secure institutions.

With your consent, we would like to begin a dialogue with you concerning the operation of the NDOC. With our member years of experience while incarcerated and in prisoner advocacy, we may be able to provide you with some valuable insights and suggestions. It would not hurt to hear our views and opinions and we may be able to provide constructive information and intelligent solutions.

NV-CURE invites you, other NDOC employees and all persons in the community concerned with the rehabilitation of errants to join NV-CURE and assist in our efforts to bring real reform to the Nevada criminal justice system.

Please advise us of your decision regarding a dialogue and our invitation to join NV-CURE at your earliest convenience.  Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Nevada Cure