By Jayvee Vallejera
A class action lawsuit filed Thursday against Guam’s Department of Corrections highlights decades of neglect and inhumane conditions within Guam’s correctional facilities and presses for immediate reforms, including alternative measures for non-violent offenders to ease overcrowding and ensure humane treatment for all detainees.
Filed by Sen. Thomas Fisher on behalf of the detainees led by Jesse Leon Guerrero, the lawsuit alleges overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and a lack of basic necessities, all of which violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
About 500 class members are being detained right now at DOC.
The lawsuit alleges that detainees, who have not been convicted of crimes, are made to endure overcrowded cells, no mattresses and limited access to hygiene products.
“DOC officers and detainees describe conditions unfit even for animals, with severe risks of violence, disease, and abuse,” said a news release from Fisher’s office Friday.
“These conditions represent a legal and moral failure,” Fisher said. “Our government must act now to meet federal standards and protect detainees’ rights.”
The lawsuit was filed against Fred Bordallo, Director of the Guam Department of Corrections.
Leon Guerrero is being detained at DOC pending the resolution of two felony charges; class members are also detained for various allegations. They have not been convicted and are presumed to be innocent.
Yet, as the class action claims, while waiting for their cases to be resolved, six detainees are being crammed into cells designed to accommodate just two persons. There is no air conditioning, some detainees sleep on the bare floor as no mattress is provided, and it is always dark. No soap is provided, so detainees take a shower with just plain water.
“In short inmates are neither kept clean, nor are they allowed the human necessity to be clean. They shower, if at all, in water alone,” the lawsuit claims.
Leon Guerrero himself is not provided a mattress. Instead, he sleeps on the concrete floor that is regularly splashed with urine, the suit alleges.
All of these happen in gloom and darkness since there is no light.
Personal hygiene, which is presumably necessary due to such close confinement, is nearly impossible since no soap or cleaning solution is provided.
The lawsuit also claims that detainees are not screened for obvious common transmittable diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases, making it easy for detainees to contract diseases.
Being housed in a cell like sardines also causes detainees to fight and makes them probable victims of prison rape or sexual harassment, the suit alleges.
“They have incidents almost every day of getting beat up but claim they fell from their bunk or slipped in the shower and got two black eyes. They are afraid to report the truth about how they sustained injuries,” the suit says.
The lack of air conditioning causes detainees to be irritated and makes it difficult to breathe.
Such appalling conditions make it impossible for Guam's Department of Corrections to be accredited. “Indeed the only accrediting institution for adult correctional facilities (the American Correctional Association and the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections) would not accredit our Department of Corrections based upon its standards,” the class action states.
The class action claims Bordallo knows about these legal violations, yet has not resolved them.
A declaration attached to the lawsuit stated that correctional officials acknowledged that pre-trial detainees are being housed in the detention facility “with no AC units, no lights, lack of water, lack of toiletry items, lack of personal hygiene products, no laundry soap, sometimes no fire-retardant mattresses because it was damaged by prisoners, no beddings, no towels, no cups.”
"All of these problems lead to the violation of their civil rights, which falls under the 81h amendment of Cruel and Unusual Punishment," the lawsuit alleges. “The Eighth Amendment's ban on inflicting cruel and unusual punishment proscribe[s] more than physically barbarous punishments. It prohibits penalties that are grossly disproportionate to the offense, as well as those that transgress today's broad and idealistic concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency.”
The class action, represented by the law firm Fisher and Associates, says Leon Guerrero has exhausted all available administrative remedies.
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