Western Prison Project’s Associate Director David Rogers had the opportunity to interview Ajamu Baraka, director of the U.S. Human Rights Network [1]. Founded in 2003, the network is a collaborative movement of groups working to advance the belief and practice of human rights in the United States. Originally made up of sixty groups and individuals, the Network now has close to 200 members, including organizations, attorneys, organizers, policy makers, researchers, and scholars –- and is still growing. (Western Prison Project is a member). Mr. Baraka described to us the work of the network and the power and utility of using a “human rights” approach to deal with the problems of our criminal justice systems.

David Rogers (DR): Could you describe a little bit about the human rights framework. What is it, what does it look like, and how groups use it?

Ajamu Baraka (AB): When we talk about the human rights framework, we’re basically beginning with the series of human rights conventions and covenants that have been developed within the United Nations system over the last few decades. That’s the starting point.

The overarching document is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [2]. But we use many other documents, for example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Convention Against Torture, the International Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These instruments (legal documents) provide a useful framework for re-framing social justice issues within the U.S.

DR: Many of our members are currently or formerly incarcerated people. How might you describe the human rights framework as applicable specifically to prisoners?

AB: Well, first there’s the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [3] that the U.S. has signed. It provides provisions in which the U.S. is obligated to provide humane conditions to people who are incarcerated.

The Convention Against Torture [4] spells out the kind of treatment that constitutes torture and ill treatment. We know the use of restraints, restraining chairs, the use of sprays, and these supermax prisons… many of the techniques that are employed within U.S. prisons constitute torture and ill treatment.

Some U.S. human rights activists right now, for example, are trying to deal with the New Orleans Parish Prison, trying to address those issues that came up during the course of Hurricane Katrina when people were left in their cells, and people drowned inside the prison because the prison was abandoned. Other people disappeared and still have not been accounted for. Right now there is no real criminal justice system in New Orleans, so the same individuals that went to jail back in August and July before the hurricane, who may have been incarcerated because of outstanding minor warrants or traffic tickets, they are still incarcerated because the criminal justice system in New Orleans has completely broken down. The public defender system that people rely on has been reduced down to four individuals who have something like a couple of hundred cases per person. We are working very hard to publicize that reality.

Because of changes to U.S. domestic law – for example the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) [5] passed in 1996 – it has become almost impossible for people who are incarcerated to raise up issues connected to prison conditions and treatment. The only route that people go to is to get themselves heard in the international arena.

And based on those instruments I’ve mentioned, certain issues can be raised in the international arena. They can be raised with the UN Human Rights Committee. That is the body responsible for monitoring U.S. compliance with the international covenants.

As a consequence of PLRA, the human rights community has been able to raise these issues with the UN Human Rights Committee to say that the domestic remedies have been exhausted. Because of the blockage put forth by U.S. law, the only outlet we have now is to raise these issues within the international arena. This is the route that you have to go. You have to reframe these issues within the human rights context and take it to the international court of world opinion.

DR: A lot of people who talk about the importance of using the human rights framework in the U.S. talk about U.S. exceptionalism. Could you explain what that means when people refer to that?

AB: International law recognizes that an essential principle is the principle of equality, that all nations are equal. All nations have an obligation to adhere to these international principles. The U.S. believes that because of its particular experience, its self-defined leadership role in the human rights ideal, and its predominant power in the world, they believe that they are not bound by the same norms as everyone else. The U.S. believes that it can pick and choose what principles it’s going to respond to based on its own particular needs. That’s the idea of U.S. exceptionalism.

One of the missions of the U.S. Human Rights Network is to reverse that. To put pressure on the U.S. to recognize that it is one nation on this planet and that it has an obligation to adhere to the same set of principles as everyone else.

DR:    I think it’s full of a lot of potential in part because so many folks in the U.S. like to think of ourselves as better than the rest of the world. There’s a lot of power in bringing to light the types of deeply inhumane things that happen within the borders of the United States that we accuse other countries of allowing. Unearthing injustice puts some pressure on policymakers to right the wrongs that are going on everyday here.

It also seems like one of the really valuable things of the framework is that it allows people to make connections across constituencies, across communities, across issues. Do you think that for folks working on criminal justice issues there are particular connections that folks can make to deepen the work, whether it is across other communities or other issues?

AB: I think that it helps us think about so-called criminal justice issues in a different kind of way. When we think about or we rethink, what is criminality? Who decides criminal behavior? Across the planet, you will see that countries define criminality in different ways, but there are also similarities.

Across the planet you find that the individuals who end up incarcerated are individuals who are from vulnerable minority populations, who come from low-income communities, communities that have been targeted by national authorities for over-policing, communities that have been forced through circumstances to engage in certain kinds of behaviors that are then deemed to be illegal.

There’s common sorts of issues of class, poverty, national oppression that we find that connect up most of these criminal justice issues. So, this framework connects us with the world, it allows us to think about these things and to see them in a different way and to recognize common interests. I think that’s really the value of this framework.

Within the human rights framework we acknowledge that a criminal justice system is supposed to have at its core the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration. These are recognized as civilized principles. We know that in this country over the last two decades these ideas have been jettisoned from the public discussion. Now it is all about revenge, and we have now these draconian laws in place that provide for these mandatory minimums. We have prosecutors that basically are running their election based on how “tough” they can be.

For example, in this country we have thousands of young folks under the age of eighteen who are being transferred into the adult system in violation of international human rights law. I don’t know if people understand that this is one of the few countries on this planet that condemns children as young as thirteen to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That is a barbaric sentence.

We have a situation that when you look at the criminal justice system in the country from the top to the bottom, it is full of human rights violations. Those violations have to be brought to the surface, have to be brought to the attention of the international authorities.

Part of our strategy is to bring in examples of how other countries deal with their criminal justice issues. People always think that when you do that it’s going to evoke an immediate negative response from people, and it does somewhat, but most people in this country don’t understand how other countries are dealing with similar kinds issues in a more humane, more civilized way. Being able to bring that into the equation, into the conversation, to show other ways of dealing with this issue can be a useful instrument to spur people’s thinking away from this reliance on punishment.

We have to recognize that as we build a social movement here, the meaning of those words in these international agreements is still being decided. The final product of what human rights look like will be settled as a consequence of struggle, mass struggle determining the full content and scope of human rights. The documents are the beginning point of the human rights framework, and the ending point will be a direct result of people’s struggles.

DR: Thanks so much.

This article is part of a series of articles for the spring 2006 issue of Justice Matters on human rights.