Prejudice? Perish the Thought

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Case in point: the silence that has greeted the well-documented reports of human-rights abuses in the U.S. that Amnesty International USA has been issuing since last fall. The latest installment--a horrifying account of the treatment of female prisoners--is due this week. According to AIUSA, such barbaric practices as shackling female prisoners even while they are giving birth, along with rape and other sexual assaults by both guards and male inmates, have become commonplace as the female prison population has nearly tripled since 1985, to 138,000. But there has been only sporadic press coverage of the issue and next to no public outcry. "The victims of these offenses are female and usually nonwhite and poor," laments William Shulz, executive director of AIUSA. "In this country, that makes them invisible."

You'd think those Congressmen who accused Bill Clinton of violating Paula Jones' civil rights would want to leap on this issue. But you'd be wrong. The AIUSA report is more likely to be dismissed as a slanderous liberal assault on the criminal-justice system than as a wake-up call for reform. Like Alfred E. Neuman, its detractors will look deeply into their own heart, pronounce themselves innocent and bury their head in the sand.