Cummins Unit

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The Cummins Unit (formerly known as Cummins state farm) is a state prison in Arkansas, USA.

This prison farm is a 16,000 acre (65 km²) correctional facility located 28 miles south of Pine Bluff, off Highway 65 near the town of Grady in Lincoln County, Arkansas. The prison first opened in 1902 and has a capacity of 1725 inmates.

Opened in 1902, Cummins Unit has a capacity of over 1700 prisoners. Cummins housed Arkansas's death row until 1986, when it was transferred to the new Maximum Security Unit.

[edit] History of torture

In 1968, Tom Murton alleged that three human skeletons found on the farm were the remains of inmates who had been subjected to torture, prompting a publicized investigation which found "a prison hospital served as torture chamber and a doctor as chief tormentor." [1]

The revelations included allegations of electrical devices connected to the genitalia of inmates, a practice similar to that depicted in photographs of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse which took place in Iraq in 2004. The Arkansas State Penitentiary System at that time had already been found to have held inmates at the Cummins Unit under conditions rising to the level of unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, in cases tried by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, among others.

"Certain characteristics of the Arkansas prison system serve to distinguish it from most other penal institutions in this country. First, it has very few paid employees; armed trusties ["trusted" inmates, according to the source] guard rank and file inmates and trusties perform other tasks usually and more properly performed by civilian or "free world" personnel. Second, convicts not in isolation are confined when not working, and are required to sleep at night in open dormitory type barracks in which rows of beds are arranged side by side; there are large numbers of men in each barracks. Third, there is no meaningful program of rehabilitation whatever at Cummins; while there is a promising and helpful program at Tucker, it is still minimal."

HOLT v. SARVER, US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, 1970 [2]