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. Cummins housed Arkansas's death row until 1986, when it was transferred first to the Tucker Maximum Security Unit and then to the Super Maximum Security Unit at the Varner Unit.
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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. 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, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, 1970 [2]
See also
- Trusty system
- Gates v. Collier
- List of law enforcement agencies in Arkansas
- List of United States state correction agencies
- List of U.S. state prisons
- Prison
References
- The Shame of the Prisons (Time magazine)
- New Chapter in Horror (The Nation, National Digital Archive)
- One Year of Prison Reform (The Nation, National Digital Archive)
- Arkansas Department of Correction: Prison History
- [3] Movie Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal
Bruce Jackson, Killing Time: Life in the Arkansas Penitentiary. Cornell University Press, 1977
External links
- Cummins Unit website
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