NPR's Michelle Martin, Accountability and the 4/16/18 South Carolina Incident

On 3/1/20 NPR's [National Public Radio] Michelle Martin allowed the whatever his name, Director of South Carolina's Department of Corrections to escape his accountability by continuing the mischaracterization of the 4/16/18 killing of 7 prisoners and 17 injured at South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institute as a simple matter of Gang activity.

Whether or not the immediate cause of the 4/16/18 violence was gang activity is besides the point. Had NPR's, Michelle Martin prepared for the 3/1/20 media event, which not only included the Director evading his accountability, but 3 hand-picked South Carolina, prisoners representing the purported reform of the South Carolina prison system. She would have held to account the irrelevant named Director for practices of South Carolina's Department of Corrections that not only are found to be unconstitutional hence illegal but on its face fostered the environment that enabled the death of 7 prisoners who were not sentenced to prison to die.

There is a specific reason why we typically find the prison systems of southern former Confederate Slaves holding states, especially those that scream the loudest of their Conservative values, of which South Carolina is one, violating the equality before the law underpinning of their social relations. Which is the extra-judicial existence of prison officials being above the law and the lack of accountability.

Gang activity isn't any more corrosive than the malfeasance of the prison official who having swore toe uphold the law behaves above it, and for NPR's Michelle Martin to interview the whatever his name, Director of South Carolina's prison system and not make this obvious point. Actually, ask who really is to blame for the death of those 7 prisoners during the 4/16/18 incident, is it the prisoners who killed fellow prisoners the Director of the prison system whose malfeasance fostered and enabled the killing of the journalist who failed to hold to account prison officials who have the legal and professional responsibility for the lives of prisoners.

By William Thorpe

Further Reading

South Carolina Prison Reform Proposal