YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: LAW-CRIME-AND-LAW-ENFORCEMENT

PRISONS AND PENOLOGY Internationally, the scope of criminal law was widened and the sentencing powers of the courts strengthened during 1995. As a result, criminal justice systems were placed under ever-increasing strain. Romania instituted prison sentences of between one and five years for various homosexual acts and imprisoned, for up to three years, those who flew foreign national flags or played national anthems of other states. Iraq added to its list of punishments branding and the amputation of hands, feet, and ears and televised before-and-after images of the punishment, mainly to deter desertion from the army. In the U.S. 30 states acted upon or were considering "three strikes and you're out" sentencing provisions that typically ensured life imprisonment for an offender convicted of a third felony. In a California referendum voters strongly backed such a proposition, even though it would cause the percentage of state funds allocated to the state prison system to double within eight years. Alabama restored the chain gang, a practice that had been abolished some 30 years earlier. Prisoners were manacled together in groups of five with 2.4-m (8-ft) lengths of chain as they worked alongside state highways. In October 1995 the Washington state judge who in 1994 suspended the sentences of two Native American teenagers on charges of robbery and assault and gave a Native American tribal court a chance to rehabilitate them revoked his decision. After hearing conflicting testimony on the effectiveness of their banishment to separate corners of an uninhabited island off the Alaskan coast, he sent the two to prison (for 55 and 31 months, with each earning a 12-month credit for time served). Prison populations worldwide continued to grow; the number of those incarcerated between 1991 and 1994 rose in 13 of 14 Eastern and Central European countries, with populations doubling in the Czech Republic and Belarus. Russia and the U.S. again had the world's largest prison populations, with rates per 100,000 of 590 and 555, respectively. Severe crowding and other appalling prison conditions were reported worldwide. Amnesty International, reporting on Mongolia, attributed one-third of 90 prisoner deaths in the first nine months of 1994 to starvation. Bulgarian prisons were overflowing and operating with minimal levels of sanitation. At the Stara Zagora penitentiary, cells were dark and grossly overcrowded. In Cambodia a UN-sponsored centre found that prisoners were frequently shackled and kept in darkened solitary confinement for lengthy periods; many were reportedly dying from malnutrition and other diseases. In Phnom Penh prison, inmates were held in large rooms with only one open latrine and water trough for their use. The Combinado del Este prison in Cuba, with a capacity of 3,000, reportedly held over 5,000 prisoners. The Glendiary prison in Barbados, with a capacity of 245, held 724 men and women, often for lengthy periods without light and with little ventilation. At Kresty Prison, St. Petersburg, some 8,000 were jailed in accommodations designed for 3,500. Conditions at a special unit of the Korydallos Psychiatric Centre in Greece were so abysmal that the government closed it. That country's prisons held 6,700 inmates in a system designed for 3,900. In the U.S. a federal judge condemned ill treatment of prisoners at the "supermax" Pelican Bay facility in California. There, naked men were confined in tiny metal cages during bitter weather, while others were handcuffed wrists-to-ankles for up to 19 hours in that "hog-tied" position. The world's worst conditions were undoubtedly found in Rwanda, where 23,000 Hutu prisoners, many of them under investigation for the massacre of Tutsi, were forced to stand in space designed to hold 4,000. In 1995 a new facility in Florence, Colo., was called the most secure prison ever built. In January three prisoners serving life sentences escaped from Parkhurst top-security prison in Britain shortly after a critical report had been issued on a breakout by six men (five of whom had been convicted for terrorist offenses) from Whitemoor Prison four months earlier. A mutiny in February at the Serkadji prison in Algeria left 95 prisoners and 4 officers dead. In 1994 in China, where as many as 65 offenses--ranging from bicycle theft to political dissent--were punishable by death, authorities reported that 1,991 prisoners had been executed, though the number was believed to be much higher. Several prostitutes were executed just prior to the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing. In May two refugees testified before a U.S. Senate committee that the Chinese authorities systematically removed organs from executed prisoners in order to sell them for medical transplants. They also reported that some executions were arranged in order to meet particular transplant demands. In Iran a reported 139 persons were put to death during 1994, but the actual figure was thought to be much higher. In Bangladesh the buying and selling of women and children became a capital offense, while in Nigeria a dramatic increase occurred in the number of executions by firing squad. In the U.S.--where 56 people were put to death in 1995--New York became the 38th state since 1976 to adopt capital punishment; 10 types of murder were punishable by lethal injection. In March the hanging of a Filipina maid in Singapore prompted a serious rift between that country and the Philippines. In Singapore 32 people were executed in 1994, many of them for drug-related offenses, and it was seen that ancient penalties were still sometimes imposed when a man who had been convicted of rape in Somalia was put to death by stoning. Two Christians in Pakistan, one of them a 14-year-old, were acquitted on appeal after having been sentenced to death for blasphemy. Though capital punishment became the mandatory sentence for blasphemy in 1991, the only other person so convicted had had his sentence overturned in 1994. In South Africa opponents of capital punishment welcomed the unanimous decision of an 11-member constitutional court in June to declare the death penalty for murder unconstitutional. More than 1,000 persons had been hanged in that country during the past two years, and some 450 persons were on death row at the time of the court's decision. (ANDREW RUTHERFORD) See also World Affairs: Multinational and Regional Organizations; United Nations. This updates the articles constitutional law; crime and punishment; international law; police. LIBRARIES During 1995 various events demonstrated the uncertainties facing libraries in a rapidly changing world. Two commonly held, but fully opposed, notions about libraries aptly articulated those uncertainties. One held that libraries serve a totemic function, that architecturally grand and massive library buildings stand as symbols of the wisdom and culture of the organizations that create them. The second notion stated that physical libraries would cease to exist; the library of the future would be a television set capable of retrieving all of the world's wisdom and culture through the Internet. Supporting the totemic view was the 1995 dedication of the new Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, that country's national library. The Kuala Lumpur facility employed architectural treatments, particularly in the shape of its blue roof, that reflected the cultural heritage of Malaysia. Reviled by Britain's Prince Charles and legions of others, and becoming a metaphor for national disarray, the new British Library at St. Pancras station was now--after some 30 years of work, delay, cost overruns, and controversy--completely visible. In 1995 some critics cautiously announced that the building may be not an architectural abomination but rather an exciting and edifying edifice. Meanwhile, across the English Channel, France rushed, nearly successfully, to complete the construction of the National Library of France during Pres. Franois Mitterrand's term of office because Mitterrand considered the library, located on the Left Bank of the Seine, to be a part of his legacy. The design employed four L-shaped glass towers, each resembling an open book. Reading areas were located below. The design outraged many bibliophiles because exposure to sunlight makes preservation of materials problematic. The new public library in San Antonio, Texas, also caused architectural controversy; Denver, Colo., and Phoenix, Ariz., also opened new downtown central libraries in 1995. The New York Public Library celebrated its centennial on May 20 and in November announced the receipt of $15 million--the largest one-time benefaction in its history--to renovate the historic Main Reading Room. On the last day of the year, San Francisco's Main Library closed. The books would be moved to a new building across the street. The Oklahoma City, Okla., downtown library was closed for just over a month following the explosion that devastated the nearby federal office building on April 19. The bomb blew out 90% of the library's windows as well as causing extensive ceiling damage on the upper floors. Even as countries, cities, and universities built grand symbols of culture and learning, librarians worked to create an electronic future that might make those structures obsolete. Worldwide, budgets lagged behind demands for materials and services, and librarians, particularly in less-developed nations, knew that a computer and an Internet connection were less expensive than a large collection. North America and Western Europe continued to lead, but many of the fastest-growing computerized library networks were in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific. Cooperative ventures abounded. The 1995 General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, held in August in Istanbul, focused on turning the global promise of the Internet into a reality. The European Union was funding projects that promoted resource sharing within and across borders. A record-breaking 13,178 paid registrants at the American Library Association's 114th annual conference in Chicago heard new ALA Executive Director Elizabeth Martinez announce "ALA Goal 2000," a five-year plan to position the association for the Information Age. In February the U.S. Library of Congress unveiled Thomas, a new computer system (named for Thomas Jefferson) giving citizens Internet access to information on the workings of Congress. The library came under attack when it closed an exhibit on slavery the day after it opened. Several black officers and staff members had complained. Amid charges of a cover-up of recent book mutilations at the Library of Congress, the U.S. General Accounting Office planned to conduct a review of the library's management as well as oversee a federal investigation of the damage. Public library circulation in the U.S. showed a modest decline of 3% in 1994, while expenditures leveled off to keep pace with inflation, according to the annual University of Illinois survey. In the face of declining circulation and diminishing advertising revenues, the 81-year-old Wilson Library Bulletin ceased publication in June. (GORDON FLAGG; THOMAS GAUGHAN) This updates the article library.