"It so happens," writes Chase Madar in his recent TomDispatch piece, that, like the US’s military prison at Guantánamo Bay, "a great many of America’s unsung domestic prisons also routinely abuse inmates, are unable or unwilling to prevent inmate rape, employ long-term, sustained solitary confinement (which gives waterboarding a run for its money) and in actual practice are often beyond the rule of law."

In this video, Madar, a civil rights lawyer and frequent contributor to The Nation, The London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterpunch and The American Conservative argues that Guantánamo’s lawlessness is not the exception, but rather the rule, when it comes to the American criminal justice and penal systems.