(Adds comment from state prison official, 10th paragraph)

By Jason Szep

BOSTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Dogs are allowed to terrify and even bite unruly prisoners who refuse to leave their cells in five U.S. states, a human rights group said on Tuesday, comparing the policy to abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said it was unaware of any other nation where such a practice exists, describing it as a well-kept secret and drawing similarities to U.S. soldiers terrorizing Iraqi prisoners with dogs.

"At Abu Ghraib, it was not intended for them to bite the prisoner. Here we're using dogs to terrify. If the intimidation by the dog doesn't work, then the dog goes in and bites," said Jamie Fellner, Human Rights Watch director of U.S. programs.

If prisoners refuse to leave their cells when ordered in Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, South Dakota and Utah, officers may bring a dog to the cell "to terrify the prisoner into compliance," the 20-page report said.

If an inmate still refuses, the dog is allowed to bite. As the prisoner struggles to fend it off, officers restrain and then remove the prisoner from the cell, the report said.

"In some prisons ... the institutional culture permits cell extractions simply to show inmates 'who's in charge' or to retaliate against defiant inmates, even if there is no real emergency," the report said.

"At Abu Ghraib, they always denied that the use of the dogs was for this purpose. Here it is policy," Fellner added.

The practice was most common in Connecticut and Iowa prisons and rarely used in Utah, it said.

In Delaware and South Dakota, although policies allow the use of dogs for so-called "cell extractions," prison officials say they are not in fact used for this purpose, the report said. Massachusetts and Arizona banned the practice this year.

INVITING LIABILITY

The Connecticut Department of Corrections said its 22 canine teams were crucial to maintaining prison security. "If necessary, they are used in cell extractions," said Stacy Smith, spokeswoman for Connecticut's prisons.

Prison officials contacted by Reuters in the other states declined to comment on the report.

Human Rights Watch urged the Washington-based American Correctional Association to ban the practice under its national standards for prison managers.

The report comes at a time when the United States has 2.2 million people behind bars -- about a quarter of all the world's prisoners. The rate of people going into U.S. jails and prisons has quadrupled in 25 years, swelled by get-tough policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s, and the jail population has risen risen by 500,000 in the last 10 years alone.

"The unknown factor with a canine is that it's an animal -- you're creating a needlessly high risk of injury. There are just so many other ways to do it," said Steve J. Martin, a former general counsel for the Texas prison system and co-author of "Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down."

"These folks (who) are doing that are inviting liability."

AlertNet news is provided by