kerness

By Bonnie Kerness

The use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons began in 1829 based on the early Quaker religious philosophy that solitary introspection would lead to penitence and reform. It soon became evident that people in isolation would often suffer mental breakdown. Thus, the general practice of isolation in US prisons was abandoned. However, isolation as a means of administrative control has continued and grown to proportions engendering great concern.

This abuse of isolation has more recently been combined with behavioral modification programs, including physical beatings, the use of devices of torture and psychological abuse. In 1972, the first official "control unit" was opened in Marion Federal Prison in Illinois. This was a behavior modification experimental unit. Around this time, other similar units began opening in state prisons across the country. In 1983, the entire prison at Marion was "locked down;" an action in which all prisoners are locked in cells 24 hours a day without human contact. This was done in response to an isolated incident of violence in the prison. That lock down has never been lifted. In 1995, a new federal high tech prison in Florence, Colorado took over the "mission" of Marion and purports to house the "most predatory" of prisoners in the US. Here people are kept in nearly total isolation for years. There is little interaction with anyone other than prison staff.

Although litigation concerning control units has been sporadic, ongoing and not too promising, there have been some successes. In 1989, the women's small-group isolation prison in Lexington, Kentucky, designed specifically for women political prisoners was closed by legal, political and moral battles waged by a broad coalition of people. Today, there is no "official" women's control unit prison. However, women in the federal prison at Marianna, Florida, and in many state prisons are experiencing increasingly repressive conditions. We've had reports from an Ohio women's prison on the use of restraint tables for women who are "misbehaving." Public oversight of prisons is essentially nonexistent and we have found abuses of power by prison officials are endemic.

This development of control units can be traced to the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement during which time many activists found themselves in US prisons. We believe that this use of isolation stems directly from the brainwashing techniques used during the Korean War. This use of sensory deprivation was extensive with imprisoned members of the Black Panther party, the Black Liberation Army formations, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the American Indian Movement, white activists, jail house lawyers, Islamic militants, and prison activists. At one time or another, they all found themselves living in extended isolation, sometimes for years on end.

We are seeing an expansion of the experiment in solitary confinement manifest in the building of supermax prisons throughout the country. These are entire prisons devoted to forcing people to live in complete isolation. You cannot see or hear another human being unless or until the administration decides that you can. Perhaps the fastest growing population to find themselves living in enforced solitude are the youth of color who are in prison as a result of the racist crack-cocaine laws. Most of these youngsters have received unconscionably long sentences. As a consequence of their anger at this, they tend to commit real or imagined infractions shortly after their imprisonment, which results in Department of Corrections all over the country placing them in sensory deprivation supermax prisons.

The latest in the effort at expanding the number of people living in isolation involves the alleged spread of the "gang problem" in US prisons. While most of us dealing with prison issues know of gangs in prisons, many of us are also watching this "problem" be created, as well as enhanced in many prisons throughout the US. In New Jersey for instance, they are building a new 750 bed "gang unit." In order to fill this new unit, they are rounding up people for interviews to determine gang membership. New Jersey has never had a gang problem. The prisoners are reporting that the Department of Corrections is using various counterintelligence tactics to create one. Prisoners report rumors being started by guards provoking one group against another. This trend is being repeated throughout the country, resulting in the increased building of supermax prisons.

Corrections personnel have told us that this nation-wide move to expand the use of isolation is being fostered to a great extent by the guard Unions. Those Unions are now contributing heavily to the political campaigns of "law and order" candidates. This is followed up by various forms of lobbying to secure the necessary support for the building of new solitary confinement units or prisons. Guards report feeling that these units provide a safe working environment. It is also obvious to advocates and monitors of prison that the units provide a place in which to commit atrocities unobserved.

While specific conditions in control unit prisons vary, the goal of these units is clearly to disable prisoners through spiritual, psychological and/or physical breakdown. In its brochure, the National Campaign to Stop Control Unit Prisons notes that this is accomplished in a number of ways including: arbitrary placement--sometimes not based on pre-established standards and procedures. Years of isolation from both prison and outside communities while being housed in solitary or small group isolation. Extremely limited access to services such as education, worship, or vocational training. Physical torture such as forced cell extractions, strap-downs, hog-tying, beating after restraint, and provocation of violence between prisoners. Mental torture such as sensory deprivation, forced idleness, verbal harassment, mail tampering, disclosure of confidential information, confessions forced under torture, and threats against family members. Sexual intimidation and violence usually against women prisoners by male guards, using strip searches, verbal sexual harassment, sexual touching, and rape as a means of control.

In recent years, those of us who have been monitoring the rapid growth of these units have seen not only the proliferation of control unit prisons, but also a duplication of these questionable conditions. Throughout the country, for instance, when a control unit prisoner leaves his cage, he is strip-searched, even when there is no contact with anyone but prison staff. Oscar Lopez, a Puerto Rican political prisoner reported being searched recently three times going to a window visit and three times returning. At the time, Oscar hadn't been in the direct company of another human being for months.

Many human rights groups have expressed concern over criminal justice policy in the US, which has increasingly, encouraged the use of control units, security housing units and super-max prisons. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the American Friends Service Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, California Prison Focus, and many other groups and individuals have joined with the World Organization Against Torture in expressing concerns about these units. The World Organization Against Torture is currently writing a report on United States compliance with the United Nations Covenants (CAT) in 1994. Areas of concern where the US does not comply with that Convention include punitive violence and brutality in control unit facilities, the practice of cell extractions, the treatment of the mentally ill and the use of brutality through chemical sprays and dangerous methods of restraint. The existence and scope of these conditions is also in opposition to guidelines for treatment set in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
Human rights monitors throughout the country are also hearing increasingly about the use of devices of torture in US prisons, almost exclusively from those living in enforced isolation. We are receiving more frequent testimony from prisoners on the expanded use of pepper sprays, mace, stun belts, head masks and restraint chairs and beds. The latter are described as having holes in them for prisoners, who report having been strapped down in a restraint for 21 days. We have also received reports on the growing use of these devices from women's prisons and juvenile facilities as well.

Dr. Stuart Grassian, an expert on the results of living in extended isolation, has commented at length on the psychiatric harm that can come to people subjected to long term isolation. He talks about interviewing people who begin to cut themselves just so they can "feel" something. He speaks of a progressive inability to tolerate ordinary stimulation. Dr. Grassian also speaks of the panic attacks that those of us in touch with people living in isolation frequently hear about. Isolation has been documented as a cause of paranoia, problems with impulse control, extreme motor restlessness, delusions, suspiciousness, confusion, and depression. I have treated a number of ex-control unit prisoners, many of whom come out with serious symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The National Campaign to Stop Control Unit Prisons held Hearings throughout the country in 1996, resulting in countless pieces of testimony, family members, lawyers and advocates. What was described in these testimonies clearly violates the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, another Covenant, which the United States has signed. The group continues to monitor conditions in extended isolation units throughout the country and fostered the publication of a 1997 report on the status of control units in the US and "The Survival Manual." The latter pamphlet was written by prisoners living in isolation for prisoners living in isolation.

Prisons are one of the largest growth industries in the United States at this time. What is happening with the use of extended isolation is part of the growth pattern. The prison industrial complex, now houses over 1.9 million people in state and federal prisons. The number is not reflective of children's facilities, immigration detention centers or municipal lockups. As a human rights advocate on behalf of prisoners for over 20 years, it has become glaringly clear to me that, just as there were economic and political functions of slavery, so are there economic and political functions of prisons. I no longer believe it is by accident that people who are perceived of as economic liabilities have been turned into a major economic asset--for the young male of color who is worth less than nothing in the current economy suddenly generates between 30 and 60 thousand dollars a year in the "justice" system.

Nor do I believe that it is any accident that the technological revolution has been accompanied by the largest explosion of building prisons in the history of the world. Control units, supermax prisons and maxi-maxi prisons are the latest manifestation of this effort. The politics of the criminal justice system--the politics of the police, the politics of the courts, the politics of the prisons and the politics of the death penalty are all a manifestation of racism and classism.

We need to expand the level of popular understanding of what is happening in this country's justice system and make it relevant to the lives of people that we know and touch. We need to put a human face on those people living so alarmingly out of sight of the rest of us. The folks in prison are mostly the poor and working classes who need jobs and education. Prison issues are class issues and until prisoner activists and outside organizers begin opposition on a more serious level, neither prison administrators nor the US government has to respond to our complaints.

Prisons reflect both the structure of society and the nature of struggle against that structure. The wall of silence that has been built around prisons and prisoners has got to be broken down.

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