The wall of silence that has been built around prisons and prisoners has got to be broken down. What I have described is a conscious attempt to physically, mentally and spiritually break down millions of people, and for the most part it is going on unchallenged. The American Friends Service Committee has become so concerned that we are currently archiving prisoner testimonies of torture state-by-state. We've produced a "Survivor's Manual" written by prisoners living in extended isolation for prisoners living in extended isolation. The development of this pamphlet on testimonies of torture is an effort to put human faces on what is happening. We're also asking prisoners to draw what they are seeing and experiencing, some of which you will see reflected in these pages. Some of these drawings have already been used by newspapers who find that they can't get into the isolation prisons to photograph.
As an activist it is my job 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 the people that I may touch. I have been part of the struggle against oppression in this country for the past 35 years. I have seen the horror and havoc that US policies can create with people's lives. I have never seen anything like what I am seeing now in United States prisons. I have spent time with US political prisoners. I have spent time with people who have endured torture in US prisons. I have treated hundreds of ex-prisoners who have returned to our communities with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress. My soul is shaken by what I read in my daily mail. What is going on in the name of all of us needs to be looked at very carefully. I think that whites have to consciously rid ourselves the racism that infects us daily in a society where we are privileged in relation to peoples of color. I think people of color have to become specifically involved in fighting the bottom line expression of racism and oppression that the prison system represents.
Prejudice rarely survives experience. We hope that one of the things born of this pamphlet such is a far more critical look at yourselves, your families and your society. In a genuinely multi-cultural society, the current criminal justice system would not survive.
Our deep appreciation to the many prisoners who have sketched their pain and sent us these testimonies, often at risk to themselves. With the exception of the prisoners in the section entitled "Women in Prison", all the prisoners referred to or quoted in this paper are men currently being held or who have been held in control units.
- Bonnie Kerness, June 2000
********************* "The term 'control unit' was first coined at the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois in 1972 and has come to designate a prison or part of a prison that operates under a 'super maximum security' regime. Control unit prisons may differ from each other in some details but all share certain defining features:
"1. Prisoners in a control unit are kept in solitary confinement in tiny cells (six by eight feet is usual) for between twenty two and twenty three hours a day. There is no congregate dining, no congregate exercise, no work opportunities and no congregate religious services. Access to any facilities or social services is severely limited.
"2. These conditions exist permanently (as opposed to the temporary lockdowns that occur at almost every prison) and as official policy.
"3. The conditions in control units are officially justified not as punishment for prisoners but as administrative measures that are within the discretion of prison officials to impose without a hearing taking place. Since there are no rules governing such decisions (in contrast to formal punishments) prisoners are denied any due process and prison officials can incarcerate any prisoner in a control unit for as long as they choose, without having to justify their action. [USTORTURE]
In the words of one prisoner, "Indeed, these control units are a low intensity form of warfare where the battleground is the mind; [they] must be shut down ... Prisoners should have a 'liberty interest' (right) in not being placed in [a control unit] for an unlimited amount of time simply because this confinement is labeled by prison officials [as] 'non-punitive segregation.'"1
In January of 1997, 42 states, the District of Colombia and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) were known to operate at least one control unit prison in their respective jurisdictions. As to the number of prisoners housed in these units, estimates vary anywhere upwards of five percent of the total prison population. That would make the total well over 100,000 at the present time. It is about these prisoners and the conditions under which they must live that this paper has been prepared.
- Editor
1. JH, Northern State Prison, Newark, New Jersey