Eight Constructive Activities for a Prisoner in Lock Down

1) Study an area of law or learning that would be of use to yourself and others (a language, art, history, etc.) Develop an expertise in an area that others do not have. Share your learning and information with others.

2) Organize a family member or friend to do prison support work on the outside. Persuade them of the importance of hooking up with a prison support group on the outside that is working to turn the prison/industrial complex around. Tell your loved ones not to mourn, but to organize.

3) Write about your feelings and emotions in a way that people on the outside can get a sense of your humanity and concerns. Break down the image of prisoners as selfish, brutal, uncaring monsters. Let others see the individual qualities of each person on the inside, and their potential for change.

4) Keep a chronicle of the oppressive conditions in prison. Make the chronicle available to others who can document the dehumanizing effect that cruelty has on people incarcerated. Be specific, and help break through the cynical suggestion that prison is a "country club" where people don't have to work.

5) Engage in physical exercise to keep your body in shape. Refrain from physical activities and conduct that is detrimental to your health.

6) Write newspapers, elected representatives and others to describe conditions in prison. Don't just complain about your own case, but educate the reader about how prisons destroy people, rather than improving them.

7) Take every chance you get to create solidarity among prisoners. Break down the issues that divide prisoners from one another racism, homophobia, etc. Help prisoners to respect each other's differences and space. Don't allow the prison administration to divide you from other prisoners, through debriefing or bribery.

8) "Write poetry, short stories, novels, or any other kind of fiction that lets your mind free itself from the boundaries of the 4 walls. Expand the walls through your imagination and creativity." - (quote from Luis Talamantez)

Louis Hiken
Prison Law Project
National Lawyers Guild

Psychological Destruction Due to Isolation

Leo Grieb interviews Dr. Stuart Grassian

L: Tell us your qualifications for addressing the issue of the psychological aspects of solitary confinement.

S: I'm Dr. Stuart Grassian and I'm a psychiatrist in the Boston area on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School. I've had the opportunity to evaluate a number of prisons, specifically around the issue of solitary confinement. I've been involved in an number of class action suits as an expert witness. One recent one concerned the Pelican Bay Facility in California. There have been a number of cases where we have been able to get some relief for prisoners because of the Court's findings of psychological harm caused by conditions of solitary confinement.

L: What are the actual issues that the courts have decided on?

S: Basically, I think the courts have been impressed first, that there are a number of people who end up being incarcerated in solitary confinement on the basis of having committed infractions in the prison system basically because of difficulties they have emotionally, difficulties with impulse control. There is a notion in the popular mind that people who end up in solitary confinement are the most ruthless, kind of James Cagneys of the prisons system. In fact what