ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This pamphlet is the collective effort of many people on both sides of the walls. It evolved out of years of dialogue with prisoners enduring control unit conditions. I would especially like to thank Ojore Lutalo who has been living in enforced sensory deprivation in the Management Control Unit at Trenton State Prison in New Jersey for 12 years. It is Ojore's survival discipline upon which I based the original letter to Ronald Epps. The response to the correspondence between Ronald and myself prompted the National Campaign To Stop Control Unit Prisons, California Prison Focus and the American Friends Service Committee to produce this pamphlet. Many thanks go to each of the courageous contributors. Special appreciation goes also to Holbrook Teter of the California Prison Focus without whose vision and hard work this would not have been completed. And we ALL want to thank Patrick Sheldon from the Oberlin Prison Awareness Group for his patient typing of the manual.

There can be no excuse or condoning the use of isolation or sensory deprivation for prisoners. Human Rights groups all over the country have decried this practice which is certainly inhumane and arguably torture. These control units and supermax prisons seriously violate the rights of prisoners. They are used to incapacitate and demoralize those held in them. This pamphlet is one humble attempt by those enduring this brutality to help others enduring this brutality. It is important to us that each of you forced to live in such circumstances maintain your mental and physical health. In 1974, Ruchell Cinque Magee noted: "Those people in this judicial system, their concern is not for Justice, as they claim. That is what they come in disguise of, to strip people of everything. When I say strip, I mean rob, murder, exploit, intimidate, harass, persecute, everything to destroy the mind and body. They seek to take a person and make a complete vegetable of them." Ruchell spent more than 25 years living in forced isolation in California prisons.

Again, deep thanks to each of you for your contribution.
Bonnie Kerness
1997