Colorado Segregation Targets Activists and Mentally Ill
The ever-growing bureaucracy in Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC), and the interpretations that are following from ego-filled guards is appalling. Rich Ramicsh, our new DOC director, has made strong statements regarding closing down the use of solitary confinement, more commonly known in Colorado as Administrative Segregation. Yet the implementation of these measures and the enforcement of policies is left up to the creative imaginations of the individual prisons' administrators. With no monitoring systems in place, everything that takes place beyond each prison's razor wires and concrete walls goes unnoticed.
A new form of punishment is known as the "Austere Living Environment." They take disruptive, aggressive and often mentally ill prisoners and house them in 12-man housing units, locked in single cells 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no TVs, radios, books or any form of stimulation. This means of oppression is just the beginning. Ad-Seg now is used as a means of retaliation, suppression, and rendition to those who are not just gang members, but those who speak out against DOC.
Prisons are public institutions, not fiefdoms. Why can't there be inquiries into the use of prison in non-violent crimes and investigations on the environments of prisons? Instead of tough on crime, let's get tough on human rights and abolish prisons.
Standing in solidarity with fists held high. Keep fighting my comrades.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This attempt to build new long term isolation units under different names is a game employed by prisons across the country to conceal their brutality and abuse. This Austere Living Environment in Colorado will do nothing more than degrade the mental and physical health of prisoners. We call on all prisoners to send us documentation like this on control units in your prisons and/or state. Write to us to request a survey you can complete. We compile this data for use by those in the movement to shut down these control units, but we also take this message further and point out the value of isolation units that target activists to the imperialist system. We work to free anti-imperialist voices so that we can organize a movement that will overthrow the criminal injustice system.
