UPDATE: On 9/17/2009 the
comrade who wrote this letter was
killed
in Attica Correctional Facility
True solitary confinement - it’s general concept, ultimate purpose, and
all of its myriad applications - must be exposed to as many concerned
citizens as is possible. Media, cinema, and corrections spokespeople
have all contributed to distorting our society’s perception of this
shameful and torturous practice that has been a facet of this country’s
history since it’s earliest years.
Amnesty International has defined solitary confinement as “all forms of
incarceration that totally remove a prisoner from inmate society”,
elucidating further that “the prisoner is visually and acoustically
isolated from all other prisoners as well as having no personal contact
with them.” But even this definition can forfeit the consideration of
other variations of confinement that similarly and adversely affect the
prisoners who are imprisoned in them. Professors Craig Haney and Mona
Lynch concluded and supported with irrefutable evidence from the study
they conducted that solitary confinement refers to a broad set of
conditions, including single-celled control units where even some
semblance of communication between prisoners is somehow feasible,
double-celled control units that produce conditions of both isolation
and overcrowding simultaneously, control units where prisoners are
subjected to sensory overload as well as sensory deprivation, and
control units that impose “small group isolation.” The effects of
solitary confinement in all of its manifestations within this country’s
prison system have been recognized by numerous authoritative analysts,
as well as their impact upon society as a whole. Studies of this
phenomenon, empirical and with scientific experimentation, have been
conducted and recorded as early as 1790.
With this in mind, terms such as “punitive segregation”, “restrictive
housing”, “segregated housing”, “special housing”, “administrative
segregation”, “disciplinary confinement” and “control units” have all
been used to designate constructed environments that employ what are
essentially conditions- whether in part or whole - of solitary
confinement. Despite their differences, all of them serve similar ends
in that all of them employ torturous conditions as punishment rather
than rehabilitation.
I have been a prisoner of the New York State Department of Correctional
Services prison system for approximately fifteen years to date. I have
spent at least two-thirds of those years confined to the system’s
special housing units (SHU) for lengthy and continuous periods at a
time. Recently, former New York State Governor Eliott Spitzer signed a
bill into law that provides for mentally ill prisoners who have been
sanctioned with disciplinary confinement penalties exceeding thirty days
to be removed from conventional SHU’s and placed in newly constructed
“therapeutic units.” The majority of these “therapeutic units” are
actually conventional SHU’s amended with rooms designated for
therapeutic group programming and individual therapy sessions. The rooms
are fitted with “cubicles” that amount to small single-occupancy cages,
to restrict prisoners contact with program instructors and each other
during “therapy.” Whether this arrangement is a genuine and sufficient
departure form conventional SHU to ward off mental deterioration
fostered by the conditions of the various forms of solitary confinement
seems to have escaped adequate forum for public debate.
One of the worst SHU’s I have been confined to, by my estimation, is the
notorious F-Block at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New
York. I remained there for just over a year.
In their State of the Prisons report on conditions of confinement in 25
New York correctional facilities, published in 2002, the Prison Visiting
Committee of the Correctional Association of New York described the SHU
at Great Meadow CF as “… one of the most unsettling we have experienced.
Many of the inmates were mentally ill and confined in cells behind thick
metal doors or bars covered with Plexiglas to protect staff
from”throwers.” Most striking was the pervading sense of chaos and the
way in which inmates with mental illness are isolated, cut off from
human contact and caged in barren, concrete walls. Animals in zoos are
kept in more humane conditions… the more stable inmates spoke of the
constant yelling and noise on the unit, the stench of feces and sweat,
and the lack of ventilation.” Although the SHU capacity had been reduced
since the time of that report, the conditions aforementioned were
certainly prevalent even during my confinement there in 2004 and 2005.
With the draconian measures put in place by the Bush administration as a
device of its purported “war on terror,” and a look to the conditions
under which prisoners designated as enemy combatants are being held in
at the detention complex in Guantanamo Bay by the U.S. government, I do
not see that the use of solitary confinement is being diminished at all.
Rather, I foresee that it will expand and morph into forms less
conspicuous but more insidious, cultivated with and nurtured by the
incitement of mass hysteria and the greed of profiteers.
After clarifying the general concept, myriad applications and ultimate
purpose of solitary confinement, this information must be conveyed to
the concerned active citizenry. The concept, applications and purpose of
solitary confinement serve to control and inflict suffering upon a
segment of the population through isolation and deprivation. It does not
nor has it ever served to rehabilitate or improve the condition of
society.
sources: “Regulating Prisons of the Future”, by Craig Haney &
Mona Lynch, 23 NYU Rev. L. Soc. Change 447 (1997).
“State of the
Prisons” Report, June 2002, by the Correctional Association of New
York.
“Enemy Combatant” by Moazzam Begg (the New Press, 2006).