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"...In this Article, we make recommendations regarding the manner in which
prison conditions should impact the length of a prison term. We suggest
that for most prisoners, every day spent in supermax conditions should
result in two days’ credit towards the expiration of the prison term.
Hard-time credits are justified by the principle of proportionality,
which stipulates that the seriousness of the crime should be matched by
the hardship of the penalty."
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Showing posts with label Supermax prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supermax prisons. Show all posts
The Psychology of Cruelty: Recognizing Grave Mental Harm in American Prisons
"Over the past forty years, American prisons have increasingly relied on a brutal method of confinement that inflicts sever suffering on prisoners. Inmates confined in this manner have endured symptoms ranging from hallucinations and perceptual distortions to self-mutilation and suicidal ideation. Walking past these inmates, one can observe babbling, shrieking, and the banging of prisoners' bodies against the walls of their cells. There is no dispute that this method of confinement has a terrible effect on prisoners' well-being, and yet because it inflicts mental harm, rather than physical harm, courts have largely turned a blind eye.
Solitary confinement - the confinement of a prisoner in isolation with limited chance for social interaction or environmental stimulus - has existed in America for centuries, but until the late twentieth century, it was rarely used. In the 1970s and 1980s, the use of solitary confinement began to expand, as prisons started to employ it not only for discipline and safety, but also, in America's supermax prisons, as a method of long-term imprisonment. Supermax prisons - prisons that house inmates in perpetual conditions of solitary confinement - have continued to spread across the country since the first one opened in 1983. Today, about forty states have at least one supermax prison, and nearly sixty total facilities are in operation around the country. Though estimates vary, most conclude that about 25,000 inmates are currently incarcerated in supermax facilities, with another 55,000 in solitary confinement outside the supermax setting."
"Over the past forty years, American prisons have increasingly relied on a brutal method of confinement that inflicts sever suffering on prisoners. Inmates confined in this manner have endured symptoms ranging from hallucinations and perceptual distortions to self-mutilation and suicidal ideation. Walking past these inmates, one can observe babbling, shrieking, and the banging of prisoners' bodies against the walls of their cells. There is no dispute that this method of confinement has a terrible effect on prisoners' well-being, and yet because it inflicts mental harm, rather than physical harm, courts have largely turned a blind eye.
Solitary confinement - the confinement of a prisoner in isolation with limited chance for social interaction or environmental stimulus - has existed in America for centuries, but until the late twentieth century, it was rarely used. In the 1970s and 1980s, the use of solitary confinement began to expand, as prisons started to employ it not only for discipline and safety, but also, in America's supermax prisons, as a method of long-term imprisonment. Supermax prisons - prisons that house inmates in perpetual conditions of solitary confinement - have continued to spread across the country since the first one opened in 1983. Today, about forty states have at least one supermax prison, and nearly sixty total facilities are in operation around the country. Though estimates vary, most conclude that about 25,000 inmates are currently incarcerated in supermax facilities, with another 55,000 in solitary confinement outside the supermax setting."
How a 1983 Murder Created America's Terrible Supermax-Prison Culture
On Oct. 22, 1983, inmates aligned with the Aryan Brotherhood prison
gang murdered two corrections officers at the United States Penitentiary
near Marion, Ill. The reverberations from those killings are still
being felt in the American prison system. The murders sent Marion into
lockdown for 23 years, ushered in the era of the modern Supermax prison,
and normalized the chilling idea that the only rational way to deal
with violent or notorious prisoners is to lock them up in small,
isolated cells and throw away the key.
In 1983 Marion was the toughest penitentiary in the federal prison
system. The maximum-security complex housed some of the country’s most
violent inmates, and the worst of those were put in Marion’s “control
unit.” Getting placed in the control unit was akin to being buried
alive. Inmates were confined to their small cells for almost 23 hours a
day. When they left their cells, they were shackled, guarded, and under
constant surveillance. The conditions there echoed the commandant’s line
in The Great Escape: “We have, in effect, put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch that basket very carefully.”
Read on...
Read on...
Supermax Showdown
Update: On December 19, an Alexander County judge lifted the
injunction blocking the closure of Tamms and six other state facilities.
Illinois prison officials began transferring inmates out of the
facilities following this move, which was taken on an earlier order from
the Illinois Supreme Court. The facilities are scheduled to close by
January 4. The judge did not dismiss AFSCME Local Council 31's underlying lawsuit, however, and the union said in a statement
on the closings that “AFSCME will be able to continue to seek a legal
remedy that addresses the dangerous conditions that the closures will
cause throughout the prison system.”
“I am a mom,” read dozens of signs lofted by protesters outside Illinois’ Tamms Correctional Center last spring. Many of the demonstrators were family members of the prison’s 100-plus inmates who are held in 23-hour-a-day isolation. But the slogan—an allusion to AFSCME’s famous 1968 “I am a man” campaign for striking sanitation workers in Memphis—was also seeking to shame the union that once marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., for its current fight to keep the supermax prison open.
In June 2012, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced that Tamms and five other state correctional facilities would be shuttered that August to help fill the state’s $43.8 billion budget deficit. But all have remained open thanks to a lawsuit filed by AFSCME Local Council 31, which represents guards and other workers at the prison. A bruising fight has followed between a union trying to preserve its members’ jobs and activists insisting that the labor movement must draw the line at supporting the prison industry’s cruelest facilities.
Read on...
“I am a mom,” read dozens of signs lofted by protesters outside Illinois’ Tamms Correctional Center last spring. Many of the demonstrators were family members of the prison’s 100-plus inmates who are held in 23-hour-a-day isolation. But the slogan—an allusion to AFSCME’s famous 1968 “I am a man” campaign for striking sanitation workers in Memphis—was also seeking to shame the union that once marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., for its current fight to keep the supermax prison open.
In June 2012, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced that Tamms and five other state correctional facilities would be shuttered that August to help fill the state’s $43.8 billion budget deficit. But all have remained open thanks to a lawsuit filed by AFSCME Local Council 31, which represents guards and other workers at the prison. A bruising fight has followed between a union trying to preserve its members’ jobs and activists insisting that the labor movement must draw the line at supporting the prison industry’s cruelest facilities.
Read on...
The World’s Most Secure Prison: ADX Florence
ADX Florence, built south of Florence Colorado in 1994, is the most secure prison in the United States prison system. Commonly called a “Supermax” prison, it has 490 beds in a compound which encompasses 37 acres. The prison was designed to house prisoners deemed too dangerous or high-profile for regular incarceration and nearly 95% of all inmates that have been sent to Florence were transfers with histories of violent behavior in other prison facilities. Guinness World Records acknowledges ADX Florence as being the most secure prison in the world.
Americans Face Guantanamo-Like Torture Everyday in a Super-Max Prison Near You
To little public outcry, tens of thousands of citizens are being held in horrific conditions in super-harsh, super-maximum security, solitary-confinement prisons.
January 18, 2011 |
Editor's Note: Courageous WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning is reportedly suffering some of the same horrible experiences detailed in the article below, including 23 hours a day of solitary confinement, which has been labeled torture by numerous prison and psychological experts.
“They beat the shit out of you,” Mike James said, hunched near the smeared plexiglass separating us. He was talking about the cell “extractions” he’d endured at the hands of the supermax-unit guards at the Maine State Prison.
“They push you, knee you, poke you,” he said, his voice faint but ardent through the speaker. “They slam your head against the wall and drop you on the floor while you’re cuffed.” He lifted his manacled hands to a scar on his chin. “They split it wide open. They’re yelling ‘Stop resisting! Stop resisting!’ when you’re not even moving.”
When you meet Mike James you notice first his deep-set eyes and the many scars on his shaved head, including a deep, horizontal gash. He got that by scraping his head on the cell door slot, which guards use to pass in food trays.
Read on...
January 18, 2011 |
Editor's Note: Courageous WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning is reportedly suffering some of the same horrible experiences detailed in the article below, including 23 hours a day of solitary confinement, which has been labeled torture by numerous prison and psychological experts.
“They beat the shit out of you,” Mike James said, hunched near the smeared plexiglass separating us. He was talking about the cell “extractions” he’d endured at the hands of the supermax-unit guards at the Maine State Prison.
“They push you, knee you, poke you,” he said, his voice faint but ardent through the speaker. “They slam your head against the wall and drop you on the floor while you’re cuffed.” He lifted his manacled hands to a scar on his chin. “They split it wide open. They’re yelling ‘Stop resisting! Stop resisting!’ when you’re not even moving.”
When you meet Mike James you notice first his deep-set eyes and the many scars on his shaved head, including a deep, horizontal gash. He got that by scraping his head on the cell door slot, which guards use to pass in food trays.
Read on...
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