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NEWS & LETTERS, JULY 2003
Voices From the Inside Out
Cruel and unusual punishment as usual
by Robert Taliaferro Early morning screams, lasting an hour, chilled the
cavern-like hallways that acted as echo chambers, startled everyone out of their
hard-found sleep. The 20-year-old Black male screamed that someone was looking
at him, which was impossible under the circumstances. He finally stopped, and
spent the rest of the morning attempting to find someone to talk to him through
the air vent. Another 20-year-old Black male, began shaking and twitching like
those subjected to sensory deprivation in immersion tanks. The guards were
keeping him like an addict in a strip cell. His eyes darted to the vent as this
offers the only contact with one's peers. Two other “cellies” in the
strangely designed segregation cells, are finally split up after they were
caught displaying “body parts" to each other. THE SYSTEM OF AMERICA'S HELL Welcome to the world of a $90 million supermax prison.
In this particular Midwestern state’s monument to abuse, considered to be the
worst such facility in the country due to its windowless vacuum-like environment
and psychologically challenging conditions. Mostly young, under-educated and
marginally emotionally- or psychologically-impaired non-white prisoners are
subjected to a degree of sensory deprivation that was previously only found in
the cells of Lefortovo prison in the former Soviet Union. Such deprivation is normally used in modern
interrogation techniques to break the will of the prisoners, effectively
disassociating them from both the free world and prison communities from which
they have come. Such techniques are only employed for several weeks in
such an interrogation. At this facility, these techniques are employed for
up to a year or more. The 6-by-12 foot “segregation” cells are dominated
by a 3-by-7 foot slab of concrete and steel, which acts as a bed; toilet, sink,
and shower is also incorporated into this room where the walls are painted an
off-white, and a light stays on 24 hours a day--also a feature in interrogation
cells. For only five or six hours per week prisoners are
allowed recreation in a concrete room whose only feature is a 12-by-8 inch vent
mounted high in the room so they can receive their only fresh air in the
otherwise enclosed facility. Few take the option to leave the cell; perhaps
because the recreation pens are more depressing than the cells themselves, or
perhaps a small view of the sky is not enough to placate the hours of
state-imposed solitude. Prisoners may not see the sun or sky for the entire time
they "serve." Add the lack of newspapers, magazines, even family
photographs and you have a vacuum that allows no social growth, even within the
prison environment. From the very first day, the same psychological problems
seen at California's infamous Pelican Bay have been present at this facility.
These young prisoners will, after their short sentences, go from a supermax
facility that experts consider worse than Pelican Bay directly back to the
street community. TORTURE RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS In the late 1800s, prisoners were led into
Pennsylvania's "eastern Penitentiary" with black sacks over their
heads to disorient them. Now the prison system has come full circle to the
stark, windowless environment of the newest--and most expensive--supermaxes in
the U.S. Once abandoned as cruel and unusual, the high-tech version of the black
hood has returned. And with nothing to do and very little experience in
such total isolation, prisoners begin to degrade emotionally and
psychologically. Often this process is exacerbated in the younger prisoners who
are used to high volumes of external stimulation, who now, lacking that, begin
to turn on themselves and others. Prisoners are not allowed to retain cups and utensils.
Even bags must be returned to guards to avoid their use in such
“entertainment” (as some supermax prisoners call it) of throwing feces or
urine at guards. The isolation affects guards as well since their
traditional role has been reduced to that of servants. Recently that
lackluster performance resulted in a prisoner in an observation cell being dead
for several hours before he was finally checked. The existence of these high-tech cathedrals of cruelty defines, exactly, the degree of a society’s civilization, verifying the wisdom of Dostoyevsky--particularly in this country which attempts to define the "moral high road." What’s so very compelling is that only a few scant years ago we--as a nation--were showing our disdain for such places and practices in other countries, all the while secretly creating our own. |
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