Weekend Edition July 5-7, 2013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/05/the-battle-against-control-unit-prisons/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/05/the-battle-against-control-unit-prisons/
Out of Control
by NANCY KURSHAN
In 1985 some colleagues and I in Chicago registered, with
shock, the brutality of the US Penitentiary at Marion in southern
Illinois and organized a program to alert the public (really, the
movement) about what was going on. We would do just this, we told
ourselves, and then get back to all the other movement work in which we
were involved. Just this.
But the work, of course, would not be left alone. The
inhumanity, brutality and torture by the United States demanded a
humane response and we tried to provide that. Fifteen years later we
were still fighting against prison brutality in general and control
units or isolation units in particular. I have now written Out
of Control: A 15 Year Battle to Abolish Control Unit Prisons, a
book that can be ordered at Freedomarchives.org.
Over those 15 years we sponsored perhaps a 100 demonstrations
throughout the country, 200 major educational events, published a huge
amount of literature, put forward theoretical insights into prisons and
control units in particular and foreshadowed more recent formulations
like those of Michelle Alexander in her very wonderful book, The
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. (For
the nuts and bolts of what we did, and how we organized, read my book
or go to freedomarchives.org where an abridged version resides, filled
with links to documents, audiovisuals, etc.)
In the course of those years, we made several predictions
along the way and issued associated cautions. One way to to evaluate
the power of an analysis is by its ability to predict. Our two primary
predictions were: 1) that imprisonment would reach 1 million by 2000,
fueled particularly by a rise in incarceration of people of color; 2)
that control unit prisons would proliferate and serve as an anchor
dragging the whole system in a more repressive direction. (In contrast
the Bureau of Prisons, the BOP, insisted that control units would allow
the overall system to run more openly.) We were unfortunately correct
on all scores. Our prisons are a human rights disaster. In 1971, no
prisoner lived under control unit conditions. Today, there are control
units in virtually every state in the union, and whether they are
called Control Units, Supermax, SHU (Secure Housing Unit),
Administrative Maximum Facility ADX), Communication Management Unit
(CMU), a skunk by any other name still stinks. On any given day, over
80,000 prisoners live under these torturous conditions.
HISTORYPrevious to 1963, the worst prison in the U.S. was Alcatraz, the island prison located in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was the place where the U.S. government sent the people it hated the most. Morton Sobell was incarcerated there, co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed during the McCarthy era. Also interned there was Puerto Rican independence leader and political prisoner, Rafael Cancel Miranda. And of course many others, not all political prisoners.
In 1963 the BOP closed the federal penitentiary at
Alcatraz as it had become too expensive to run and was outdated in
every possible way. The replacement was USP Marion, located in
southern Illinois. Marion then became, as Alcatraz had been, the end
of the line of the federal prison system, the place where the US
government would send those prisoners it hated the most – not at all
the most violent prisoners but those the government wanted hidden from
view. One of the corollaries of this was that many of the most
resistant and politicized prisoners were sent to Marion. Both Alcatraz
and now the new prison at
Marion, Illinois, ran relatively freely. That is,
prisoners lived and worked with other prisoners. They ate in a communal
dining hall. They had group recreation and religious services. On
occasion, a prisoner would be put in solitary (thrown in the hole) in
response to a perceived infraction. Today we are used to images of
prisoners in solitary confinement, but back then it was not the rule.
In 1972, after guards severely beat a Mexican prisoner,
the prisoners went on a work stoppage, refusing to participate in their
work assignments. In response the feds locked down one wing of the
prison, throwing all the prisoners in that unit into indefinite
solitary confinement, in what was essentially the first “control
unit.” One of the people locked down was Rafael Cancer Miranda, the
well-known Puerto Rican nationalist, who was accused of being a leader
of the strike.Marion, Illinois, ran relatively freely. That is,
prisoners lived and worked with other prisoners. They ate in a communal
dining hall. They had group recreation and religious services. On
occasion, a prisoner would be put in solitary (thrown in the hole) in
response to a perceived infraction. Today we are used to images of
prisoners in solitary confinement, but back then it was not the rule.In October of 1983, two prisoners at Marion (in fact, members of the Aryan Brotherhood) killed a guard, ironically in the control unit wing of the prison. There was no response in the rest of the prison, no rebellion, no peaceful work stoppage. Nonetheless, the BOP seized on the opportunity to lock down the entire prison, all 350 men. This was the first such control unit prison. The BOP claimed that this was a temporary measure but as the lockdown continued, some of us who had been monitoring the situation were not optimistic that this was a short term development. As 1983 continued into 1984 and then 1985 we grew more and more alarmed. We understood that this was a significant and new historical development, that we were seeing a restructuring of prison life as we knew it. We realized that the government was experimenting, not just on the prisoners, but on us as well. If these horrific conditions could win public acceptability, then control units would proliferate everywhere. In 1985 we issued a call for a conference in Chicago in October to commemorate two years of the lockdown and to better understand what the future held in store.
WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT PRISONS?
I have been asked by many people why would I choose to do work regarding prisons? My answer is simple. In high school and college I was part of the civil rights movement. I picketed Woolworths with CORE, raised money for SNCC workers in the South, heard Dr. King speak in D.C. and Malcolm X in Madison. I see work to abolish control units as a logical continuation of that anti-racist work.
Albert Hunt’s article in the NY Times on Nov. 20, 2011
entitled “A
Country of Inmates“ reported that “With just a little more than 4
percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for a quarter of
the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35
European countries combined.” Moreover, this mass imprisonment binge
does not affect all sectors of the population equally. No, the prisons
are overflowing disproportionately with Black and Latino prisoners. As
Hunt wrote, “more than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are
black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of
the population.” One in nine black children has a parent in jail! If it
weren’t for the over-incarceration of people of color, the U.S.
imprisonment rates would look similar to those of many a European
country.
Although we concentrated on control units, we did so
because we saw them as the capstone of a thoroughly racist prison
system. Both mass incarceration and control units are united in terms
of their underlying ideology. Both come out of a profoundly racist
ideology that blames the victim and refuses to deal with the structural
challenges and fault lines of our society. And of course, refuses to
change the pitiful conditions inside our prisons.
We have never really dealt with the legacy of slavery. We
have not dealt with the immigration challenge. We have not dealt with
the lack of jobs at a living wage. We have not made room at the table.
We have not dealt with how to “rehabilitate” people, especially since,
as Malcolm said, they have never “been habilitated.” Rather we have met
the challenge of a huge under-reported unemployment problem with an
imprisonment binge. And the challenge of an anti-human prison system
with control unit prisons.
Our prisons have no real plans for ‘rehabilitation.’ That
would require a restructuring of society, a real jobs and education
program–one that we need now more than ever but that is not on the
horizon. In fact, the jobs program that we do have has been building
more prisons and hiring more guards. The prisons are located long
distances from the urban centers that most prisoners call home and
offer jobs to a totally different sector of the population. The
imprisonment binge has served to get largely young men of color off the
streets, warehousing them to prevent any disruption that might come
from millions of unemployed men of color out on the pavement.
SOCIAL CONTROL OF PEOPLE OF COLOR IN RESPONSE TO
MOVEMENTS TOWARDS DEMOCRATIC INCLUSION OF THE 60s
Beyond racism, the more we studied together, the more we
learned about imprisonment. The well-known criminologist William Nagel
found that there is no relationship between the crime rate and the
imprisonment rate, and no relationship between the crime rate and the
number of Black people that live in a given state. But he found a
strong relationship between the imprisonment rate and the proportion of
Black people who live in a given state. In other words, people go to
prison because they are Black not because of a rising crime rate. It
became apparent to us that prisons are instruments of social control of
people of color. Before the 1970s we did not have these huge
imprisonment rates, nor did we have control unit prisons. In the 1960s
Black people led the way in challenging injustice. They were a force to
be reckoned with. When Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were
assassinated, there was mass unrest with urban centers going up in
flames around the country.
The Attica prison rebellion of 1971 was a watershed where
prisoners stood up and said: “We are men. We are not beasts and will
not be treated as such.” To a large extent, the rebellion was an
expression within Attica of the Black liberation movement on the
outside. When the tear gas and bullets cleared, 43 men were dead as a
result of Rockefeller-ordered military assault. Control units try to
prevent the kind of camaraderie and resistance from developing that was
exhibited on the yard at Attica.
For almost 50 years prior to Attica, the U.S.
incarceration rates were constant, and commensurate with those of
Western Europe. In response to the movements of the 60s and early 70s,
particularly civil rights and black liberation, in response to Attica
and George Jackson and the California prison movement, imprisonment
rates started to soar, and we saw the beginnings of what would become a
mass imprisonment binge. It was no accident that control units began to
emerge at the same time. Just as prisons control a population on the
outside of prisons that was demanding human rights, control units
control a rebellious prison population on the inside. The first control
unit was opened at Marion in 1972, exactly in response to a peaceful
work stoppage and a year after the incredible uprising at Attica.
In 1975 the right-wing ideologue and Harvard Professor
Samuel Huntington wrote The
Crisis of Democracy, a report for the Trilateral Commission, in
which he argued that there was too much democracy and things needed to
change. Well, things have changed. And now, thanks to both Republicans
and Democrats, the leading ‘democracy’ in the world is also the largest
incarceration nation.THE HUMAN RIGHTS PROBLEM IN THE WORLD TODAY IS RIGHT HERE IN THE U.S.A.
So what is a control unit prison?
There are variations from prison to prison, but generally
speaking, a control unit prison is one in which every prisoner is
locked away in their own individual cage about 23 hours a day under
conditions of severe sensory deprivation. The prisoner eats, sleeps and
defecates in the windowless cell. Meals come through a slot in the
door. In some cases the prisoner may be out of the cell a couple of
times a week for exercise, but in other circumstances the exercise area
is even more limited and is attached to the cell itself. Most control
unit prisons have little access to education or any recreational
outlets.
Usually, control units severely restrict the prisoner’s
connection not just with other prisoners, but with family and friends
in the outside world. At Marion, only family members could visit, upon
approval, and only for a small number of visits per month. The amount
of time allowed per visit was severely restricted, and there was no
privacy whatsoever and no contact permitted between prisoner and
visitor. Visiting took place over a plexiglass wall and through
telephones. Guards were always within earshot. The prisoner had to be
searched before and after, sometimes cavity searched. The visitor had
to undergo a body search as well. The prisoners were brought to the
visit in shackles.
Regarding the underlying dynamics, the intent is to make
the prisoner feel that his or her life is completely out of control.
That is not an unintended consequence. The purpose of the control unit
is to make the person feel helpless, powerless and completely dependent
upon the prison authorities. The intent is to strip the individual of
any agency, any ability to direct his or her own life. A control unit
institutionalizes solitary confinement as a way of exerting full
control over as much of the prisoner’s life as possible.
There is no pretense that this is a temporary affair.
Instead it is long-term, severe behavior modification, and it is the
most vile, mind & spirit-deforming use of solitary confinement.
Control units represent the darkest side of behavior modification.
Inside a control unit, the prisoner usually has no idea how long he or
she will be there. It is an indeterminate sentence, and usually the
rules or guidelines for exiting are unclear at best and impossible to
comprehend at worst. It is a hell without any apparent end. It is truly
Kafkaesque and studies have shown that long-term solitary confinement
drives many people crazy. As a social worker in the Chicago public
schools for 20 years, and as a human being, I don’t believe this severe
punishment helps people to change in any positive way. Human
interaction is critical. The Quakers first instituted solitary
confinement (they called isolation in a cell with a bible “doing
penance,” hence “penitentiary”). They thought it would be a more humane
alternative than physical punishment such as flogging, but they gave it
up when they saw what effect it had on people.
Being sent to a control unit prison is tantamount to
torture, as acknowledged by many human rights organizations including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International
recently released its 2012 report, “The
Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California’s Security Housing Units,”
in which the conditions in two California prisons — Corcoran and
Pelican Bay — are described as “cruel, degrading and inhuman” and a
violation of international standards.Prisoners are held under conditions that today are not considered ‘humane’ even for animals. This is an extreme abuse of state power.
The existence of the control unit also functions to control other prisoners who are in the general population. This is as important to the system as the impact on those actually in the control unit. The fear of imprisonment in this worst of all prisons is meant to scare all prisoners into tolerating intolerable conditions. The word ‘Marion’ was meant to strike cold fear into the hearts of prisoners throughout the federal prison system.
DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL CONNECTION
In Out of Control I argue that CEML’s 15 years of
work is “the story of one long determined effort against the very core
of the greatest military empire that has ever existed on this planet” .
. . and that “in this day of debate about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, it
is absolutely essential to realize that a direct line extends from U.S.
control units to these so-called ‘enhanced interrogation’ centers
throughout the world.” The connection has always been there because we
live under one system, and that system has a domestic side and an
international side. But they are really just two sides of the same coin.
In Out of Control I discuss a 1962 Bureau of
Prisons (BOP) meeting in Washington, DC between prison officials and
social scientists. Billed as a management development program for
prison wardens, it took place the same year the BOP opened Marion. Dr.
Edgar Schein of MIT, a key player at that meeting, had written
previously in a book entitled Coercive Persuasion about ‘brainwashing’
of Chinese Prisoners of War (POWs). In the meeting he presented the
ideas in a paper entitled “Man Against Man”:“In order to produce marked changes of attitude and/or behavior, it is necessary to weaken, undermine, or remove the supports of the old attitudes. Because most of these supports are the face-to-face confirmation of present behavior and attitudes, which are provided by those with whom close emotional ties exist, it is often necessary to break these emotional ties. This can be done either by removing the individual physically and preventing any communication with those whom he cares about, or by proving to him that those whom he respects are not worthy of it, and, indeed, should be actively mistrusted. . . I would like to have you think of brainwashing, not in terms of politics, ethics, and morals, but in terms of the deliberate changing of human behavior and attitudes by a group of men who have relatively complete control over the environment in which the captive populace lives.” (Berrigan, p.6)
Along with these theories, Schein put forward a set of
‘practical recommendations,’ that threw ethics and morals out the
window. They included physical removal of prisoners to areas
sufficiently isolated to effectively break or seriously weaken close
emotional ties; segregation of all natural leaders; spying on
prisoners, reporting back private material; exploitation of
opportunists and informers; convincing prisoners they can trust no one;
systematic withholding of mail; building a group conviction among
prisoners that they have been abandoned by or are totally isolated from
their social order; using techniques of character invalidation, i.e.
humiliation, revilement and shouting to induce feelings of fear, guilt
and suggestibility; coupled with sleeplessness, an exacting prison
regimen and periodic interrogational interviews.
So-called ‘brainwashing’ strategies that involved physical
as well as psychological abuse were being adopted from international
arenas and applied inside U.S. prisons. Now, in 2011, similar
strategies, honed in Marion and its progeny, are being employed around
the world in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere.
LESSONSThe underlying ideology has to be challenged because if that doesn’t change, the rulers will tweak this or that to their conveniences, they may make some small changes, or even do the right thing at any given moment, for the wrong reason. But things will revert toward repression.
Understand that the whole criminal justice system, indeed
the whole society, needs to be transformed. Fight to change the
day-to-day conditions of prisoners but while educating people about the
whole situation. Celebrate the small changes but never let them be
enough.
Studies don’t necessarily change things. Pressure, both
legal and activist, is essential. Hearings can be a step in the right
direction but they can also be a smokescreen to lull people into
believing something is being done. Or they can be a rubber stamp for
some negative developments. For instance, the BOP has apparently just
recently agreed to undergo a “comprehensive and independent assessment
of its use of solitary confinement in the nation’s federal prisons.”
The assessment will reportedly be oriented toward reducing the
population of “segregated” prisoners. It is to be conducted by the
National Institute of Corrections, an agency of the BOP! That is
something to be watched, but skeptically.
Listen to prisoners. Trust what they tell you about prison
conditions. Support their efforts to change their situation. Help their
voices reach the outside world.
Work with everyone who is willing. We don’t have to all
agree but we have to respect each other. Do not let the authorities
demonize some activists and bestow accolades on others. That is the old
divide and rule.
OPPORTUNITY
The time is right to build a powerful force to oppose
these institutions of torture. The people who fought the fascists in
the Spanish Civil War are sometimes referred to as “premature
anti-fascists”. Perhaps the members of the Committee to End the Marion
Lockdown were “premature anti-solitary” activists. But now is the time,
now is the moment. Most importantly, prisoners are resisting. 12,000
California prisoners, in the summer of 2011, went on hunger strike in
opposition to the conditions in control unit prisons. There is
awakening consciousness that these institutions are tantamount to
torture. Not a single editorial ever appeared in a significant mass
media outlet opposing control units during our 15 years. Now the New
York Times has opposed them. Additionally, the money to run these
expensive institutions is running out. Illinois’ control unit prison,
Tamms, that we fought to prevent from opening, has recently been closed
by Governor Quinn. Senator Durbin has called for an investigation into
solitary confinement. There are openings. But we cannot rely on
politicians to do the right thing. We can work with politicians who are
true allies, but we have to be out in the community talking to people,
and out in the streets and in front of the prisons, formulating our
demands and building a powerful movement.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in the House
of the Dead, said “That to understand a civilization, it is
necessary to look within its prisons.” Mohandas Gandhi was once asked
“What do you think of Western civilization? His answer was, “I think it
would be a good idea.” So come on people. Let’s get on with it.
Nancy Kurshan is the author of Out
of Control. She can be reached at: Nkurshan@aol.com
This essay originally appeared in the May issue of
CounterPunch magazine. Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org
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