Pelican Bay - Being normal is not OK

Being normal is not OK

November 26, 2013
http://sfbayview.com/2013/being-normal-is-not-ok/

by Mutope Duguma

We prisoners are being told that as long as we are mentally healthy or not succumbing to CDCr’s debriefing policy, we will not be eligible for release from solitary confinement. Despite all the hype promising change, CDCr is still claiming that our placement inside solitary confinement is justified, despite the clear injustice of holding us here indefinitely, to no end, for nothing.

Because many of us have maintained our mental stability under such a barbaric system, we do not meet the criteria for release, but as soon as we begin to exemplify any signs of mental illness, we immediately qualify for release. Does this not suggest that our placement inside solitary confinement is for the sole purpose of driving us to become mentally ill patients?

CDCr simply waits for us to begin to suffer from the effects of mental illness like so many before us. They’re looking for us to put fecal matter all over our bodies, talk to ourselves, beat on the cell door, holler at the top of our lungs until we fall asleep from exhaustion, throw urine and fecal matter on staff and prisoners, commit suicide or attempt suicide, become anti-social etc., only to be taken out of our cell by force and placed in four corner restraints and heavily sedated and neutralized into a zombie state.

This has been the pattern for all of those we have seen driven into mental illness, due directly to their placement in solitary confinement. Why does CDCr even wait for any of us to succumb to mental illness when we are, for the most part, normal – unless being normal is not OK.

Hasn’t CDCr created enough mentally ill prisoners through the use of solitary confinement? Hasn’t CDCr caused enough suicides through the use of solitary confinement? Hasn’t CDCr emasculated enough prisoners through its de-briefing policy? Why can’t we – normal, functioning human beings – remain as such?

Many of us have kept our mental stability or capacity to some degree throughout all the years we’ve been in solitary confinement. Wouldn’t it be only right for the state – for CDCr – to prevent prisoners from eventually succumbing to such a fate, because we all know the longer you’re here, the greater your mental and physical deterioration.

Hasn’t CDCr created enough mentally ill prisoners through the use of solitary confinement? Hasn’t CDCr caused enough suicides through the use of solitary confinement? Hasn’t CDCr emasculated enough prisoners through its de-briefing policy? Why can’t we – normal, functioning human beings – remain as such?
END LONG TERM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT NOW!

Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma (James Crawford), D-05996, PBSP SHU D2-107, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532.

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