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Prison guard perspective
A prison guard, sickened by abuse behind the walls, documented what he
heard and saw. Now, after his early death, his diaries testify to what he
could not change in life.
By ADAM C. SMITH
St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2001
TRENTON -- From the diary of Capt. Willie Hogan, Florida prison guard:
A Thursday -- "(A prison nurse) related . . . that inmate was beaten so
badly that his tooth was knocked out, kicked in the kidneys until he was
urinating blood and kicked in the groin."
A Wednesday -- "This technique of alleged physical and verbal abuse is
out
of control. Testimony suggests that (high-level prison administrators) are
integral parts in or masterminds behind the abuse and cover-ups.
"Where do you go?"
A Tuesday -- "In (my) 19 years of employment at Lancaster I've never
seen
psychopathic personalities operate so freely as in the past two years. It's
as (if) these people enjoyed abusing both verbally and physically."
Another Wednesday -- "I will not support beating of inmates and
falsifying
reports or allow staff to be verbally abusive. The judge's sentence was the
punishment, not for the officers to punish inmates."
A voice from the grave
There's a saying among prison officers: Do your eight and hit the gate.
In other words, finish your shift and forget the cesspool at work as you
pass through the razor wire to go home. Otherwise, the job will eat you up.
Capt. Hogan, a veteran officer with a spotless record and stubborn sense of
right and wrong, couldn't follow that advice.
He spent the final years of his life trying to drink away and write away
the dark world of punishment in which he worked. He kept a private,
detailed journal chronicling the abuse, racism and cover-ups he said were
rampant behind bars.
Hogan -- an officer at Lancaster Correctional Institution, a youthful
offender prison in northwest Florida -- was convinced his bosses were
trying to push him out because he would not tolerate physical and verbal
abuse of prisoners.
To protect himself -- and to document problems he felt helpless to fix --
he constantly wrote in notebooks tucked into a green nylon case. His
supervisors wanted to look the other way, he said, and inmate grievances or
reports explaining uses of force against prisoners were routinely buried or
never completed.
Late in 1999, Hogan gave the St. Petersburg Times a copy of his 1998
journal and parts of his 1999 journal. He did it with the understanding
they would remain secret, at least until his retirement. He would not risk
his job and pension by speaking out while working in the department. He
also harbored hope that things might improve.
Hogan planned to retire in 2004, after he hit 25 years with the Department
of Corrections. But gin and vodka, sipped after work alone in his Chiefland
mobile home, wrecked his liver and his dreams.
On Dec. 1, his 43rd birthday, Hogan collapsed and died inside his
grandmother's Gilchrist County home. Cause of death: cirrhosis of the liver.
Official responses dismiss diary
Florida corrections secretary Michael Moore declined to comment on the
allegations in Capt. Willie Hogan's journal, but his spokeswoman dismissed
them.
Hogan's is not a lone voice
A pending federal lawsuit by dozens of black corrections officers charging
systematic discrimination by their agency suggests that Capt. Willie Hogan
was not alone in his sense of helplessness to correct wrongdoing in
Florida's prison system. "The prison did it to him. And he did it to
himself," said Sharon Thomas, his older sister. "He drank to
relieve the
stress and problems at the prison, but he wouldn't talk about it. He'd just
say, "You wouldn't understand. Unless you worked in it, you wouldn't
understand.' "
Hogan was a quiet man who saw corrections as serious, honorable business.
Now he is speaking up from the grave, through his grim diary of life in a
Florida prison.
His neatly scripted notes are made public here because of his death. They
provide a remarkable look inside a prison system normally shielded from
public view by perimeter fences and a strict code of silence among officers.
As Hogan described it, it's a world where dedicated and professional
officers are too often overshadowed by rogue guards who do as they please.
Cliques of bullying and sometimes racist officers, ignored or backed by
higher ups, set the tone for conduct on certain shifts.
Doctored-up disciplinary reports and verbal and physical abuse are common.
Officers who don't go along find themselves pegged as inmate lovers and
reassigned to lousy shifts and assignments.
Hogan identified at least 50 officers at Lancaster he suspected of
regularly mistreating inmates and routinely filing bogus disciplinary
reports. The result, he wrote, was that inmates often were punished,
sometimes put in confinement or even sprayed with Mace, whether or not they
did anything wrong.
"There appears to be no means to report (these abuses) any higher up the
chain of command because all levels appear to know about this tactic,"
he
wrote on Aug. 4, 1998.
'Strictly by the book'
Prisoners and officers say abuse of inmates rarely occurs out in the open.
It happens in confinement cells, in showers, storage rooms and out-of-view
nooks on the compound. The only witnesses are fellow officers, who often
will back up whatever a colleague says, or inmates, whose word won't be
trusted.
The allegations filling Hogan's spiral notebook are not eyewitness
accounts. They come from what he heard from other officers, prison
staffers, and inmates he deemed credible. His firm suspicions were based on
more than two decades of prison experience, including a stint as an
internal investigator, and a keen eye for spotting dubious official reports.
Beginning in 1979, consistently outstanding evaluations pegged Hogan as a
quiet and hard-working professional who worked well with staff and inmates
alike. But by the time he started the 1998 diary obtained by the Times, he
felt isolated. Lancaster, he said, was increasingly controlled by officers
and administrators who had transferred from North Florida Reception Center,
a prison where thuggishness was common.
Inmates and other officers told him some officers were working hard to get
him ousted, including ordering inmates to file complaints against him.
Other officers told Hogan his bosses referred to him as an "n---."
Groups of
officers went over his head, complaining to the prison colonel about Hogan
not backing them up enough.
"Capt. Hogan was sharp as a whip, but none of the white officers wanted
to
take orders from a black officer, and it was hard for him to do his
job,"
said Dennis Douglas, a former Lancaster officer who is white.
Prisoners regularly went to Hogan with their complaints.
"Other officers looked at it as he was just protecting his homies (black
inmates), but really the only reason those inmates went to see him is
because they were getting knocked around and they knew Capt. Hogan was
fair," Douglas said. "He was strictly by the book."
Inmates told him about being slammed against walls or having their genitals
doused with Mace while isolated in confinement. They complained of racial
slurs or harassment. They often told him officers would step up their
mistreatment when Hogan was off duty.
"Your War Daddy Capt. Hogan can't help you now," officers would
supposedly
say, threatening prisoners with more punishment if they said anything to
Hogan.
"I've received numerous complaints from various inmates that if they
voiced
complaints to me, they are usually retaliated against on Fridays and
Saturdays (his days off). In some cases inmates reported that they were
physically abused for reporting incidents, and information is passed from
shift to shift by various officers who would retaliate against the inmates
for something that happened on a previous shift," Hogan wrote on June
10.
His entries grew more and more frequent, and the tone more and more
frustrated as the months went on.
"It gets increasingly difficult to perform duties when you are
constantly
aware of sgts and (officers) reporting every minute move you make in effort
to discredit you," he wrote July 23.
Aug. 26: "(Another officer) informed me he was glad I was on third shift
because inmates were being beaten prior to my coming to the shift. He
wanted to tell someone about it but was afraid (another captain) would
target officers that weren't a part of the physical abuse. (He) further
stated that certain officers were trying to discredit me because I didn't
allow them to mistreat inmates."
Hogan felt helpless. Superiors didn't want to hear about problem officers,
and investigators protected them.
Aug. 18, 1998: "If we continue to let officers . . . who have no
reservations about lying on reports to (abuse inmates) then it is just a
matter of time before we have a situation like occurred at Charlotte CI.
"
In 1998, officers at Charlotte were indicted for covering up the beating of
an inmate who later committed suicide. Most were acquitted.
"When you talk to the colonel about it, it's like the officer is always
right and the "convict' is lying. Or you're targeted for not going along
with the program. If you talk to inspector . . . it's "lock the convict
up
for 180 days until he recants his allegations.' "
As Hogan saw it, administrators were more concerned with curbing complaints
about abuse than curbing actual abuse.
In September, he was called into a meeting with Col. Jeffrey Wainwright and
assistant warden George Sapp. The discussion turned to Hogan's rocky
relationship with his bosses.
" "We're all together as a team'," he said they told him
repeatedly. " "You
need to help us stop the physical abuse allegations’ . . . . They then
stated that Tallahassee was on their asses about the allegations and the
FBI had launched an investigation at (North Florida Reception Center) . . .
Previously, when I attempted to talk to (the colonel) about the crazy
things that officers were doing to inmates, he would brush me off . . . or
block my efforts to have the officers follow the rules. Now I'm on the
"team' when I couldn't get a ticket to get into the ballpark
before."
'Black Jesus'
Hogan, who in 1975 was Trenton High's first African-American quarterback,
went to Florida State University to study business. But he missed his rural
hometown and returned to Trenton in 1977 without a degree. He never married
but had three daughters, one of whom he raised as a single father.
For young men and women in rural north-central Florida, a career working
behind bars offers a way to earn health benefits and the promise of a
pension without first getting a college degree. Hogan became a corrections
officer at Lancaster, earning $348 every two weeks.
A sterile complex of brick and concrete buildings, Lancaster sits isolated
amid the rolling hills and oaks 35 miles west of Gainesville. The prison
houses 500 inmates between 19 and 24 years old.
They are car thieves, crack dealers and armed robbers, and many take
medication to control mental illnesses. Prison officials describe them as
some of the toughest inmates in the system and put them through
military-style drills, chanted creeds and vocational programs. More than
half are minorities, kept in line by a security staff that is 87 percent
white.
Many Lancaster alumni say they will never forget the quiet black captain
who stood out as a stern, but always fair, authority figure. Some referred
to him as "Black Jesus."
"Once Capt. Hogan came on shift, everything cleaned up. You didn't see
ass-whuppins, and the officers were calm," 21-year-old former Lancaster
inmate Chester Hart told the Times before Hogan's death.
"He was strict, but he wasn't an a---. If he turned off your (dormitory)
TV
early, he'd tell you, "You're making too much noise, or you're being
disrespectful to officers. The TV's going off.' The other officers would
make you stand up against the wall for four hours," Hart said.
A new assignment
In 1993 former warden Linda Buby tapped Hogan to be prison inspector,
ferreting out improper behavior by inmates and staffers. His two decades of
evaluations made him a perfect fit for internal watchdog, someone
"completely trustworthy" who knows the rules and understands the
precarious
line in prison between chaos and control.
Friends and family members of Hogan say the assignment brought on intense
stress, particularly after Buby left Lancaster. A new administration, he
felt, was less interested in shining a spotlight on problematic staffers.
In 1996, Hogan was promoted to captain and moved back into Lancaster's
security detail. Department of Corrections records show he told a
departmental investigator last year that he knew he had to leave the prison
inspector job when one of his bosses asked him to cover up investigations.
Racial tensions increased Hogan's isolation. Soon after Buby left
Lancaster, so did every other high-ranking African-American. Word began to
spread among black officers to be wary of the new Lancaster leadership.
"Affirmative action was out, and the KKK was in when the new
administration
arrived at Lancaster," Hogan said one upper-level officer warned him.
Other than his green book and his liquor, Hogan's only outlet appeared to
be his father, a yes-sir, no-sir dad with his own strict moral standards.
After his prison shifts, Hogan would spend hours with his father by the
back of Hogan's pickup, the two of them smoking and immersed in intense
discussion.
Late in the summer of 1999, after a Florida State Prison inmate died
following a violent altercation with prison officers, a friend persuaded
Willie Hogan to meet a Times reporter at a Citrus County coffee shop.
Speaking off the record, Hogan earnestly described his concerns about the
direction in which Florida's prison system was headed. He worried about a
North Florida "network" of officers and administrators who saw no
problem
trampling rules and protecting and promoting one another. It extended well
beyond Lancaster, he said.
He mentioned the diaries he kept and eventually provided a copy of one to
the Times.
Hogan last spoke to the Times in the summer of 2000, shortly before going
on extended sick leave. Nothing had changed, he said. He doubted it ever
would.
Alcohol abuse is a well-known job hazard among corrections officers, who
spend much of their lives working among society's refuse. For Hogan, booze
was a stress reliever -- and a death sentence.
Even officers who couldn't stand him say they never saw alcohol affect his
job performance, but it was clearly taking a toll on his body. As his liver
gave out, he started becoming bloated. Family members noticed nosebleeds.
In early 2000, doctors attached a pump to Hogan's side to do what his liver
no longer would. In July, Hogan underwent surgery for a ruptured hernia and
went on extended sick leave from which he never returned.
"To the very end he would say, "I'm getting better, and I'm going
back to
work,' " his sister Sharon Thomas said. "He'd barely be able to
walk, but
he'd say, "I've got to get back to work. There are things I need to do.'
"
On Dec. 1, Hogan sat shivering in his grandmother's Trenton living room.
"I'm so cold," he said, and his grandmother knew he would soon
leave her.
His brother pulled up outside, and Hogan stood and slowly walked to the
door to talk to him. He collapsed and died.
At Lancaster Correctional, the flag flew at half-staff in his honor. The
quiet captain constantly scribbling in his green book had left an impression.
"I can't say a lot of officers are going to miss him," former
Lancaster
officer Billy Edmonds said. "He was a racist, the way I looked at it. It
was all right to do your job and enforce the rules on white inmates, but if
you did it on black inmates he wouldn't back you up."
On the other side is Sgt. Charlie Waters, a 21-year veteran officer.
"If some officers thought he was soft, it was probably because they
weren't
following the rules and regulations to the letter. He was a straight
shooter," said Waters.
"In my mind, there was no better officer than Willie Hogan."
Back to Top
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July 15, 2001
Going Insane in the SHU
Box
The LA Times
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Alexander Cockburn writes for the Nation and other publications In an amazing
feat of organizing, about 900 prisoners in solitary confinement in the
infamous California prisons of Pelican Bay and Corcoran staged a hunger
strike in the first week of July.
The hunger strike was in protest of the corrections department's policy to
remove and isolate those inmates designated, often capriciously, as prison
gang members.
These inmates are separated from the general prison population and kept in
Security Housing Units, known as SHU--confined for 22 hours a day in
8-by-10-foot windowless cells. SHU inmates are always shackled when they
leave their cells; they exercise in a "yard" that is really a
larger concrete
cell with no exercise equipment and no view of the outside world. SHU
prisoners receive all meals in their cells, are not allowed to participate in
training or educational activities, are not allowed contact visits and have
no phone access. The severe sensory deprivation of SHU causes some prisoners
to go insane.
Given the horrific nature of indeterminate confinement in the SHU, the nature
of the evidence of gang activity can be vague, well beyond the point of
malevolent absurdity.
The most frequent way to incriminate a prisoner with gang associations is by
way of an anonymous informant's fingerpointing. But other criteria the
corrections department uses to justify "gang membership" include
possession
of literature or art construed as gang-related, writing to another prisoner's
family, assisting another prisoner with legal work, signing birthday or get
well cards to prisoners, exercising or otherwise interacting with another
prisoner suspected of gang involvement.
Prisoners are not allowed to present evidence or witnesses in their defense.
There is no requirement that the information be current; a parolee returned
to prison for a new offense after 10 years on the outside can be thrown in
the SHU as a gangster based on information from his previous term in prison.
Confinement in the SHU is for an indeterminate period. Before 1999, the only
way for a validated gang member to be released from a SHU was to be paroled,
die, go insane or become an informant on other prisoners. Since a rule
change, a prisoner now can be released to the general inmate population if
prison investigators determine that he has been free from gang activity for
six years.
The hunger strike was organized by Steve Castillo, an inmate at Pelican Bay's
Security Housing Unit who has waged a legal campaign for years on this issue
and whose suit led to the 1999 rule change.
Here are some excerpts from a recent letter from Castillo explaining why he
organized the hunger strike:
"A hunger strike (besides the obvious) is generally a desperate plea for
help. And it is a plea that usually follows the exhaustion of all other
attempts to bring about the necessary change; when there exists no adequate
or speedy remedy; or, when the required change is immediately needed.
"Rarely in a lifetime do we ever witness a sane person go insane. And
even
more rare is it to witness such an occurrence happen more than once. . . .
Here, I have seen such things more times than I want to remember. I thought
that seeing a prisoner get shot by staff was a frightening and chilling
event, but that in no way compares to seeing a prisoner calmly playing a game
of chess with pieces made out of his own feces. Or, prisoners smearing their
bodies and cells with their feces. Or, watching prisoners throwing urine and
feces at each other through the perforated cell doors. And worse yet, since
we are cell fed, we eat our meals under these conditions.
"In sum, this place seems to lose all semblance of a prison and instead
takes
on a laboratory environment for human experimentation."
The SHU inmates suspended their hunger strike after California state Sen.
Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Joint Committee on Prison
Construction and Operations, promised to probe the situation expeditiously.
If their grievances are not addressed, the prisoners vow to resume their
hunger strike in January.
Fifteen years of 22-hour days alone in a small concrete box, after being
stigmatized as a gang member for helping a fellow inmate sign a letter, or
because a guard has it in for you?
Californians have no right to lecture any country in the world on prison
conditions while these horrors persist.
Back to Top
CONTROL UNIT PRISONS
(By Frank J. Atwood, M.A.)
Control units are supermax prisons that have been designed by
government and prison authorities to control the thinking of prisoners, to
determine what the prisoners will think about, through carefully contrived
sensory deprivation tactics and by focusing the attention of prisoners on
immediate concerns. These strategies disable prisoners through
psychological, physical, and spiritual breakdown in order to compel mindless
compliance by humiliation, intimidation, and demoralization.
In addition to such unconscionable treatment of prisoners,
the government and prison officials disingenuously attempt to justify these
abhorrent conditions by claiming the “worst of the worst”prisoners require
such brutal treatment. However, it is always the political prisoner, the
jailhouse lawyer, the resisters of government brainwashing -- rather than the
violent and - who end up in the control unit. Case in point,
on September
3, 1997, all death row prisoners in Arizona were moved to the supermax
control unit. Such a move may appear justified until learning that the
vast
majority of Arizona’s death row prisoners have the lowest possible
institutional risk score; that is, they pose the least risk to prison
security, even when considering minimum security prisoners.
In
addition to deceiving the public into believing control units
are necessary and house only the “worst of the worst,” prison
authorities
are master manipulators of prison conditions - an environment that provides
absolute control over the lives of prisoners: living assignments,
files,
medical treatment, food, mail, recreation, and a host of other prisoner
activities. Within this atmosphere, prison officials relegate prisoners
to a
self-imposed state of inferiority. There exists no doubt, the ultimate
goal
of a control unit prison is to crush the human spirit. Prior to
detailing
the methods employed by control units to crush the human spirit, as well as
to reveal the devastation resulting from such methods, let’s take a brief
look at the history of control unit prisons.
History
The
concept of using isolation and sensory deprivation in prisons
- the main tool used by modern day control units - began in the 1820’s with
the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (also known as
the “Pennsylvania Model” prison). The prevailing belief in the 1820’s
was
that solitary confinement would lead to remorse and rehabilitation, reform
through isolation and sensory deprivation. However, it soon became
evident
that solitary confinement, isolation, and sensory deprivation caused mental
breakdown and insanity in prisoners.
Soon after
the establishment of the “Pennsylvania Model”prison,
in the 1830’s, Charles Darwin was given a tour and observed that the
prisoners seemed “dead to everything but the torturing anxiety and horrible
despair.” Subsequently, in the 1840’s, Charles Dickens toured the
Eastern
State Penitentiary and remarked that, “I hold this slow and daily tampering
with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any physical
torture of the body.” Furthermore, German literature between 1854-1909
reveals that results of solitary confinement included hallucinations (visual,
auditory, tactile, and olfactory in nature), disassociation, hysteria,
agitation, motor excitement with aimless violence, persecutory delusions, and
psychosis (see: J. Ganser, ArchPsychiatr Nervenkr 1898).
Finally,in 1890 the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sensory deprivation and solitary confinement
caused violent insanity and condemned the practice.
Therefore, isolation prisons were harshly
criticized throughout the
1800’s, as a consequence of causing rampant mental illness in prisoners, and
in 1913 solitary confinement was officially abolished.
The story
does not end there. In 1962 a professor of psychology
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Edgar Schein, suggested
that physical, psychological, and chemical techniques could be used on
prisoners to deliberately alter behavior and attitude. Schein was a
world
renowned expert on psychological coercion, having done extensive studies of
torture and brainwashing techniques used on American prisoners of war, during
the Korean War, by North Koreans and the Chinese. Schein also proposed
isolation, sensory deprivation, to destroy socialization among prisoners as
well as to sever the links prisoners had to the outside world. Because
humans validate their existence, their personality, through contact with
others, isolation has a significant impact on the human psyche. This
form of
psychological disorientation, the removal of others for validation of self,
came to be known as the “Muttnik Principle” (so named by psychologist
Nathaniel Braden) and was also called the “Psychology of Invisibility.”
Building
on Schein’s lead, other psychologists suggested using
psychotropic medication to mentally, rather than physically, isolate
prisoners. University of Michigan psychologist James V. McConnell followed
upon this suggestion with an article entitled Criminals can be Brainwashed
(Psychology Today, April 1970). Then Havard psychologist B.F. Skinner
authored a book in 1971, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in which he discussed
manipulating the mind like clay.
Continuing
along the same path, former U.S. Bureau of Prisons
director, James V. Bennett, suggested that the federal prison system was the
perfect place for human experimentation with brainwashing techniques.
That
suggestion led to federal prison psychologist Martin Groder transferring
prison agitators, suspected militants, jailhouse lawyers, and other
nonviolent prisoners to remote prisons to be housed in solitary
confinement.
If prisoners became compliant then privileges were granted, otherwise, the
psychological torture continued. These tactics mirrored Schein’s
proposal of
using sensory feedback reduction to create predictable cracks in the mental
defense system of prisoners which could then be filled with government
propaganda. In fact, Jessica Mitford wrote an article, The
Torture Cure: In
Some American Prisons it is already 1984 (Harper’s, August 1973), which
detailed results of a laboratory experiment that was designed to test the
effects of sensory deprivation on the human mind: Sensory
deprivation, as a
behavior modifier, was the subject of an experiment in which students were
paid twenty dollars to live in tiny solitary cubicles with nothing to
do.
The experiment was to last at least six weeks, but none of the students could
last for more than a few days. Many experienced vivid hallucinations .
. .
while in this condition, the students were fed propaganda messages. No
matter how poorly the messages were presented, or how illogical the messages
sounded, the propaganda had a marked effect on the attitudes of all students
- an effect that lasted for at least one year after they came out of the
experiment.
The first
federal control unit was in Marion, Illinois, and
opened in 1972. Marion was an experimental project, intended for
developing
a program to mentally break prisoners. It was totally locked down in
1983
and has remained on lock down ever since - prisoners average 22 ½ hrs.
daily
in their cells.
Subsequent
to Marion being opened, various states across America
built control unit prisons and by the early 1980’s supermax sensory
deprivation prisons began to flourish. By 1996 there were over forty
control
unit prisons housing some 15,000 prisoners. Even the federal prison
system
re-entered the scene when opening another control unit prison (Administrative
Maximum ADX) in Florence, Colorado, in November 1994. Prisoners in ADX
are
given nine hours of outside recreation weekly, three hours, three times a
week, with one other prisoner. Additionally, ADX has four stages:
(1)
isolation cells, (2) getting out of the cell to mingle with a few other
prisoners, (3) going from the cell to recreation unhandcuffed, and (4) a
job
and better food.
Conditions
in Arizona’s supermax control unit are far worse.
There will never be co-mingling with other prisoners, movement while
unhandcuffed, better food, or a job. Recreation occurs three times a
week
but only in one hour periods and alone. That is, prisoners in Arizona’s
Special Management Unit (SMU) are lockedup for 165 out of 168 hours, over 98%
of the time, each and every week.
Such is
the history of sensory deprivation control unit prisons.
We will now turn to methods utilized by control units and the devastating
consequences.
Methods
Control
units attempt to brainwash and mentally debilitate
prisoners through systematic programs of oppression such as isolation,
physical abuse, psychological torture, medical neglect, and other sinister
forms of behavior modification. In the section on control unit prison
history, we learned that many of the current solitary confinement tactics
developed from brainwashing techniques used during the Korean War.
There are
also reports which confirm that brainwashing and torture tactics employed by
both the CIA and the KGB have been adopted for use in America’s control
units.
Insofar as these tactics, one of the most comprehensive
overviews resides in Biderman’s Chart on Penal Coercion (reprinted in
1983 by
Amnesty International in the Report on Torture). The chart is
broken into
eight sections, with each section having two subsections (one on Purpose
and
one on Variants). These sections and subsections will be
presented here
along with an additional subsection (SMU) which details strategies used
in
Arizona’s control unit.
Section
I:
Isolation
Purpose:
To deprive prisoners of social support from both other
prisoners and the outside world, to obstruct the ability to resist, to
develop an intense concern with self, and to create dependence on captors.
Variants:
Use of solitary confinement through isolation, partial
isolation, or group isolation.
SMU:
Group isolation occurs through collective punishment, one
prisoner acts up and all prisoners are punished or rules, affecting all
prisoners, are altered. The isolation of prisoners from outside sources
occurs by mail tampering (censorship, delayed delivery, arbitrarily returning
letters to sender, and lost mail), weekly 5 min. monitored and recorded phone
calls, non-contact visits through glass and without a phone (both prisoners
and visitors must stand throughout each two hour weekly visit in order to
barely be able to hear), and routinely harassing and threatening
visitors.
Finally, isolation from other prisoners occurs when prisoners are locked in
cells for an average of over 23 ½ hrs. a day, never touching or being touched
by another person (unless begin beaten by prison guards), no access to
services (education, religion, or vocation), and forced idleness.
Section II: Monopolization of Perception
Purpose: To fix attention on one’s immediate predicament, to
eliminate any stimuli competing with stimuli controlled by captors, and to
obstruct all actions not consistent with compliance.
Variants: Isolation,
bright light, barren environment, restricted
movement, and monotonous food.
SMU:
As far as isolation, see preceding section. Florescent
lighting remains on for 17 ½ hrs. daily which provides a bright environment
(even during the night a “dim” light remains on). Bland food, no sweet
desserts, small portions, and daily sack lunches constitutes monotonous
food. Restricted movement exists when prisoners are handcuffed behind
the
back and escorted by a guard whenever leaving the cell. Finally, a
barren
environment is provided by the piece
de resistance of control units, sensory
deprivation. This includes unpainted walls as well as no plant or
animal
life, fresh air, sun, sky, windows, or hobby craft. The tactics
discussed
previously - isolation, forced idleness, and no access to services - also
play a role in producing the barren environment.
Section III: Induced Debility and Exhaustion
Purpose: To weaken both the physical and the mental ability to
resist.
Variants: Semi-starvation,
induced illness and exploration of
pre-existing injury, sleep depravation, and prolonged constraint.
SMU:
In addition to monotonous food tactics, semi-starvation
occurs from severe restrictions on commissary purchases (only junk food and
sweets, no wholesome foods offered), inability to obtain adequate nutrition
from prison meals, and an extremely sedentary lifestyle. The failure to
provide cold weather clothing during outdoor exercise in winter or when
freezing coolers are on indoors, refusal to treat illness or provide
prescribed treatment, and other medical neglect all promote physical weakness
and mental fatigue. Sleep deprivation occurs when guards purposely make
excessive noise all night (stomping up and down stairs, randomly opening and
closing pod doors, yelling, loud laughing, and blaring walkie-talkies) and
arbitrarily wake prisoners throughout the night with excuses such as supposed
problems with outgoing mail, not enough skin showing (completely under the
covers) or too much skin showing (sleeping naked), and so forth.
Prolonged
constraint involves year after year of isolation, escorted everywhere in
restraints, being hog-tied or strapped down, and being placed in the hole.
Section IV: Threats
Purpose: To cultivate anxiety and despair.
Variants: Threatening
death or harm and providing reward for
partial compliance.
SMU:
Threatening death or harm may occur verbally and often
actually occurs physically. All too frequently prisoners are gassed,
forcibly removed from a cell, physically beaten, and then strapped down for
hours, even days. Additionally, violence, whether between
prisoners or
against guards, is constantly provoked by disclosing confidential
information, starting rumors, or housing prisoners arbitrarily and,
occasionally, around known enemies. There are also strip searches, cell
searches, urine analysis tests, and other forms of harassment. The use
of
these tactics against prisoners who maintain any shred of individuality
provides an implied threat to other prisoners in order to force
compliance. Furthermore, to openly refrain from imposing such
harassment, in
return for compliance, also sends a message. Such arbitrary use of power
is a
key weapon.
Section V: Occasional Indulgence
Purpose: To motivate compliance and hinder adjustment.
Variants: Occasional
favors and fluctuating attitudes.
SMU:
The motivation of compliance via favors includes suspending
some policies intermittently upon compliance by a prisoner. For
instance, a
complaint prisoner may not be strip searched, any cell search would be
cursory, or longer and preferred recreation times are provided. This
can
also include cessation of verbal harassment and even congenial small
talk.
Of course, such arbitrary use of power generates a fluctuating environment
which makes it impossible to know what to expect, impossible to adjust.
Section VI: Demonstrating
Omnipotence:
Purpose:
To show the futility of resistance.
Variants: Confrontation
and displays of absolute control.
SMU:
The unending demonstrations of who has the power involve
gassing, beatings, and time in the hole. Other demonstrations of
control
include not following rules, issuing trumped up or even totally false
disciplinary charges, video surveillance, and the absence of an exit strategy
-for most prisoners, the only way out of the control unit is to snitch,
parole, or die. Of course, for death row the only way out is to die
(after
16 years, average).
Section VII: Degradation
Purpose: To show that the cost of resistance is far more
damaging to self-esteem than capitulation and to reduce prisoners to animal
level concerns.
Variants: Preventing
personal hygiene, promoting a filthy
environment, invoking demeaning punishment, giving insults and taunts, and
precluding privacy.
SMU:
Preventing personal hygiene occurs through restricting the
items sold in the commissary as well as by not keeping soap, shampoo, and
other items on the store list in stock.
Forcing prisoners to keep rotting trash in their cells and allowing the
cleaning of cells weekly, at best, and then not providing such essential
tools, like cleanser, creates a filthy environment. Guards, counselors,
and
even tours often walk by prisoner’s cells, including when the toilet is being
used - there is no privacy. Insults and taunts occur through verbal
harassment. As for demeaning punishment, this involves many of the
aforementioned tactics such as being strapped down while naked, forcibly
extracted from a cell, body and cell searches, being escorted while in
restraints by guards wearing flak jackets and eye goggles, being subjected to
fabricated disciplinary reports and the consequent penalties, and so forth.
Section VIII: Enforcing Trivial
Demands
Purpose: To develop the habit of compliance.
Variants: Enforcement
of petty rules.
SMU:
Trumped up disciplinary charges along with arbitrary
enforcement of rules and/or violating established policies are among the main
strategies. Also, the use of cell searches to seize authorized
property. It
must be noted that cell searches involve leaving the prisoner handcuffed in
the shower, clad in only underpants, while a team of guards ransack the cell,
leaving property on the floor or damaged -cell destruction rather than cell
searches.
Results
Having learned the methods employed by control unit prisons to
brain wash prisoners, for the purported purpose of compelling compliance,
let’s look at the actual results of sensory deprivation:
The
devastation, on human beings, caused by control unit prisons
is horrifying! One of the foremost experts on the results of solitary
confinement - Dr. Stuart Grassian, faculty member at Harvard Medical School -
authored an article in 1983 (Psychopathological Effects of Solitary
Confinement) in which he linked both the brainwashing of prisoner of war
soldiers in Korea and the prisoners in American control units with the
devastating effects of sensory deprivation. In general, Dr. Grassian
described these effects as causing restlessness, banging on walls, yelling,
assaultiveness, incoherent confusional states, hallucinations, regression,
disassociation, and a withdrawn hypnoid state.
As part of
his research for the article, Dr. Grassian studied
fourteen prisoners who had been in solitary confinement for an average of two
months at the prison in Walpole, Massachusetts. When reporting the
results
of this particular study, in the same 1983 article, Dr. Grassian initially
pointed to the intense effort by each prisoner to minimize the effects of
isolation. However, after diligent digging, Dr. Grassian found that the
following symptoms were common results:
Cutting
and self-mutilation, fear of insanity, hypersensitivity
to external stimuli (i.e., lighting becoming very uncomfortable, smells
appearing to be quite strong, noises causing much irritation), perceptual
distortions and illusions, hallucinations, de-realization, massive
free-floating anxieties (leading to panic, fear, and difficulty in
breathing), acute confusional states, partial amnesia, difficulty with
concentration and memory, disassociation, disorientation, fantasy of
aggressive revenge (torture and mutilation against guards), persecutory fear,
suspiciousness, paranoia, random violence, and lack of impulse control.
As an
expert witness in the mid-1990’s civil lawsuit case Madrid
v. Gomez, Dr. Grassian conducted another study involving prisoners in
isolation. This study included fifty prisoners in the control unit in
Pelican Bay, California. At the conclusion of this study, Dr. Grassian
discovered that forty of the fifty prisoners (80%) had either massively
exacerbated a previous psychiatric illness or had developed psychiatric
symptoms associated with reduced environmental stimulation (RES) as a result
of solitary confinement. RES is a psychiatric condition characterized
by
perceptual distortion, hallucinations, hypersensitivity to external stimuli,
aggressive fantasies, paranoia, inability to concentrate, and poor impulse
control.
Insofar as
results of solitary confinement, a report by the
American Journal of Psychiatry confirmed that sensory deprivation leads to
hallucinations, anxiety attacks, problems with impulse control, and
self-mutilation. Additionally, as a consequence of personal experience
with
sensory deprivation in control unit prisons, the author of this paper has
also experienced depression, delusion, headaches, hypertension,
hypersensitivity, and anti-social behavior and attitude. Finally, in
regards
to effects of solitary confinement, current literature (Dr. Grassian, et.
al.) reports that sensory deprivation actually alters the chemical balance in
the brain and undoubtedly causes significant personality changes.
Consequently,
by reviewing this author’s personal experience, Dr.
Grassian’s studies, and reports by the American Journal of Psychiatry, we can
see that nothing has changed since solitary confinement was known to cause
mental illness and insanity in the 1800’s. Current studies and reports
are
virtually identical to the reports from Germany between 1854-1909 (remember,
the German literature reported psychosis, hysteria, hallucinations,
agitation, motor excitement, disassociation, random violence, and delusions
as results of confinement in isolation).
Conclusion
This article has clearly demonstrated that the use of control
unit prisons causes mental breakdown in prisoners. In and of itself,
such
devastating results are most tragic, however, even more horrifying is
government’s full knowledge of the destruction they are causing to
humans. In
the mid-1990’s Dr. Grassian disclosed the results of his comprehensive
studies, involving the fifty control unit prisoners at PelicanBay, to both
federal and state governments. Rather than take corrective action, to
immediately cease the commission of such atrocities against human beings, the
federal government enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in
1996. The PLRA effectively precludes prisoners from suing for “emotional
or
mental harm unless they can also prove physical injury.” That’s
right, the
government enacted the PLRA to specifically exclude lawsuits, to fully
absolve both government and prisons from any liability, which results from
the knowing and intentional psychological torture, performed in control unit
prisons, and the devastating consequences. God help us all.
___________________
The author of this article is on death row in Arizona. For additional
information on control units, or to make comments and ask questions, please
contact:
Frank J.
Atwood #62887
Arizona
State Prison
Box 3400 -
SMUII (Death Row)
Florence,
AZ 85232
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New
Economy: Behind Bars, a Market for Goods
By
PAMELA LiCALZI O'CONNELL
New
York Times
MORE
than 1.3 million inmates were under the jurisdiction of state and
Federal
prison authorities in 1999, according to the Justice Department.
During
the 12- month period ended June 30, 1999, the Federal prison
population
rose 9.9 percent, the largest yearly gain ever reported. The
incarceration
rate has tripled since 1980.
To
some, these figures are a national embarrassment. To others, they
represent
a marketing opportunity. Particularly in consumer electronics.
Take
headphones. They are a ubiquitous feature of prison life, given the
potential
for conflict over noise and music preferences. Indeed, headphones
are
required by some corrections departments and are popular items in
commissaries
and mail-order catalogs that sell directly to inmates.
In
the last 10 years, the Koss Corporation, a maker of headphones, has
become
a leading supplier of "listening accessories" to the prison market.
Koss
learned, however, that not just any headphone is a good fit behind
bars.
The product has to be customized: the ear cups and housing must be
transparent
or "clear," so drugs cannot be stashed inside. The headband
must
be plastic, with no metal springs, so a knife cannot be fashioned from
it.
The cord has to be a bit weaker than usual so it can't be used as a
garrote,
for permanently silencing a guard or cellmate.
Koss
also developed simpler packaging and adjusted its warranty policy for
this
market. "Our lifetime warranty was really being abused by the
customers
in prison," said John Koss Jr., vice president for sales at the
Milwaukee-based
company. "On the advice of our distributors, we have now
reduced
that warranty on our clear products to 90 days."
Outside
prison, Koss is second only to Sony in retail stereo headphones,
with
a market share of 28 percent, according to the research firm NPD
Intelect,
and had overall sales of $34.8 million last year. It entered the
prison
market by chance when it was asked to bid on a contract for "ear
bud"
personal listening devices at one prison. Now, according to Mr. Koss,
its
line of inmate headphones represents more than $1 million in sales
annually.
Although
Koss is not the only company that aims at the large and growing
incarcerated
population, it is one of the few companies willing to talk
about
how it markets to the segment. "This business is very quiet, very
tight-lipped,"
Mr. Koss said. "We sell through a group of closely held
companies
that specialize in getting merchandise into the prison stores.
This
is a lucrative business both for the manufacturers and the
distributors
so there's a reluctance to talk about it for fear of
attracting
competition."
One
of Koss's distributors confirmed that assessment.
"We
don't like exposure," said Tom Thomas, president of Union Supply. The
company,
based in Rancho Dominguez, Calif., distributes items to prison
commissaries
and also offers a catalog of more than 5,000 items for direct
sale.
"This is really a closed market," Mr. Thomas said. "Once you
get in
and
get a contract, it's hard to dislodge someone."
There
is another reason for secrecy: politics. Much of the public and most
lawmakers
dislike the idea that prisons are stocked with consumer
electronics
items, or that prisoners have access to presumed amenities of
any
kind. In response to such sentiment, Congress is considering
legislation
that would prohibit use of federal money for things like cable
television,
martial arts training and weight-lifting equipment in
penitentiaries.
Many corrections officials disagree, since offering or
withholding
such items or activities can be useful in managing the prison
population.
Statistics
on commissary sales of nonfood items are hard to come by. The
Federal
Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department and the American
Correctional
Association were unable to supply numbers. But one thing is
undisputed:
It is a severely fragmented market.
"Prison
shops are run differently state by state, even prison by prison,"
said
Michael Dallaire, the executive director of Correctional Health Care
Consultants
in Forestdale, Mass. Mr. Dallaire monitors the prison market
closely
and assists people entering the health care segment. "Many times,
what's
sold depends on the level of security and is at the warden's
discretion,"
he added.
One
commonality is a movement toward clear products. "Clear is growing
nationwide;
it's a contraband issue," Mr. Thomas explained. "Clear TV's,
hot
pots, shavers any product that is allowed into an inmate's personal
possession
all the way down to clear trash cans."
Zenith
Electronics has manufactured a TV set with a clear polystyrene
cabinet
for four years. "Everyone in this area knows the story about the
guard
uniform that got smuggled into a prison in a TV," said Nancy
Langendorf,
national sales manager for Zenith's government and special
markets
group. "As a result, some states only allow clear TV's now." Other
requirements
include, of course, an earphone jack, as well as a list of
no-nos:
antenna, flip- down door and remote (it could be turned into a bomb
detonator).
Zenith's
"prison TV" (as it is called within the company, now owned by LG
Electronics
of South Korea) is oddly attractive, with its minimalist
translucent
casing, and its appeal has extended beyond the prison
population.
The unit has caught the eye of some retailers and proved
popular
with children. "As a result, we've developed some nonprison models
with
translucent colors, similar to the iMac," Ms. Langendorf said,
referring
to Apple Computer's translucent machines.
There
is an almost endless demand for new items, because inmates possess an
uncanny
ability to alter products in unexpected ways and rarely for the
greater
good. "It's amazing what they can do to even simple items,
electronic
ones in particular," says David Blackburn, executive assistant
to
the warden at the Federal Correctional Facility in Lompoc, Calif.
"That's
the key when any new item is made available: Can this be altered
and
become a threat to security?"
Certainly,
mail-order distributors to the market have to take extra
precautions.
"We don't hire just anyone off the street, in case they have
relatives
in prison," Mr. Thomas said. "And at the end of every day, we
make
sure that everyone involved in packing and shipping hands in their
Exacto
blades. We can't have something like that accidentally shipped
behind
bars."
Still,
although the prison market is difficult to crack, "considering the
demographics,"
he said, "it's worth it."
Back to Top
Prison labor on the rise in US
By Alan Whyte and
Jamie Baker
US trade union officials have repeatedly denounced China for its use of
prison labor, as part of the AFL-CIO's campaign against the normalization of
trade relations with China. At the same time, however, the union officials
have virtually been silent about the huge growth of prison labor in the
United States.
There are presently 80,000 inmates in the US employed in commercial
activity, some earning as little as 21 cents an hour. The US government
program Federal Prison Industries (FPI) currently employs 21,000 inmates, an
increase of 14 percent in the last two years alone. FPI inmates make a wide
variety of products-such as clothing, file cabinets, electronic equipment
and military helmets-which are sold to federal agencies and private
companies. FPI sales are $600 million annually and rising, with over $37
million in profits.
In addition, during the last 20 years more than 30 states have passed laws
permitting the use of convict labor by commercial enterprises. These
programs now exist in 36 states.
Prisoners now manufacture everything from blue jeans, to auto parts, to
electronics and furniture. Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the
same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do. Konica has
used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys R Us
used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft to pack and ship software.
Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with
apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other
countries.
Inmates are also employed in a wide variety of service jobs as well. TWA has
used prisoners to handle reservations, while AT&T has used prison labor
for
telemarketing. In Oregon, prisoners do all the data entry and record keeping
in the Secretary of State's corporation division. Other jobs include desktop
publishing, digital mapping and computer-aided design work.
US employers have pointed to the tight labor market for their interest in
employing prisoners. But the other advantages, though not stated publicly,
are obvious. The prison system can provide an "ideal" workforce:
employers
do not have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick
leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign inmates as they so
desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates
cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave and get
a better job.
Prisoners who refuse to work under these conditions are labeled
"uncooperative" and risk losing time off for "good
behavior," as well as
privileges such as library access and recreation. In one case, two prisoners
at California's Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility were put in
solitary confinement after a local television station broadcast their
complaints about working for C.M.T., a T-shirt manufacturer that required
them to put in 60 days of unpaid "training."
The growth of prison labor has directly led to the destruction of other
workers' jobs. For example, Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in
Austin, Texas, dismissing its 150 workers so that it could open shop in a
state prison in Lockhart. The prisoners assemble circuit boards for
industrial giants such as IBM, Compaq and Dell. Lockhart is not required to
pay for health or any other benefits. The company must pay the prison the
federal minimum wage for each laborer, but the inmates get to keep only 20
percent of that.
Linen service workers have lost their jobs when their employer contracted
with the prison laundry to do the work. Recycling plant workers have lost
their jobs when prisoners were brought in to sort through hazardous waste,
often without proper protective gear. Construction workers have lost their
jobs when the contractors were assigned to build an expansion of their own
prison-essentially making the chains that bind them.
In 1990, California voters approved a change in the state's constitution
allowing the operation of private enterprise in the prisons if the governor
will assure that no civilian jobs will be lost. According to the law,
companies that are about to begin using prison labor are obligated to notify
the state's AFL-CIO, but in reality they rarely do.
In 1994, Oregon residents voted overwhelmingly for a constitutional
amendment mandating that all prisoners work 40 hours a week. As a result,
thousands of public sector jobs have been lost to convict labor, and
thousands of private sector jobs have been lost as a result of firms that
now utilize prison labor.
The struggle over prison labor has a long history in the US. In the early
1800s, group workshops in prisons replaced solitary handicrafts, and the
increased efficiency allowed prisons to be self-supporting. Entire prisons
were leased out to private contractors, who literally worked hundreds of
prisoners to death. Manufacturers who lost work to prison contractors
opposed the leasing system, but only with the growth of the union movement
came effective opposition to prison labor. One of the most famous clashes,
the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891, took place when the Tennessee Coal, Iron
and Railroad locked out their workers and replaced them with convicts. The
miners stormed the prison and freed 400 prisoners, and when the company
filled up work with more prisoners, the miners burned the prison down.
The prison leasing system was disbanded in Tennessee shortly thereafter, but
remained in many states until the rise of the CIO and industrial unionism in
the 1930s. As a result of this mass movement of workers, Congress passed the
1935 Ashurst-Sumners Act, making it illegal to transport prison-made goods
across state lines. However, under the presidency of Democrat Jimmy Carter,
Congress passed the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which granted
exemptions from Ashurst-Sumners for seven "Prison Industry
Enhancement"
pilot projects. Congress has since granted exemptions to all 50 state prison
systems.
Although prison labor is today in its infancy, it could become one of
America's most important growth industries. Over the last decade, the prison
population has increased by 840,000, many of these prisoners having been
convicted of nonviolent crimes. With the use of tough-on-crime mandatory
sentencing laws, the prison population continues to grow. Some experts
believe that the number of people locked up in the US could double in the
next 10 years. The expansion of the number of prisoners will not only
increase the pool of slave labor available for commercial profit, but also
will help pay for the costs of incarceration.
With 2 million inmates, the US already has the largest prison population in
the world. China, which the AFL-CIO consistently condemns as anti-worker and
totalitarian, has a half-million fewer prisoners. With only 5 percent of the
world's population the United States has a quarter of the world's 8 million
prisoners.
Proponents of prison labor have argued that the employment of labor for
profit has a rehabilitative effect. Expenditures for education and training
of prisoners, meanwhile, have been declining.
Nevertheless, the use of right-wing propaganda made possible a situation in
Oregon where 70 percent of voters, including many union members, approved
the use of prison labor. Today, many of these same voters say they were
fooled by the original media campaign advocating prison labor, which
maintained that its essential purpose was to teach inmates proper discipline
and prepare them to be good citizens when they were released.
Today, the AFL-CIO in Oregon is split on the issue. The Teamsters and the
building trades unions and the American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME) now officially stand for the repeal of the
prison labor laws because their implementation has already resulted in the
loss of dues-paying union members. However, corrections officers who are
AFSCME members support prison labor because it makes their jobs a lot
easier; they say that the commercial work keeps the prisoners both occupied
and exhausted, and therefore easier to control.
In 1997, the Tennessee AFL-CIO supported proposals to privatize the state's
prison system, having struck a deal with Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA) to represent the workers. Private, for-profit prisons such as those
run by CCA and Wackenhut have become the modern-day version of the
nineteenth century leased prisons. Brutal treatment of prisoners is
commonplace, as the for-profit entrepreneurs seek to reduce the expense of
food and housing in order to add to the profits from running commercial
industries.
Perhaps more significantly, the unions tend to portray inmates as the ones
who should be blamed for the loss of union members' jobs. They depict
prisoners as bad seeds wholly responsible for their own incarceration,
rather than the victims of a system based on the exploitation of workers'
labor-power. Unions have expressed the idea that giving inmates hard work is
good because it will help discipline and rehabilitate them. This ideological
outlook turns the prisoner into the enemy of organized labor, as well as
civilized society. This conception also makes it possible to deflect
responsibility from the corporations that pushed for prison labor, and who
are now profiting handsomely from its use.
One step towards organizing an effective response to the growth of prison
labor is to clarify what is really behind the law-and-order mentally that is
being pushed by both major parties in the US. This would involve examining
the relationship of crime to the growth of poverty, social and economic
inequality, the decline of real career and growth opportunities for millions
of people, the crumbling of schools, the impact of racism and bigotry, and
so on.
The labor bureaucracy is incapable of doing this as this would threaten the
privileged position that it enjoys in a system based on the exploitation and
oppression of the working class. It is for this reason that union officials
share and promulgate to their membership the same ideological outlook of the
corporations, which essentially blames the working class for the social
problems that it confronts.
The role of the union bureaucracy can be clearly seen in the political
maneuvers taking place in Washington DC concerning the issue of using
inmates as laborers. Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons are pushing
for legislation that would expand the use of prison labor. There are now two
competing bills in Congress that would accomplish just that. Representative
Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, is offering one of the bills that
would compel prison labor in state prisons to compete with private
enterprise. This is an absurd attempt to claim that somehow free labor can
successfully compete with the slave-labor conditions in the prisons.
Significantly, this bill has the support of both the United States Chamber
of Commerce and the AFL-CIO.
The other bill proposed by Representative Bill McCollum, a Republican from
Florida, would greatly expand the program but allow the inmates to earn a
paltry $1.15 an hour instead of the current 21 cents an hour. This bill also
contains a provision that would prohibit existing jobs from being lost as a
result of the expanded use of convict labor. However, the experience in
California shows that such guarantees are not worth the paper they're
printed on.
There has been discussion about merging the two bills. This demonstrates the
real dangers posed to workers and prisoners alike as both the labor
bureaucracy and the organized voice of big business in America work together
to enlarge the scope of prison labor.
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In the
Grip of the Governor's Tyranny
By Harold Harvey Hawkes
1 March 2001
The governor does not have the right to increase punishment upon prisoners.
Yet, Governor Davis, the Board of Prison Terms (BPT), and victims' rights
groups are conspiring to keep felons convicted of murder and kidnap
incarcerated well beyond the criteria established by law. As the chief of the
executive branch of government, the governor controls appointments to the
BPT, thereby generally dictating the policy of the "Board" through
his
appointments. Because the governor desires to maintain political popularity
and fulfill campaign promises, he operates at the whim of victims' rights
groups and other special interests that shape the tone and tenure of his
policies.
This is exactly what is occurring right now in California. It is a
condition
where politics dictate how the law is applied, ignored or retroactively
modified. It is a form of tyranny against a class of people who have
long
been sentenced and are eligible/overduefor parole. The condition is not new
and efforts to remedy it have been attempted; therefore, it is prudent to
begin by briefly viewing the history of California's indeterminate sentencing
laws.
California introduced the Indeterminate Sentencing Law (ISL) in 1917. This
law allowed for indeterminate sentences to be applied to felonies depending
on the severity of the given crime. Sentences ranged from 1-to-life for
felonies such as first-degree burglary, to 7-to-life for first-degree murder.
Yet, the length of sentences began to be applied unevenly by the Adult
Authority, leading to a number of court cases, which proved the ISL
sentencing scheme to be constitutionally inadequate.
In the culmination of these cases, In re Rodriguez (1975), the BPT was found
to be applying the ISL scheme in an unconstitutional manner. This ruling led
to the end of the ISL and paved the way for Senate Bill 42 (1976), which
became law in 1977 and was supposed to provide a scheme for fair and uniform
sentencing. Senate Bill 42 created the Determinate Sentencing Law (DSL),
which set fixed terms such as 2, 4, or 6 years for first-degree burglary.
However, the DSL left open "indeterminate sentencing clause" that
allowed for
a "minimum-term-to-life" sentence for more serious felonies, such
as murder or
kidnap. In 1978, the Briggs Initiative increased the length of
terms
severely: first-degree murder (25 years-to-life), second-degree murder (15
years-to-life), (7 years-to-life). Under the DSL, & indeterminate
sentencing
still exists.
The DSL has been in existence for 23 years, and, due to politics, the lengths
of terms for imprisonment are being unevenly applied and/or not applied at
all. The same conditions that existed under the ISL are now violating
indeterminately sentenced DSL prisoners' rights to equality in sentencing.
Beginning in 1979, the BPT (which replaced the Adult Authority), routinely
released significant numbers of lifers under the new DSL scheme; but, as
politics became more "tough on crime" oriented in the early 1980's,
it became
politically expedient to grant less and less parole dates for lifers.
In
1988, the governor received the power to revoke parole dates set by the BPT.
By the mid-1990's, less than half of one percent of lifers received and kept
parole dates or were paroled. Since January 2000, Governor Davis has
implemented a "Pine Box Parole Policy" for murderers.
According to the 1999 declaration of Albert Leddy, an ex-BPT commissioner,
Board members are subject to pressure from the executive branch of
government. As political appointees, the BPT rarely sets a date for a
murderer or kidnapper, because it is not politically correct for the
governor's office to let a "killer" or "kidnapper" out on
the streets,
reformed or not. On the rare chance that a lifer receives a date, it is
readily yanked away by the governor.
The Board does not follow the law, set forth under Penal Code §3041, nor does
it follow its own rules under C.C.R. Title 15, Division 2. The Board wrote
its own rules consistent with the intent of the DSL and the approval of the
Office of Administrative Law, but these rules were written in such a manner,
which allows vague interpretation and uneven application. All a BPT panel has
to do is state that the prisoner is "unsuitable for parole" and
trump up a
few reasons for denial. It can then by pass the plethora of rules it
has
established for setting a prisoner's term (the matrices) and a parole date.
The Board rarely sets dates and no uniform sentencing is being applied. No
equal protection is being provided. Furthermore, under the DSL, inmates
are
to receive one-third time off their sentences for good behavior.
"Earned"
good time credits can never be applied to a sentence if no uniform lengths in
sentences are established. The indeterminate sentencing clause of the DSL
reeks of unconstitutionality and unfairness.
In the past 15 years or so, the only murderers or kidnappers who have been
released were cops or the politically correct and connected. If you are
rich, you can hire top gun attorneys, but even this does not always help, as
has recently been demonstrated by the efforts of Robert Rosenkrantz, whose
case has lingered in the courts for years. Clearly, the average person
convicted of murder or kidnap cannot afford high-priced attorneys. This is
certainly not due processor equal protection.
In an attempt to appear to be following the law, Governor Davis and the BPT
have recently begun to set dates for a few indeterminately sentenced
attempted murderers and kidnappers and two "battered women"
murderers have
been set free. Again, no equal standard has been applied.
Meanwhile, a growing number of indeterminately sentenced inmates, who have
passed their minimum eligible parole dates and are eligible for parole, are
not having their terms set or being granted parole dates. These inmates are
not convicted of crimes that carry sentences of life without parole; thus,
some equal scheme in sentencing has to be adhered to. That is why the DSL was
enacted, and the Board established the matrices as a means of determining
uniform sentences for like crimes. Numerous kidnappers and
second-degree
murderers with positive institutional behavior have been incarcerated well
past any time criteria established by the matrices for those crimes.
While politics have clearly changed over the past 25 years, the law has not.
People sentenced to 15 years-to-life in 1979, for example, have served 22
years, with no regard to good time credits or positive behavior in prison.
Because dates and terms have not been consistently set, no uniform standards
have been established to indeterminate sentencing under DSL; thus, the same
constitutional violation of equal protection of the ISL still exists in the
DSL.
No one likes the fact that a person has committed a murder or kidnap. A
price cannot be put on a person's life. Instead, the offender's liberty
is
taken away. Liberty is regarded as one of the most sacred rights in America.
But, you can't put a price on liberty, either. If a person has reformed him
or herself and has served a sufficient amount of time, according to the law,
that person should be granted freedom, not held under the grip of political
tyranny.
For over 80 years the ISL and DSL schemes have confounded justice and allowed
a condition of politics to dictate how the law is applied to a class of
prisoners. It will never be "popular" to let a person convicted of
murder or
kidnap go free on parole; however, justice is supposed to be blind to
popularity and politics. Though far more importantly, it is unconstitutional,
hence illegal, to allow tyranny to exist in America. Politics do not belong
at a person's liberty interest hearing, but clearly they are the guiding
force under the current law and regime.
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