Under Lock & Key

Set my people free, from the streets 2 the penitentiary!
I say a prayer 4 you, from the streets 2 the penitentiary!

I stand alone strap decent I’m ready 4 war
Military ammu I’m knocking at your front door
Mr. Oppressor open up and kick in like a slot machine
No excuses I want mine by all means
Doing crime is easy we getting by
Just look around, Black and Brown
Where we at, locked up, we doing life
They (oppressor) want us off the streets, the violence decease
Mr. Police “please,” y’all ain’t no better than me
Body bags is staking up and the system is corrupted as hell
The war, the drugs, these slugs, we bust
The rules you make, you break, we all stuck
Ain’t no justice, it’s just us
Believe that shit
Bloods and Crips at war, kids is killing kids
My soul is torn, my heart ripped up,
Bloody tears dried up, love ones I mourn
Love me or hate me, I can care less,
You ain’t the one:
Born in captivity, living in a struggle,
Contemplating death,
Mr. R___ a cop, damn right, let’s ride, till my last breath,
BanaRu from the feet up.
Those chosen few representing us, stay up.
The torch been passed down 2 me, flames in rage,
All power 2 the people, here I give 2 you
Rise and shine our time has arrived
It’s ‘our destiny,’ we must survive,
(Afrika)=Ethiopia is calling come home
Riches of all land, beginning of all man,
Mother 2 all earth, righteous land of our birth
The world is waiting 4 a new power 2 rise,
It’s time 2 wake up, open up your eyes
Let Freedom Ring, my people, hear your brother sing
My strong sistas, continue 2 shine like the sun
Lead and guide our generation and those 2 come
Get in the cell, get in the cell, they continue 2 yell at me,
Ayana Wewe, Ayana Wewe, I continue 2 scream
So go ahead and turn your back on all political prisoners and
pay us no mind, bu
Behind every action there’s a re-action
It’s only a matter of time
Are strength in numbers
It’s time 2 wake up and let’s catch the oppressor
While he slumbers
So all those who are with me “Put your fist 2 the air”
So when the revolution comes we shall all be there!!!
Enclosing I just would like 2 say, may you stay forever grounded and gravitated in victory against eh powers and
Principalities that conspire our collective demise and their
Constant rise!

I have been in Upstate Correctional Facility plenty of times, and it is a double bunk control unit called Special Housing Unit.

There is about 800 to 900 people contained in there. 90% of the facility is SHU, the rest is porters that cook and serve the food trays and do the laundry. The double-bunk cells are large because it’s a room for two and your shower is in the cell as well as a rec cage in the back of your cell. So basically, you never leave the cell unless it’s for a visit, hospital call out or release from the box.

The national makeup is 50% Black and 50% Latino. There are numerous prison rule violations to be placed in SHU, for example: assault on staff or on convict, gang lessons, dirty urine for drug use, weapon possession and all of these must be a tier three ticket. Anything lower , like a tier one or two ticket don’t go to those SHUs. So a tier three ticket is considered a serious offense.

This unit is the largest in NYS, and it opened around 1999. The SHUs in NYS have expanded by opening smaller ones that hold 200 convicts. They are still double-bunk and they were built behind medium security facilities throughout the state. Many are empty and a big waste of tax-payers money.

I have not heard or read any memos about new SHUs planned for NY, I hope there are not. We need some schools and social programs, not control units that are hardly occupied.

These control units are very dangerous and hazardous to the minds of convicts who are mentally weak and they lose control and become self-destructive. There were instances where a convicts bunkey almost killed him and tied him up. They put you in a cell with anybody, a perosn you never met in your life and who knows what ill intentions he might have, it’s a surivival of the fittest!

They feed you small portions of food, so that prisoners lose lots of weight. The visit are behind a chicken fence gate that separates you from your visitors, so there is no real humyn contact. They put brothers on food and water restrictions, they censor our magazines and books thoroughly and most times violating our right to periodicals that don’t pose a threat to security. These control units should be shut down because it doesn’t reduce prison violence and its a waste of money and hazardous on the mind.

I just read Under Lock and Key from 2007 and it concerned the health care in California prisons. I’m sending along a copy of an article from the Sacramento Bee by Don Thompson of the Associated Press. It explains that Federal Receiver Robert Sillew’s report shows there is very little change in health care in California prisons as of March 2008. Mr. J. Clark Kelso is the new federal receiver.

I have been in prison for 11 1/2 years for resisting arrest. I was given a life sentence under California’s Three Strikes Law. Since I’ve been in prison I’ve known three prisoners personally who died from liver failure. Each man told me they did not receive proper care from the medical services. The CDCR needs more qualified doctors and more medical and mental prisons, but until the over population problem (173,000 prisoners) is solved, there will continue to be people dying. We need to be seen as human beings, not cattle.

Currently, I am in a Supermax, what you refer to as control unit/ solitary confinement/ the box.

There are five buildings. Each building has three blocks, each block has two galleries and on each gallery there are twenty-five cells. Within each cell there are two prisoners. In total there are fifty people on a gallery- 100 people in a block - 300 people in a building.

The exception is that one of these buildings are occupied by cadre. These cadre are the workers. These workers are akin to those of a beehive, they’re the lifeline of the facility. They clean the facility, and basically maintain it so that the facility is self-contained.

The four other buildings are strictly occupied by prisoners who are locked down, like myself, for 24 hours. A single prisoner might occupy a cell depending on that prisoners prior disciplinary history in the Special Housing Unit. Being that when one is locked in the box, we are liable to take anyone as a bunky, on several occasions people have been killed and some times even raped. Fights are common because of the frustration and being forced to double bunk with someone that you’re incompatible with.

Upstate was built in 1999. It was the last Special Housing Unit that I know of that was built within the past 9 years. There are several more SHU buildings throughout New York State.

As far as the racial makeup, my observation & analysis is based on the numerous facilities i’ve been in, whether solitary confinement or group population. More than 50% of the prisoners are Black, 30% are Latino and the rest is made up of whites and those of Asian descent. This ratio also holds true for Upstate (which is where i’m at). More than half the cells on each gallery is occupied by Blacks, then Latinos. Many galleries have no white prisoners, if there is two cells on a gallery occupied by whtie prisoners, that itself is a large number.

The way that the system of pairing prisoners works is like this: People are put together based on their race - Blacks can only bunk with other Blacks (there are exceptions if a prisoner bunk goes to population e may request to have someone in the cell, but that doesn’t mean the request will be granted). Latinos are bunked with Latinos and whites with whites. Now, Latinos and whites are allowed to be bunked. Basically, Blacks must be bunked with Blacks and all the other racial groups could be bunked together.

I doubt that the state plans to open new facilities for two reasons. (1) Organizations such as MIM have been putting a lot of pressure on the state to close the SHU. There has also been pressure around the fact that many of the prisoners that are locked away in solitary confinement should be put in psychiatric facilities. (2) Another reason is that many prisoners are receiving harsh sentencing to solitary confinement for minor infractions - anxiety attacks is a common one. This is a result of the tenure of Governor Pataki whose “tough on crime” rhetoric allowed him to build more prisons. More prisons were built in Governor Pataki’s tenure of two terms than at any other time. Within the past 8 years several jails have been closed and many of those being incarcerated are parole violators who are recycled back into the system. So it is harder to justify the need for so many SHUs.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the articles any more, but i have read a couple of journal articles on the harmful effects these units have on humyn beings. In reality there is no value to these prisons, except to control prisoners. They use them to break us down. There is nothing rehabilitative about this place.

Greetings from the oppressed in the state of Washington’s 2nd fully operational ‘Supermax’ gulag. Since i’ve been imprisoned here by the fascist pigs and imperialistic/racist government and state powers, the conditions have deteriorated a bit. Currently, we are fighting the pigs, A/C’s (assistant cooks), CUS (custody unit supervisor, CO’s (pigz) and the Unit Sgt. concerning the quality/quantity of our food. We’re being given food that is just reheated from servings 2-3 days previous and lacking enough nutrients to benefit us (ie. 2000 calories). We also have no real outside yard access. We go out to a 10’ x 10’ concrete box, with an iron screen mesh high up on a wall that only allows us to get a strip view of the sky. The ventilation in our cells blow hard air 24/7. Our cell lights stay on 24/7 (count-light). [MIM(Prisons) adds: this unit was just opened in October 2007 as the first certified “green” prison building in the state]. All of our cell functions (toilet, hot & cold water, lights, air conditioning, heating) are controlled by the pigz in a control/monitoring booth. The water we sue is “re-claimed” water, water already used, and our showers have inadequate pressure & heat. When placed in the showers we’re put in a cage with open front were both male and female pigs that are walking around can view us taking showers. Since i’ve been here, i’ve seen 3 cell extractions with the “Goon” squad, OC [pepper spray], electrified shields & tasers. They’ve also moved 2-3 guys of my current tier to ISO for no apparent reason other than filing grievances or complain about conditions or lack of general issue items.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that the fascist pigz are looking at out-of-state a prisoner chain of 500 (slaves) to be shipped out to MN, AZ, CO, KY, and IN in the next 12 months. I can’t confirm this, but i am looking into it.

As far as statistics on the number of people in control units in Washington, i cannot verify numbers for Clallam Bay, Stafford Creek or WCC for Women, but i can clarify and confirm for the following prisons:

McNeil Island has three (3) control units, each unit is single cell, 23hr. lock-down. Each unit holds approximately 30 prisoners, for a rough total of 90+. One pod (unit) is seg, 1 pod is IMU and 1 pod is Mental Health IMU/seg combo.

As for Washington State Penitentiary (WSP), they have an ASU/seg unit that holds 195-200 prisoners on 23 hour lockdown. They (WSP) also has a new 1500-2000 bed CC “state-of-the-art” housing unit that just opened, a 96 bed IMU, and a new “supermax” IMU/ASU that i’ve been told holds 199 prisoners. WSP also has an medical/mental health 14 cell (1 man) capacity housing. Then they have a SHU, which is where the mental health/protective custody and death row prisoners are housed and it’s a 260 bed capacity with another 24 cells for seg overflow.

As for Monroe Correctional Complex, SOU/SOC are the same facilities. SOU(Special Offender Unit) is for Medium/Minimum inmates with a 600+ bed capacity (1&2 man cells), SOC (Special Offender Center) is CC for mental health/sex offenders with 4 units; 2 (CC) with 72 bed, 1 man capacity and 2 IMU/ASU with 72 bed, 1 man capacity. The new “supermax” Monroe Correctional Complex-IMU has 120 1-man 23hr lock-down IMU “supermax” housing cells and 120 ASU-“supermax” housing cells. This is one of two new “supermax” units that opened in the last 6 months. Monroe also has a Seg/ASU unit at Washington State Reformatory (WSRU) with 100-115 bed, 1-man cell capacity, 23hr lock-down. Meanwhile, the WSRU-SHU is medical/psych long-term housing with several 100 bed capacity. Also at MCC, the Twin Rivers Correctional Unit(TRU) has a 20 bed “Temp” seg unit.

Washington Correctional Complex at Shelton has an IMU/Seg unit with 144 1-man cells and a 6-man ISO unit known as COU (Crisis Observation Unit).

These figures are as close as possible, and the units are ALL control/long-term ISO with the exception of WCC Shelton COU and TRU’s seg unit. Airway Heights also has a “SMU” (Special Management Unit) Seg which has 45-60 bed capacity of short-term ISO. Again, most of these figures are very close as i’ve either been there before or someone has come through here and let us all know what’s going on elsewhere.

a comrade in Monroe Correctional Complex IMU

There are about 2500 inmates housed here and about 1600 of them have jobs, the other 900 are inmates in control units.

The prison offers many jobs such as industry, kitchen, yard, unit, education, assistants, etc. Now all the industry jobs pay between $100 to $175 a month and all the rest pay between $25 to $75 a month, which is bullshit since the minimum wage is like $7.75 and the amount we get paid is only a small percentage of regular outside community jobs.

By working in the prison it keeps us focused and able to purchase the necessities we need to contain proper health & hygiene and things like food, electronics, etc. But the state charges us double or triple the price the items cost on the streets.

The kinds of work we do here consists of building furniture, welding, plumbing, electrical, repairing equipment, washing laundry and the rest are tutors for the education department and unit orderlies. There are also kitchen duties such as cooking, washing, dishes, wiping tables and serving the food.

The industry jobs make couches, chairs, tables and desks for the outside world. Other jobs make jewelry, saddles, clothes and toys. The lifers club has a lot of these items in the visiting room so when our people come to see us they can purchase them.

The Prison Blues clothes are made by prisoners at EOCI in Pendleton and SRCI. They have construction programs where we build trailers and sheds for people to live in. So we do more than make license plates, like in some states. But again, almost all the money made goes to the staff’s checks, only 10% gets put toward the inmate trust fund.

Now the state of Oregon is making such a big profit off us working for pennies and they can’t even give us better yard equipment so we can exercise without having to be careful the cables don’t break while we’re pumping the weights. So it’s real sad that we live in these conditions.

If the inmates refused to work these jobs like slaves which we our slaves of the state then nothing would get done. The officers are so lazy all they do each day is sit around and eat donuts. There ain’t no real labor in this job for them, but they bitch about always being tired. So if it weren’t for us they wouldn’t be making such a nice chunk of money and treating us so bad.

UPDATE: On 9/17/2009 the comrade who wrote this letter was killed in Attica Correctional Facility

True solitary confinement - it’s general concept, ultimate purpose, and all of its myriad applications - must be exposed to as many concerned citizens as is possible. Media, cinema, and corrections spokespeople have all contributed to distorting our society’s perception of this shameful and torturous practice that has been a facet of this country’s history since it’s earliest years.

Amnesty International has defined solitary confinement as “all forms of incarceration that totally remove a prisoner from inmate society”, elucidating further that “the prisoner is visually and acoustically isolated from all other prisoners as well as having no personal contact with them.” But even this definition can forfeit the consideration of other variations of confinement that similarly and adversely affect the prisoners who are imprisoned in them. Professors Craig Haney and Mona Lynch concluded and supported with irrefutable evidence from the study they conducted that solitary confinement refers to a broad set of conditions, including single-celled control units where even some semblance of communication between prisoners is somehow feasible, double-celled control units that produce conditions of both isolation and overcrowding simultaneously, control units where prisoners are subjected to sensory overload as well as sensory deprivation, and control units that impose “small group isolation.” The effects of solitary confinement in all of its manifestations within this country’s prison system have been recognized by numerous authoritative analysts, as well as their impact upon society as a whole. Studies of this phenomenon, empirical and with scientific experimentation, have been conducted and recorded as early as 1790.

With this in mind, terms such as “punitive segregation”, “restrictive housing”, “segregated housing”, “special housing”, “administrative segregation”, “disciplinary confinement” and “control units” have all been used to designate constructed environments that employ what are essentially conditions- whether in part or whole - of solitary confinement. Despite their differences, all of them serve similar ends in that all of them employ torturous conditions as punishment rather than rehabilitation.

I have been a prisoner of the New York State Department of Correctional Services prison system for approximately fifteen years to date. I have spent at least two-thirds of those years confined to the system’s special housing units (SHU) for lengthy and continuous periods at a time. Recently, former New York State Governor Eliott Spitzer signed a bill into law that provides for mentally ill prisoners who have been sanctioned with disciplinary confinement penalties exceeding thirty days to be removed from conventional SHU’s and placed in newly constructed “therapeutic units.” The majority of these “therapeutic units” are actually conventional SHU’s amended with rooms designated for therapeutic group programming and individual therapy sessions. The rooms are fitted with “cubicles” that amount to small single-occupancy cages, to restrict prisoners contact with program instructors and each other during “therapy.” Whether this arrangement is a genuine and sufficient departure form conventional SHU to ward off mental deterioration fostered by the conditions of the various forms of solitary confinement seems to have escaped adequate forum for public debate.

One of the worst SHU’s I have been confined to, by my estimation, is the notorious F-Block at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. I remained there for just over a year.

In their State of the Prisons report on conditions of confinement in 25 New York correctional facilities, published in 2002, the Prison Visiting Committee of the Correctional Association of New York described the SHU at Great Meadow CF as “… one of the most unsettling we have experienced. Many of the inmates were mentally ill and confined in cells behind thick metal doors or bars covered with Plexiglas to protect staff from”throwers.” Most striking was the pervading sense of chaos and the way in which inmates with mental illness are isolated, cut off from human contact and caged in barren, concrete walls. Animals in zoos are kept in more humane conditions… the more stable inmates spoke of the constant yelling and noise on the unit, the stench of feces and sweat, and the lack of ventilation.” Although the SHU capacity had been reduced since the time of that report, the conditions aforementioned were certainly prevalent even during my confinement there in 2004 and 2005.

With the draconian measures put in place by the Bush administration as a device of its purported “war on terror,” and a look to the conditions under which prisoners designated as enemy combatants are being held in at the detention complex in Guantanamo Bay by the U.S. government, I do not see that the use of solitary confinement is being diminished at all. Rather, I foresee that it will expand and morph into forms less conspicuous but more insidious, cultivated with and nurtured by the incitement of mass hysteria and the greed of profiteers.

After clarifying the general concept, myriad applications and ultimate purpose of solitary confinement, this information must be conveyed to the concerned active citizenry. The concept, applications and purpose of solitary confinement serve to control and inflict suffering upon a segment of the population through isolation and deprivation. It does not nor has it ever served to rehabilitate or improve the condition of society.

sources: “Regulating Prisons of the Future”, by Craig Haney & Mona Lynch, 23 NYU Rev. L. Soc. Change 447 (1997).
“State of the Prisons” Report, June 2002, by the Correctional Association of New York.
“Enemy Combatant” by Moazzam Begg (the New Press, 2006).

Prisoners make all the clothing and uniforms as well as envelopes and greeting cards here in MacDougall-Walker CI in Connecticut, and then they sell them back to us. They even sell jail pillows now. Not real pillows, jail pillows, the ones the prisoners used to make back in the day and they confiscated them (we use to make ’em out of old mattresses, the ones that were ripped up and no longer useful). Now the state confiscated all those pillows and are now manufacturing our idea in the prisoners workshop. Same kind of pillow we use to make with the old mattresses the state is making and selling back to us for $15. They stole our idea and sell it back to us.

The BHU program originated from a lawsuit settlement in April of 2007 (see Disability Advocates, Inc. v. New York State Office of Mental Health).

Disability Advocates, Inc., Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, the Prisoner’s Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society, and Davis Polk & Wardwell brought the lawsuit against the Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) and the Office of Mental Health (OMH). DOCS runs the New York State prisons. OMH is in charge of mental health treatment and services within New York State Prisons.

The main purpose of the settlement is to improve mental health treatment and services for all prisoners with serious mental health needs in DOCS- operated prisons.

In hood slang this program is about changing how the pigz has constantly violating prisoners with mental health issues throughout these years.

The program is taking mental health prisoners out of SHU (Special Housing Unit), basically the box, who are confined to their cells 23 hours a day, 7 days a week and admitting these prisoners to programs that will be very beneficial in helping us transition our bad ways to more positive ways.

For example, there are prisoners with serious mental health issues who tries to commit suicide & the DOCS pigz will discipline these prisoners instead of giving these prisoners treatment for their illnesses.

The problem at the BHU program at Sullivan Correctional FAcility is that the OMH BHU Director Ms. Harris is not stepping up to the DOCS Deputy Superintendent of Security Griffin, who truly runs the program.

The thing is this, the DOCS don’t want these programs to exist because of the fact that they feel like the SHU prisoners are getting over by being released from the box and being sent to these program, so DOCS goals is to try and sabotage these programs any way they can.

The BHU pigz are constantly violating us by issuing fabricated tickets, deading us on supplies, cosmetics, showers, food, sending us back to the box (SHU) for alleged security reasons, forcing us to work unassigned porter jobs, that we don’t even get paid for.

We have prisoners who are not medically cleared and approved to work in the food pantry and if prisoners refuse to work, they are being sent to the box for demonstration! The pigz have deaded me on food and the OMH staff are aware of this, but still don’t do anything about it.

There’s so many things I need to explain to you in details, but the fact is it’s too much, therefore on behalf of all the BHU prisoners, we are requesting any type of assistance that you may provide because we’ve been submitting all types of complaints, grievances and we are not getting any results, but plain old more bullshit and corruption within these prison systems.

In closing, me and my fellow comrades wanna say thank you for remembering us behind these walls, and the struggles existing every where in every hood!

notes: Disability Advocates, Inc. v. New York State Office of Mental Health Private Settlement Agreement. summary from The Legal Aid Society.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We have received a number of reports regarding the BHU over the last year, many of them hopeful of the possibilities of the new program. Others describe it as no different from the SHU, and even this supporter points out the great inadequacies in eliminating abuse so far. Anything that gets people out of SHU will likely have progressive characteristics and we support BHU prisoners in their struggle to stay out of SHU and hold the state to the promises made in the Disability Advocates, Inc. settlement.

However, we do not put forth the BHU or other psychological approaches as solutions to the mental health problems faced by prisoners. The writer mentions the extreme case of suicide which requires “treatment.” In MIM Theory 9: Psychology & Revolution, MIM discusses mental institutions as the flip side of the same coin as prisons, both of them being tools of social control. MIM even addresses a revolutionary approach to suicide that recognizes our relationship to the world around us and our ability to transform it, rather than focusing on getting us to accept an oppressive world that we should be sad and upset about.

Former Governor Spitzer signed more recent legislation aimed at getting people with serious mental health problems out of the SHU on January 28, 2008. “Governor Spitzer’s action formalizes the state’s decision to ban the use of solitary confinement for inmates with a serious mental illness who violate prison rules. Instead, these inmates will be placed in a residential mental health treatment unit where they will receive intensive psychiatric and behavioral treatment in a therapeutic setting.” (1) As MIM has been saying for decades, and the state has openly admitted, the purpose of the SHU is to repress certain political ideas and social groups. And as MIM describes in MIM Theory 9, “intensive psychiatric and behavioral treatment” has the same goals.

The other problem with this legislation is the focus on the split between the mentally ill and not. Those who fall apart under the torture of being in the SHU have been successfully treated in the eyes of the state who is trying to break revolutionary and rebellious spirits. Therefore, the state is fine with letting those who have been broken out of the SHU while holding those who are able to stand strong in resistance. So while we may have decreased the amount of torture being committed by the state (that is still not clear), we have not done anything to address the problem that prisons and mental health institutions serve to repress elements of society that would otherwise be forces for progressive change for all of society.

Historically, experimentation with isolation, drugs and invasive brain surgery have all occurred hand-in-hand. Letting the state play one strategy of control off against the other, as if one is more humane or beneficial to the people is nothing but a good-cop/bad-cop sham. All prisoners need re-integration into society that includes education on how it is structured and operates in order to become sane productive members of this society.

notes:
(1) Mental Health Association in New York State. http://www.mhanys.org/publications/mhupdate/update080201.htm
(2) MIM Theory 9: Psychology & Revolution
(3) An Alternative to the SHU