Apr-May 97

Through Foreign Eyes

When I was young I thought that the United States of America was really a miracle, a model country, the way of the future! I was fas-cinated by this big state, ready to fight for freedom, ready to send armies everywhere in the world to "save" democracy!

When I started to see the other face, at first it seemed simplistic "anti Americanism," and I continued imagining cowboys, Cadillacs, Las Vegas, Sunset Blvd., Mount Rushmore, Disney World, Old Faithful, etc. Slowly, the dream faded, the miracle vanished, the melting-pot was not as successful as we were told it was. Then I got involved in the fight against the death penalty and conditions of incarceration, and discovered another face of America-a face that looked more like a nightmare.

When I first saw Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, I said to myself, he is going a bit too far in the first part. Then I read that the instructor in the film was a real one, so maybe it was reality! When I saw on TV last week the way the Marine troops get their medals, I was horrified, but not surprised.

This is the problem. I started not to be surprised! I started to be used to it!

How can this be possible? We all know that it is not the rifle that kills but the finger on the trigger! So if people aren't violent, and feel safe to have guns, why not? But what if the society is so violent that soldiers endure having their medals pinned in their flesh, the pins pushed, turned, forced inside the pectoral muscle-a society ready to see the blood of its own soldiers staining T-shirts because other U.S. soldiers have decided to have fun? Does a society which accepts this "show" of military decoration -soldiers screaming and their superiors using their knees to hit them in their private parts-does this society deserve the name of society? Is that learning to obey, to be a soldier? Or is this barbarity vs. submission? When a man loses his ability to say NO, to refuse, is he still a man? What sort of hell has the American dream turned into? Are such barbaric practices necessary to transform human beings into robots ready to kill anyone at a superior's order?

Come on! All that happened a long time ago. The video film was made in 1991, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina! Let's forget that. For sure it will not be filmed again! So it won't exist anymore. What is happening in the late 90's? Is life better, more humane?

You must be joking!

What about these Alabama Hitching Posts? Just Middle-Ages pillories! When a prisoner refused to go to work as a slave in these U.S. concentration camps called chain-gangs in Alabama, he just didn't go! He didn't just stay in his cell! He was put on a hitching post. What does that look like? Like these bars outside saloons in the old days where the cowboys hitched their horses, but here in Alabama the horses are human beings. To show the difference between animals and human beings this device has two different levels, one bar down for small guys, one bar up for taller prisoners. That's nice! Except when you are tall, you are restrained on the low one, bending down for hours, and, when you are small, you are stretched to the highest one!

Standing there handcuffed in the sun, in the rain, in the warmth or in the wind, winter or summer, who cares? You want to go to the bathroom? You must be joking-no time for that. Just do it under yourself and stay like that in front of others for hours, some for up to nine hours! In all seasons! Even dogs are kept on a leash and can move. Here the handcuffs are locked on a link welded to the post. No way to move!

Working in a French association taking care of people who have been tortured, I can imagine these prisoners' pain, the injuries caused, and-probably worse-the humiliation they endured! Knowing their arbitrary use in certain prisons, I can easily imagine that these degrading posts, used for cruel and unusual punishment, aren't only used for prisoners refusing to be enslaved in fields or on roads! How can the U.S. criticize what was done to prisoners of war in the Far East now?

Whatever they have done or refused to do, I am sure the solution should not be torture. You can't expect to rehabilitate people by showing them violence as usual, cruelty as normal, degrading punishment as trivial. Maybe the question is: do you really want to rehabilitate them?

How to Survive in MCUs

How to survive in a Maximum Control Unit (MCU)? "With a discipline, a discipline forged by convictions" is the answer of Ojore N. Lutalo, who started his twelfth year in the Trenton, New Jersey's MCU (called a Security Housing Unit or SHU in California).

Isolation in U.S. prisons started as early as 1829, based on the Quaker philosophy of solitary introspection as a path toward penitence and deterrence. In 1972, the first U.S. maximum security facility opened its gates in Marion, Illinois. What was only supposed to be an experimental program quickly became an institutional project of convict destabilization. This "experiment" was judged to be such a success by the authorities that 36 states presently have this type of facility, with 15,000 convicts "benefiting" from them!

Since 1990, the only "residents" of this type of prison in New Jersey are black men!

FROM EXPERIMENT TO PRACTICE

What makes an MCU different from a standard prison? Imprisonment conditions in MCUs are different in every prison, but all share common aspects: the first and most terrible, in my opinion, is the arbitrary way one can be placed under such detention conditions. Just the good will ( or ill will) of corrections authorities decides if you are admitted or get out of MCU. A prisoner under such a "sentence" is facing it for an indeterminate period, renewed as long as he presents "a substantial danger for the security and administration of the prison." There is no other criteria for one's way in or out of this prison inside the prison.

Isolation is as complete as possible, from both the world outside prison and from the world within the prison itself. Usually prisoners spend 22 or 23 hours of every 24, alone in their cells. They are allowed only 5 hours of visits every month-visits without any physical contact, of course, not even a hand shake!

The possibility of learning, improving-which should be the main basis for any incarceration-is as small as possible. To the question "What are you doing with your time?" the answer is "Nothing, I just remain sitting, doing nothing all day long."

DEGRADING, INHUMAN AND CRUEL
There are also physical and psychological mistreatments (bondage, assaults, sensory deprivations, limited visiting times, harassment, etc.) that lead many prisoners to start legal proceedings after being brutalized, raped etc. This is evidence of institutional practices rather than isolated accidents. It is quite easy to imagine what sort of psychological damage these conditions can cause.

Some prisons are now being built to better serve their isolation vocation. They are equipped with plain steel doors for every cell, so as to prevent any form of communication between prisoners. These sliding doors are remote-controlled, thus preventing contact even between prisoners and guards. Some are also equipped with small personal "private rec. yards" making walking outdoors solitary as well. Inside their 8 x 6-ft. cells, prisoners sleep, go to the toilet, wash themselves, and eat alone. Some cells are even equipped with four restraint points to permit immobilizing the prisoners by wrists and ankles.

DESTABILIZATION

All this proves that the unacknowledged principle is to destabilize those who are subjected to such "treatment." Listen to a prisoner who managed to get out from this hell: "Everyone knows the Supermax prisoners when they are transferred out to a lower security level because of their extreme paranoia and the enormous amount of weight lost. When I was transferred out of Supermax after three years, I found myself walking back and forth, and when brothers would ask me what was wrong I would say that old habits die hard. I walked back and forth like that to think, to exercise, and to keep warm while the cold blowers were being used to force prisoners to stay in their beds.

Other testimonials point to totally intolerable practices. In Maryland, there has been mention of a "pink room" in which some prisoners have said they were stripped naked, strapped with a three-restraint-points device, often beaten by guards and left there, shivering because of a 45° Fahrenheit temperature created by powerful fans blowing icy cold air on their backs. One prisoner even declared he had been left in such a room for three days without food, or the ability to go to the lavatory. One relative of a prisoner who " benefited" from such treatment reports: After three to four months, you start to see a real heightening of (the inmates') paranoia. It is clear that the severe isolation is an attempt to cripple their minds.

It is difficult to imagine that this 23-hour-a-day isolation, this destabilizing environment without fresh air, without natural light, without going out, without any contact with other prisoners or even guards or any human being, could be what is best to prevent violence explosions.

Even the inquiry done by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (when prison authorities knew they were coming) found the conditions imposed on prisoners were "terrible."

WHERE IS THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THAT?
With the death penalty, or with these MCUs, the United States of America gives us a quite different image than we are used to seeing on TV hour after hour! How far we are from the image of the American Dream! Where is humanity in such a system?

Dr. Pierre Duterte works in a French association taking care of refugees, victims of torture or repression in their homeland. He writes to death-row prisoners and prisoners in general population in a number of states in the U.S. He has been to the Texas death row twice.

Apr-May 97- - Archives - - HOME- - Electrons to Editor