Twenty Years After the Lucasville Uprising, Trying to Tell the Story

April 16, 2013 By 1 Comment
Guest Post by Staughton Lynd

Staughton Lynd is a lawyer, historian, educator, author, and lifelong activist for peace and justice. For four decades, he and his wife, Alice Lynd, have worked on prisoners’ rights issues, especially in Ohio where they live. The Lynds were of counsel in a landmark 2001 class action suit, Austin v. Wilkinson, which challenged the constitutionality of conditions the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. Among Staughton Lynd’s many books is Lucasville, the story of one of the longest prison uprisings in U.S. history, which took place twenty years ago this week at the maximum security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

According to the publisher’s description: “More than 400 prisoners held L block for eleven days. Nine prisoners alleged to have been informants, or ‘snitches,’ and one hostage correctional officer, were murdered. There was a negotiated surrender. Thereafter, almost wholly on the basis of testimony by prisoner informants who received deals in exchange, five spokespersons or leaders were tried and sentenced to death, and more than a dozen others received long sentences. Lucasville examines the causes of the disturbance, what happened during the eleven days, and the fairness of the trials. Particular emphasis is placed on the inter-racial character of the action, as evidenced in the slogans that were found painted on walls after the surrender: ‘Black and White Together,’ ‘Convict Unity,’ and ‘Convict Race.’ Lynd has stayed in touch with the Lucasville Five, and in this essay he champions their right to tell their own stories–a right that has been challenged by the state.

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Art by Jason Robb, one of the Lucasville Five

Art by Jason Robb.

What is it like to be behind bars and try to tell your story to the world outside?

The old poem doesn’t see a problem, because: “Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage/Minds peaceable and quiet/Take them for a heritage.”

King Lear was almost anxious to go behind prison walls with his daughter Cordelia.

“Come, let’s away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage;
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down.
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tell tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies . . . and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sets of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.”

 

However, few who go behind stone walls and spend their days behind bars attain the peace of mind to “take them for a heritage.” For that matter, few so confined are able to share that solitude with a favorite daughter.

More common, and more appropriate, is the attitude of the imprisoned 19th-century German workers who composed the song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (thoughts are free). No matter where they put us, sang the embattled workers, our thoughts will burst our chains and cause the prison walls to crumble in two.

Preserving One’s Humanity

There are two arguments for free communication by prisoners, especially by those in solitary confinement. The first and no doubt the most important is, thereby one seeks to preserve one’s humanity.

My wife Alice and I first came into contact with prisoners confined alone when the State of Ohio decided to build its first supermaximum security prison in Youngstown, near where we live. The Mayor pronounced the event a “home run.”

While the new prison was still under construction, members of the Workers’ Solidarity Club and Youngstown Peace Council organized a community forum at a small church near the entrance to the facility. Alice sought contact with persons who had experienced solitary confinement elsewhere in Ohio. One man wrote us that what was done to him was so much more harmful than anything he had committed that he had lost his ability to forgive.

At the same forum we met the sister of George Skatzes (pronounced “skates”), one of the five men sentenced to death after the 11-day uprising in April 1993 at the maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio.

Alice and I made the first visit to a prisoner in the Youngstown supermax when we visited George in June 1998. He was locked on one side of a small cubicle. We were placed on the other side, separated from George by a panel of some transparent material. Although George was securely confined in his side of the cubicle, throughout our visit a guard sat just outside it. And throughout our visit, which lasted about two hours, George Skatzes, as he sat on a concrete stool with no backrest, was handcuffed behind his back.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, death row, media, Ohio, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: What Solitary Confinement Does to the Mind

February 16, 2013 By 32 Comments

ellis_unitThe following was submitted to Solitary Watch by Michael Jewell, who was sentenced to death in Texas for capital murder in 1970 and spent three years in solitary confinement as a death row prisoner. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1973 following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which prohibited the death penalty nationwide until the decision was overturned in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Over the next 30 years, Jewell spent two two-year-long terms in Administrative Segregation. In Ad Seg, he would spend 23 hours a day in a 5×9 foot cell alone, allowed only a 20 minute shower and one hour of exercise in a cage. The first term was a result of his leading a work stoppage at Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in support of the Texas civil rights case Ruiz v. Estelle, which ultimately led federal courts to rule that the conditions in the Texas prison system violated 8th Amendment prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. His second term in solitary confinement was the result of an escape attempt at Ferguson Unit in Madison County.

Since his parole, he has found that life after prison is not easy. “Hell, with my criminal history, I couldn’t get a job as a speed bump at Kroger’s,” he writes. “If it were not for a loving wife with enough fixed income to support the both of us, no doubt I would have recidivated for something akin to throwing a brick through a bank window.” Jewell has become active in prison reform with Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), Amnesty International, the Texas Inmate Family Association, and  the ACLU of Texas. With his wife, Joan, he founded Con-Care Services, which assists Texas inmates with  problems prisoners routinely face, including visitation issues and appealing disciplinary cases. “We don’t move mountains but we kick the shit out of molehills,” –Sal Rodriguez

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

I served 40 consecutive years on a life sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections, from 1970 to 2010. My first 3 years were on death row, which is much like Administrative Segregation and Solitary Confinement (S.C). I also did time in Ad Seg on two separate occasions, staying over two years each time. During that time I was confined to a 5 x 9 foot cell for 23 hours per day. I was allowed a 20 minute shower and an hour for outside recreation in a cage made of cyclone fencing, which resembled a cage you’d see at the dog pound. The cage measured about 10 x 10 square feet.

S.C. is a form of sensory deprivation, in that your perception shrinks to the dimensions of the space and sensations of confinement. Visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and even the sense of taste are dramatically deprived and constricted. Almost immediately upon being tossed into isolation, though many people may not recognize it for what it is, you begin to suffer from a form of “sensory withdrawal.” Soon, you begin to crave the broader liberty you’ve lost, even the limited freedom of a prison’s environment: the ability to move about and interact with other human beings. Such a radical deprivation of sensory perceptions has a ‘numbing’ effect. You feel ‘stunned.’

Removed from the distractions and diversions of the broader context, the mind  is suddenly forced to confront itself. You begin to hear yourself think. When the mind is withdrawn from the experience of ‘perceiving’ and interacting with the complex activities of the broader environment, it is forced to switch to perceptions from within itself and draw upon self-consciousness, as well as the subconscious.

Sudden subjection to S.C. is a painful and dreaded experience. Because it is human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, we have a tendency to withdraw from the physical and take refuge into the psychological. Different people will have different reactions to this phenomenon. But most will indulge in various memories and forms of ‘fancy.’ Alongside memories of good times come those of sad and bad times. It is my opinion that all prisoners, deep inside, have a poor self-image. In S.C. that fact becomes acutely self-evident, or at least it did in my case. I suffered profound feelings of guilt and shame for past actions and inactions. Hot on the heels of regret come recrimination. Again, it is our nature to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. We tend to escape from over-awareness of our faults and foibles by turning to ‘fancy.’   Over time: days, weeks, months, and years, imagination can verge on, and in many cases, into, hallucination. The next stage is often psychosis and irreparable psychological damage. Research has shown an irrefutable link between S.C. and mental deterioration:

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Filed Under: death row, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Art from Tennessee’s Death Row

January 20, 2013 By 3 Comments
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Donald Middlebrooks, “Midnight” (acrylic on canvas board)

A show currently running at the Sarratt Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, features artwork created by prisoners on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. According to the description of the show:

The art seeks to convey the prison environment and to explore possibilities for living, thinking, working, and creating while on death row.  This show grows out of a weekly philosophy discussion group facilitated by Dr. Lisa Guenther of the Vanderbilt Philosophy Department, in which prisoners and volunteers meet to discuss work by Plato, Martin Luther King, Michelle Alexander, and others.  This art exhibition is the result of our collective effort to expand the discussion beyond the prison walls and beyond the language of philosophy.

Several of the pieces, reproduced below, directly address the reality of life in long-term solitary confinement, which all of the artists have experienced. For more details about the show, additional samples of artwork, and links to poems, essays, and stories by the men on Death Row, click here. For more information on Vanderbilt University’s “A Year of Rethinking Prisons,” of which this show is a part, click here. For Lisa Guenther’s writing on solitary confinement, click here.

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Derrick Quintero, “If My Journey Were a Book Title,” Parts 1 and 2 (mixed media. The doll’s head is molded from a kind of papier-mache made from toilet paper and glue.)

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Richard Odom, “Crying Dove,” inside and outside views

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Kennath Artez Henderson, “Solitary Confinement” (pencil on paper)

 

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Harold Wayne Nichols, “Prison: Outside the Box” (foam board, paint, balsa wood, mirror, collage. When you peer through the window and “pie flap” of this diorama, you see your own face in the mirror, surrounded by images of Wayne’s family and friends, which are pasted in a collage behind the door.)

Filed Under: death row, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Tennessee, torture, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Santa Was in Prison and Jesus Got the Death Penalty

December 24, 2012 By 6 Comments

star-of-bethlehem1[1]_jpg2This post has become a Christmas tradition at Solitary Watch. To all our readers, warm wishes for the holidays.

As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.

As more than 3,000 Americans sit on death row, we revere the birth of a man who was arrested, “tried,” sentenced, and put to death by the state. The Passion is the story of an execution, and the Stations of the Cross trace the path of a Dead Man Walking.

Less well known is the fact that Saint Nicholas, the early Christian saint who inspired Santa Claus, was once a prisoner, like one in every 100 Americans today. Though he was beloved for his kindness and generosity, Nicholas acquired sainthood not only by giving alms, but in part by performing a miracle that more or less amounted to a prison break.

Nicholas was the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myra (in present-day Turkey). Under the Roman emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians, Nicholas spent some five years in prison–and according to some accounts, in solitary confinement.

Under Constantine, the first Christian emperor, Nicholas fared better until the Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D. There, after having a serious theological argument with another powerful bishop, Nicholas became so enraged that he walked across the room and slapped the man.

It was illegal for one bishop to strike another. According to an account provided by the St. Nicholas Center: “The bishops stripped Nicholas of his bishop’s garments, chained him, and threw him into jail. That would keep Nicholas away from the meeting. When the Council ended a final decision would be made about his future.”

Nicholas spent the night praying for guidance, and was visited by Jesus and Mary. “When the jailer came in the morning, he found the chains loose on the floor and Nicholas dressed in bishop’s robes, quietly reading the Scriptures.” It was determined that no one could have visited or helped him during the night. Constantine ordered Nicholas freed and reinstated as the Bishop of Myra, and his feat would later be declared one of many miracles performed by the saint.

Saint Nicholas lived on to serve the poor during the devastating famine that hit his part of Turkey in 342 AD. He is reported to have anonymously visited starving families at night and distributed gold coins to help them buy scarce food.

Here in the United States two thousand years later, Christians go to church to worship an executed savior and shop to commemorate an incarcerated saint. And most Americans give little thought to their 2 million countrymen who are spending this Christmas behind bars.

Filed Under: death row, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mumia Abu-Jamal Challenges Death Row Solitary Confinement and Life Without Parole

September 16, 2012 By 5 Comments
Guest Post by Bret Grote

In a story that has received scant attention so far, former death row occupant, political prisoner, and world-renowned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal filed a legal challenge to the imposition of a sentence of life without parole. Mumia is basing his case, in part, on the idea that his thirty years in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row pursuant to an unconstitutional death-sentence is in gross excess of the quantum of state-inflicted pain and suffering permitted under the Eighth Amendment to theU.S. Constitution. He is asserting that thirty years of torture entitles him to immediate release from prison.

The case of the Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal has been up and down the state and federal appellate courts for three decades now. Last December, after the United States Supreme Court had declined to reverse a lower court’s ruling that the death sentence was unconstitutionally imposed upon Mumia, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced he would not seek the death penalty in a new penalty phase hearing. This meant that Mumia would be re-sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime he has always maintained he did not commit.

After the imposition of a sentence by a court, a criminal defendant has ten days to file a post-sentence motion challenging the lawfulness of the sentence. As reported by Linn Washington, Mumia was almost deprived of this right when Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge Pamela Dembe sentenced him on August 13 to life without parole without notifying him or his lawyers or even holding a sentencing hearing.

The last-minute motion filed on August 23 echoes a statement made by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu last December calling forMumia’s release from prison in part because “For three decades, Mumia has been held in a windowless, bathroom-sized cell and denied any physical contact with his family or with members of his community. This is in violation of the U.S.’s own Constitution.”

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, death row, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, guest posts, lawsuits/litigation, life without parole, Pennsylvania, race, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Solitary Watch’s James Ridgeway on Democracy Now!, with Anthony Graves

June 22, 2012 By 5 Comments

Perhaps the most moving testimony Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement came from death row exonoree Anthony Graves. Graves spent over 18 years on Texas’ death row for a crime he did not commit. Living in an 8 x 12 cell, he had little social contact, and described horrible, degrading conditions. “Like all death row inmates, I was kept in solitary confinement. I lived under some of  the worst conditions imaginable with the filth, the food, the total disrespect of human dignity,” he testified, “I  lived under the rules of a system that is literally driving men out of their minds.”

He goes on:

I was subjected to sleep deprivation. I would hear the clanging of metal doors throughout  the night, an officer walking the runs and shining his flash light in your eyes, or an inmate kicking and screaming because he’s losing his mind. Guys become paranoid, schizophrenic,  and can’t sleep because they are hearing voices. I was there when guys would attempt suicide by cutting themselves, trying to tie a sheet around their neck or overdosing on their medication.  Then there were the guys that actually committed suicide.

Mr. Graves continues,

Solitary confinement does one thing, it breaks a man’s will to live and he ends up deteriorating. He’s never the same person again. Then his mother comes to see her son sitting behind plexiglass, whom she hasn’t been able to touch in years, and she has to watch as her  child deteriorates right in front of her eyes. This madness has a ripple effect. It doesn’t just  affect the inmate; it also affects his family, his children, his siblings and most importantly his  mother.

His experience in isolation has continued to haunt him,

I have been free for almost two years and I still cry at night, because no one out here can  relate to what I have gone through. I battle with feelings of loneliness. I’ve tried therapy but it  didn’t work. The therapist was crying more than me. She couldn’t believe that our system was  putting men through this sort of inhumane treatment.

To read his complete testimony, click here.

To watch the full hearing from Tuesday, click here.

Mr. Graves joined Solitary Watch co-founder James Ridgeway today on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman to discuss solitary confinement and the historic hearing.

Filed Under: death row, media, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas, video Tagged With: , , , ,

Report from Senate Hearing on Solitary Confinement

June 19, 2012 By 6 Comments

Our report on today’s hearing was published by Mother Jones. It starts out this way:

The cell placed at the back of the hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building was a pretty accurate replica of a real isolation cell—the kind that exists in supermax prisons and solitary confinement units all over the country. It measured about 7 feet by 10 feet, with a tiny covered window too high to see out of and nothing inside but a bunk and a toilet. The door contained a slot through which a guard slides a food tray; for many prisoners, this represents their only human contact for the day. These are the conditions in which some 80,000 inmates live on any given day in American prisons and jails. They spend at least 23 hours a day in their cells, and some remain in solitary for years or even decades.

Solitary confinement in our prisons and jails may be the most pressing domestic human rights problem to which most Americans remain largely oblivious. But today, supporters and foes of the practice descended on Capitol Hill for a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, convened by subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin. An overflow crowd of some 200 spectators came there to witness what was—somewhat amazingly—the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement.

Durbin opened the proceedings with a surprisingly strong indictment of  solitary confinement as it is practiced in US prisons. The senator, who  had visited the notorious Tamms supermax in his home state of Illinois  and was apparently much-affected by the experience, called on his  colleagues to visit prisons in their states and witness the conditions  for themselves. “America has led the way with human rights around the  world,” Durbin said. But “what do our prisons say about our American  values?”

You can read the rest on MotherJones.com.

A full transcript of the hearing has been added to our Resources section, along with an archive of over 70 pieces of written testimony submitted before the hearing.

Opponents of solitary confinement are urging concerned citizens to follow up on this historic hearing by writing to Chairman Durbin and other members of the subcommittee to thank them for holding the hearing and urge them to further investigate and institute reforms of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. For more information, see “Petitions and Letter Writing” on our Action page.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, death row, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, federal prisons, human rights, legislation, mental illness, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , ,

Connecticut Votes to Replace the Death Penalty with Life in Solitary Confinement

April 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Late yesterday, the Connecticut Assembly passed legislation to bring an end to the state’s future use of the death penalty. The governor has promised to sign the legislation, making Connecticut the 17th state to repeal capital punishment.

This is, of course, a significant victory for death penalty opponents. But the legislation has two troubling components. The first is the fact that it will not apply to the 11 men currently on death row. The second is an amendment added last week to the legislation in the Connecticut Senate, where it faced a steeper hurdle. As reported by the Connecticut website The Day:

The House bill is nearly identical to the Senate bill passed last week. It creates new imprisonment standards for future Class A felony murderers convicted of “murder with special circumstances,” what is currently known as a capital offense.

Under the bill, those convicted must be housed separately from other inmates, subjected to twice-weekly cell searches and must change their cells every three months. They would get no more than two hours a day outside their cells and would be allowed only “non-contact” visitation privileges.

The amendment–which can be read in full here–is meant to ensure that prisoners who might previously have received the death penalty will serve life without parole in 22-hour-a-day solitary confinement, in conditions that mimic death row. In pledging to sign the bill, Governor Dannel Malloy stated: “Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience…Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.”

Even for steadfast opponents of long-term solitary confinement, it would be difficult to argue that this is not the lesser of two evils. But it is an evil nonetheless, in that it replaces death penalty with a lifetime in conditions that are widely considered to constitute torture. It also risks spreading the use of life in solitary confinement beyond what would originally have been capital cases–which is effectively what happened with life without parole.

Filed Under: death row, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

National and International Events Challenging Use of Solitary Confinement

March 1, 2012 By 2 Comments

Following is information on two important upcoming events that examine and challenge the practice of solitary confinement, both in the United States and internationally.

The first will take place in New York on Thursday evening, and is sponsored by the Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association:

“SUPERMAX” CONFINEMENT IN U.S. PRISONS:

A NECESSARY PRACTICE OR TORTURE?

March 1, 2012

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

The Association of the Bar

of the City of New York

42 West 44th Street

  SPEAKERS:

 Juan E. Mendez

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture

 Martin Horn

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

 Michael Mushlin

Pace University Law School

 Moderator: David Stoelting

Committee on International Human Rights

 Sponsored by the Committee on International Human Rights, Stephen L. Kass, Chair

This program will examine whether the widespread use of extended solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, affecting tens of thousands of federal prisoners, is a necessary administrative measure or whether, despite the absence of physical abuse, “supermax” detention amounts to torture or other human rights violations and, if so, what changes should be made in current U.S. practices.

This program is free to members of the bar and the public.  Advance registration is suggested, but not required, at http://www.abcny.org/

The second event, the first of its kind on this subject, will be held next Tuesday at the 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland:

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT AND ITS HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

11.00 – 13.00

Room XXIV, Palais des Nations

Every day tens of thousands of prisoners and detainees are held in solitary confinement worldwide. Usually in isolation for at least 22 hours a day and denied all meaningful human contact, these prisoners and detainees are frequently held for months, years, and sometimes decades. They are held in conditions that the Special Rapporteur on Torture has found can amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and even torture. In a global study of the practice published last year at the General Assembly and in his statement to the 19th session of the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur called on all countries to ban solitary confinement except in very exceptional circumstances and for minimal time periods. This briefing will examine the detrimental impacts of solitary confinement, the research that finds it to be a human rights violation, and the disproportionate impact of its use on mentally disabled persons and youth. The briefing will also offer concrete recommendations for future action to increase protections and effective safeguards from abusive and prolonged solitary confinement.

Prof. Juan Mendez, Special Rapporteur on Torture

The global practice of solitary confinement

PANELISTS:

Amy Fettig, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

The practice of solitary confinement in the United States

Dr. Sharon Shalev, University of Oxford & International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS)

European practices of solitary confinement and its use during pre-trial detention

Dorottya Karsay, Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC)

Persons with disabilities in solitary confinement

Justice Renate Winter, Appeals Chamber of the Special Court of Sierra Leone

Juveniles in solitary confinement

Andrea Huber, Penal Reform International (PRI)

Solitary confinement of death row inmates/ lifers and the lack of international

safeguards against solitary confinement

Moderator: Jamil Dakwar, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, death row, Eighth Amendment, human rights, international, international agreements, juveniles, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

“Occupy” Prison Protests in California Oppose Use of Solitary Confinement

February 21, 2012 By 4 Comments
Protestors outside the LA County Jail

Solitary confinement was very much on the agenda during yesterday’s “Occupy for Prisoners”protests at more than a dozen sites around the country. This was particularly true in California, where recent prisoner hunger strikes have called attention to conditons in the state’s all-solitary Security Housing Units (SHUs) and Administrative Segregation Units (ASUs).

The largest rally was staged at the east gate of San Quentin, north of San Francisco, which is the state’s oldest prison and the home of its death row. At least 700 people gathered there on Monday afternoon for a peaceful demonstration. As the Guardian reports:

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California’s Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights…

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandela described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.

“In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary,” Fattal added.

Bauer said “a prisoner’s greatest fear is being forgotten.” He described how hunger strikes became the hikers’ own “greatest weapon” in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that “this movement, this Occupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons.”…

Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called “three strikes, you’re out” laws.

Ironically–but perhaps predictably–prison officials responded to news of the impending protest by increasing restrictions on prisoners. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “San Quentin was placed on lockdown, meaning prisoners were kept in their cells,  in anticipation of the protest.”

While the rally was taking place at San Quentin, another group of about 100 advocates was demonstrating in front of the Los Angeles County Jail. Members of the National Religious Campaign Against  Torture (NRCAT), ACLU of Southern California, and California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement were there “to protest  long-term solitary confinement in American prisons, show support for  prisoners, and advocate for legislation that would limit the use of  solitary confinement,” according to a statement from NRCAT.

One attendee, NRCAT board member Virginia Classick, said that the event was “an opportunity to be in solidarity with family members” inside California’s prisons and jails, and to be “visible as part of the witness” to a practice that the religious coalition considers a form of torture. The group’s executive director, Rev. Richard Killmer, stated: “Long-term solitary confinement denigrates a person’s inherent dignity and hinders genuine rehabilitation.  As people of faith, we have been deeply concerned about prison conditions in California that led to the recent prisoner hunger strikes.”

Filed Under: California, death row, life without parole, sentencing, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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