Feds to Open New Supermax Prison Cells at “Gitmo North”

February 8, 2013 By 6 Comments

thomsonEven as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed to Solitary Watch that a newly acquired prison ln Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions. “Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates,” said BOP spokesperson Chris Burke in an email.

Thomson is the unused prison that the federal government recently bought from the state of Illinois. ADX, the notorious federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, holds its prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation and near-total sensory deprivation. Federal SMUs, or Special Management Units, such as those found in Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hold their prisoners in round-the-clock lockdown in two-person cells. Both are forms of long-term isolated confinement, and both have been denounced by human rights and prisoners rights groups as an inhumane and ineffective form of punishment, sometimes amounting to torture.

The revelation of the BOP’s plans to introduce new supermax cells at Thomson comes on the heels of an announcement that the Bureau has agreed to undergo a “comprehensive and independent assessment of its use of solitary confinement in the nation’s federal prisons.” The assessment, to be conducted by the National Institute of Corrections (an agency of the BOP), will reportedly be oriented toward reducing the population of “segregated” prisoners in the federal system.

In recent months, according to Monday’s announcement, the BOP has already “reduced its segregated population by nearly 25 percent. In addition, it has closed two of its Special Management Units, a form of segregated housing, due to the reduction in the segregated population.” Prior to the reported reduction, the BOP held more than 11,000 prisoners in some form of isolated confinement. Thomson is built to house 1,600.

When asked by Solitary Watch why the BOP needed to build new supermax cells despite reducing its segregated population, spokesperson Chris Burke replied: “The reduction in our special housing unit population does not lessen the need for these beds.  The Bureau of Prisons has not constructed any new ADX type units since 1994, when our population was only 85,000 (our current population is approximately 218,000).”

He continued: “‘Special Housing’ refers to units within our prisons where inmates are placed on a temporary basis as a result of misconduct or as a result of circumstances that warrant their separation from the general population.” The distinction suggests that Thomson will be used for long-term, sometimes indefinite segregation of the kind common in ADX and the SMUs–in other words, for the most extreme forms of isolated confinement.

The lucrative sale of Thomson to the feds was engineered largely by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. The prison, in the northeastern part of the state, was built by the state of Illinois but never opened. The Obama Administration initially showed interest in Thomson as a possible stateside home for Guantanamo detainees (and it was quickly dubbed “Gitmo North“).

The sale was blocked for years by Congressional Republicans, even after the president promised that it would be used only for overflow from existing federal prisons, and not for prisoners from Guantanamo. But last fall, the administration made an end run around the Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, and bought Thomson by presidential directive. “Finally, the Department of Justice this afternoon is going to present the $165 million check…for the transfer,” said Durbin on October 2, “At this point, the president had to intervene and do this directly. I hope people understand he’s doing it for his state.”

Ironically, Durbin, the Democratic Assistant Majority Leader, is also widely credited with drawing attention to the issue of solitary confinement and pressing for national reform. In June he chaired the first-ever Congressional hearing on the practice. According to Monday’s press release from his office: “In his hearing last year, Durbin emphasized the importance of reforming the way we treat the incarcerated and the use of solitary confinement in prisons and detention centers around the country. Following that hearing, Durbin has twice met with Bureau of Prisons Director Samuels to push for additional reforms and encourage a sufficiently robust assessment of the Bureau’s segregation practices.”

When asked about the fact that Thomson would include supermax cells, Durbin spokesperson Max Gleischman responded with the following statement: ”As the first member of Congress ever to hold a hearing on solitary confinement, Senator Durbin is committed to reforming America’s segregation policies and practices.  As a part of his efforts, Senator Durbin has met with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and continues to work with its director to reform BOP’s segregation policies and practices.  One important step in solitary confinement reform, and prison reform generally, is to reduce high rates of overcrowding.  The BOP’s acquisition of Thomson prison will greatly reduce this overcrowding crisis and Senator Durbin will work with BOP to ensure that all of its inmates are treated fairly and humanely.”

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No Budget Cuts for Federal Prisons

April 13, 2011 By 8 Comments

In the midst of an epic budget battle that could transform the American landscape for decades to come, the White House and Republicans in Congress appear to agree on one point: Federal prisons need more money.

With more people and a higher percentage of the population locked up than any other country, the United States would seem more than ripe for cuts in both its incarceration rate and its prison spending. A number of states have initiated such measures, and a growing chorus of critics on the right and left are decrying the devastating fiscal costs of mass incarceration. Yet the Obama Administration’s combined budget requests for FY 2011 and FY 2012 call for a full 10 percent increase over 2010 levels in funding to the federal Bureau of Prisons, to more than $6.8 billion. The increase, says the BOP, is necessary to accommodate a still-growing federal inmate population. And the latest budget deal reached with Republican leadership indicates that this particular category of discretionary spending will emerge from the budget battles comparably unscathed.

There is ample precedent for an expansion of federal prisons under a Democratic administration. According to analyses by the Sentencing Project and the Pew Center on the States, the growth rate in the BOP’s population has far outstripped that of the states (which itself has increased by than 700 percent in the past 40 years). Federal growth was most dramatic during the Clinton years, when a host of new offenses were federalized: Since 1995 alone, the number of federal inmates has more than doubled, to over 211,000. More than half of these prisoners are serving time on drug charges, and another 10 percent are held on immigration violations. In all, more than 72 percent are nonviolent offenders with no history of violence, and 34 percent are first-time nonviolent offenders.

What’s more, the federal government is now bucking a state trend toward decreasing inmate levels and closing prisons. The Pew Center found that in 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, the overall state prison population fell for the first time in 38 years. States as tough on crime as Texas, Georgia, and Florida are now pushing reforms that range from lighter sentences to early release programs—all under the leadership of Republican governors. In contrast, the BOP population continues to rise, with an increase of 11,000 projected this year, according to Attorney General Eric Holder.

No wonder, then, that federal prisons are overcrowded, and the government is still opening new ones. According to the Justice Department’s FY 2012 budget request for the Bureau of Prisons:

The biggest challenge facing the BOP is managing the ever increasing federal inmate population and providing for their care and safety, while maintaining appropriately safe and secure prisons required to ensure the safety of BOP staff, inmates, and surrounding communities, which is why the requested base resources for BOP’s operations budget (S&E) and for modernization and repair are vital.

BOP anticipates finalizing the construction of Federal Correctional Center (FCI) Aliceville, AL, a secure female facility in FY 2012. This facility will add 1,792 more beds to rated capacity. Assuming the requested FY 2012 funding is received, the BOP will begin the activation process of FCI Berlin, NH and the acquisition and renovation process of administrative maximum U.S. Penitentiary (ADX USP) Thomson, IL. If realized, FCI Berlin, NH will add 1,280 beds and ADX USP Thomson, IL will be activated as a federal institution and add up to 1,600 high security cells after modifications.

The “activation” of the new ADX (“administrative maximum”) prison in 2012 depends upon the purchase of that prison in 2011 from the state of Illinois, and its retrofitting as a federal supermax. This has been by far the most controversial facet of the BOP’s future plans, since the new ADX in Thomson was originally proposed as a new home for Guantanamo detainees.

Obama’s plans to close Gitmo and move its residents to the American mainland were stymied by Congress, but the White House decided to buy Thomson nonetheless. In a letter sent just last week, Eric Holder assured Illinois’s Democratic Senator Dick Durban and Republican Senator Mark Kirk that “consistent with current law, we will not transfer detainees from Guantanamo to Thomson, or otherwise house Guantanamo detainees at Thomson. The Thomson facility would only house federal inmates and would be operated solely by the Bureau of Prisons.”

What the White House is calling for, then, is the creation of a second federal supermax on the model of the notorious Florence ADX in Colorado—a place where solitary confinement has been raised to a torturous art, and inmates seldom, if ever, see another human being. Conditions at this “Alcatraz of the Rockies” are so harsh that the European Court of Human Rights is currently refusing to extradite terrorism suspects to the United States lest they end up in ADX. Yet this new prison has also become the centerpiece of Obama’s plans for prison expansion. The letter from Holder to Durbin and Kirk continues:

As you know, the Department wishes to acquire the Thomson facility in order to provide critically needed high security bed space for the federal Bureau of Prisons. The current population of high security federal penitentiaries is 51 % above rated capacity, and continues to grow…I appreciate your leadership in addressing the dangers of prison overcrowding, and in fostering community support for the federal government’s acquisition of this unused state facility.

The President’s FY11 budget requested $237 million for the acquisition, renovation, and operation of the Thomson facility. However, under the FY11 Continuing Resolutions, the Department lacks sufficient money to purchase or activate Thomson using currently available funds. We look forward to working with you to obtain additional appropriated funds for this important and needed project.

So far, this new prison remains a sticking point in the latest budget deal. With $6.3 billion for the BOP, it includes much of the other prison funding requested by the White House, and represents a significant increase over 2010 levels. But it is still $239 billion below the White House’s 2011 request, and doesn’t contain funding for the Thomson purchase. Durbin and Kirk have not given up on the plan, however, and will continue pressing the Justice Department to come up with funds to finance the new prison.

The BOP’s standing in the House Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal is less clear. Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s ”Path to Prosperity” calls for more than $10 billion in cuts to programs that fall under the broad spending category “Administration of Justice.” The plan is more of a manifesto than an actual budget, and it doesn’t specify where these cuts should be made—though history would suggest that civil rights prosecutions and the like would be more obvious targets for Republican cuts than prison spending. In another rare show of bipartisan unity, House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) and ranking member John Conyers (D-MI) have already joined in writing to the House Budget Committee, warning them against making cuts to federal law enforcement in 2012.

What belies all this agreement on increasing federal prison spending is a bipartisan trend, growing over the past several months, that calls for precisely the opposite. Fall 2010 saw the birth of the group Right on Crime, spearheaded by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Ed Meese, making the “conservative case for criminal justice reform”—including a reduction in prison populations. Norquist also joined the NAACP last week to endorse its Smart and Safe Campaign for criminal justice reform, and publicize its new report Misplaced Priorities: Under Educate, Over Incarcerate. Another recently formed coalition, calling itself Smart on Crime, brings together the Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and Prison Fellowship with the Innocence Project and the ACLU. Smart on Crime advocates for criminal justice reforms that are “fair, accurate, effective, proven, and cost efficient,” and makes a particularly sharp critique of the “overcriminalization of conduct” and “overfederalization of criminal law.”

What think tanks and pundits do, of course, is quite a different matter from what elected officials are willing to undertake. Few politicians will risk being declared “soft on crime” in the next election. And in the end, the generous funding for prisons makes a grim kind of sense, in the context of a budget that slashes education, health care, and social services: A country that can’t spare the funds to properly educate its children or care for its sick, poor, or unemployed is destined to remain an incarceration nation.

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Obama and Bureau of Prisons Lowball Supermax Costs

October 3, 2010 By 3 Comments

In response to questions at his September 10 press conference, President Obama spoke about his failure to fulfill his clear campaign promise to close the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He blamed fear and “political rhetoric” for blocking his plan to move Gitmo detainees to prisons in on U.S. soil. In the course of discussing Guantánamo, Obama said:

And by the way, just from a purely fiscal point of view, the costs of holding folks in Guantánamo is massively higher than it is holding them in a supermax maximum security prison here in the United States.

There’s no question that the president’s statement was true. The trouble started when the federal Bureau of Prisons was asked to provide information on the cost of holding a prisoner in a U.S. supermax. The Miami Herald‘s Carol Rosenberg followed up on the numbers. In an article following the press conference, she wrote:

Pentagon reports the annual cost of running the prison camps, staffed by a variety of U.S. military troops, at $116 million. With a current population of 176 war-on-terror detainees, that’s more than $650,000 each.

By contrast, it costs nearly $5,575 a year to keep a prisoner in federal detention, said Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley on Friday. A Supermax prisoner’s cost might be a bit higher, she said, because of additional security.

That just didn’t sound right to us–neither the $5,575 figure, nor the fact that supermax costs would only be just “a bit higher.” And sure enough, a few days later Rosenberg reported: 

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman on Monday revised upwards the cost of housing a captive in federal detention, days after the bureau said it spends a tiny fraction of what the military spends at Guantánamo Bay.

The new figure — $27,251 a year per federal prisoner compared to $650,000 per captive at the U.S. base in Cuba — is still a tiny fraction. “Obviously we’re far less expensive than what the military is doing,” said Bureau of Prisons spokesman Edmond Ross.

The per prisoner cost has exceeded $25,000 for several years now in the federal system, he said. It was unclear how a colleague arrived Friday at $5,750 a year, he said.

Now, $27,351 may still be a “tiny fraction” of what’s spent at Gitmo–but multiplied by more than 200,000 federal prisoners, it’s still a lot of money. More importantly, it’s still not an accurate figure for the cost of keeping a supermax prisoner–something the BOP spokesperson neglected to mention when he provided the “corrected” number.

If the Bureau of Prisons wished to provide an accurate projection of costs, it could have provided figures for ADX Florence, the notorious federal supermax in Colorado, or for the “Communications Management Units” (CMUs) at Marion or Terre Haute federal penitentiaries– the units that most resemble any proposed future home for Guantánamo detainees. Yet it chose instead to offer the media misleading lowball figures.

We do know that the average annual cost for a supermax prisoner, according to one study by the Urban Institute, is $75,000 a year, as opposed to $25,000 for a prisoner in the general population. At the Illinois State Tamms supermax, it’s about $92,000 a year.

And this does not take into account the cost of building supermax prisons in the first place. The price tage for ADX Florence, completed in 1994, was $60 million, and it houses only about 400 prisoners. Obama’s proposed future home for Gitmo detainees, an unused state prison in Thomson, Illinois, would cost $237 million to buy, retrofit, and activate.

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Two for One: Guantanamo Won’t Close, But Illinois Supermax Will Open

July 6, 2010 By 4 Comments

Gitmo North: Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois

Obama’s oath to close the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay within a year of his election was more than a campaign promise or a post-inauguration executive order; for many people, it signified a return to some semblance of the rule of law after eight years of a rogue administration. But the 44th president had barely taken office when the opposition–and the backpedaling–began.  In January 2010, the White House announced that it would miss its original deadline for closing Guantanamo. At the same time, however, the administration presented a plan to buy and refit a state prison in rural Illinois, which it promised would serve as the future home for remaining residents of Gitmo.

Six months later, as the New York Times recently reported, “impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them.” Charlie Savage writes that ”political opposition” and”competing priorities,” make it ”unlikely that  President Obama will fulfill his promise to close [Guantanamo] before his term ends in 2013.” The article continues with quotes from members of Congress: 

“There is a lot of inertia” against closing the prison, “and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He added that “the odds are that it will still be open” by the next presidential inauguration.

And Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who also supports shutting it, said the effort is “on life support and it’s unlikely to close any time soon.” He attributed the collapse to some fellow Republicans’ “demagoguery” and the administration’s poor planning and decision-making “paralysis.”

According to Savage, “some senior officials” in the adminstration say that the White House “has done its part,” and “blame Congress for failing to execute” the plan to move detainees to Illinois.  

One part of that plan, however, is moving forward apace. A few days before the New York Times article appeared, the Associated Press reported that ”plans to convert a virtually unused state prison in Illinois into a federal supermax facility are on track…even though its potential as a site for Guantanamo Bay detainees may be foundering.”

The Justice Department informed Illinois lawmakers that “the Obama administration is committed to acquiring the facility in Thomson, Ill., this year,” and that once purchased, “the entire space will be made available to the Bureau of Prisons and converted into a high-security facility with room for 1,600 inmates.” The DOJ’s reassuring message, according to the AP, was meant  ”to separate the thornier issue of where Guantanamo Bay detainees will be held from the process of turning the rest of Thomson into a supermax federal prison.”

As we’ve written before, it’s possible Obama still believes that “if you build it, they will come“–meaning that if he buys and renovates the prison in Thomson, Illinois, at least some portion of the remaining Guantanamo detainees will eventually be housed there. It’s also possible that a few years from now, said detainees will still be at Gitmo, and we’ll have another 1,600 cells to fill in an exorbitantly expensive, state-of-the-art federal supermax.  

The recent history of the U.S. prison system has proven beyond a doubt that when we build it they do come: Someone will be shipped in to fill those new cells at Thomson, and if they don’t arrive from Gitmo they’ll come from somewhere else. Some prisoners will probably be ”upgraded” to supermax from other federal facilities, while others might come from overcrowded prisons to enjoy the comfort of 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement.  They’ll leave behind other beds to fill.

If statistics are any indication, the federal criminal justice system will be only too happy to oblige:  Earlier this year, a survey by the Pew Center on the States found the overall state prison population declining in 2009, for the first time in 40 years. The same survey, however, ”found that the federal prison population continued to grow, rising by 6,838 prisoners, or 3.4 percent, to an all-time high of 208,118.”

Those familiar with conditions in U.S. supermax prisons know that they are in many ways considerably worse than those experienced by prisoners at Guantanamo today, now that some of the most grievous abuses of the post 9/11 years have ceased. And in recent months, the Obama administration has indicated that even if they are moved to Thomson, some Guantanamo detainees could be held indefinitely without trial, or be subject to military tribunals. This has prompted some critics to label Thomson “Gitmo North,”  and to question whether there is any advantage to bringing the detainees onto American soil under these conditions.

One thing is clear: The likely outcome of current plans, which would leave Gitmo still open for business along with a new supermax in rural Illinois, is the worst of both worlds.

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Obama’s Plan Is the “Wrong Way to Close Guantanamo,” Groups Warn

April 10, 2010 By 7 Comments

Thomson Correctional Center, Illinois: Future Home of Gitmo North?

Part of Obama’s plan for fulfilling his campaign promise to close Guantanamo calls for moving a piece of the notorious detention camp, virtually intact, onto mainland American soil. In a letter sent to members of Congress this week, a coalition including the ACLU,  Amnesty International USA, and the Center for Constitutional Rights warned against this portion of the White House plan for Gitmo detainees, which the groups believe “could result in institutionalizing and perpetuating policies that should instead end.”

Since December, the president has been talking about moving a group of some 50 to 100 Guantanamo detainees to a special unit at Thomson Correctional Center in rural Illinois, after the near-empty state prison is purchased and renovated by the federal government. The unit would resemble a federal supermax, but would be run by the Defense Department.

Voices on the right, including many in Congress, have warned against bringing these “terrorists” (none of whom have been tried or convicted) stateside.  But some progressives have a different concern: As Glenn Greenwald wrote when Obama’s plans were first announced, it appears that detainees sent to Thomson could “have exactly the same rights–or lack thereof–as they have now at Guantanamo.” The Illinois prison could simply become Gitmo North, another “legal black hole” where the U.S. Constitution does not apply.

Resistance to the Thomson scheme has been building among civil libertarians and human rights groups for some time, as Spencer Ackerman described in the Washington Independent last month. These are some of the same groups that strongly supported Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo. But their skepticism has grown as details of the president’s plans emerged. This week’s letter represents the first public statement by a broad coalition of those groups, and it spells out their objections in detail. 

We urge you to oppose legislation authorizing, or appropriating federal funds for, the purchase of the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois, unless Congress, at the same time, also enacts a permanent, statutory ban on using the Thomson prison for indefinitely detaining persons without charge or trial, or for holding persons during military commission trials or for serving sentences imposed by military commissions.

All of our organizations strongly support the responsible closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and we would support using the Thomson facility for holding any detainees now at Guantanamo who may be charged, tried, or sentenced in federal criminal court. However, we strongly oppose transporting the worst of Guantanamo policies–indefinite detention without charge or trial and military commissions–to a prison within the United States itself. If used for one or both of these purposes, the purchase of the Thomson prison could result in institutionalizing and perpetuating policies that should instead end.

“There is a right way and a wrong way to close Guantanamo,” the letter states. It praises the Obama administration for taking some of the “right” steps–including clearing certain detainees for release, and committing others to federal civilian trials. “However,” it continues, “there are two developments over the past year that constitute closing Guantanamo the wrong way.”

First, the government has reinstituted the discredited military commissions. The military commissions have now gone through eight years, two statutes, four sets of rules, but have only resulted in three convictions, with two of those convicted detainees now released. By contrast, more than 400 defendants have been convicted of terrorism-related offense in federal criminal courts. The military commissions still do not have any rules based on the new statute, continue to have fundamental problems that could result in their proceedings being held illegal under the Constitution and international law, and deservedly lack credibility both at home and abroad.

Second, the government continues to claim authority to indefinitely detain without charge or trial some of the Guantanamo detainees. Even if there is legal authority to continue to indefinitely detain these men, which many of our groups dispute, the government should make the policy decision that the interests of the United States are better served by either charging a detainee in federal criminal court or repatriating or resettling the detainee.

Based on the government’s own statements, it appears that the Defense Department-run portion of the Thomson prison would house only those Guantanamo detainees being held pursuant to Guantanamo policies that should end—namely, military commissions and indefinite detention without charge or trial.

 In fact, the groups argue, having a facility of this kind operate on American soil would in some ways be worse than allowing it to remain at Gitmo (or Bagram, or elsewhere overseas). While providing an illusion of progress, the move would only reinforce and legitimize unconstitutional practices.

Bringing the practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial to any location within the United States will further harm the rule of law and adherence to the Constitution…Moreover, Thomson could eventually become the place to send other persons held indefinitely without charge or trial—with the prospect of detainees being transferred there from Bagram, Afghanistan or new captures brought from other locations around the globe…Once the indefinite detention policy is institutionalized at Thomson, it will be difficult to hold the line at former Guantanamo detainees.

If the government does not intend to provide these Gitmo detainees with due process through civilian trials, the only other reason for bringing them stateside would be to improve their conditions of confinement. But the idea that this would happen is based upon two interrelated myths: first, the fantasy that American prison conditions are relatively humane; and second, the notion that Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were Bush-era aberrations. 

In fact, U.S. prison reformers know that thousands of American prisoners live in conditions of isolation and deprivation that meet the criteria for torture. Now that the waterboarding at Gitmo has stopped, conditions there are likely no worse (and may in some ways be better) than in the average supermax prison. 

In addition, former Guantanamo detainees would no doubt experience the most extreme form of supermax solitary confinement. They would be subject to near-complete isolation, with additional restrictions placed on their contact with other human beings–much like the detainees currently living under “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMs) or the prisoners in the “Communications Management Units” (CMUs) at two federal prisons. Already, these units have been dubbed “Little Gitmos.” 

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, Eighth Amendment, federal prisons, human rights, Illinois, legislation, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

If You Build It, They Will Come: Obama Commits to Gitmo North

March 20, 2010 By 6 Comments

The federal government confirmed on Thursday that it plans to buy Thomson Correction Center. Obama has long envisioned the state prison in rural Illinois as a new home for the detainees from the so-called war on terror who are currently housed at Guantanamo Bay. But it is quite possible that no Gitmo residents will ever live there. 

According to Lynn Sweet’s blog at the Chicago Sun-Times:

The Obama administration’s Justice Department ”would be seeking to purchase the facility in Thomson even if detainees were not being considered for transfer there,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch wrote in a letter to Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.). However, Welch said the facility is being acquired “to fulfill both of the goals of reducing federal prison overcrowding and transferring a limited number of detainees out of Guantanamo.”

Thomson is in Manzullo’s district and the lawmaker has been trying to convince the Obama White House to buy Thomson to house just high security federal prisoners–not Guantanamo detainees.

The Justice Department request for $237 million to buy, activate and operate Thomson is in the fiscal 2011 budget now pending before Congress.

This would seem like a strange turn of events, since the administration’s whole reason for buying Thomson was as part of a scheme to shut down Guantanamo. But the White House has met with stiff resistance ever since December, when it announced plans to move about 100 terror suspects from Gitmo to the near-empty Illinois prison, once it had been purchased and renovated by the federal government. 

Before those plans could be carried out, however, Congress would need to change existing laws that limit the movement of Gitmo detainees, and it would need to approve the federal funds required to buy and upgrade Thomson. Instead, Congressional Republicans, along with some Democrats, quickly pronounced the president’s scheme a grave threat to national security and public safety, and declared that the captives at Guantanamo should remain right where they are.

Earlier this month, there was talk of a deal being brokered by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to round up support for closing Gitmo–if the White House would drop plans to try accused 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts and put them before military commissions instead.  ”I don’t believe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed robbed a liquor store,” Graham said on ”Face the Nation.” “If he’s not an enemy combatant, who would be?”

But last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) made it clear that he wasn’t playing ball. “I think we have a world-class facility at Guantanamo,” Boehner said on CNN. “There’s no reason to bring these terrorists into the United States. No reason to increase the threat level here–because they’re here, their friends may want to come.” He also declared: “They keep saying they are going to [close it]. They want $500 million from this Congress to rehabilitate this prison in northwest Illinois…I wouldn’t vote for this if you put a gun to my head.”

Against this backstory, what are we to make of the latest move by the White House–it’s pledge to buy Thomson regardless of whether Congress allows terrorism suspects to be transferred there? Does this represent Obama’s complete capitulation to his opponents in Congress and beyond–or a shrewd end run around them?

It’s clear that the residents of Thomson, Illinois–a depressed rural town on the banks of the Mississippi whose main claim to fame is that it’s the “watermelon capital of the world“–are hungry for the economic boost they believe a booming federal prison would provide. Their Republican member of Congress is pushing for it as well. But if they’re going to have a maximum security prison in their own backyards, they’d apparently prefer it be filled with good, old-fashioned American criminals, rather than foreign terrorists (convicted or not).  

Is the president hoping that he can exploit this desperation to quietly carry out the first phase of his plan to close Guantanamo? Does he wager that if he can just get his hands on Thomson, he’ll eventually be able to slip his hundred Gitmo detainees into the 1,600-bed complex? Does he believe that if he builds it, sooner or later they will come?

A more meaningful question might be whether it even matters, at this point, if the detainees remain at Guantanamo or are brought to the proposed supermax unit at Thomson, which some critics have already dubbed Gitmo North.

If any of Guantanamo’s terrorism suspects are tried in civilian courts–a prospect that seems less likely by the day–they would not be sent to Thomson, but directly to the jurisdictions where their trials take place. Instead, the prospective tenants of the Illinois supermax would include two types of current Guantanamo detainees: One group, Obama acknowledged last May, will likely be held in indefinite detention without trial, because they “cannot be prosecuted for past crimes,” he said, but “nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.” (In at least some of these cases, the suspects cannot be prosecuted because they were tortured during the Bush years.) Another group of detainees, the president has said, will continue to be tried under the system of military commissions established at Gitmo in 2006–albeit with some added legal protections. Facilities would be built at Thomson expressly for this purpose.

When the Thomson scheme was first announced, Glenn Greenwald wrote that the detainees sent there would “have exactly the same rights–or lack thereof–as they have now at Guantanamo.”

The sentiment behind Obama’s campaign vow to close Guantanamo was the right one, but the reality of how it’s being done negates that almost entirely.  What is the point of closing Guantanamo only to replicate its essential framework–imprisonment without trials–a few thousand miles to the North?  It’s true that the revised military commissions contain some important improvements over the ones used under Bush…But the fundamental elements of Guantanamo are being kept firmly in place.  What made Guantanamo so offensive and repugnant was not the fact that it was located in Cuba rather than Illinois.  The primary complaint was that it was a legal black hole because the detainees were kept in cages indefinitely with no charges or trials. That is being retained with the move to the North.

There is, I suppose, symbolic value in closing Guantanamo.  But what made Guantanamo such an affront to basic liberty and the rule of law was far more than symbolism, and it certainly had nothing to do with its locale. 

There’s some question, as well, whether conditions at Thomson would be any better than those at Guantanamo, now that some of the most abject torture practices of the Bush years have ceased. Senator Orrin Hatch was ridiculed by some progressives last month for suggesting that the detainees might be  better off at Gitmo: ”It’s pretty nice compared to Illinois–the place in Illinois where they want to put them,” Hatch said at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. ”It’d be nice and cold in the winter time and… all I can say is that I imagine there’ll be a hue and a cry that we’re not fair by bringing them here.” But it’s possible that Hatch could be right.

Illinois Senator Dick Durban has already promised that the supermax portion of Thomson “would be the most secure prison in the United States of America”; Governor Pat Quinn concurs. It’s a safe bet that former Gitmo residents there would live in an extreme version of the Communications Management Units already in place at other federal prisons, blocked from virtually all contact  with the outside world as well as with other prisoners, and plunged into permanent isolation. It would likely surpass even the notorious ADX federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, which bars some of its inamtes from all human contact even with guards. A former warden called ADX “a clean version of hell.” (The federal Bureau of Prisons, by the way, insists that “solitary confinement” does not exist within its system; inmates who live in isolated lockdown are in ”Special Housing Units.”)  

This is the final grim reality to be faced in contemplating Obama’s plan to close Gitmo, should it ever come to pass: Residence in a stateside prison is no guarantee of immunity from torture. While a federal supermax in Illinois will never be the site of waterboarding, torture of various kinds take place routinely at prisons across the United States (including the terrible Tamms supermax, not far from Thomson in Illinois). For some reason, it has never inspired the kind of progressive resistance that rose up in response to Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, but it goes on nonetheless. A 2004 report from Human Rights Watch stated:

In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.

Both men and women prisoners—but especially women—face staff rape and sexual abuse. Correctional officers will bribe, coerce, or violently force inmates into granting sexual favors, including oral sex or intercourse. Prison staff have laughed at and ignored the pleas of male prisoners seeking protection from rape by other inmates….

Even detained children and youth are not immune from staff brutality and abuse. They too are kicked, beaten, punched, choked, and sexually preyed upon by adult staff.

In addition, some 25,000 supermax prisoners, along with 50,000 to 80,000 others, live in extended solitary confinement within the borders of the United States. This kind of isolation has been deemed torture by a number of international conventions, and by everyone who has ever experienced it. 

None of this will change because a hundred prisoners are taken on a 2,000 mile journey north, from the shores of Guantanamo Bay to the banks of the Mississippi.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, federal prisons, human rights, Illinois, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,