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January 13, 2009
Guantanamo and U.S. Control Units
Statement by Lois Ahrens on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights given at commemorative event in Northampton, MA Dec 12 2008
Yesterday leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report stating that Donald Rumsfeld bore major responsibility for torture at Guantanamo and Abu Gharib.
Speaking today, I must call your attention to this same kind of torture that goes on every day in U.S. prisons. President Obama can take the lead in ending this inhumane practice in Federal Prisons and call for the Justice Department to investigate the inhumane practices which go on in every state.
Solitary confinement of prisoners exists under a range of names; isolation, control units, supermax prisons, the hole, SHUs, administrative segregation or maximum security. Prisoners are placed in these units by prison authorities not as a result of a specific crime. They are used for punishment, for behavior modification, as retribution for political activism. Once in them, it is very hard to get out.
Solitary confinement includes
• confinement behind a solid steel door for 23 hours a day
• limited contact with other human beings
• infrequent phone calls and rare non-contact family visits
• grossly inadequate medical and mental health treatment
• restricted reading material and personal property
• physical torture such as hog-tying, restraint chairs, and forced cell extraction
• mental torture such as sensory deprivation, permanent bright lighting, extreme temperatures, and forced insomnia
Practices used in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were developed here and used every day.
In 1985 there were a handful of control units across the county. Today more than 30,000 people in them. Prisoners are often confined for months or even years, with some spending more than 25 years in segregated units.
Increasingly isolation units house the mentally ill who struggle to conform to prison rules. An independent investigation from 2006 reported that as many as 64% of prisoners in SHUs were mentally ill. Contrary to media driven perception that control units house "the worst of the worst', it is often the most vulnerable prisoners, not the most violent who end up in extended isolation.
Article 5 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” On this day of Commemoration of the Declaration of Human Rights, I ask each of us to take a stand against daily torture of thousands of men and women here in the U.S. and demand an end to prison isolation and segregation units.
Posted by lois at January 13, 2009 09:03 AM