Trouble Coming Every Day
ADX--The First Year
by Raymond Luc Levasseur
Society reflects itself in the microcosm of prison. From a class-based,
economically-driven, racially-motivated construct devolves life as a series
of Chinese boxes-a set of boxes decreasing in size so that each box fits
inside the next larger one. I am in the smallest box.
I am in Administrative Maximum (ADX) prison, the Federal government's latest
boondoggle to contain prisoners' rebellion and dissent. I am in a "boxcar"
cell. Picture a cage where top, bottom, sides, and back are concrete walls.
The front is sliced by steel bars. Several feet beyond the bars is another
wall. In this wall is a solid steel door. The term boxcar is derived from
this configuration: a small, enclosed box that doesn't move.
I am confined to the boxcar cell 157 hours of each 168 hour week. Eleven
hours each week I'm allowed into the barren area adjacent to this cell.
Each morning begins with the noisy rumble of the steel door opening. A guard
steps to the bars and slides food through a small slot. Feeding time. The
guard steps back and the door slaps shut with a vengeance.
The purpose of a boxcar cell is to gouge the prisoners' senses by suppressing
human sound, putting blinders about our eyes, and forbidding touch. Essential
human needs are viewed with suspicion. Within the larger context of a control
unit prison, the boxcar cell is designed to inflict physical and emotional
isolation that wears down a prisoner's will to resist. When this regimen
undermines a prisoner's health or distorts his/her personality, it's considered
the cost of doing business.
It seems endless. Each morning I look at the same gray door and hear the
same rumbles followed by long silences. It is endless. Subjected to humiliations
designed to buckle our knees, we are bent over, arms clamped behind our
backs, pawed, prodded, cell-searched, strip-searched, commanded, marched
distances of 50 feet, silenced, and hooked to a chain running through 1,500,000
prisoners. All this is enforced by a porcine abomination called the Goon
Squad whose idea of combat is to jump on handcuffed and caged prisoners
while applying boots, truncheons, and blasts of chemical agents to faces
that are pushed into unforgiving concrete.
I'm deeply cornered in their prison. My sight is diminished, but I maintain
my vision. I see their hand in the use of four-point "restraints"
to spread-eagle prisoners, something inherently abusive regardless of the
excuse. I see forced feedings, cell extractions, hassles, harassments, verbal
barrages, mindfuck games, disciplinary reports, medical neglect, and the
omnipresent threat of violence. Airborne bags of shit and gobs of spit become
the response of the caged.
The minds of some prisoners are collapsing in on them. I don't know what
internal strife lies within them, but it isn't mitigated here. One prisoner
subjected to four point restraints (chains, actually) as shock therapy,
had been chewing on his own flesh. Why is a prisoner who mutilates himself
kept in ADX? Is he supposed to improve his outlook on life while stripped,
chained and tormented by a squad of guards and prison functionaries?
Some prisoners rarely come out of their cells. Others never come out. I
don't know why. Meanwhile, psychologists with heads full of psycho-babble
roam the tiers supposedly sniffing out pockets of mental instability.
I was in Tennessee's Brushy Mountain penitentiary in 1970-71 when it was
locked down. The media (finally!) did a shocking exposé demonstrating
that up to one third of Brushy's prisoners were mentally ill and didn't
belong there. Left unanswered was whether they arrived in that condition
or whether Brushy drove them over the edge. It never will be answered because
Brushy prisoners rebelled in a conflagration that claimed lives on both
sides of the bars. Brushy Mountain is no more.
Authorities designed ADX the way corporations design schemes to poison the
environment while avoiding responsibility for doing so. They cut into sight
and sound with ubiquitous walls and boxes. We exercise in something resembling
the deep end of a cement-lined pool. Every seam and crack is sealed so that
not a solitary weed will penetrate this desolation. Smell and taste are
reduced to staleness and sameness. Every guard functions as a spy, watching
and listening with prying, voyeuristic eyes, cameras, and microphones. ("Intelligence
gathering by the staff is critical."1) When they're done with us, we
become someone else's problem.
Television deserves special mention. Unlike other prisons, every ADX cell
is equipped with a small black & white TV, compliments of the Bureau
of Prisons (BoP) pacification program. Hollywood and Madison Avenue images
are churned out through a barrage of talk shows, soaps, cartoons, and B
movies to give us some vicarious social interaction. Feeling rebellious,
lonely, angry, miserable, alienated, unskilled and uneducated? Turn on the
face of Amerika. The administration replaces a broken TV quicker than fixing
a toilet.
There are no jobs for those in boxcar cells. Like millions of others, we
are punished with unemployment. Education is restricted to inadequate videos
on the TVs. One such program featured "The Criminal Mind." I was
expecting some analysis of U.S. corporate criminals and politicians. Instead,
we got a sketch of drug abusers stealing and cavorting in a landscape of
dilapidated houses and abandoned factories. A school we had already been
through.
Religious services are relegated to TV. Recently the prison chaplain presented
his video analysis of the U.S.'s decline caused by homosexuality, AIDS,
and women's rights. Lifting this blight would "make America great again"
(like in the good old days of land theft and chattel slavery). The chaplain
said nothing about the scourge of poverty , racism, unemployment, or killer
cops and their connection to the prison industry. The chaplain said nothing
about the ADX visiting room where floor-to-ceiling partitions rub "family
values" into our wounds. "Christianity" rules. There is no
Imam for Muslim prisoners.
Every morning, I go through my own ablutions. Every morning there is a layer
of chalky dust settled about the cell. It comes through the single air vent.
It never stops. Each morning I busy myself with a wet rag mopping up all
that is not in my lungs.
The government says we don't have much common cause with humanity because
we are "the worst of the worst"-an incessant BoP incantation which
has become an effective soundbite. The government successfully monopolizes
and manipulates information pertaining to crime and punishment. But was
the government to be believed about Vietnam or the S&L rip-off? Was
Nixon to be believed on Watergate? Was Reagan to be believed about the mass
murder in Central America? Was Clinton to be believed concerning the human
ashes in Waco? If they were, maybe you'll buy a Brooklyn Bridge named ADX.
The government has a major credibility problem, yet tax dollars continue
to bleed into the sordid business of the world's largest prison system.
Who are we? We are part of the chain gang: a human chain of one and a half
million prisoners that runs from the "evil and unnatural construction"2
of impoverished communities to the evil, unnatural construction of children's
prisons, penitentiaries, control units, and death chambers. With each repressive
step, the "troublemakers," AKA "the worst of the worst"
are removed, as if we spawned conditions in Roxbury, North Philly, East
LA, and Appalachia.
We are men of no property, predominantly black and brown, and increasingly
younger, who enter one of the few doors open to us: the penitentiary. We
are too uppity, too rebellious, too subversive, and too quick to piss on
prison policies. At times we are so outrageous that we destroy government
property, and challenge the State's authority to treat us like dogs. We
are quick to defend ourselves, our rights, our religions, and our principles.
Sure, there are some happy killers and heavy bulk dealers that cashed in
on other people's suffering, but they are a small minority. Most of those
dealing in crimes against humanity remain on the street. No one in ADX left
as many bodies in his wake as Reagan did in Central America. Not even close!
Who am I? I am one subjected to the collective punishment within the common
ground of ADX. I was sent to prison for political offenses and I was placed
in a control unit prison because the State maintains my radical political
beliefs and associations warrant extreme measures. Recently I was cited
with a disciplinary infraction for allegedly making a derogatory comment
about an ADX administrator during a media interview. The constitutional
expression of my views is considered conduct unbecoming within the master/chattel
relationship.
"Worst of the worst" is where illusion clashes with reality. The
illusion-that the criminalization of poverty and the isolation and degradation
of prisoners provides an effective, humane response to social ills. The
reality-that crimes begin at the top with predatory capitalists profiting
grotesquely, while the results of their activities mire the rest of us in
economic and social rot.In a 1993 commemoration of the Marion lockdown,
I wrote that ADX (then under construction and slated to replace Marion)
"awaits those who continue to refuse and resist."3 Sure enough,
ADX became the destination for those prisoners held responsible for the
recent uprisings throughout the federal system. The best were sent to ADX
after running gauntlets of gunshots, beatings, tear gas, and the destruction
of their few personal belongings. A baptism into the ranks of resistance.
Other uprising participants were sent to Marion, still locked down since
1983. To the public, the BoP maintained that once ADX became operational,
the lockdown would end. They lied. They doubled their control unit capacity
by keeping both prisons locked down.
For years, prisoncrats raved about the deterrent effect of Marion. If it
works so well, why hasn't it put itself out of business? Marion/ADX didn't
deter the October uprisings, the most widespread and destructive in the
Federal prison system's history. They didn't deter USP Atlanta from grabbing
headlines with its high level of violence. They have not deterred prisoners
transferred to other prisons or released to the streets from picking up
new charges. Control unit prisons are not the solution, they are the problem.
Last year, a prisoner released from the isolation and brutality of California's
notorious control unit at Pelican Bay killed a cop before he got home and
unpacked his bag. Apparently someone forgot to explain the finer points
of deterrence to him.. The response of the state representative from the
district including Pelican Bay was illuminating. He introduced legislation
mandating that released Pelican Bay prisoners be transported directly to
their destination, so that when the bodies drop it will be in some other
bailiwick, and not stain the Department of Corrections. Prisoncrats, like
politicians, are amazingly adept at shielding themselves from the consequences
of their policies.
Where are the mental challenges, stimulations, education, recreation and
socialization that are the building blocks of sound minds? The answer lies
in the ADX "STEP" program-an insidious operation based on a carrot
and stick approach to compliance.
We all begin in the boxcars. Beyond this initial STEP, prisoners must pass
through three other steps for the ultimate award: transfer to a less degrading
prison.
Each step beyond the boxcars provides greater mental and physical stimulation
and less isolation. Each step provides for a bigger and tastier carrot.
Be compliant, lucky, or necessary to fill a quota, and you will receive
more privileges. Be non-compliant, unlucky, or present any resistance, and
you will be buried in ADX until you're released, or you find an innovative
way to beat them, or die. That's a lot of weight to carry.
Advancement in STEP involves pseudo debriefings by a review committee, which
includes an ADX shrink. The committee expects at least a token degree of
compliance, which can range from keeping one's mouth shut to standard shuck
and jive. Were I to tell the committee what I am now putting on paper, I
would be rejected. The bottom line is the administrations's power and agenda:
no different really than outside.
Here, they advance who they want, when they want, and for whatever reason
they want. They just as arbitrarily reject others. Or ignore their own "guidelines"
whenever it suits their political or personal purpose. They toy with prisoners'
lives and compile reams of paper to create the fiction that the federal
prison system, indeed, the country, is a better, safer place because of
their efforts.
The final step is UNICOR-the factory. Prisoners are required to demonstrate
their readiness to function in a less restrictive environment by laboring
for 26 cents an hour ("to be treated in such a way as to exploit them
to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure."4)
Not quite slave labor, but close.
STEP/UNICOR is administration's primary management and control mechanism,
which it manipulates at will. They consider it something of a propaganda
coup to have the system's designated recalcitrants filling the slots. I
say this in part because shortly after UNICOR became operational, the ADX
segregation (boxcar) unit filled with incoming prisoners from the October
uprisings. The irony of having one group of prisoners set up a primary component
of a program which serves to entrap other prisoners entering ADX has not
gone unnoticed. If we cannot counter the administration's strategy of dangling
each prisoner from his own rope, they will turn us into our own worst enemies.
Locked down prisons are no longer unique (or uncommon?). They have erupted
across the country like malignant sores on a diseased organ. The entire
prison gulag vies with gambling as the country's fastest growing industry,
with neither one producing anything of social value. Jails and prisons compete
with fast food joints for the public appetite. Jails are scattered among
churches. Prisons among cow pastures. Barges are converted into jails. Tents
into cells. Military bases are converted into prisons. Schools are being
looked at next. And it all bottoms out in control unit prisons.
Let's not kid ourselves about the prevailing attitude among the political
and corporate elite and much of the voting public: prisoners are human waste.
The more forbidding the penitentiaries, the more like garbage they define
us. As downsized laborers, outcasts, and outlaws, there is no room for us
at the table. Exterminating us on a mass scale is not presently acceptable,
so plan B is in effect: execute small numbers, corrupt some, co-opt others,
drive others mad, and imprison millions. As prisoners, the only value we
have is if they can turn a political campaign or a dollar on us.
So our bodies become commodities for someone else's gain. Past recidivist
rates documented a failed system. Today's recidivist rates read like the
Dow Jones Industrial Average: the higher the recidivism, the more various
opportunists stand to gain.
The traffickers in bodies insure a steady supply by slashing at fundamental
programs serving society's poorest families. They demand more police, more
children's prisons and more youth incarceration. More bodies, younger bodies,
with increased shelf life due to mandatory sentences. They legislate harsher
conditions that make us leaner, meaner, and infinitely more recyclable.
Crowding the waste are parasites and scavengers that descend on misery like
gulls at a landfill: prison guards, administrators, consultants, contractors,
construction companies, maintenance personnel, concessionaires, realtors,
social workers, paper shufflers, etc., ad nauseam. All of them opt for the
government blue light sale rather than find respectable employment.
ADX guards say they are just doing their job, which they will gladly do
for an annual entry level salary of $32,000, $50,000 with overtime. A nice
benefits package and a bully pulpit to boot. Some do it with benign neglect,
while others do it with perverse cruelty. In a Faustian contract with the
government, they work the cages and in return get to send their kids to
college and take Caribbean vacations.
Guards, like all enterprising citizens, can buy a piece of the action through
tax exempt bonds that underwrite state prison construction. They can do
it with the detached air of the post-modern fascist because such purchases
do not hold them liable for anything that happens within the prison. No
beating, injury, medical neglect or death will cut into their profit. In
the burgeoning private prison industry, stock purchases are available through
investment companies. Why not? General Motors invested in Nazi Germany.
There's money to be made in fraud and the government is rife with it, but
like most frauds there are a few who profit from prisons while many more
are victimized. Taxpayers subsidize most prisons, and it is the citizens
who pay through the nose. By any financial measure, statistic, or body count,
the prison system is an abysmal failure. Very high cost, very little benefit.
There's a parallel with the Vietnam War; the government takes your money
and children for war while deceiving you into acquiescence. In return we
get a divided society, more violence, and an abandonment of the War on Poverty.
And as in those years, it appears that the present "silent majority"
isn't ready for a serious policy review until the cycle of violence drives
its stake deeper into middle Amerika's heart and their pockets have been
more thoroughly picked.
We were the slaves in Pharaoh's land
you and he and I,
And we were serfs to feudal hands
Now that time's gone by.
'Prentices in cities, prisoners for debt,
Hunted vagrants, parish poor, Our life is a lie.
We move, an invisible army......
-All of us Together, Southern Labor song of 1930s
The ruling class makes the laws, and there's no shortage of sycophants to
wield them like a club. Guards and administrators operate under color of
prison law which ranges from court-granted "qualified immunity"
to stark terror and murder. The United States Constitution's 13th Amendment
allows convict labor to be harnessed like slave labor. A Supreme Court mandate
forbids prisoners from forming unions. Circulating a petition is a punishable
offense. Interwoven through the letter of the law is 500 years of white
supremacy. Twenty-five lashes. Twenty-five year sentence.
Penitentiaries turn out more violent, crime-prone, big-attitude men, women
and children who have been told in no uncertain terms that their individual
freedom and dignity are worth nothing, and that their futures are nil. The
police cannot protect communities from the volatile rage this brings about.
All the police do is step in after the fact to clean up some of the mess.
The Better Business Bureau accepts no complaints about the criminal justice
system's grand fraud and toxic emissions.
Millions more in prison will not improve life on the street. It takes an
investment in humanity that provides living wage jobs and other development
opportunities to improve the quality of our lives and communities. America
doesn't lack the resources. It lacks the will.
The Attica rebellion and massacre demonstrated that the State can and will
kill us, and that killing us is the ultimate sanction for militant resistance.
Twenty-five years of subsequent litigation put the courts' approval on that
massacre. The government always approves its own slaughter. But the capacity
to live in submission and have the lifeblood sucked out of us from one decade
into the next has its limits. When we are strong, organized, and ready,
we will transcend these limits-as only human beings can.
-Raymond Luc Levasseur, 10376/016, Box 8500, ADX, Florence, CO 81226
