CONTROL UNIT MADNESS
Across the land, there are thousands of us--poked and prodded animals from lives and environs where violence rules. Many of us are released from jails and prisons each week, filled with the rage of months and years--especially those of us who have served time in control units where hate festers day and night. And the good news? We're coming to "your" neighborhood with the kind of rage that fuels the desire to get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.
You have to understand, this is war. Hey, it wasn't our choice; we didn't declare it. It was declared on us. When prisons came to epitomize the Nazification of amerika, it became an inevitability. How? With jack-booted SWAT teams trained to hunt and kill us; battle-geared riot squads trained to zap, beat, and chain us in our cells; and control units to strip our humanity and leave a crazed hulk looking for something or someone to bite.
Prisoners are locked into human warehouses, denied any semblance of control over any aspect of their lives. They are told when to sleep, wake, eat, and shit. They are denied an opportunity for meaningful employment, education, or self-endeavor. Any attempt to exercise responsibility, whether personal or for the benefit of others, is not only discouraged, it is actively suppressed. Prisoners are patronized, treated like children, and belittled. Prisoners are separated from life, often sent to a facility located far from home. Mail is returned for want of a correct cell number, even though it was the prison who moved us. Phone calls are charged to the recipient at exorbitant rates and tape recorded. Visitors are ridiculed, searched, and degraded. Then, after months or years of such treatment, one is simply unleashed. Is it reasonable to expect that such a person is ready to join the nine-to-five, to expect that he is not enraged and ready to take your wallet, eat your child, and fuck your dog?
CONTROL UNITS SUCK. Plain and simple. A prisoner can wind up in a control unit for the most trumped-up bullshit imaginable and remain for the longest time. The prisoncrats will harp about how control units were created to house "the worst of the worst," human animals who are so dangerous they cannot be housed in general population. Yet there are many reasons some of these "worst" wind up in a control unit. A tattoo may display affiliation with some group or gang. A Jailhouse Lawyer may have beaten the system on his own or another's behalf. A prisoner may have vocalized wrathful discontent when the goon squad tackled and manhandled a peer. Some young gang-banger may have rap lyrics in his cell that advocate violence against the police. A mentally ill prisoner may be beyond the ability of the prison to treat or control. Oh, yeah, and other prisoners are there because they actually did do something, an act of violence or rebellion that really did threaten the security of the joint. But the reality is that many are there for no more reason than that they pissed off the brass. (By the way, each of these examples is taken from my own experience and/or observation.)
CONTROL UNITS SUCK ONE's SENSE OF HUMOR. The medical community tells us that smiling and laughing are healthy, that laughing is one of the ways that the brain releases endorphins, the body's own feel-good medicine. There is precious little to smile about in a control unit.
CONTROL UNITS SUCK HEALTH. Several studies show how isolation and sensory deprivation can cause the body to turn upon itself. This can be manifested in respiratory illness, weight loss, muscle atrophy, hives, shingles, skin lesions, and other ailments. Records show there is a higher rate of contact with prison medical personnel among control unit prisoners than among the general population.
CONTROL UNITS SUCK SANITY. The frustration and rage of being in a control unit have little or no outlets. Some prisoners do not possess enough inner strength or whatever it takes to survive the isolation without some outward display of the frustration and rage. They pace and talk to themselves, work themselves into a frenzy, and at times rail against their plight by screaming, smearing feces in the cell, beating against the walls, and self-mutilation. Add to these, those prisoners who are mentally ill to begin with and subject to these same behaviors. The din these two types of prisoners cause is often enough to deprive others of peace, sleep, and their own sanity.
CONTROL UNITS SUCK HUMANITY. A prisoner is never outside of a locked cubicle (cell, yard area, shower) without being handcuffed. Staff who work in control units are trained to act harshly and respond violently to any behavioral breach. These two factors often result in unprofessional conduct that ignites, fuels, and escalates the frustration, rage, and consequent behaviors of those locked into tiny cells. embittered and angry, having no outlets. Prisoners who endure control units often become ticking time bombs. When they are released into general population, they may readily engage in activities and behaviors that threaten security, even when the reason for being placed in a control unit was bullshit from the start. And if they are capable of this in the highly controlled environment of a prison, imagine the type of behaviors they might exhibit if they are released from a control unit directly into downtown amerika, your neighborhood.
But there's another sucking that control units do which is largely unnoticed by all but a few.
CONTROL UNITS SUCK MONEY. A great deal of money. People often think that prisons are filled because of increases in criminal behavior in general. But we know this to be patently false. For the past fifteen years, the US Department of Justice and the FBI have both stated that crime has steadily decreased at around five percent per year. Yet, the criminal justice machine has grown exponentially in the same period, the fastest-growing component of which is the control unit, modern dungeons that practice torture "humanely" in a pristine environment. Something stinks here.
It is a common misperception that the amerikan prison system is ruled by lofty ideals about the protection of society. This is far from the truth. As in any other enterprise, the bottom line is the same bottom line that controls any other business. Therefore, the ultimate authority is that pencil pusher from hell, the accountant.
The average cost of incarceration is around $25,000 per prisoner per year, factored as a per capita cell cost. The average cost of housing a prisoner in a control unit is roughly triple this amount. Put into perspective, these amounts will hold true only so long as every cell in a facility is occupied. For any empty cell, the per capita cost must then be amortized among all the other cells in the facility. In order to keep the per capita prisoner cost down to these amounts, all the cells in a prison or control unit must be filled. It's either that or a pencil-pushing geek somewhere in upper government will scream and threaten. THIS is why so many prisoners are in control units for no good reason.
So, what have we got here? We have control units that are creating human monsters who threaten the social orders inside and outside of prison. We have staff who are more akin to Hitler's storm troopers than civilized government employees. And at what cost? In addition to the dollar amounts to operate control units, how many victims are the result of created human monsters? How often do staff families become brutalized by husbands and fathers who "bring the office home"? How much more of this can or even should a civilized society tolerate?
But what's a poor boy or girl to do?
How about this? All of you prisoners out there who have been or are in control units, write to this publication. Talk about the control unit of your experience, its rules, the effect it has had on you and those you know. Talk about the medical problems, the deprivations, the abuses, the tools of torture (gas, tasers, four-point restraints, etc.), the ways in which it has affected or changed you, the rage. Talk about the prisoners who have left the control unit, what they did then, whether they returned to the control unit--or worse. Talk to us.
The rest of you can help, too. You can write, call, fax, and e-mail your elected representatives to demand accountability, humane treatment, and educational and vocational training programs for prisoners. I would like to say demand that control units be abolished, but that's a tough nut to crack. One reason is that there are indeed prisoners who have done something to justify that they be removed from general population. On the other hand, you can demand that control units be operated more humanely, that they be utilized strictly for those who require the added security, and not as retribution for activities that mostly piss off the brass rather than threaten security; that mentally ill prisoners get treatment, not punishment. With your time and money, support organizations, groups, publications, and projects that call attention to and suggest solutions for the problems. Talk to others in your community about the time bombs that prisons are creating and releasing.
To do nothing is to allow the abuses and dangers to exist; to allow is to accept; and to accept is to approve. Make noise, ask questions, send money, do something.
Remember, most of us will one day get out. A great many of us will get out mad. Some of us will get out dangerous. A few of us will get out to get even. How do you want us? Me, I skate the gate in just days.
I wonder . . .