The deputy warden fished around his desk until he produced a small white container filled with a collection of at least 15 handmade darts. The weapons, designed to sail, are constructed with needles, paper clips and staples mounted on Q-Tips, pencil erasers and cigarette butts--strips of cloth and shredded paper are tied to the ends.
In a class-action suit filed in a protective segregation case against DOC officials, two prisoners testified in federal court that they'd been hit with blow darts, which were fired by inmates through rolled up sheets of paper. While line officers wear stab-proof vests and goggles in the units, some prisoners complain they have no protection.
Prisoners inside SMU II are divorced from natural light except for the three hours a week spent alone in a narrow, concrete recreation pen; the light defracts in from the outside through a metal covering. Those who refuse "rec" have no indicator of the seasons. "It's difficult to hear thunder in there," says former inmate Paris Carriger, who only knew it was raining when water ran down the wall near his cell.
A 7-watt bulb burns like a votive candle around the clock, illuminating a cell stripped down to institutional furniture bolted to the floor. Those inmates who cover their light to sleep in darkness are written up and refused their next meal. Officers on 30-minute bed checks peer through holes in the extruded metal into hundreds of the same boxed vignettes: a mattress on a metal frame, a small sink, a recessed light, a stool, a metal desk, a stainless steel mirror and an open toilet at the front of the cell. Discipline may be administered through turning off water or electricity. Conditions sound as if they're designed for Hannibal Lecter.
But Donna Hamm, director of the prisoner-advocacy group Middle Ground, said that one of her clients was sent to SMU II for a rules violation after bringing a medallion that he received in a drug-treatment program to visitation with his wife, whom he hadn't seen in three years. "They saw him showing the medal...He was written up and thrown in the hole."
One former SMU II inmate submits that in placing a prisoner in what many consider a psychologically inhumane lockup, "you teach him a deadly form of hate. Now that's fine if you're going to kill him...You wouldn't pen a dog up for five years and expect it to be friendly."
Photo by Jenn Ackerman from "Trapped"
No comments:
Post a Comment