introduction
Survivors Manual: Surviving In Solitary
A manual written by and for people living in control units
The federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois went on permanent
lockdown in 1983, creating the first “control unit.” Forced isolation
and psychological abuse were used to ostracize and torture human
beings, often for racial and political reasons.
In 1994 the Bureau of Prisons opened a new maximum security
prison in Florence, Colorado. Modeled after Marion, the administrative maximum unit prison (ADEX) in Florence intensified the repressive techniques of isolation and sensory deprivation used in other
control units. Although there are currently very few prisons with formally designated “control units,” the use of isolation as a method of
abuse and control has exploded throughout the US prison system.
Aside from super-max prisons, the US uses “special housing
units” for the mentally ill; “security threat group management units”
for purported gang members; “communications management units”
for people of Islamic faith deemed as suspected terrorists; voluntary
and involuntary protective custody units; and administrative segregation punishment units to isolate and psychologically crippled inmates
that the system deems undesirable. The use of these isolation units
amounts to what we call “no touch torture” — a means of inflicting
pain and suffering without resorting to physical violence.
These conditions violate the United Nations Convention against
Torture (CAT), which forbids any punishment intentionally designed
to inflict severe physical or mental pain and suffering. The use of isolation in US prisons also violates the UN’s International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (CPR) and International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In the following pages, people who are captives in these cells write about what
goes on and how one can survive.
Dedicated to those who have contributed to this manual, to all
courageous people living in prisons, and to the memory and example
of those who have died in these isolation cages.
Compiled and edited by Bonnie Kerness
Coordinator, Prison Watch Project
American Friends Service Committee
89 Market Street, 6th Floor
Newark, NJ 07102
bkerness@afsc.org
Fifth printing
June 2012
Cover art by Todd Tarsellifor PDF doc click link: https://ffupstuff.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/survivors-manual-afsc.pdf
