Johnnie Walton condemns Tamms solitary isolation at the Unlympics Emotional Games, February 14
The Chicago Tribune this morning presents an in-depth look at Tamms Supermax, the downstate prison built 11 years ago, designed originally to house prisoners for no longer than one year under constant solitary confinement. (Or, “overdesigned,” as the Tribune calls it: the photo gallery is worth spending some time with, too.) According to Mustafa Afrika and Johnnie Walton, who I met during the Unlympics Emotional Games just a few weeks ago, both formerly housed at Tamms (both on charges of questionable severity), the long-term effects of this isolation are constant, and ongoing.
Over one-third of the prisoners transferred to the facility when it was constructed have been held with no human contact or communal activity since 1998. Indefinite solitary isolation is condemned as torture by several human rights organizations.
The Tribune overlooks a few key problems with the management of Tamms, submitted by watchdog organization Tamms Year Ten:
Contrary to the popular conception of a supermax, no one is sentenced to Tamms for the severity of their crime. Tamms was designed as a one-year behavior modification program for those who committed violence in a regular Illinois prison.
Tamms does not house the most dangerous prisoners. Over one-half of the people are there for “administrative detention” which means they are not there for specific acts of violence. The IDOC concedes that men are sent there for their “potential” to do harm. People are there who did not have disciplinary problems and were even earning good time in regular prisons.The IDOC claim that “people earn their way into Tamms” is not substantiated. The IDOC refuses to tell prisoners, or their attorneys, why they are in Tamms, or to give them fair hearings. Hence, there is no way to know if they have earned their way into Tamms. For those who are not EVEN ACCUSED of an act of violence, how can your earn your way into Tamms based on something you might do in the future?The story fails to mention that there are are no clear procedures for who is sent to Tamms or how they get out. This is the basis for House Bill 2633. The non-partisan John Howard Association of Illinois recently issued a report about Tamms that, among other things, condemned the lack of transparency and due process in the transfer of men to Tamms, the length of stays, and the failure to establish or follow clear criteria to move prisoners out.The IDOC claims they have been very selective about who they choose to put at Tamms. Unfortunately this might be true. Some current and former prisoners believe they were sent in retaliation for filing grievances. A pending lawsuit, litigated by Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center, alleges violations of due process and illegal retaliation. If there is a good reason for each placement, why does the IDOC oppose providing hearings, or creating clear criteria for transfers?Tamms does not work as a “management tool.” There is no empirical evidence that supermax prisons increase guard or inmate safety.
From “Guantánamo Bay In Illinois? Downstate Supermax Holds 250 in Long-Term Isolation” by Stephen F. Eisenman and Laurie Jo Reynolds in the Capital City Courier:
On his second day in office, President Barack Obama issued executive orders to shut down secret or “black site” CIA detention centers abroad, close Guantánamo Bay, and end the torture of prisoners held in custody by the U.S. “We don’t torture,” Obama said, and he meant it. Within a year, prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay – which Amnesty International called “the Gulag of our times” – will be freed, sent home, or tried in civilian or military courts. . . . The fact is, there are dozens, and perhaps as many as a hundred, Guantánamo Bays right here in the United States: prisons, or units within prisons, holding people in long or indefinite terms of solitary confinement in conditions of reduced sensory stimulation. Beginning in 1983 with the Marion Federal Penitentiary in Illinois, certain correctional facilities were operated as “control units,” segregating selected prisoners from the general population and denying them the contact allowed at regular, maximum security institutions: phone calls, communal meals, group recreation, religious service, and a modicum of educational programs. After Marion, they were built as freestanding facilities, often called supermax prisons. There are now more than 50 such institutions in the United States, including the one at Florence, and the Special Control Units at the Miami Correctional Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana and the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute. The latter two prisons, like the infamous Camps 5 and 6 at Gitmo, were designed by the architectural firm of Schenkel and Schultz of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Illinois has its own supermax prison, opened in 1998, and located in the southernmost tip of the state, in the town of Tamms. It was designed by LZT Associates, Inc. of Peoria, Illinois; supermax architecture is apparently a Midwestern industry.
Readers are urged to download the rest of the Capital City Courier story and request corrections of the Trib.
Honestly, when Johnnie Walton described how some of his Tamms prisoners reacted to long-term solitary confinement—with sudden violent outbursts that could only be stopped by equally violent guard intervention, all started just for the chance at human contact—it seemed clear the project of Tamms was not the ”success” the Trib quotes prison officials describing it.
Tags: solitary isolation, supermax, Tamms
