By Anthony Madrid
1. If Abu Ghraib-style photographs were to emerge from within a prison in the United States, it would provoke a tidal wave of disgust and condemnation. People would not say, "Well, what do you want? Prison's not supposed to be fun . . ." Instead, they would call for an immediate remedy for the situation.
This is partly because the deliberate inflicting of unbearable pain and intense humiliation is "obviously wrong" to virtually everyone. People always know at least something about physical pain and humiliation at first hand. They know what it's like; they know what it means. And so, it's pretty much impossible for a normal person to explain it away or to justify it. Torture can hardly be interpreted as anything other than cruel.
Unfortunately, human cruelty is a cunning thing. It knows how to "find a way." When a person commits a crime and is taken into state custody, unchecked cruelty finds a terrible opportunity. A person who has done wrong is now "in our power." He or she is kept in a more-or-less secret place; his or her rights are already justifiably docked. Now, the prison administration cannot, in good faith, attack that prisoner's body, but there is something left to attack, after all . . .
2. At Tamms Supermax Correctional Facility, in downstate Illinois, the attack is upon the prisoners' minds. Each and every prisoner—some 270 in all—is kept in permanent solitary confinement. There are no phone calls, no educational programs, no contact visits. There is no group interaction. The walls are blank; the air is cold and still; there is absolutely nothing to do.
Because of the prison's situation in remote and rural downstate Illinois, family visits are very rare. The inevitable toll on family relations inherent to any kind of imprisonment is, at Tamms, taken to the highest level. Many men spend years with no mail and no visits. And the predictable results of this do not fail to appear.
Prisoners experience despair, hallucinations, paranoia, and (for many) an irresistible desire to die. Many go into the prison sane and leave it deranged. And for the many who are unlucky enough to enter Tamms already struggling with a mental disorder, the outlook is not good.
3. Mary L. Johnson is the mother of a man who has been at Tamms almost from the day the prison opened in 1998. He has endured ten solid years of sensory deprivation. Like most people connected with Tamms prisoners, Mary L. Johnson is not a wealthy person. Three Hundred Fifty miles separate her and her son, and she has no car. Also, her health is not perfect. So a great deal of careful planning and money-saving is required for every visit. Paperwork has to be filed; a car has to be rented; and there is no way to avoid at least one night in a hotel in Carbondale.
Mary feels very keenly the anguish of having a son at Tamms. She says: "There is no way to move on from it, knowing your son is in there being tortured, psychologically tortured, and to not be able to touch him, or speak to him except through that glass. I haven't touched my son in ten years."
Mary continues: "I was raised to look up to people in authority, to think they were looking out for you. But what I see is people who should know better, abusing that authority, inflicting pain—emotional, spiritual pain—on my son, and on me, too. It's like they've forgotten he's a human being, and that he has to grow."
4. Most people agree that prisoners need more, not less, human contact if they are ever to be rehabilitated. Looked at in this way, it's easy to see how Tamms Supermax is bound to contribute to, rather than subtract from, the problem of crime in this country today . . .
Public hearings on Tamms' effects on prisoners and on prisoners' families will be held April 28th in Chicago. Details on this event and many others related to Tamms can be found at http://www.TammsYearTen.org.
