In May of this year, a nationally coordinated mobilization
against control units took place. The call was issued by the Puerto
Rican and New Afrikan liberation movements, the Committee to End
the Marion Lockdown (CEML), and other solidarity organizations on
the twentieth anniversary of the Attica Rebellion. The first
control unit was also built twenty years ago, as part of a wave of
repression carried out by the government against the upsurge of
revolutionary and progressive movements in that period. The
mobilization condemned the Marionization of prisons and the
proliferation of control units. In the preceding months a process
of education by the sponsors focused on:
- The use of control units as tools of political repression. A past
warden of Marion has stated: "The purpose of the Marion control
unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and
in society at large.
- The fact that the national oppression and white supremacy of U.S.
society determines who is incarcerated in these units.
- The brutal physical and psychological conditions in the control
units.
There was no mention of women and women's control units in the
mobilization propaganda. The history of the use of control units
against women, including the current federal incarnation, the
Shawnee Unit at Marianna, Florida, was ignored. A false picture was
projected - that women are exempt from placement in control units;
that Shawnee is not a control unit because it does not use the same
physical brutality as men's control units.
This view undermines the struggle against control units.
Important milestones are overlooked; the mobilization against the
Cardinal Unit at Alderson, West Virginia, and the national campaign
to shut down the High Security Unit (HSU) at Lexington, Kentucky.
These efforts were significant because of the explicit political
mission of these units: targeting women political prisoners and
Prisoners of War from the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and
white anti-imperialist movement.
Sidelining women as equal participants in the struggle to
close all control units has deeper implications. It diminishes the
importance of women's resistance. It ignores the brutality of
psychological methods of control and behaviour modification. It
plays into the government mythology that women are more submissive
and open to manipulation. And because a number of political
prisoners and Prisoners of War have spent the majority of our
sentences in control units, this omission further distances us from
our movements, indirectly playing into the principle objective of
the government: isolation. By isolation we don't mean the physical
barriers created by any incarceration, but rather the lack of an
organic relationship to the very movements and struggles that we
were part of - the activities for which we are imprisoned. By
isolation we mean the turning of political prisoners into symbols
to be remembered as historical leftovers of a more militant past,
while ignoring them as continuing participants in today's
progressive movements.
The government relies on secrecy and silence to accomplish its
goals. This article was written to break with the secrecy and
silence of Shawnee Unit; to recognize women as equal participants
in the struggle to shut down all control units; and to be
responsible to ongoing political struggle.
Shawnee Is A Control Unit
CEML, in "Walkin' Steel", defines a control unit as a
"combination of physical conditions, the policies which determine
who is sent there, and the overall purpose of the unit".
Shawnee Unit was opened by the BOP in August 1988, after the
small group isolation experiment at Lexington HSU was shutdown. The
political and security mission of Shawnee Unit is the same as that
of the HSU: to control, isolate and neutralize women who, for
varying reasons, pose either a political, escape, or disruption
threat. Neutralization insures that the women imprisoned here will
never leave prison with the full capacity to function. Central to
the mission is the understanding that Washington can decide at any
point to transfer any woman political prisoner or Prisoner of War
here. The recent transfer of Laura Whitehorn is a case in point.
A distinct profile emerges: membership in or association with
any of the national liberation movements, particularly the Puerto
Rican and New Afrikan Independence Movements (as determined by the
FBI); on-going surveillance and counterinsurgency against the
progressive movements; classification of political acts as
"sophisticated criminal conspiracies", characterized by employment
of armed struggle; and punishment for continued commitment to non-
collaboration. Reflecting the centrality of the oppression of Black
people in the history of the U.S., we have been told that we were
designated here because of our conviction in or association with
the so-called "Brinks Case." (Underlying all the charges in this
case, now 11 years old, is the struggle for self-determination by
Black people and active solidarity with this struggle by white
anti-imperialists.) The unit serves as a public admonishment to
those who would challenge the supremacy of the U.S. - deterrence
and isolation are central to its mission. It also serves to
maintain control over all women in BOP prisons: in less than 24
hours, twelve women who were targeted as leadership of the recent
demonstration by women at Lexington against police violence were
transferred here.
Once a control unit is set up, it fulfils many needs. The BOP
operates Shawnee with some flexibility. Protected witnesses,
disciplinary cases, high profile individuals, members of various
Columbian cartels, and women with successful escape histories are
imprisoned here. What distinguishes them from the political
prisoners is their ability to transfer out of Shawnee. Over the
past year, there has been a massive movement out of the unit. But
the political prisoners, despite repeated requests to be
transferred, have been excluded from this.
Psychological Control
To wash away the brutal image of the HSU, the BOP has created
the deception that life at Shawnee is normal, not designated or
manipulated. The physical plant is designed to deflect any concern
from the outside about human rights abuses - it looks comfortable
and attractive. This appearance is a lie.
The women of Shawnee live in a psychologically assaultive
environment that aims at destabilizing women's personal and social
identities. This is true of the prison system as a whole; here it
has been elevated to a primary weapon, implemented through a
physical layout and day-to-day regimen that produce inwardness and
self-containment. The unit is a small triangle with a small yard.
Within this severely limited space, women are under constant
scrutiny and observation. In the unit, cameras and listening
devices (the latter are installed in every cell) insure constant
surveillance and control of even the most intimate conversation.
Lockdown is not necessary because there is nowhere to go, and
individuals can be observed and controlled better while having the
illusion of some mobility.
The fences around the yard - the only place where one could
have any sense that an outside world existed - were recently
covered with green cloth, further hammering into the women the
sense of being completely apart and separate. It is one thing to be
imprisoned in this tiny isolation unit for a year or two, another
to be told one will be here for three more decades - that this
small unit will be one's world for the rest of one's life.
Compared to the other federal prisons for women, Shawnee is
like being in a suffocating cocoon. What replaces visual
stimulation and communication is TV. As in Marion control unit,
there is a TV in every cell - the perfect answer to any complaints
about isolation or boredom. TV provides the major link to the world
- a link which conveniently produces passivity and inculcates
"family values".
The intense physical limitations are compounded by a total
lack of educational, training, or recreational programs. At a time
when such programs are being expanded at other prisons, here, at
the end of the line, women are not worthy of even the pretence of
rehabilitation. The geographical location of Shawnee makes contact
with family and community an almost impossible task. Gradually,
women here begin to lose their ability to relate to the outside
world. As time moves on, frustration sets in, accompanied by
alienation and despair. The result is the creation of dysfunctional
individuals who are completely self-involved, unable to participate
in organized social activities, and unprepared for eventual
reintegration into life on the outside: women who resist less,
demand less, and see others as fierce competitors for the few
privileges allowed.
Competition and individualism become the defining
characteristics of personality distortion here. The staff seeks out
the most needy personalities and molds them into informants. Unit
life has been rocked by a number of internal investigations begun
when individual prisoners "confided" in ambitious staff members.
Snitching and cooperation are the pillars of the "justice system."
Those who refuse to accept this standard of behaviour are isolated
and targeted by those who do. In the tiny world of the unit, this
can have a massive effect on one's daily life.
A system of hierarchical privileges governs the unit and
destroys any potential unity. Small comforts, such as personal
clothing, have become the mechanism through which cooperation and
collaboration are obtained. The latest wrinkle is the institution
of "privileged housing" - the arbitrary designation of a limited
number of cells on the upper tier as a reward for acceptable
behaviour. This is classic behaviour modification. The unit is in
a constant state of uproar over the daily moves that enforce the
fall from privileged status.
White supremacy and racism
There are close to 90 women imprisoned at Shawnee: 1/3 Black
women from various parts of the world, 1/3 Latin women, 1/3 white
women, and a very small number of Native American women. The
numerical balance belies the hegemony of white supremacist
ideology. As outside the walls, a permanent conflict exists between
Black people and those in power. Prisoners experience and are
affected by the sharpening of conflict on the outside and the
increasing national oppression experienced by Black people in
particular. Events in California have given focus to the discontent
and heightened the contradictions. Since May, an unprecedented
number of Black women have been put in the hole - more than the
total for the past two years. Currently, five women from the unit
are in the hole; all are Black. And while the administration says
that they do not deal with gangs, "Boyz 'N the Hood" and "Jungle
Fever" were banned from the prison after the Aryan Brotherhood
protested.
A strict segregationist policy determines who gets the jobs.
After four years, no Black women have ever worked for education or
recreation, except in janitorial jobs. It has taken just as long to
place a Black woman in commissary and to promote one woman to be a
trainer in the UNICOR factory. All Black staff have left the unit,
eliminating the small cushion they provided. This is significant,
as staff in the federal system determine everything from access to
family to release conditions.
Racism governs how religion can be practised. Islam, Judaism,
and Native American religions are either totally ignored or
marginalized. One cannot help but notice this, since there is a
daily diet of fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic services,
seminars and retreats.
Superexploitation Of Women's Labour
Like B block at Marion, there is no productive labour at
Shawnee besides UNICOR. Unit life is organized to facilitate the
functioning of the Automated Data Processing (ADP) factory. Nearly
40 women work here, twelve hours a day and five more hours on
Saturday. The forced rhythm of this work has made the ADP factory
the most profitable UNICOR operation in the BOP for its size. The
complete lack of any other jobs, the need for funds, the lack of
family support, the enormous expense of living in Shawnee, all push
women into UNICOR, into intense competition and into an acceptance
of their exploitation. Unlike general population prisons, Shawnee
prisoners are not even permitted to work in jobs maintaining the
physical plant. Removing productive labour is an element is
destroying human identity and self-worth.
The Use Of Violence Against Women In Prisons Is Increasing
The recent attacks by male guards at Lexington, and a similar
incident here at Shawnee, illustrate the marked tendency towards
using greater force to control women prisoners. While lower
security women are being sent to minimum security facilities, those
left in high security prisons will be more and more vulnerable to
physical attack - justified by being characterized by the BOP as
"dangerous".
Misogyny And Homophobia
Women in prison are at the very bottom. The misogyny and
contempt for women in the society as a whole are compounded by the
way the prison system is organized to exploit and utilize women's
oppression. The BOP characterizes some women as "dangerous" and
"terrorist" (having gone beyond the bounds of acceptable female
behaviour in the U.S.), making them the target of particularized
repression, scorn and hatred. To be classified maximum security is
to be seen as less than human, by definition not eligible for
"rehabilitation".
All women's prisons operate on the all-pervasive threat of
sexual assault and the dehumanizing invasion of privacy. Throughout
the state and federal system in the U.S., invasive 'pat searches'
of women by male guards ensure that a women is daily reminded of
her powerlessness; she cannot even defend her own body. In the
control unit there is absolutely no privacy: windows in the cell
doors (which cannot be covered), patrolling of the unit by male
guards, and the presence of the bathrooms in the cells guarantee
this. The voyeuristic nature of the constant surveillance is a
matter of record: in the past year alone there have been three
major internal investigations of sexual harassment and misconduct
by male officers - including rape.
Programs that exist in other women's prisons, addressing the
particular needs of women, are deemed frivolous at Shawnee. Most
women here are mothers, but no support at all is given to efforts
to maintain the relationship between mother and child. Similarly,
if Shawnee were not a control unit, then education, recreation,
religious and cultural programs should be on a par with those at
Lewisburg, Leavenworth, and Lompoc (three men's high security
prisons). But not a single program available in those prisons is
available here.
The median age of the women here is 37 - a situation distinct
from any other women's prison. Nearly everyone is doing more than
15 years; more than 10 women are serving life sentences without
parole. Menopause is the main medical problem in the unit.
Menopause is an emotional as well as a physiological process.
Ignoring this is a pillar of misogynist Western medicine. In the
repressive reality of Shawnee, refusal to recognize and treat the
symptoms of menopause becomes a cruel means of punishment and an
attack on the integrity of one's personality.
Security determines all medical care. Two women who have
suffered strokes here were both denied access to necessary
treatment in a hospital: a life-threatening decision, made solely
for "security reasons."
Intense isolation and lack of activities mean that the loving
relationships that provide intimacy and comfort to women in all
prisons are of heightened importance here. Until recently, a
seemingly tolerant attitude towards lesbian relationships was
actually a form of control. For lesbian relationships to function
without disciplinary intervention by the police, the women had to
negotiate with and in some instances work for, the staff. This
tolerance was viewed as necessary because the relationships served
as a safety valve for the tensions and anger in the population. As
a result of they system of police-sanctioned tolerance, people
tended to elevate the individual relationships above any collective
alliances that might endanger the administrations rule over the
unit.
This situation served to increase the already intense
homophobia in the population. A new administration has now ended
the tolerance, and lesbians are now suffering greater harassment
and discrimination. A witch hunt is underway to identify lesbians
and couples engaging in homosexual behaviour.
Together with racism, misogyny and homophobia define
conditions here. When coupled with the repressive practices of a
control unit, psychological disablement can result - fulfilling the
Shawnee mission.
Conclusion
Partly as a result of the astronomic rise in the number of
women in prison and the resulting public interest in women's
prisons, and partly as a result of the struggle against the
Lexington HSU, the BOP has to be very careful not to appear to be
brutal in its treatment of women prisoners. The investigations of
the HSU by Amnesty International, the Methodist Church, the
American Civil Liberties Union and others struck a nerve in
Washington. The experiment carried out within the walls of the HSU
failed because of the personal and political resistance of those
inside and outside the walls. But this defeat did not deter the BOP
from its stated goals. It just drove them to hide them cosmetically
behind a veneer of new paint and the momentary elimination of the
most notorious abuses. The BOP always denies the truth of its
workings. It denies the existence of control units and this unit in
particular, not even listing it in the BOP Register of Prisons.
Nevertheless, Shawnee is the present women's version of the
Marionization of the prison system. The next one is supposed to be
opened in North Carolina in 1994. The movement should not fall into
the trap and ignore the particular control strategy aimed at women.
Uncovering and exposing the reality that the Shawnee Unit is a
control unit will contribute to the movement against all control
units.
Silvia Baraldini
Marilyn Buck
Susan Rosenberg
Laura Whitehorn
