Unlock the Box: : Melbourne Indymedia

An Organizing Conference to Shut Down Prison Control Units

Unlock the Box is a product of many years of struggle to shut down the Security Housing Units in California. During this time, the United Front to Abolish the SHU was created as a forum to coordinate the actions of everyone involved in this campaign.

Since its creation, the United Front has continued to expand in membership and in the number of people we reach with our message. This conference is a step in the process of building more unity with groups all over the country and the world who are engaged in the struggle to end this torture.

The goals of Unlock the Box include increasing communication between groups over a wider geographic area, coming up with plans of action that we can agree to work on as a whole to help strengthen those connections and strengthening our cause thru mass participation.

The event will be a combination of presenters with vast experience in this struggle and working groups to come up with plans of action, with performances and food in between.

As the date approaches we will be contacting everyone with a more specific schedule and plan. Until then, we welcome your input, help and donations to make that happen.

Saturday, October 8, 2005
10 am - 6 pm Cell Space
2050 Bryant Street (near 18th street)
San Francisco, CA

Please fill out the questionnaire below and return to:
RAIL PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140 or email to: railx@mim.org

name(organization, if applicable):________________________________
location:__________________________________
contact info:_______________________________
_________________________________________

[ ] We/I do not want to receive future updates on the Unlock the Box Conference.

[ ] We/I cannot attend the Unlock the Box Conference, but would like to support the struggle to abolish control units in the following ways:

[ ] sign me up for the Abolish Control Units email list to receive and share information ( this is a low volume, monitored list) my email address________________________

[ ] add our organization to the 'Shut Down all Control Units' petition (see text below)

[ ] We/I can pledge $______ to help fund the conference (checks can be made out to MIM Distributors)

[ ] We/I plan to attend, please keep us updated by:
email:__________________
mail:_________________________________

[ ] We are interested in organizing group transportation from our city/area.

[ ] We/I can contribute $______ to cover the cost of the conference.

[ ] We/I would like fliers and outreach materials to help raise awareness around Unlock the Box.

[ ] We/I can provide housing in or near San Francisco for other participants.

[ ] We/I can bring food donations to the conference.

[ ] We would like a literature/outreach table for our organization at the conference. (Tables will be reserved for those who respond earliest.

Relevant vendors are also welcome, but will be expected to contribute a portion of their proceeds to the cost of the conference.)

[ ] We would like a representative from the United Front to attend a meeting or event in our area to promote the conference

If you think you can help out in any other way, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

United Front Mission Statement

The United Front to Abolish the SHU is dedicated to shutting down Security Housing Units (SHUs) in California prisons. The SHU is one type of control unit, which are solitary or small group confinement cells. Their inhuman conditions in control units, including total sensory deprivation, amount to torture. The United Front to Abolish the SHU demands that all control units be abolished across the country.

Member Organizations/Contact Info:

Barrio Defense Committee
PO Box 1523
San Jose, CA 95109
tel: (408) 885-9785
email: barriodefens@earthlink.net
http://barriodefensecommittee.org/

San Jose, CA (Donna)
email: dbwall@earthlink.net
tel: (408) 293-4774

Chicano Mexicano Prison Project
PO Box 620095
San Diego, CA 92113
email: info@uniondelbarrio.org
http://uniondelbarrio.org/cmpp/

California Prison Focus (CPF)
2940 16th St. Suite B5
San Francisco, CA 94103
tel: (415) 252-9211
http://www.prisons.org

Chico, CA
email: diana.sottana@sbcglobal.net
Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
Bay Area: PO Box 40799
San Francisco, CA 94140
tel: (415) 267-4879
email: mim124@mim.org

Los Angeles/National:
PO Box 29670
Los Angeles, CA 90029-0670
email: mim136@mim.org
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/prisons/controlunits/
http://www.abolishcontrolunits.org

Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League
email: railx@mim.org

African People's Solidarity Committee
email: uhurureparations@yahoo.com

Santa Cruz, CA
email: veloamor@yahoo.com
or Frances_Ruiz@csumb.edu

Shut down all Control Units

Control Unit prisons confine people to small cells in isolation for long periods of time. These prisons were first officially used in Alcatraz and then in 1972 in Marion, Illinois to house prisoners who were "institutional problems" or "too dangerous." Since then the idea has spread, and control units have become a common tool of repression throughout the Amerikan prison system.

These control units are used for the political and social control of prisoners already locked in secure institutions. They target Black, Latino and indigenous people who are a disproportionate part of control unit populations (relative to their already disproportionate representation in prisons in general). Control units go beyond the usual constraints of maximum security prisons. Better defined as a prison within a prison, control units are used to defeat prisoners' revolutionary attitudes, organization, militancy, legal and administrative challenges, and anything else the prison administrators deem objectionable. While conditions vary from prison to prison, the goal of these units is always to achieve the spiritual, psychological and physical breakdown of the prisoner.

Control units have various names such as Adjustment Center, Security Housing Unit (SHU), Maximum Control Complex (MCC), administrative maximum(ad-max), Intensive Management Unit (IMU) and administrative segregation (ad-seg). Prisoners spend years of isolation in tiny cells, usually 6 by 8 feet for 22 - 23.5 hours a day. In some cases the long term isolation is complete, in others it is small group isolation; both conditions are tremendously damaging to humans. The short time that they do spend outside their cell is within a cement or chain link "dog pen" that lacks any kind of equipment and proper space for physical exercise. Participation in programs including religious services, educational programs, work and job training, congregate dining and exercise are all prohibited. Medical care is also greatly limited.

Control units may vary from prison to prison but they can be generally characterized as: Permanently designated prisons or cells in prisons that lock prisoners up in solitary or small group confinement for 22 or more hours a day with no congregate dining, exercise or other services, and virtually no programs for prisoners. Prisoners are placed in control units for extended periods of time.

Prisoners are usually placed in control units as an administrative measure, with no clear rules governing the moves. This makes it virtually impossible for prisoners to challenge their placement.

Control units are designed to administer the very most in sensory deprivation and dehumanization of inmates. The United Nations has put forward clear documents outlining acceptable treatment of prisoners. These documents reaffirm that prisoners retain fundamental human rights. The Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners (1990) states: "Except for those limitations that are demonstrably necessitated by the fact of incarceration, all prisoners shall retain the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and, where the State concerned is a party, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Optional Protocol thereto, as well as such other rights as are set out in other United Nations covenants." The United Nations Human Rights Committee has further stressed the obligation of the state to treat prisoners with dignity and allowing them all rights set forward in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United $tates signed in 1977).

Control units are physical and mental torture and they very clearly violate the humyn rights of prisoners. They systematically target prisoners who are challenging the legal system and other manifestations of state authority. We, the signatories of this statement, condemn these units and demand that the United $tates abide by the UN principles it claims to uphold. We call for the elimination of all control units in prisons in the United $tates.

More: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/prisons/controlunits/unlock.php

Related:

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases

The use of segregation of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

More: http://www.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/113070.shtml

Where the Norm is Not the Norm: Goulburn Correctional Centre and the Harm-U

In the absence of public policy, this paper is an attempt to shine a light through the rhetoric and test for coherency in the policy and function of NSW's only supermax prison, the High Risk Management Unit. Its present use will be compared with the 'vision' flogged by the Premier and the Department of Corrective Services (the Department) at its inception in 2001.

Click here: http://www.geocities.com/nswac14/archive1/WNNGCCHU.pdf

'Killing Rational' and Prisoner Control in NSW

The prisoners are deprived of all basics and made to earn small things in order to survive. DCS do this until the prisoner's head caves in or self harms. Once the damage is done DCS send them to the Long Bay Mental Health Facility and put them on drugs to control them.

More: http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/87303.php

WARNING: Australia must also unlock the box in places like the HRMU and RED One Baxter. SHUs are the problem because they will cause people a mental illness

We have evidence of prison-induced insanity (which is strongest in SHU type places) is part of the "cruel & unusual treatment"

Human Rights arguments can be launched to remove SHU system for *everyone*

"Imagine yourself locked in a cube of thick Perspex with a series of small air holes in it. The electric light is always on. The camera is always watching you. You are allowed to use the toilet. Sometimes you are allocated a pill. You are not allowed a pillow to cry into, or hug. You are alone. This is 24 hours a day." These cells are commonly used as punishment.