Federal Prisons Throw Inmates In ‘Little Guantanamo’ — And Don’t Have To Say Why

[xchrom]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/04/25/3431002/documents-reveal-life-inside-little-guantanamo/


Former prisoner Daniel McGowan in 2009, while at federal prison USP Marion.
CREDIT: PHOTO PROVIDED BY DANIEL MCGOWAN

They’re known to many as “Gitmo North” or “Little Guantanamo”: restrictive units in federal prisons in Illinois and Indiana that cut off inmates from almost all contact with their families and loved ones. Prisoners get two 15-minute phone calls a week. When their family and friends travel for their two 4-hour visits a month, they are not allowed to touch each other. No hugs. No arms around shoulders. Just a phone call on two sides of a thick plastic window. The conversation is monitored by guards, who could stop it at any moment if inmates speak in a language other than English, use hand signals, or break another one of the many visiting rules.

“It is soul-crushing,” said Daniel McGowan, who spent nearly four years in the two CMU units. When McGowan served his time in 2007 for his role in two arsons with the Earth Liberation Front, inmates were only allowed one 15-minute call a week and four hours of visiting a month. “You feel very removed from things, even the society of the prison. Things like playing softball, doing something productive, all of that is impossible in the CMU.”

Documents released by the Center for Constitutional Rights this week shed new light on how inmates who have often broken no rules are arbitrarily transferred to the cells, known as “Communication Management Units”, sometimes for years at a time. Prisoners are given incomplete or inaccurate information as to why they’ve been moved, CCR found, and have almost no way to substantively protest their placement.

The Center for Constitutional Rights released the files on Wednesday, as part of a federal lawsuit filed in 2010 over the subjectivity of who is put in the units for “communications monitoring.” The documents confirm that the Bureau of Prisons has no formal policy on who should be put under the restrictions, or how they can earn their way back into general population.

[pipoman]

1. There are many injustices in the federal system. ..

There are people in every federal facility who's job it is to extend each inmates stay by what ever means possible.

[Sunlei]

2. in public courts these crimes of 'arson' (no loss of life)do not get decades extra Fed. prison years

What is it with the Federal Gov. where some fairly straight forward type of crime changes to a crime that costs 10,000% more in Federal funds to prosecute & punish?

Not even to mention the life of the person in prison, their mental health ruined and their families also 'punished' and their lives ruined as well.

Our country should really slash the budget, the billions dished out to the Federal prison system.

Because any Federal system will never trim their own budget. They want to grow, get & keep more prisoners, keep their yearly budgets growing.

When I worked for the Gov., yes we had a budget, we got our taxpayer funding every year. And we would use every last penny of that money on 'whatever' so next years money would be the same or more.