Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Super Max Prison
The super max prison has been touted as the "prison of the future," but it is in fact a knockoff of Pennsylvania's nineteenth-century wonder, the Easter State Penitentiary. Pelican Bay prison in Northern California is considered a super max prison that uses isolation and sensory deprivation which often results in mental illness. These types of prisons are designed to warehouse prisoners and do not even hint at the possibility of rehabilitation. Pelican Bay is well beyond its intended capacity, which exacerbates the confining, mentally debilitating conditions for prisoners within its walls.
Today's super max prisons are designed to be extremely controlling and punitive. One of these prisons in Texas, the McConnell Unit, holds 2.806 inmates and keeps 504 of them isolated in an area known as administrative segregation, or ad seg. Inmates are kept in ad seg when they are considered dangerous to themselves, to others, or to the general peace of the prison. Unfortunately, these ad seg units, which exist in many of the super max prisons, have become known as torture chambers for the inmates. Prisoners in the McConnell Unit, designated Level 3 inmates, receive no deodorant, no shampoo, and no toothpaste-only a small box of baking soda to use to brush their teeth. "In 1999, a federal judge found ad seg units in Texas to be 'virtual incubators of psychoses'".
The checkered history of maximum security prisons reveals that little has changed over the years. In the early nineteenth century flogging, water torture, and shackling prisoners to walls were used to punish the more unruly prisoners. Since that time, uncontrollable prisoners have experienced less obvious forms of torture, but torture nevertheless. Super max prisons are built with the ultimate confinement in mind, and sometimes they border on primitive torture.
The loss of freedom is a punitive form of justice that is meant to partly deter criminals and partly punish them. The problem with todays super max prisons is that detainment has been advanced to a masochistic science. Foucault describes the strict disciplinary methods and hierarchal structure at Mettray reformatory in the 1840's and announces it to be the beginning of a new age of prisons. Mettray was a severe disciplinary institution that was built upon the philosophy of confinement to the one man cell and touted the wonders of its structure for teaching discipline. Foucault recognizes the need in these highly structured and disciplinary institutions for a "design of power" which gives the prison personnel the ultimate power and supervision over inmates. Foucault's idealized version of a prison and its disciplinary elements have largely been implemented today in the super max prison which is almost exactly what Foucault had envisioned, but the vision has become somewhat of a living nightmare for prisoners and guards alike.
One of the most troubling aspects of the new super max prisons is the system that is used to discern who qualifies and who does not qualify for assignment to administrative segregation among the prison population. To unsympathetically imagine an uncontrollable, psychotic criminal in administrative segregation is not to difficult for the average person, but imagine a non-violent criminal who has stolen a piece of pizza from a store and been placed in administrative segregation for months or years. It may sound absurd, but this is exactly what can happen today as a result of the three-strike laws. Non-violent offenders are placed in strict super max prisons for third strike crimes that are harmless. This represents a major glitch in the system of corrections and one that Foucault surely could not have foreseen in his idealized vision of a disciplinary instrument. The injustice will continue and prisons will become even more secure as the system becomes architecturally and philosophically focused on punishment through confinement.
Today's super max prisons are designed to be extremely controlling and punitive. One of these prisons in Texas, the McConnell Unit, holds 2.806 inmates and keeps 504 of them isolated in an area known as administrative segregation, or ad seg. Inmates are kept in ad seg when they are considered dangerous to themselves, to others, or to the general peace of the prison. Unfortunately, these ad seg units, which exist in many of the super max prisons, have become known as torture chambers for the inmates. Prisoners in the McConnell Unit, designated Level 3 inmates, receive no deodorant, no shampoo, and no toothpaste-only a small box of baking soda to use to brush their teeth. "In 1999, a federal judge found ad seg units in Texas to be 'virtual incubators of psychoses'".
The checkered history of maximum security prisons reveals that little has changed over the years. In the early nineteenth century flogging, water torture, and shackling prisoners to walls were used to punish the more unruly prisoners. Since that time, uncontrollable prisoners have experienced less obvious forms of torture, but torture nevertheless. Super max prisons are built with the ultimate confinement in mind, and sometimes they border on primitive torture.
The loss of freedom is a punitive form of justice that is meant to partly deter criminals and partly punish them. The problem with todays super max prisons is that detainment has been advanced to a masochistic science. Foucault describes the strict disciplinary methods and hierarchal structure at Mettray reformatory in the 1840's and announces it to be the beginning of a new age of prisons. Mettray was a severe disciplinary institution that was built upon the philosophy of confinement to the one man cell and touted the wonders of its structure for teaching discipline. Foucault recognizes the need in these highly structured and disciplinary institutions for a "design of power" which gives the prison personnel the ultimate power and supervision over inmates. Foucault's idealized version of a prison and its disciplinary elements have largely been implemented today in the super max prison which is almost exactly what Foucault had envisioned, but the vision has become somewhat of a living nightmare for prisoners and guards alike.
One of the most troubling aspects of the new super max prisons is the system that is used to discern who qualifies and who does not qualify for assignment to administrative segregation among the prison population. To unsympathetically imagine an uncontrollable, psychotic criminal in administrative segregation is not to difficult for the average person, but imagine a non-violent criminal who has stolen a piece of pizza from a store and been placed in administrative segregation for months or years. It may sound absurd, but this is exactly what can happen today as a result of the three-strike laws. Non-violent offenders are placed in strict super max prisons for third strike crimes that are harmless. This represents a major glitch in the system of corrections and one that Foucault surely could not have foreseen in his idealized vision of a disciplinary instrument. The injustice will continue and prisons will become even more secure as the system becomes architecturally and philosophically focused on punishment through confinement.
Labels: prison
