NCJ Number
141856
Journal
Journal of Prisoners on Prisons Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Dated: (1993) Pages: 95- 110
Date Published
1993
Length
16 pages
Annotation
First used at the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, the term "control unit" is now widely used to describe the proliferation of similar maximum-security units in State prisons across the country.
Abstract
The Marion facility has been inadequate for implementing the tight control intended, because it was not originally built as a control-unit prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to replace Marion with a state-of-the-art control-unit prison in Florence, Colorado in 1993. This facility is modeled after a California facility, in which inmates are confined to their 8-foot-by- 10-foot cells with solid steel doors for 22.5 hours per day. They are allowed out only for a 90-minute exercise period alone in an empty concrete yard the size of three cells. Guards open the sliding doors by remote control and use loudspeakers to give instructions. When prisoners are moved off the cell block, they are shackled and accompanied by two guards carrying truncheons. Corrections officials determine which inmates will be sent to this unit, and inmates have few due-process safeguards. Corrections officials state that control units contain only the most violent inmates, reduce violence at other prisons, and permit relaxed security at other prisons. In reality, they represent an attempt by corrections managers to suppress protest and dissent within the prison system. This system is an attack on oppressed people, including the poor and minorities, making them less able to organize and struggle for their rights and their liberation. Notes and 59 references