Every morning, Mary Frances Barbee wakes up and experiences a “microsecond of happiness before the terror sets in.”
Barbee had a heart attack, transient ischemic attack and then a stroke after her sons were incarcerated. She puts on a brave front when they call.
“I wonder what they are going through, will they be able to call today, and how long until they are out of lockdown again,” Barbee, 71, says as she chokes back tears. “Will it be for just three hours after many days or weeks locked inside? They have no exercise. Four, six or 12 days without a shower. It is inhumane treatment on a daily basis.”
What Barbee is living through is something that millions of people inside and outside razor wire are also experiencing: The purgatory of endless prison “lockdowns” where prisoners are forced to live in isolation that typically exceeds punitive segregation conditions.
An exclusive, eight-month investigation for Truthout has revealed that at least 33 U.S. state prison systems and the majority of federal medium-, high- and maximum-security prisons have […]
What does the American public not understand: Cruelty is the point. Incarceration has been used as a major tool of social control for decades. It’s been used to control the anti-war movement, Black and Latino populations, the environmental movement, union organizers, etc….Mass incarceration is necessary for the functioning of the empire. As things become more and more difficult for the empire managers to navigate, incarceration is an easy, and eventually will become the major tool of enforcement against protest. What do you think Julian Assange is in jail? This phenomena is not new. It has been planned and supported by the bipartician infrastructure for decades.
As the article states: “I revealed the conditions at Coleman in a September 2023 Truthout article, describing it as a “black site” because even lawyers were regularly prohibited from communicating with their clients, and loved ones had no idea what had happened to people inside. Legal mail was returned to the sender on countless occasions, and even postal mail often stopped coming through to families for weeks on end.
It turns out that the term was more predictive than I could have imagined. Attorney Jenipher Jones told Truthout that prisoners at USP Coleman have been informed by guards that in a pending prison transformation, they will soon be confined to their cells for 22 hours of every day, without exception. If the situation unfolds as such, USP Coleman would become a federal supermax prison. (The U.S. currently has only one federal supermax, ADX Florence in Colorado, which was also put on lockdown during the first wave of George Floyd protests despite the sheer absurdity of locking down the most secure prison in the entire country without any disturbance from prisoners.)”
Yes, “black sites” supported and run by the CIA overseas mirror US prisons stateside where even attorneys are not permitted and where the incarcerated are not allowed mail. As empire managers must increasingly use internal force to maintain control they lose legitimacy in eyes of the public. Since power is the only vector of importance, legitimacy is of less concern. \
As the article concludes: “In this terrifying new era of a lockdown prison society thoroughly closed off from the rest of the country, attorney Jones offered prescient insight: “We as Americans must decide the kind of treatment everyone deserves, non-incarcerated and incarcerated. We must first examine how prisoners are treated because whatever it is, it represents a shadow of repression, sure to come for us all.”” Indeed. We must examine the shadows within ourselves and address them. Projecting them onto others is the route to self-destruction.
I worked with a volunteer group that went to a women’s max security prison in VA. We gave lessons on how to communicate better. The prisoners had the option to join us. The conditions weren’t as bad as are described here. What haunted me were their personal stories. All of them were severely abused as children. And, except, for one or two, in spite of their lack of education, they were all very smart. I’m not surprised by this story. My impression was that much of what depends on who’s chosen to head the prison and what kind of organization chose them. Also, the location of the prison has an affect. There have been some great programs whereby, using video and interacting with a local college makes a huge difference. Often Ivy League. I was told by a famous African American writer that a large segment of the African American male population in a prison contained the best and the brightest minds. My mother was a teacher and she also told me that the brightest are difficult because they’re easily distracted. They lacked education or were poorly taught. Yale University created a debate program and then video taped it. THE PRISONERS WON. Sadly, as usual, it is the Deep South which rarely has these kinds of programs.