SHU Hurts Inmates' Families, Too

I straddle a parallel universe. While I wake up each morning to a world of “freedom,” making my own choices in how to live out the next 24 hours, my husband wakes up to a world of confinement, caged in a cell, with his actions dictated by a conglomerate of characters and policies fit for no man, or woman.

Since the beginning of this year a particular female officer landed in his unit on the morning shift, and nothing good has happened since. She is an abusive provocateur who enjoys inciting discomfort, anxiety, and fear in both inmate and staff. What she incites is seething anger and defiance, and he is fearless.

She has made his life miserable and has the power and authority to do so. The culture of prison staff is to support each other however wrong their actions are.

It is Friday morning, and I woke up to the knowledge that Darrell is in segregation/ isolation after being found guilty of a “major infraction,” a concocted “official version” of the truth based on a bully’s perspective of how to treat another human being. He will now lose more good time, our one-hour visits will be behind glass, he will lose his job as laundry porter (where he works 6 hours a day, five days a week making $18/month of which 20% is taken for the cost of incarceration), and he will sit in a cell 23 to 24 hours a day for an unknown length of time, at the whim of his jailers.

My insides roil and turn and burn with disgust at the abuse of this system called “corrections.” My mind sketches out scenarios of demands that I’m going to make and angry words I will use against the authorities. And then I think of the retaliation they will perpetrate on him.

And there remains only tears and silence because the truth is I can do nothing.

I am helpless against this world and the actions of a system of oppression and abuse. The predicament he faces behind the insular walls of secrecy, deprivation, and abuse is a violent construct of inhumanity like no other, designed to keep me, you, us, out of its business.

Written by Suzanne Gordon Cook

Promising news regarding solitary confinement is published in "Legal Victories" blog:

"Limiting Solitary Confinement in Corrections" 
http://legalvictories.blogspot.com/2014/02/limiting-solitary-confinement-in.html

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Thank you for participating in the "Human Rights for Prisoners March" across the Internet to demand respect for all people.

Human Rights for Prisoners March

http://HumanRightsforPrisonersMarch.blogspot.com

Blogtalkradio - Monday nights at 9pm PST

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nnia1/

Mary Neal, director

MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com

EXTREME PUNISHMENT: SHU and DP

EXTREME PUNISHMENTS - SOLITARY CONFINEMENT and EXECUTION
Join us every Monday night on "Human Rights for Prisoners March" Blogtalkradio show at 9pm Pacific by computer http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nnia1 or phone (818)572.2947 (press "1" to speak). Discussions with Dr. Jean Kennedy, an organizational psychologist, and Mary Neal, a prisoner activist and director of the Human Rights for Prisoners March.

Google+ tags #solitaryconfinement #execution

"SHU"

Death Chamber

Human Rights for Prisoners March is hosted each Monday night by Mary “Loves Justice” Neal. We began broadcasting on October 21, 2013. We carry advocacy:

~For adequate defense, fair trials, drug courts, mental health courts, post-conviction DNA tests, safe and humane incarceration, and successful re-entry.

~Against prisoner abuse, avoidable deaths caused by police and correctional officers, solitary confinement, children tried and sentenced as adults, criminalizing mental illness, inadequate health care, wrongful convictions, law of parties, three-strikes law, enforced prison labor, and capital punishment.

Guests include people who have experienced, or who have specialized knowledge about, prison conditions and overuse of force by police or correctional officers, or any subject related to crime and punishment, including improvements proposed or realized. Call in and have your say!

Contact Mary “Loves Justice” Neal at (571)335-1741, email MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com
Dr. Harris' email xyfloyd@aol.com  Dr. Kennedy's email DrJeanKennedyRadioShow@gmail.com

Broadcast No. 1: RECOVERY from Alcohol and Drug Addiction
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nnia1/2013/10/22/human-rights-for-prisoners-march
Broadcast No. 2: Extreme Punishment: Solitary Confinement and Execution
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nnia1/2013/10/29/human-rights-for-prisoners-march

Look for our book on shelves in Spring 2014, entitled "EXTREME PUNISHMENT: Solitary Confinement and Execution." The book by Dr. Jean Kennedy and Mary Neal includes full interviews with individuals who experienced or had close contact with people who did experience incarceration in solitary confinement or on death row, including men, women, and children, as well as prison personnel who are impacted by working in such abusive environments. Yes, many children experience solitary confinement in juvenile correctional facilities. Dr. Kennedy will explore and expose the psychological damages caused by these extreme punishments in America.

If you would like to give an interview that might possibly be included in our book, please TRY to contact us via phone or by leaving a commenting at this article or at Blogtalkradio's NNIA1 page, or please email us. Prisoner rights is a censored subject, as you can tell by the attack on our broadcast of October 28, 2013. Prison investors seem to have hired cyberstalkers to interfere with the Human Rights for Prisoners March, but we hope you will persist and make contact. Call (818)572.2947 during each broadcast as well as each Friday, "Open Mic Night" at NNIA1. You can have your say! Please help advocate for human rights by sharing the links above. Return to this article every week to get the url from our latest Blogtalkradio show!

The next article in this Human Rights for Prisoners blog is entitled "Six Software Company Execs Wrongly Convicted: IRP6," at the url below
http://humanrightsforprisonersmarch.blogspot.com/2013/10/six-officers-of-software-company.html

For God hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth; To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death. ~Psalm 102:19-20

MaryLovesJustice
Director of Human Rights for Prisoners March