USP Marion: A Few Prisoners Summon the Courage to Speak
Abstract
:1. Introduction
The “Marionization” of American prisons suggests that prison systems throughout the United States rely more and more on penal regimes that emulate or exaggerate conditions and policies found at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion (Illinois): reportedly the “toughest prison in America”.
2. Welcome to USP Marion
The United States Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois, is one of approximately 93 correctional facilities [in 2013 the federal system has 118 prisons] that make up the complex of the Federal Prison System. This institution was erected and became operative as a Federal prison camp in 1963. In January 1964, Marion was designated as a penitentiary. This is the smallest of the penitentiaries and accommodates approximately 500 men. It is constructed primarily of one-man cell units. The site of this institution was selected because of its central location within the geographic boundaries of the United States and because it is in close proximity to the academic advantages of Southern Illinois University and the John A. Logan Junior College.
The administrative staff has an Executive Officer, the Warden, who is assisted by two (2) Associate Wardens, and seventeen (17) department heads. The remaining employees are assigned to various departments that are outlined in this booklet. The purpose of this booklet is to assist every inmate in his day-today living and bring about a smoother operation of this institution. These procedures may change from time to time for various reasons. Such changes will be posted on the bulletin boards of your housing unit or conveyed to you by staff members or taped broadcasts. It is important you read this booklet carefully. It may answer some questions you have about Marion. If you have more specific questions, ask a staff member who can give you guidance.
You are required to appear before your unit team for Initial Classification. Your participation is important because your unit team, with your assistance, will determine what your program will be while you are at Marion.
In order to begin your stay in this unit on a positive note, unit staff will conduct a decentralized admission and orientation program for all new commitments and transfers, which focus on familiarizing new inmates with the staff, institutional procedures provided by staff and expected behavior.
Upon first glance, Marion differed radically in its appearance from what one would believe from the horrid myths. The ominous sword of Damocles over the prison system appeared to be no threat. But the human eye can be deceived by what is contracted on the phenomenal level. A vague but bleak sensation invades a man's being when he passes through the grill doors into the prison’s interior. Each electronically controlled grill seems to alienate him more and more from his freedom—even the hope of freedom. A sense of finality, of being buried alive, is raised to the supra-level of his consciousness. He tries to suppress it, but the clanging of each door leaves an indelible imprint on his psyche. This is the first evidence that Marion is more than a physical star-chamber. It is a modern “behavior modification laboratory”.
But the omnipotent is also omnipresent. Nothing escapes Marion’s elaborate network of “eyes”. Between television monitors, prisoner spies, collaborators, and prison officials, every crevice of the prison is overlaid by a constant watch. Front-line officers, specially trained in the cold, calculated art of observation, watch prisoners’ movements with a particular meticulousness, scrutinizing little details in behavior patterns, then recording them in the Log Book. This aid provides the staff with a means to manipulate certain individuals’ behavior. It is feasible to calculate a prisoner’s level of sensitivity from the information, so his vulnerability can be tested with a degree of precision. Some behavior modification experts call these tests “stress assessment”. Prisoners call it harassment. In some cases, selected prisoners are singled out for one or several of these “differential treatment” tactics. A prisoner could have his mail turned back or “accidentally” mutilated. He could become the object of regular searches, or even his visitors could be strip-searched.
3. The Physical Layout of USP Marion
3.1. The Outside Security Perimeter
3.2. The Inside Security System
The constructs of the prison are somewhat peculiar. Some not-so-outstanding features do not make the least economical sense, and are often totally out of physiological order. But these features, when viewed from a psychological angle, begin to take on new meaning. For example, the prison is minced into small sections and subsections, divided by a system of electronic and mechanical grills further reinforced by a number of strategically locked steel doors. Conceivably, the population can be sectioned off quickly in times of uprising. But even for the sake of security, the prison is laced with too many doors. Every few feet a prisoner is confronted by one. So he must await permission to enter or exit at almost every stop. A man becomes peeved. But this is augmented by the constant clanging that bombards his brain so many times a day until his nervous system becomes knotted. The persistent reverberation tends to resurrect and reinforce the same sensation, the same bleak feeling that originally introduced the individual into the Marion environment. It is no coincidence. This system is designed with conscious intent.
Every evening the “control movement” starts. The loud speakers, which are scattered around the prison resonate the signal: “The movement is on. You have ten minutes to make your move”. The interior grill doors are opened, but the latitude and limits of a man’s mobility are sharply defined, narrowly constricted. His motion, the fluidity of his life, is compressed between time locks. There is a sense of urgency to do what prisoners usually do—nothing. It is just a matter of time before the last remnants of a prisoner’s illusion become obliterated.
At the end of the ten-minute limit, the speakers blare out: “The movement is over. Clear the corridor.” The proceedings stop. Twenty minutes later the routine is repeated, and so on, until a man’s psyche becomes conditioned to the movement/non-movement regimentation, and his nerves jingle with the rhythmic orchestration of steel clanging steel. In prisoners’ words, it is “part of the program”—part of the systematic process of reinforcing the unconditional fact of a prisoner’s existence: that he has no control over the regulation and orientation of his own being, too accept without question the overseer’s power to control him.
4. The Housing Units
USP Marion comprises nine living units, B through I and K. Conditions vary between units. The five general population units, B through F, are located on Marion’s East Corridor. Among these units, D, E and F are the most restrictive. C-Unit is slightly less restrictive than these three units and holds prisoners who are being considered for transfer to B-Unit. B-Unit is a pre-release unit with conditions similar to those in most maximum-security prisons. On the North Corridor are located the prisons’ four “special living units”. I-Unit, the Disciplinary Segregation Unit, holds prisoners from the East Corridor units who are on disciplinary or administrative segregation, and those who are being considered for transfer to H-Unit. G-Unit is similar to I-Unit and also holds prisoners in protective custody. H-Unit, or the Control Unit, holds prisoners who are on long-term administrative segregation ([15], pp. 491–92). K-Unit, or the Director’s Unit, holds prisoners assigned there specifically on the order of the Director of the Bureau of Prisons.
D, E and F-Unit prisoners are let out of their cells one and a half hours each day. By comparison, in the rest of the Federal prison system prisoners spend an average of thirteen hours per day out of their cells. The hour and a half of daily “recreation” is usually spent in the narrow hallway immediately outside the cell. This time provides little stimulation and no real exercise opportunity. One hour of outdoor recreation in a fenced area is offered once a week in winter and three times a week in summer. The only chance prisoners have to take showers is during the exercise period.
The cell itself measures six by eight feet. Meals are taken through the bars and eaten in the cell—there is no congregate dining. Beds are concrete slabs with pads laid on top of them. At each of the four corners of the bunk is a ring so that the men can be strapped down whenever prison authorities think that it is appropriate. Jackie Leyden from National Public Radio reports that “guards have the power to chain a man spread-eagled and naked to a concrete bunk” [16]. Prisoners have reported being chained like that for days at a time.
5. Transfer from Supermax to Big House Maximum-Security Penitentiary
Many inmates held for long periods in lockup, during which they have been subjected to extreme racial prejudice, harassment by the guards, and threats and attacks from other prisoners, are converted into extremely violent, relatively fearless individuals who profess and conduct themselves as if they do not care whether they live or die.
6. Release to the Community
7. What do the Prisoners Report about Their Own Marionization?
In 1978, I was committed to USP in Leavenworth, KS, for kidnapping for ransom, with a 30-year sentence. That sentence was subsequently reduced to 20 years. I was transferred to several different federal institutions over the following five years. Due to an escape [from prison] and receipt of State time while on escape, I ended up in the state of Wyoming in January 1984. I escaped from Wyoming State Penitentiary later that year. While on this escape, during the hijacking of a semi tractor-trailer and its subsequent abandonment, the driver of the vehicle was left secured in the trailer and tragically, accidentally, died from a rope that tightened around his chest. I believe I explained this in my previous letter.
I subsequently received a life sentence, with a 20-year minimum, in the state of Oregon, for this crime of aggravated murder. The aggravating factor was my escape status. I was returned to federal custody in February 1985, and initially placed at USP Leavenworth; but two weeks later was transferred to USP Marion, Illinois, for greater security purposes. I arrived at USP Marion on 18 March 1985. Within days of my arrival, George Wilkerson, then North Central Regional Director, came to my cell and told me that here (USP Marion) was where I would remain until my release.
Marion had been on lockdown for about 17 months then, and the atmosphere between staff and inmates was one of full-fledged war. Inmates there had been brutalized for the last year and a half, as was well documented at the subsequent congressional hearings on the lockdown. I had just received a life sentence in the state of Oregon, and as you might imagine, I did not adjust well to the Marion environment. I felt as if I had nothing to lose or to live for, and I acted accordingly for the most part.
Most of my time at Marion was spent in solitary confinement, in one form of segregation or another. I spent most of my time there in a cell with a solid steel door, with a six-inch square glass window, and a tray slot that stayed locked except for meals. The cell was concrete, with a roll-open window in the back of the cell behind a stainless steel plate with pencil sized holes drilled in it. The sink-toilet combination was set in the front of the cell, opposite side of the door. There was a screened air vent on one wall of the cell. There were I believe 36 cells on the tier, with an upper and lower tier. When I first arrived at Marion, the cells still contained the old steel bed frames and a ceramic sink/toilet; but around 1986 the cells were remodeled and a concrete bed platform, a concrete stool and desk, and a stainless steel sink/toilet were added. I was only allowed an AM/FM radio during those first years, but after the remodeling, I was issued a 10 or 12 inch black and white television as well. I received five one hour outside rec periods a week, and three ten minute showers a week.
The program that existed at Marion during those years, 1985–1995, supposedly allowed an inmate to earn their way to a modified open-population unit (C-unit), through good behavior and programming. In reality, no inmate was allowed to advance through this program unless/until the Marion administration wanted him to do so, regardless of his programming and behavior. The program was a joke and everyone knew that…just part and parcel of the cruel and extensive behavior modification research and experimentation they routinely engaged in there.
A typical day for me was to wake up about 4:30 a.m., and after a brief toilet, begin my daily workout routine. I would ace-bandage peanut butter jars filled with water to each hand and shadow box for a half hour, then go immediately into step-ups on the bed platform, for about two hours or until breakfast trays were delivered to the tray slot. I would usually break then and eat something, usually just a piece of fruit from canteen, and peanut butter on the toast from the tray, about the only palatable part. After breakfast I would usually be given an opportunity to go outside into an individual rec cage for a single hour’s exercise on pull up and/or dip bars. I was allowed five such exercise sessions per week. I would be strip searched before being handcuffed behind my back and escorted to the outside rec cage by a guard holding the handcuffs, with another guard on each side of me holding a three foot black lead filled baton with a steel-ball rib spreader on each end of it. When the guards would jab an inmate in the ribs with these batons, the steel-ball was just the right size to tear the ribs apart and tear the cartilage, causing excruciating pain when the inmate even breathed and with every breath.
After an hour outside in the rec cage, I would be handcuffed and escorted inside, and strip-searched again after being placed in the cell. After being strip-searched I would redress and continue to work out in the cell until call for a shower. Guards would handcuff me behind my back and escort me to the shower on the end of the tier, where I would be locked inside the shower stalls and then handcuffs removed. Same procedure as being escorted to rec. I was allowed ten and sometimes fifteen minutes to shower, then returned the same way to my cell. I would spend the rest of the afternoon either studying, doing legal work, or reading or writing.
After dinner, I would allow myself to turn on the television for national news and usually a nature show or occasionally a movie. I would end my day with a half hour meditation or prayer and usually be asleep by ten p.m., if none of the mentally ill were screaming all night on the tier. There was a cell on the front of each tier that was converted to a law library and the inmates in the unit could request an hour at a time in there. College tests were also proctored in there. The library consisted of a cardboard box of dog-eared paperback books that you may or may not have access to on any given day. I enrolled in the college studies offered through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I spent many hours, days, weeks and months immersed in those studies. I never sought any degree program, but only the knowledge available to me.
In late 1987, I was given the opportunity to transfer to a maximum-security institution in the state of Minnesota for one year. The BOP had made an arrangement with the state of Minnesota to help them with their corrections budget and they paid the state over one million dollars a year to house ten federal prisoners, usually USP Marion prisoners. I spent one year at Oak Park Heights, in Minnesota, where I worked as a media specialist, operating the institutions two television and radio stations, and was returned to USP Marion in 1989. I remained at USP Marion until August 1995, at which time I was transferred to MCFP Springfield, for medical treatment, and then transferred on to the new supermax, ADX Florence, Colorado, where I arrived in April 1996. I remained there until my release to the state of Oregon in May 1998. My cell at ADX Florence was significantly different…and bad as ADX confinement was, it was better than USP Marion.
I have done hard time in the truest sense, I suppose. All those years in solitary forced me to turn inward for survival, and face the person I truly was, with all my faults, weaknesses and strengths. I had to come to know and like the person I was…for myself. I endured those years and decades only because of the love, the faith in God, and the inner character and strength my parents had instilled in me (despite my behavior). Education played a vital role in helping me survive those years. I survived USP Marion and the ADX Florence by turning inward and finding a deep-seated spiritual well of strength to draw upon. I hungered for the knowledge I could acquire…and I lived in that mental, spiritual world on the inside of the self…while physically functioning in the day to day world of brutality and suffering around me.
The 13½ years I spent there (USP Marion) are still and will forever be the hardest time I ever did. By comparison, the final (federal time) 2½ years I spent in ADX Florence were a piece of cake.
8. Conclusions
Conflicts of Interest
References and Notes
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Richards, S.C. USP Marion: A Few Prisoners Summon the Courage to Speak. Laws 2015, 4, 91-106. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4010091
Richards SC. USP Marion: A Few Prisoners Summon the Courage to Speak. Laws. 2015; 4(1):91-106. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4010091
Chicago/Turabian StyleRichards, Stephen C. 2015. "USP Marion: A Few Prisoners Summon the Courage to Speak" Laws 4, no. 1: 91-106. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws4010091