Solitary Confinement Is Torture.

      The state likes to keep everybody in line, no disobeying rules, always do as you are told, it works hard at this with the early stages being our education system, and as you go through your life there is a tsunami of propaganda that washes over you on a daily basis, reinforcing conformity. In case this doesn't work there are the police and the judicial system, backed up by the prison system, and by any stretch of the imagination, on entering this, we have left the realms of humanity.

      Within the inhumane system of locking people up in cages, there are degrees of repression that can take you deeper into the morass of dehumanising, in an attempt to turn the individual into a submissive clone of a human. Solitary confinement breaks every aspect of humanity, we are social creatures, to take somebody and lock them away from any human contact, any form of mental stimulation, for days, weeks and months, is nothing short of torture, to break the individual. There is nothing reforming, or rehabilitating about the prison system, it is a tool of state repression to protect its apparatus and power.

      There has been a long running series of hunger strikes at the Menard Correction Center Illinois, against the excessive use of solitary confinement, like all prisoners, they need our support and solidarity.

An appeal from Anti-State STL: 

       On September 23rd, prisoners in the administrative detention unit at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois declared a hunger strike in response to the administration’s continued unwillingness to respond to their demands for relief from their conditions of long-term solitary confinement. See below for their list of demands and description of their conditions. This strike is a continuation of a series of hunger strikes by the prisoners there, which began in January 2014.

Read the full article HERE:

    

Our core demands are:

· We demand an end to long term solitary confinement.

    We demand minimum due process at Administrative Detention Review Hearings by providing inmates with written reasons, including new information relied upon, for Committee’s decision for our continued placement in A.D. and be allowed to grieve all adverse decisions. As it stands, the basis of the Committee’s votes are kept secret.
      We demand more access to outside recreation for the sake of our physical and mental health. As it stands, we are confined indefinitely to these cages for 6 days out of the week, with the exception of one 5-hour day. This is unbearable.
      We demand that meaningful educational programs be implemented to encourage our mental stability, rehabilitation, and social development for the sake of ourselves and our communities that we will one day return to.
     We demand access to more visiting privileges. For most of our families traveling to Menard is like traveling to another state. Considering the distance, 2-hour visits behind plexiglass is insufficient. We should be allowed 5 or 6 hours. Moreover, our family members, including inmates, should be provided the human dignity and decency to purchase food items and refreshments from vending machines after traveling such great distances. This would benefit one’s social development, as well as benefit prison staff environment.
        We ask the public’s help by calling the warden, the Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, and the Governor on September 23, 2015, and so forth, to check on our welfare.

Warden Kimberly Butler, 618-826-5071
Menard Correctional Center
711 Kaskaskia Street
Menard, IL 62259

Director John Baldwin, 217-558-2200
Illinois Department of Corrections
1301 Concordia Court
P. O. Box 19277
Springfield, IL 52794-9277

Governor Bruce Rauner, 217-782-0244
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706

       We will stay on [hunger strike] as long as possible in order to hopefully bring some change to our conditions. We thank you for any kind of support you can give us.

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