Tommy Silverstein isn't fighting to convince anyone that he's an innocent man who should be set free. He's admitted to the murder of two fellow inmates and a guard, and knows his sentence will keep him in prison until 2095 -- that is, if he lives to be well past 100.
He did the crime, and he's doing the time. All he wants is a little human contact. No, I'm not talking conjugal visits. Silverstein has spent more than the last two decades under a "no human contact" order, completely isolated from other inmates and given the silent treatment by the rare guards he does see.
That's why he's suing the Bureau of Prisons under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of the use of cruel and unusual punishment. The United States has used solitary confinement to attempt to mentally break down prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Waterboarding might be flashier, but American POWs insist that extended isolation is just as, well, torturous.
Senator John McCain, himself a former POW subjected to torture, said in a New Yorker piece, "It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment. "
Human beings aren't made to survive without any social contact. The weight of separation destorys the mind, and I mean that literally -- studies have found that solitary confinement does the same damage to the brain as a serious head injury.
Since he's had a whole lot of alone time over the past quarter century, Silverstein began sketching as a distraction, and has captured the hearts and minds of many supporters with the anguish of his works. "At the end of the day," one of his pen pals said in a BBC article in 2001, "he is a human being. He is a victim of a system which brutalises people."
Silverstein, an Aryan Brotherhood leader who was originally locked up for armed robbery, himself argues that he wasn't a killer when he first arrived in prison, but that incarceration turned him.
That opens up the larger question of how our prison system impacts the men and women housed in its walls, a system focused on revenge rather than rehabilitation, a system that exposes non-violent offenders to extremely high rates of violence and sexual assault (perpetrated by both fellow inmates and guards).
What do you expect that to do to a person?Regardless, Silverstein' s focus is more narrow. He wants to see his fellow inmates, talk with them, walk in the prison yard with them. He is a murderer and he is a human being. We can lock him up for life and call it due punishment and protection for society.
But a life of complete solitude has another name.
And that's torture
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
I THINK NOT!!!
Inmates are persons whom most of us would rather not think about. They have been banished from everyday sight, they exist in a 'far far away' world that most of us don't want to admit concerns us. They are members of a "correctional institution" that controls their daily existence in a way that few of us can imagine.
Prison is a complex of physical arrangements and of measures all wholly arranged by agents of government, which determine the total existence of certain human beings who have been ''found guilty'' by another governmental institution-the court of law- where the best lawyers put on their ''shows'' to manipulate a band of jury who, even though are humans with personal experiences and biases, are viewed as ''aliens from other planets'' who are, supposedly, not aware of the case and so, do not have personal opinions.
What about the judge whose favourite daughter was gang-raped years ago and the culprits could not be convicted, owing to want of evidence, who is now presiding over a rape case?
What about the Bank Security Officer who lost his job because his employers chose to ''scapegoat'' him after a robbery at the bank, who is now chairing a jury in a robbery case?
What about the Preacher whose church was burnt by arsonists who were never arrested, who is now serving on a jury in an arson trial? (I can go on and on)
The penal system says these people do nothave a personal vendetta to keep, an opportunity to punish past offenders through the present offender(s), even if they are not related?
Can such people in such system deliver ''free and fair'' judgements?
I THINK NOT!!!
Inmates are persons whom most of us would rather not think about. They have been banished from everyday sight, they exist in a 'far far away' world that most of us don't want to admit concerns us. They are members of a "correctional institution" that controls their daily existence in a way that few of us can imagine.
Prison is a complex of physical arrangements and of measures all wholly arranged by agents of government, which determine the total existence of certain human beings who have been ''found guilty'' by another governmental institution-the court of law- where the best lawyers put on their ''shows'' to manipulate a band of jury who, even though are humans with personal experiences and biases, are viewed as ''aliens from other planets'' who are, supposedly, not aware of the case and so, do not have personal opinions.
What about the judge whose favourite daughter was gang-raped years ago and the culprits could not be convicted, owing to want of evidence, who is now presiding over a rape case?
What about the Bank Security Officer who lost his job because his employers chose to ''scapegoat'' him after a robbery at the bank, who is now chairing a jury in a robbery case?
What about the Preacher whose church was burnt by arsonists who were never arrested, who is now serving on a jury in an arson trial? (I can go on and on)
The penal system says these people do nothave a personal vendetta to keep, an opportunity to punish past offenders through the present offender(s), even if they are not related?
Can such people in such system deliver ''free and fair'' judgements?
I THINK NOT!!!
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