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Another Supermax hunger strike

Dungeon Watch
By LANCE TAPLEY  |  September 2, 2009

Protesting that nothing had been done by prison authorities to relieve the torture of prolonged solitary confinement, on August 17 inmates of the Maine State Prison’s 100-man Special Management Unit or “Supermax” reprised a hunger strike that had been abandoned last May after officials made promises, according to the inmates, to “work with” them to meet demands for radios or televisions.

Michel D’Angelo, a striker, wrote the Phoenix that the latest protest involved nine prisoners. “We are quite literally going crazy” from solitary confinement, he said. (Many Supermax inmates have mental illnesses to begin with. They often are put there as punishment for breaking the Warren prison’s rules.)

D’Angelo said Supermax prisoners are not allowed to participate in educational, social, or religious programs. He will be released soon, he said: “I’m scared. I know if I don’t clear my mind and get some help I will be a very real liability to society.”

Another Supermax inmate, Jesse Baum, who was not striking himself but acting as the strikers’ spokesman, echoed D’Angelo’s comments in another letter. When he’s let out of prison in November, he said, “I will have spent 17 months in solitary confinement,” and he feared being released “with no readjustment period.”

After conditions failed to improve following the May strike, Baum said, “Many inmates made suicide attempts.” He told of one prisoner who “started writing Bible scriptures in blood” on his cell walls.

Deputy state Corrections commissioner Denise Lord said on September 1 that the newest strike was “on again, off again.” She said “no more than four” prisoners skip a meal on any given day. She also said the prison had no “current intention” to provide radios or TVs to Supermax prisoners.

Related: Limiting Supermax solitary, Putting an end to the hunger strike, Pressure rising, More more >
  Topics: News Features , Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Prisons, Protests and Demonstrations,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY LANCE TAPLEY
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  •   LIMITING SUPERMAX SOLITARY  |  October 08, 2009
    Representative James Schatz, a Blue Hill Democrat, has proposed legislation to tightly limit when prisoners can be kept in the solitary confinement of the 100-man Supermax unit of the Maine State Prison in Warren.
  •   LESS THAN EQUAL  |  October 02, 2009
    This story has a bias. It’s in favor of human rights for all people.
  •   DANGEROUS SLURS  |  October 01, 2009
    A heavily tattooed, self-described Satanist serving a life sentence for savagely murdering two people in Augusta in 1998 — his 16-year-old stepdaughter and his 87-year-old former landlady — inmate John L’Heureux, 39, is probably not the man Maine’s gay-rights groups would choose to represent their cause in the state prison, if they were inclined to choose anyone there.
  •   PRISON ‘TROUBLEMAKER’ CONFRONTS RACISM, MEDICAL ABUSE  |  September 09, 2009
    Vacillating between grit and despair — between aggressive lawsuits and suicide attempts — Deane Brown, the prisoner who in 2005 blew the whistle on the torture of mentally ill inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement “Supermax” unit, is struggling against prison conditions in Maryland, where he was exiled by the Baldacci administration.
  •   ANOTHER SUPERMAX HUNGER STRIKE  |  September 02, 2009
    Protesting that nothing had been done by prison authorities to relieve the torture of prolonged solitary confinement, on August 17 inmates of the Maine State Prison’s 100-man Special Management Unit or “Supermax” reprised a hunger strike that had been abandoned last May.

 See all articles by: LANCE TAPLEY

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