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Human Rights or Control Units

Maroon Russell Shoats

Published by Lancaster ABC-SG, PO Box 891, Lancaster PA 17608 USA (hopefully available from AK, Edinburgh and Active Dist, BM Active, London WC1N 3XX)

Maroon Russell Shoats is a black New Afrikan political prisoner. He was jailed for actions in support of the Black Panther Party in 1972, serving multiple life sentences.

This pamphlet contains two essays by Maroon on control units. A control unit is a special section within a prison designed to hold prisoners that the administration has decided must be locked up for 23 hours a day. It is different from normal solitary because it is indefinite. The essays aim to show how such regimes do nothing to reform and only produce even more embittered individuals who return to the poor communities they are from and wreak more havoc. Control units try to destroy the prisoner as functional individuals, the reasoning being that they would then no longer be a threat. The origin of these ideas are traced to the behaviourism of people like B.F Skinner and the experience of prisoners of war subdued by Chinese communist and North Korean mind control methods. That these practices are dehumanising doesn't bother the authorities. As Maroon states, "Our collective welfare demands that we do everything within our power to bring about an end to this form of imprisonment."

The crucial thing to remember is that the US wants to imprison more people so that it's economy can compete with low wage Asian economies, and this is done by the growing amount of prison labour, used by companies such as Microsoft and TWA at times.

Prisons in America are big business (coming here soon) and rehabilitation programmes, whether run by liberal organisations, churches, or the Nation of Islam are a threat to the system. If prisoners come out and fit back into society, the State will find it hard to send them back to prison. Bear in mind that someone was given life under California's reactionary 3 strikes system for stealing a slice of pizza. This system has no interest in rehabilitation, only in perpetuating itself as a multi-billion dollar business. Therefore, such units are not just an issue for those inside and their families and friends, but indirectly affect the ability of workers outside to defend their pay and conditions.