STATE TREATING VIOLENCE WITH GREATER VIOLENCE

I recently toured the super-max prison at Boscobel. I am ashamed at
how human beings will be treated by our state.

Absolute isolation for two years or more is cruel punishment. All
activity will be in solitude. Meals and showers will be in one's own
cell. Education, visits and religious services will be by monitor also
in the cell. Recreation of four hours a week will be in an empty
concrete room with a small hole at floor level where, if you put your
face on the floor, you can see outdoors.

Experts agree that this extreme treatment will cause some prisoners'
mental health to deteriorate. It is claimed that this excessive
control and security is required to reform violent prisoners.

The procedures of the supermax seem to have the state responding to
violence with even greater violence. To deny a person's need to
socialize, communicate and have human contact is a human rights violation.

This new prison is evil in the fashion in which human beings will be
treated. How we treat the least among us is an indication of how all
people are valued by our society.

The supermax is a very scary sign for the future.

Father Jim Murphy,
Wisconsin Campaign to Stop Control Unit Prisons
Platteville