Rehabilitation at Wisconsin's Supermax and Other Fairy Tales
Rehabilitation at Wisconsin’s Supermax, and Other Fairy Tales
by Nate A. Lindell
created May 4th, 2006
When Wisconsin first opened it’s Super-max prison (then called the Supermax Correctional Institution (SMCI), there was no pretense of rehabilitating it’s inmates. Then Governor Thompson and his lackeys pushed hard their propaganda that they’d pack SMCI with “the worst of the worst” - I can tell you, after being at SMCI for more than 5 years, all inmates are not alike and few could be called “the worst of the worst: (if you sat down and spoke with them, as I have)... although a large minority could be called the stupidest of the stupid (given their irrational and self-destructive/self-degrading behaviors). After the settlement of the class-action suit against SMCI (which 90 % of us wanted to go to trial on ) prison officials agreed to make some changes, including ceasing to slander us all as “the worst of the worst” and degrading us no more than any other Wisconsin prisoner.
Apparently to justify it’s continued existence and high-price tag (consider, there are around 100 staff running SMCI ad 300-350 inmates here, while in a “normal” maximum security prison the same number of staff supervise 1000+ inmates). SMCI adopted a new name (i.e. Wisconsin’s secure Program Facility - WSPF) and now portrays itself as a facility that intensely rehabilitates troublesome inmates with loads of programs. Yet nothing has changed at WSPF (maybe a little velvet disguises the hammer), it still operates as Abu-Gharib - West, pounding the decency and humanity (and there’s not much to spare in many inmates) out of inmates here, dehabilitating prisoners who often have never been habilitated in the first place.
We should first understand what “rehabilitation” is and is not. It is not: a.) adopting religion; b.) getting a GED; c.) completing some mass-marketed programs; d.) becoming needy, weak, servile or blindly complacent towards government officials; or; e.) being crippled by guilt for the harms we’ve caused. Maybe, to a degree, some of these things will occur when one’s rehabilitated, but they aren’t rehab-ilitation. What rehabilitation is, or should be, if one’s objective/just and realistic, is helping a prisoner to realize that: a.) he can achieve his/her life goals without resorting to crime, and ; b.) enabling and helping them to get rid of all the stinking thinking and emotional garbage that made them capable of committing their crimes in the first place. The rehabilitation mindset is inside all of us - we all (those who are same) have the natural desire to thrive, grow and achieve success - it’s just that some people (particularly prisoners) lose focus and lose control, and maybe never were taught it. Rehabilitation is, or should be, simply helping people regain (or gain) their focus and self control then enabling them to maintain this focus and self-control by creating a tolerable environment.
The recollections of my studies of behavioral psychology is that positive reinforcement (i.e. rewarding) good behavior is the most effective way of modifying behavior, while negative reinforcement (i.e. punishment) of bad behavior is the least effective means of changing behavior. Heck, they say this all the time on an Allstate commercial - rewarding good drivers works better than punishing the bad ones.
More so, concerning those with some mental and emotional illness or those who have histories of abuse/neglect (e.g. most prisoners), punishment (other than outright physical torture) has no positive effect at all on behavior and tends to cause the behavior to worsen or spawn anger/resentment and a desire to attack authority by doing what it dislikes - like you might lash out on somebody who’s abused/ abusing you or act out because it’s the only thing that gets you attention. It’s not so shocking then that recidivism is so high, when Wisconsin (and the entire country) has chosen to warehouse prisoners in overpopulated, filthy, dre-ary death traps run by staff who’s only difference from the inmates is (often) their greater skill at lying and running their rackets - and these prisoners (e.g. myself, and many more whom I’ve spoken with) often come from backgrounds of extreme abuse/neglect (akin to the prison environment).
BUt another principle of psychology reveals that the cruelty of WSPF and indeed most of the prison system is irrational and counterproductive. This is that people have a hierarchy of needs, and they don’t pursue the higher ones until they’ve satisfied the lower ones - this is well-known by psychol-ogists and anyone with common sense. You tend not to worry about finding the love of your life when you are starving, dying of thirst or freezing - instead you tend to seek to satisfy your needs for food, warmth and water, then pursue love and other higher needs or even wants. In WSPF (and many prisons) inmates are fed such meager/poor-quality food, subject to such extreme temperatures (cold in winter, hot and humid in summer), that they don’t have energy or time to spend pondering rehabilitation. Then, before they can ponder rehabilitation, they need to satisfy their basic needs for a feeling of safety, feeling of being loved, social contact, to merely sleep and be sane/healthy - all of which WSPF does it’s best to deprive inmates of by: forbidding contact visits: not facilita-ting correspondence/phone-calls to inmates’ few loved ones (indigent inmates, like myself, can only send 1 letter a week and there’s no free phone calls and gads of restrictions on calls); leaving inmates alone in their cells, 24/7, without even group religious services. Again, this is com-pounded when we’re talking of inmates who come from backgrounds of extreme abuse/neglect, so their social skills are retarded (e.g. insecure, mistrustful) yet a huge need for love, socialization and security exists!
Considering the above, which most people (if they put aside their biases) will agree is correct, it seems that those running WSPF (and the rest of the prison system) have no desire to rehabilitate inmates but are arch sadomasochists (remember, inmates get out and commit more crimes, hence masochism). Unfortunately good people, innocent people, are forced into being masochists by a sadistic prison system that creates (or at least exacerbates) dehabilitated humans who’ve been taught one thing - pain and misery is good, should be spread far and wide, and nothing should be done to end it or even acknowledge it exists. Of course this reveals that WSPF and the people that condone it are dysfunctional, just as is a “family” that tears down it’s children instead of building them up - for the government, like a family, if “functional”, exists to build up and nurture it’s wards, not create or aggravate distress, pain or misery.
To truly understand the miserable conditions at WSPF you’ll need specific examples, here’s a few:
a.) we get no more than 2 1/2 hours of outside exercise a week, and that’s in a dog-kennelesque cage with only light sun-exposure;
b.) the only visits we get are over a t.v. monitor, which is 8’ away and on a 26” screen;
c.) we spend practically 24/7 in our cells;
d.) every time we leave our cell we’re shackled hand, foot and waist chained;
e.) there’s constant yelling, banging on walls, doors and toilets by deranged inmates - which staff let go on and incite (e.g. by harassing inmates or inciting conflicts) so we hardly ever get to sleep up ere;
f.) staff deluge a select few of us who they particularly hat (e.g. due to our litigation, complaints, religion/politics, refusal to kowtow) with petty or false write-ups, resulting in loss of our paltry outside recreation, visits, pay and continued stay at WSPF;
g.) indigents, like me, can only send one free letter a week and can’t use postage sent in by or paid for by kith and kin;
h.) we get no group religious services;
i.) we get no opportunity to work nor job training;
j.) we’re not allowed to use our radios here;
k.) cameras monitor us in our cells, constantly;
l.) we’re subject to secret meetings where staff decide to keep us here, using a “phase” system;
m.) we’re often punished for non-dangerous remarks in our mail;
n.) the food they’re fed is meager and mostly unhealthy packaged/canned foods;
o.) staff play mind games with inmates to cause stress (e.g. yelling at us, slamming our door’s trap, flirting with inmates or inciting them to engage in sex-acts, give our mail to the wrong inmate, switch our letters when reviewing outgoing mail, grope us when pat searching us and outright assaults) and justify prolonging their stay at WSPF.
At WSPF, with a 1:3 staff/inmate ratio, the devilry is particularly concentrated - yet the same madness permeates the entire Wisconsin and U.S. prison system. The only way to end it and the suffering it perpetuates (both on inmates and non inmates is to:
a/) drop the punishment mentality and swiftly reward any and all behavior of inmates that’s lawful, self-advancing, beneficial to their community or society;
b.) create prison environments that cater to inmates; needs and allow them to grow, improve and feel safe about doing so;
c.) strictly supervise prison staff and the system, to ensure it doesn’t fall into it’s old ways of degrading/tormenting it’s captives instead of rehabilitating them;
d.) abolish all prisons that aren't absolutely needed, convert prisons into the least restrictive type of place possible, don’t sentence people to prison unless this is needed to protect society;
e.) freely allow and promote programs which empower inmates (e.g. diverse job training, work-release, family and conjugal visits, drug programs, diverse college courses, self-analysis classes) and NEVER terminate the programs to punish inmates.
More could be said, more detail added, but right now WSPF needs to embrace these basic realities... if it is to truly rehabilitate it’s inmates. The voters and politicians are going to have to choose either to rehabilitate inmates or continue to dehabilitate them - if dehabilitation remains the game - plan, prison officials should be upfront about this, as the public pays the price. Whatever YOU chose, nothing will change until YOU actively do something.
-finis-
Nate A Lindell
WSPF P.O. Box 9900
Bosocbel, WI
53805-9900
by Nate A. Lindell
created May 4th, 2006
When Wisconsin first opened it’s Super-max prison (then called the Supermax Correctional Institution (SMCI), there was no pretense of rehabilitating it’s inmates. Then Governor Thompson and his lackeys pushed hard their propaganda that they’d pack SMCI with “the worst of the worst” - I can tell you, after being at SMCI for more than 5 years, all inmates are not alike and few could be called “the worst of the worst: (if you sat down and spoke with them, as I have)... although a large minority could be called the stupidest of the stupid (given their irrational and self-destructive/self-degrading behaviors). After the settlement of the class-action suit against SMCI (which 90 % of us wanted to go to trial on ) prison officials agreed to make some changes, including ceasing to slander us all as “the worst of the worst” and degrading us no more than any other Wisconsin prisoner.
Apparently to justify it’s continued existence and high-price tag (consider, there are around 100 staff running SMCI ad 300-350 inmates here, while in a “normal” maximum security prison the same number of staff supervise 1000+ inmates). SMCI adopted a new name (i.e. Wisconsin’s secure Program Facility - WSPF) and now portrays itself as a facility that intensely rehabilitates troublesome inmates with loads of programs. Yet nothing has changed at WSPF (maybe a little velvet disguises the hammer), it still operates as Abu-Gharib - West, pounding the decency and humanity (and there’s not much to spare in many inmates) out of inmates here, dehabilitating prisoners who often have never been habilitated in the first place.
We should first understand what “rehabilitation” is and is not. It is not: a.) adopting religion; b.) getting a GED; c.) completing some mass-marketed programs; d.) becoming needy, weak, servile or blindly complacent towards government officials; or; e.) being crippled by guilt for the harms we’ve caused. Maybe, to a degree, some of these things will occur when one’s rehabilitated, but they aren’t rehab-ilitation. What rehabilitation is, or should be, if one’s objective/just and realistic, is helping a prisoner to realize that: a.) he can achieve his/her life goals without resorting to crime, and ; b.) enabling and helping them to get rid of all the stinking thinking and emotional garbage that made them capable of committing their crimes in the first place. The rehabilitation mindset is inside all of us - we all (those who are same) have the natural desire to thrive, grow and achieve success - it’s just that some people (particularly prisoners) lose focus and lose control, and maybe never were taught it. Rehabilitation is, or should be, simply helping people regain (or gain) their focus and self control then enabling them to maintain this focus and self-control by creating a tolerable environment.
The recollections of my studies of behavioral psychology is that positive reinforcement (i.e. rewarding) good behavior is the most effective way of modifying behavior, while negative reinforcement (i.e. punishment) of bad behavior is the least effective means of changing behavior. Heck, they say this all the time on an Allstate commercial - rewarding good drivers works better than punishing the bad ones.
More so, concerning those with some mental and emotional illness or those who have histories of abuse/neglect (e.g. most prisoners), punishment (other than outright physical torture) has no positive effect at all on behavior and tends to cause the behavior to worsen or spawn anger/resentment and a desire to attack authority by doing what it dislikes - like you might lash out on somebody who’s abused/ abusing you or act out because it’s the only thing that gets you attention. It’s not so shocking then that recidivism is so high, when Wisconsin (and the entire country) has chosen to warehouse prisoners in overpopulated, filthy, dre-ary death traps run by staff who’s only difference from the inmates is (often) their greater skill at lying and running their rackets - and these prisoners (e.g. myself, and many more whom I’ve spoken with) often come from backgrounds of extreme abuse/neglect (akin to the prison environment).
BUt another principle of psychology reveals that the cruelty of WSPF and indeed most of the prison system is irrational and counterproductive. This is that people have a hierarchy of needs, and they don’t pursue the higher ones until they’ve satisfied the lower ones - this is well-known by psychol-ogists and anyone with common sense. You tend not to worry about finding the love of your life when you are starving, dying of thirst or freezing - instead you tend to seek to satisfy your needs for food, warmth and water, then pursue love and other higher needs or even wants. In WSPF (and many prisons) inmates are fed such meager/poor-quality food, subject to such extreme temperatures (cold in winter, hot and humid in summer), that they don’t have energy or time to spend pondering rehabilitation. Then, before they can ponder rehabilitation, they need to satisfy their basic needs for a feeling of safety, feeling of being loved, social contact, to merely sleep and be sane/healthy - all of which WSPF does it’s best to deprive inmates of by: forbidding contact visits: not facilita-ting correspondence/phone-calls to inmates’ few loved ones (indigent inmates, like myself, can only send 1 letter a week and there’s no free phone calls and gads of restrictions on calls); leaving inmates alone in their cells, 24/7, without even group religious services. Again, this is com-pounded when we’re talking of inmates who come from backgrounds of extreme abuse/neglect, so their social skills are retarded (e.g. insecure, mistrustful) yet a huge need for love, socialization and security exists!
Considering the above, which most people (if they put aside their biases) will agree is correct, it seems that those running WSPF (and the rest of the prison system) have no desire to rehabilitate inmates but are arch sadomasochists (remember, inmates get out and commit more crimes, hence masochism). Unfortunately good people, innocent people, are forced into being masochists by a sadistic prison system that creates (or at least exacerbates) dehabilitated humans who’ve been taught one thing - pain and misery is good, should be spread far and wide, and nothing should be done to end it or even acknowledge it exists. Of course this reveals that WSPF and the people that condone it are dysfunctional, just as is a “family” that tears down it’s children instead of building them up - for the government, like a family, if “functional”, exists to build up and nurture it’s wards, not create or aggravate distress, pain or misery.
To truly understand the miserable conditions at WSPF you’ll need specific examples, here’s a few:
a.) we get no more than 2 1/2 hours of outside exercise a week, and that’s in a dog-kennelesque cage with only light sun-exposure;
b.) the only visits we get are over a t.v. monitor, which is 8’ away and on a 26” screen;
c.) we spend practically 24/7 in our cells;
d.) every time we leave our cell we’re shackled hand, foot and waist chained;
e.) there’s constant yelling, banging on walls, doors and toilets by deranged inmates - which staff let go on and incite (e.g. by harassing inmates or inciting conflicts) so we hardly ever get to sleep up ere;
f.) staff deluge a select few of us who they particularly hat (e.g. due to our litigation, complaints, religion/politics, refusal to kowtow) with petty or false write-ups, resulting in loss of our paltry outside recreation, visits, pay and continued stay at WSPF;
g.) indigents, like me, can only send one free letter a week and can’t use postage sent in by or paid for by kith and kin;
h.) we get no group religious services;
i.) we get no opportunity to work nor job training;
j.) we’re not allowed to use our radios here;
k.) cameras monitor us in our cells, constantly;
l.) we’re subject to secret meetings where staff decide to keep us here, using a “phase” system;
m.) we’re often punished for non-dangerous remarks in our mail;
n.) the food they’re fed is meager and mostly unhealthy packaged/canned foods;
o.) staff play mind games with inmates to cause stress (e.g. yelling at us, slamming our door’s trap, flirting with inmates or inciting them to engage in sex-acts, give our mail to the wrong inmate, switch our letters when reviewing outgoing mail, grope us when pat searching us and outright assaults) and justify prolonging their stay at WSPF.
At WSPF, with a 1:3 staff/inmate ratio, the devilry is particularly concentrated - yet the same madness permeates the entire Wisconsin and U.S. prison system. The only way to end it and the suffering it perpetuates (both on inmates and non inmates is to:
a/) drop the punishment mentality and swiftly reward any and all behavior of inmates that’s lawful, self-advancing, beneficial to their community or society;
b.) create prison environments that cater to inmates; needs and allow them to grow, improve and feel safe about doing so;
c.) strictly supervise prison staff and the system, to ensure it doesn’t fall into it’s old ways of degrading/tormenting it’s captives instead of rehabilitating them;
d.) abolish all prisons that aren't absolutely needed, convert prisons into the least restrictive type of place possible, don’t sentence people to prison unless this is needed to protect society;
e.) freely allow and promote programs which empower inmates (e.g. diverse job training, work-release, family and conjugal visits, drug programs, diverse college courses, self-analysis classes) and NEVER terminate the programs to punish inmates.
More could be said, more detail added, but right now WSPF needs to embrace these basic realities... if it is to truly rehabilitate it’s inmates. The voters and politicians are going to have to choose either to rehabilitate inmates or continue to dehabilitate them - if dehabilitation remains the game - plan, prison officials should be upfront about this, as the public pays the price. Whatever YOU chose, nothing will change until YOU actively do something.
-finis-
Nate A Lindell
WSPF P.O. Box 9900
Bosocbel, WI
53805-9900
posted by F. at 6:02 AM
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