Brochure/Statement Released By CMPP on July 1, 2001:

You say CDC "labels" you as a gang member or affiliate. Probably was not very difficult to come up with that label with gang/prison tattoos covering 50% of your body, or known associations outside of prison, or just a cursorary look at any of your criminal records. Any prison system would be remiss to not attempt to separate the gangster predators in the inmate population from the rest of the prison population. How many inmates outside of this housing unit share your cause or plan to go on this hunger strike too? How many of them would just rather you be kept apart from them? You act as though you aren't responsible for your ultimate destiny in prison. Try taking some responsibility, maybe that will help the prison decide when or if you can be returned to mainline.

Why is this posted in the first place? What does this have to do with the bioresistance cause?

Not to worry, the inmates are eating again! They apparently decided a diet consisting of commissary candy bars and whatever else they were eating when nobody was looking wasn't worth the effort. (If they could control their impulses they probably wouldn't be in prison anyway.) Again, not to worry, they are back on their three square meals a day courtesy of the taxpayers.

I am both troubled and appalled by the responses to the situation at the SHU units at Pelican Bay. First these SHU/SuperMax/Control Units are designed to dehumanize individuals and frankly shouldn't be tolerated on the mass scale on which they have been implemented. Just try staying in an 8'X 14' room for 24 hours a day, day after day, week after week, year after year. Cut off from outside contact, fresh air, etc. and subjected to a daily grind of abusive treatment and a cacophony of noise. Try reading "Prison Madness" by Terry Kupers. This is not going to rehabilitate anyone. Unless , of course, you feel that the best policy is to lock-em up and throw away the key. In that case the current scenario should be to your liking.

Sure there are some who may require seperation from the general population, but many times those who end up in the SHU are either politically active, a "litigator", an emotionally unstable individuals, or have only a peripheral gang involvement. And of course if you go the debriefing route, you will be labelled a "snitch" and you will likely face repercussions at the next prison or when you parole.

Another thing to think about is that in the Rampart Division of the LAPD thousands of arrests were made by the CRASH anti-gang units over a three year period prior to the Perez revelations. ALL of those arrests resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts. So I guess ALL of those gang "affiliates"

deserve a good long SHU term.

Why be "troubled and appalled" by these responses? You are talking about prisons aren't you? And career criminals who made deliberate choices along the way to prey on the rest of us? Why not have your buddies spend some time and energy on changing themselves? We all love success stories alot more than we care about making changes in our prisons to suit the creature comfort of those who deserve to be in them.

Well thanks for the enlightenment. I would direct your attention to two web sites if you are at all interested in broadening your perspective.

(1)www.unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/groups/nacun/c.u.pamphlet.html - this site has an overview re control units nationwide

2)

phoenix.marymount.edu/~mrobbers/SOC131/Assgn9.html

- this site discusses someone at Pelican Bay and how they arrived there. You might want to see the related site www.brandonhein.com

The first web address should read http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/groups/nacun/c.u.pamphlet.html.

I mistakenly replaced the hyphen with a period.