{"id":32312,"date":"2013-05-09T17:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/is-this-americas-worst-prison-the-inspirational-campaign-to-close-tamms-supermax\/32312\/"},"modified":"2013-05-09T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T16:43:00","slug":"is-this-americas-worst-prison-the-inspirational-campaign-to-close-tamms-supermax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/is-this-americas-worst-prison-the-inspirational-campaign-to-close-tamms-supermax\/","title":{"rendered":"Is This America's Worst Prison? The Inspirational Campaign to Close Tamms Supermax"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tamms Supermax was designed for just one purpose: sensory deprivation.<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com\/rudall30<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

May 9, 2013<\/span><\/em> \u00a0| \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Join our email list:<\/p>\n

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Illinois Lost Its Head<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1998, Illinois opened a prison without a yard, cafeteria, classrooms or chapel. Tamms Supermax was designed for just one purpose: sensory deprivation. No phone calls, communal activities or contact visits were allowed. Men could only leave their cells to shower or exercise alone in a concrete pen. Food was pushed through a slot in the door. The consequences of isolation<\/a>\u00a0were predictable: many men fell into severe depression, experienced hallucinations, compulsively cut their bodies or attempted suicide.<\/p>\n

The first men at Tamms were transferred there from other prisons around the state for a one-year shock treatment intended to break down disruptive prisoners and make them more compliant. But the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) left them there indefinitely. A decade later, more than a third of the men at Tamms had been there since it opened, and for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that supermax prisons don\u2019t reduce prison violence or rehabilitate prisoners. On the contrary, isolation induces or exacerbates mental illness, creates stress and tension, worsens behavior and undermines the ability of people to function once they get out.<\/p>\n

Despite its uselessness as a form of correction, Tamms had many strong supporters: the powerful union to which the prison guards belonged, the nearby towns that welcomed the well-paid jobs, and state officials who thrived on tough-on-crime politics. They all deployed a single phrase meant to paralyze any possible dissenters:\u00a0the worst of the worst. This slogan was applied to the men at Tamms to suggest they deserved the worst possible treatment\u2013long-term solitary confinement that human rights monitors uniformly describe as cruel, inhuman and degrading, if not outright torture<\/a>. Challenging this label and this punishment became the project of Tamms Year Ten, a campaign launched in 2008, a decade after the supermax opened.<\/p>\n

Punching Above Our Weight<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two years earlier, a group of Chicago artists, poets and musicians formed the Tamms Poetry Committee. Two of them, Laurie Jo Reynolds included, had been members of a group<\/a>\u00a0that had protested plans to construct the supermax. Following the practice of two women who sent holiday cards to the prison, we <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tamms Supermax was designed for just one purpose: sensory deprivation. Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com\/rudall30 May 9, 2013 \u00a0| \u00a0 Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Illinois Lost Its Head In 1998, Illinois opened a prison without a yard, cafeteria, classrooms or chapel. Tamms Supermax was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}