United States Penitentiary, Marion

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USP Marion
U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.
Location Marion, Illinois
Coordinates 37°39′47″N 88°59′3″W / 37.66306°N 88.98417°W / 37.66306; -88.98417
Status Operational
Security class Medium
Capacity 1,000
Opened 1963
Managed by Federal Bureau of Prisons

The United States Penitentiary is a former supermax prison, located in Marion, Illinois. It was built in 1963 to replace the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, which closed the same year. According to Carl Sifakis, author of The Encyclopedia of American Prisons (New York, NY:Facts on File, Inc., 2003), "Amnesty International has categorized it as inhumane" (156).

Contents

[edit] History

Opened in 1963, Marion became the United States' highest security prison by 1978.[1] The facility became the nation's first control unit when violence forced a long-term lockdown in 1983.

Marion was one of two supermax prisons in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the other being ADX Florence in Colorado. The prison was originally constructed to hold 500 inmates. In 1968, a behavior modification program was implemented, called Control and Rehabilitation Effort, or CARE. Inmates placed in CARE wound up either in solitary confinement, or were subjected to "group therapy", which involved psychological sessions.

In 1975 five prisoners(Maurice Philion, Arthur Mankins, Michael Gargano, Edward Roche, and Dennis Hunter) walked out of the front door of the prison and escaped. One of them had been an electrician and over a period of time had been required to work on the lock mechanisms of all of the doors in the main corridors. He also converted a radio into a remote control, with which he opened all of the doors. One prisoner was recaptured within hours. Two gave themselves up after they became hungry. One made it to Canada, where he was arrested and imprisoned for separate charges.

On October 22, 1983, two prison guards, Merle E. Clutts and Robert L. Hoffman, were killed in separate incidents, both at the hands of Aryan Brotherhood members.[2] Clutts was stabbed by Thomas Silverstein.[3] The prison was, at the time, the holding place for the Federal Bureau of Prisons' most dangerous prisoners. Despite this, two inmates were able independently to kill their accompanying guards. Relatively lax security procedures allowed a prisoner, while walking down a hall, to turn to the side and approach a particular cell. An accomplice would subsequently unlock his handcuffs with a stolen key and provide him with a knife.

As a result of the incident, the prison in Marion went into "permanent lockdown," and was completely transformed into a "control unit" prison. This penal construction and operation theory, since named supermax (a portmanteau of super and maximum) calls for the keeping of inmates in solitary confinement between twenty-two and twenty-three hours each day, and does not allow congregate dining, exercising, or religious services. These practices were used as administrative measures to keep prisoners under control.

[edit] Communication Management Unit

Although the supermax facility is gone, The United States Penitentiary at Marion is now home to one of two known "Communication Management Units" in the federal prison system.[4] The other is at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana. The units severely restrict the visitation rights for inmates and monitor all telephone calls and mail. Most of the inmates are Arab Muslims. The prison also houses Daniel McGowan, serving seven years for involvement in two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given "terrorism enhancements" as authorized by the US Patriot act.[5]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons created the Communication Management Unit (CMU) in response to criticism that it had not been adequately monitoring the communications of prisoners. "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," according to the Bureau's summary of the CMU.[6] An ACLU law suit charges that CMUs of the federal prisons violates inmates' rights.[7] In a Democracy Now interview on June 25 2009, animal rights activist Andrew Stepanian talks about being jailed at the CMU. Stepanian is believed to be the first prisoner released from a CMU.[8]

See also Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute#Communication Management Unit

[edit] The prison

The prison is located approximately nine miles south of Marion, which is roughly 330 miles (530 km) south of Chicago. Permanent lockdown, where prisoners remain in their cells 23 hours a day with little to no human contact, began in 1983 and ended in 2006, when the prison began extensive renovations as a medium security prison. The renovations increased Marion's inmate population from 383 to 900. [9] The majority of the inmates housed at Marion are weapons and drug offenders.

Besides the better known former supermax penitentiary, the facility also houses a minimum security work camp as well.

[edit] Famous inmates

[edit] References

  1. ^ ""Control Unit Prisons"". University of Massachusetts. http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/ceml_articles/cu_in_us.html. Retrieved 2006-10-23. 
  2. ^ ""Fallen Heroes"". United States Federal Bureau of Prisons. http://www.bop.gov/about/history/heroes.jsp. Retrieved 2006-10-23. 
  3. ^ ""America's Most Dangerous Prisoner?"". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1393970.stm. Retrieved 2006-10-23. 
  4. ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-mcgowan/tales-from-inside-the-us_b_212632.html
  5. ^ http://www.supportdaniel.org/faq/
  6. ^ Washington Post, February 2007 Facility holding terrorism inmates limits communication
  7. ^ LA Times, June 2009 ACLU to challenge isolation prisons
  8. ^ Democracy Now interview
  9. ^ Hunsperger, Kevin. "Marion Prison Tours". WSIL TV. http://www.wsiltv.com/p/news_details.php?newsID=1560&type=local. Retrieved 2008-03-24. 

[edit] External links

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