Protesting the living nightmare at Menard

A HUNGER strike is underway at the Menard Correctional Center in downstate Illinois, south of St. Louis along the Mississippi River, to protest the appalling conditions prisoners are subjected to and policies that isolate certain prisoners in special high-security units.

The hunger strike began on January 15 with at least 14 and as many as 20 prisoners participating. In early February, prisoners continuing the action said they were refusing all liquids, in addition to solid foods.

According to the statements of hunger strikers, when prison staff was first told about the action in January, guards "came on location like storm-troopers at approximately 10 a.m. Their tactic was intimidation. Their first order was to cuff up, stating that they were taking all of our property out the cell--including legal documents. So there was a standoff, because they are only allowed to remove food items during hunger strikes."

One prisoner, Armando Velasquez, was taken to "a blind spot where there are no cameras and beaten up" by guards, according to the account of prisoners.

THE HUNGER strikers say the high-security unit is filthy and infested with rodents, and prisoners suffer from freezing cold temperatures and no hot water. In letters sent to a Chicago-based legal center and the St. Louis Riverfront Times, prisoner Michael Williams wrote: "There are mice just running wild. They have 20 guys using one pair of fingernail clippers, with no cleaning in between uses, there is absolutely no mental health screening or evaluation, nor do any mental health staff even make rounds."

Mark Clements--a member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and a former prisoner who spent 28 years behind bars at facilities like Menard after being wrongly convicted on the basis of a confession tortured out of him by Chicago police--points out that Menard is 135 years old. "Inmates have had to battle its deteriorating conditions that IDOC [Illinois Department of Corrections] seems to think don't exist," Clements said. "IDOC has downplayed the inhumane conditions to avoid the high cost of repairs."

Beyond the conditions, however, the Menard inmates are protesting policies that isolate selected prisoners in barbaric conditions of solitary confinement, without any means to appeal the decision or punishment--the same issue that sparked a hunger strike last year involving 30,000 prisoners in California and others elsewhere.

"They won't tell anybody why they are in Administrative Detention, let alone give them an informal hearing to contest the undisclosed allegations," Williams wrote in his letter, according to a section quoted in the Riverfront Times.

Prisoners held in segregation units are restricted to five hours of exercise a week and one phone call a month. They aren't allowed contact visits and are required to eat meals in their cells.

Staughton and Alice Lynd, the renowned authors and social justice activists, are speaking out on behalf of the prisoners. "The Supreme Court says that in order to put anyone in indefinite solitary confinement, you must give them notice, you must give them reasons, and you must give them some sort of hearing or opportunity to respond to the allegations," Staughton Lynd told the Riverfront Times.

According to a lawyer working with the hunger strikers, the prisoners have filed grievances against prison policies, but gotten no response. In fact, some prisoners believe they have been stuck in solitary as punishment for speaking up.

In his letter to the Riverfront Times, prisoner Joseph Hauschild said, "I'm a jailhouse lawyer. And [I] file/help other prisoners with their greivances and lawsuits. Because of that I was retaliated against and transferred to Menard and placed in the High Security Unit under Administrative Detention."

THE CONDITIONS at Menard are directly related to one of ugliest scandals in the history of the Illinois prison system--the Tamms Supermax prison, which was finally shut down in 2013.

Tamms became notorious for its dehumanizing conditions. Prisoners were held alone in their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day, with little or no human contact beyond prison guards, and no real access to even the most basic education or recreation programs. The terrible psychological consequences became impossible to deny, and the legal system and Illinois state officials came under pressure to shut down this high-tech torture chamber.

But as the Riverfront Times explained: "[E]ver since the 2013 closure of the controversial Tamms Correctional Center...the Illinois Department of Corrections appears to be creating mini-Supermax prisons around the state by carving out special units such as the one at Menard."

In 2010, federal judge G. Patrick Murphy had ruled that the Supermax conditions at Tamms inflicted "lasting psychological and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods." Murphy's decision guaranteed that prisoners under orders to transfer to Tamms must be allowed to challenge the transfer in a formal hearing.

The closing of Tamms, however, seems to have shut down this avenue for prisoners to challenge the dehumanizing conditions of the mini-Supermaxes being set up at other prisons.

Mark Clements said he participated in numerous protests inside prison over the system's refusal to follow its own rules and regulations. "The approach was to ignore rather than to admit when they didn't follow rules," Clements said. "Officers commonly go undisciplined for abuses, and grievances are mysteriously misfiled or lost."

Clements says he similarly engaged in food strikes over issues such as unsanitary living conditions, rodents roaming kitchen food supplies, and visitation and phone calls.

I was always labeled by prison officials as one of the ringleaders and had to prolong my food strike to get their sanctions against me overturned. Their attempt to force me to give up on hunger strikes always involved prison officials sitting at their office desk, eating food and offering me something. But this would only cause me to throw the food into the garbage directly in front of the officials, while I continued my food strike

The hunger strikers have the support of prison rights activists on the outside. As one of the prisoners' statements compiled by Alice Lynd reads:

Yesterday, on Monday Jan. 27, there were hunger strike supporters outside of the prison banging on homemade drums singing "We support the hunger strike." Us prisoners in the HSU [high security unit] were able to hear and see them out our windows. We opened our windows and screamed "Hunger Strike!," "No due process no peace," and "We Love You!"

The hunger strikers at Menard are courageously confronting barbaric conditions in the belly of the criminal injustice system beast. We need to make sure they know they have our support.