prison abuse

Elyse Wilson unable to walk, denied food and medical care at Muncy:   The Human Rights Coalition received a report from Elyse Wilson, a prisoner at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Muncy, Pennsylvania on Saturday, February 26th, describing the prison's refusal to provide her necessary medical treatment.  Elyse is unable to walk after a pre-existing back injury worsened. Prison staff refused to take her to the medical department for treatment. As a consequence, Elyse had missed two meals since she cannot walk to the cafeteria.

An interview with author Staughton Lynd

January 3, 2011

In 1993, the maximum security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio was the site of an historic prisoner rebellion, where more than 400 prisoners seized and controlled a major area of the prison for eleven days. Nine prisoners alleged to have been informants and one hostage correctional officer named Robert Vallandingham, were murdered. Following a negotiated surrender, five key figures in the rebellion were tried and sentenced to death. Known since as the Lucasville Five, they are Namir Abdul Mateen (James Were), Siddique Abdullah Hasan (Carlos Sanders), Bomani Hando Shakur (Keith Lamar), George Skatzes and Jason Robb.

A review of Defying The Tomb:  Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin “Rashid” Johnson Featuring Exchanges with an Outlaw

(Kerspledebeb 2010)

“Like the scene at my emergence from the womb, I fought like hell, defying the tomb.”

This work collects correspondence and articles by two politicized inmates incarcerated at the time in the Virginia state system, one of whom (Kevin “Rashid” Johnson), remains in Red Onion State Prison under extremely repressive conditions.

From the Human Rights Coalition

On August 2, former prisoners LuQman Abdullah and Nathaniel Lee testified at a Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee Hearing about abusive conditions inside solitary confinement units (also known as the “hole”) in PA’s state prisons. The hearing also featured testimony by human rights investigator Bret Grote, Pennsylvania Prison Society Executive Director William DiMascio, and Department of Corrections Deputy Michael Klopotoski. The former prisoners, who are both now social workers, gave detailed accounts of Pennsylvania’s use of solitary confinement, which is the practice of holding prisoners 23 or more hours a day in small bathroom-sized cells with little or no contact with other people.

 Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on Solitary Confinement

Former prisoners in solitary Nathaniel Lee and LuQman Abdullah