Not long ago a penpal of mine was released from the Boscobel Supermax prison (now re-named) in Wisconsin. He was what the staff and prison monitor like to call "a chronic non-complier." As a "non-complier," he spent his entire two years in Boscobel bounced between custody level 1 and 2, the lowest, meanest levels of a cruel and ineffective five step system. At those levels, he was denied most basic canteen items. He couldn't get library books, magazines or newspapers. He never had direct visual contact with a visitor. His television viewing was restricted to a few channels for only a few hours. That is, until he smashed his TV out of frustration with the guards "messin' with my food." I had gotten many barely coherent letters from him. He was obviously hallucinating in his tiny cell. You see, the Supermax has no windows or direct outside ventilation into the cells. It has no outdoor recreation area (even though one was ordered by a federal judge two years ago). It has an indoor recreation area which consists of a 10x20 foot concrete cubical with no recreation equipment in it. Few inmates ever use the rec area because of having to be shackled and strip searched when leaving and re-entering their cells. My friend never left the confines of his tiny cell for two years. He never saw the sky, a tree, a bird, never felt the wind or a raindrop, or the warm sun on his skin for two years. My friend was one of those guys who beat on his stainless steel toilet or on his solid steel cell door with his shoes, day and night. He was one of those guys who screamed and howled all day making life miserable for all the others nearby. Some guys throw feces on the guards or wipe it on the walls, or beat off in front of the camera built into the wall of their cell. Some run full steam, head first into the wall or dive off their concrete slab of a bed trying to end it, or maybe just to feel something, anything. This last June, my friend reached his mandatory release date. Two weaks ahead of it, they hauled him over to Racine, Wisconsin, for a "mustering out" process. I sent him some clothes, a couple of shirts and pants from the thrift store and a new pair of sneakers from K-Mart. He asked that I hide a bit of cash in the shoes so that he would have bus fare to Chicago, but I told him that I would rather wire some money to Western Union because I didn't want to jeopardize my standing with the DOC [Department of Corrections]. I visit and write to other inmates. Why was my friend without funds? He had litigated against the Supermax in a class action suit to get the outside rec area among other things. The DOC had drained his account to pay for that litigation. Using my credit card, I wired $75 to the Milwaukee Western Union. Everything was all set. The big day arrived. Then I got a phone call from the newly freed citizen. "Hey, man, they won't give me the money! I almost got into a fight with the Western Union guy. He was gonna call the cops, so I got out of there!" "Why won't they give you your money?" "They say I need an ID and I ain't got one." "Where are you now?" "I got into a cab and went uptown to another Western Union office. I didn't have any money to pay the cab, so I gave him my TV." That's his personal TV, not the DOC one that he'd smashed in Boscobel. To make a long story a little shorter, I got him some cash and he got out of Milwaukee. I got a letter from my friend a couple of weeks later postmarked Champaign, Illinois. He was living on a mat in a homeless shelter there and enjoying every minute of his free life. The shelter, he said, also runs a work training program that he said he was going to get into. I hope he succeeds despite all the cards stacked against him. I hope he doesn't hurt anyone despite all the anger built into him at the supermax. I hope that he will avoid the revolving door of the prison-industrial complex despite their best efforts to reel him back in as quickly as possible. My friend went from two years of extreme sensory deprivation and total disassociation from normal life to being dumped into Milwaukee with no money and no identification. What does the "justice" system expect? How does this system protect our communities? What they did to my friend and to the community was criminal and dangerous. This story could have ended tragically the very day of my friend's release. Maybe the Department of Justice should be called the criminally insane "justice" system. [Editor's Note: How does such treatment benefit you or your community? America has succeeded in developing the most inhumane and horrific dungeons and treatment for citizens that the government doesn't like. How does that help us? The present system and attitude does harm, hot good.]

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