You've heard about the abysmal excessive solitary confinement that many inmates are facing, right? You've also probably heard about the federal government's war on whistleblowers. Where do these seemingly separate injustices cross paths? In Marion, Illinois.
Daniel McGowan, an environmental activist labeled an “ecoterrorist” for involvement with the Earth Liberation Front, was a low-security prisoner with a spotless disciplinary record. Without warning, he was moved to Marion, Il, where he would spend 4 years in what the federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) calls a “Communications Management Unit” (CMU).
A CMU is a high-security prison unit intended to isolate and segregate certain inmates from the rest of the population, as well as intensely monitor their communication. Inmates are allowed only two 15-minute phone calls per week, and can have no physical contact with visitors, remaining separated by plexiglass and bars. The visitation policy is even stricter than that of the BoP’s “supermax” prisons, where inmates have more than quadruple the time with visitors. CMU policies eat away at inmates’ connections to their communities and relationships with their families.
How does a person end up in the isolation of a CMU? When McGowan and other inmates asked, the BoP refused to release information about the criteria for being sent there. Inmates being relocated aren’t given any reason.
It took three years and a lawsuit for McGowan to find out: the CMU is a severe punishment reserved for the severe crime of having a dissenting opinion. Memos written by Leslie Smith, Chief of the BoP’s Counter-Terrorism Unit, confirmed the move was due to views he expressed in personal communication and articles published while in prison.
If that’s not enough First Amendment trampling for you, here’s what happened after McGowan was released from prison: he was re-arrested for publishing an opinion piece in the Huffington Post blog. While serving the last 6 months of his sentence at a halfway house in Brooklyn, he wrote the piece about his experience in the CMU. Three days later he was picked up by U.S. Marshalls and taken into custody. He was released the next day with new rules prohibiting him from media contact without BoP permission and prohibiting him from publishing any of his own writing without prior BoP permission. McGowan should feel special, because as far as attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights can tell, these rules were made up just for him.
Until this week, McGowan, whose activities were profiled in the film If a Tree Falls, was part of a federal lawsuit against the BoP, challenging the constitutionality of CMUs for reasons including free speech and due process. Now, Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein has dismissed McGowan’s claims from the suit. Part of his claim was dismissed due to the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, which keeps prisoners from suing for emotional or psychological injuries. She dismissed the rest based on the reasoning that his case is no longer relevant because he has been released from prison.
McGowan has been isolated for his views, barred from speaking out, and kept from having his day in court. How many times can one person be silenced? Someone really doesn’t want us hearing about these CMUs.
