Every prison has a story. At the Robert Scott Correctional Facility, in Michigan, the women were not allowed to touch one another or risk a “major misconduct.” Sharing, even a small piece of candy, was against prison policy and women were written up for lending a smoke.

Surveillance was 24/7 and when you got the snow detail, you could expect to be awakened at 2:30 AM for a three hour stretch out in the freezing cold picking ice with a plastic shovel. The work, when they could get it, was virtual slave labor with full day shifts making dental materials.

 

The Governor, Jennifer Granholm, ordered the Christmas lights off the year I taught there to save money. Christmas exploded when one prison guard brutally murdered another guard at the gas station across the street. Many prisoners heard the fatal bullets. It turns out the shooter had been bullied severely by the victim and took out his recourse in this violent way. Later he shot himself in the chest but recovered. Needless to say the women were highly distressed by all this. Not only did they know the guards (and sympathies went different ways), but the killing brought back tough memories of other shootings, often of abusive husbands. There was no counseling for the women.

 

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/01/michigans-abu-ghraib/

 

Thank you to Tim Wallace:

A version of this article was originally published in the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 23:2, May 2012. Tim Wallace, editor. http://www.sfaa.net/newsletter/may12nl.pdf