The federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, went on permanent lock down in 1983. This created the first "control unit." Now, in addition to the federal government, some forty states have built these "maxi-maxi" prisons -- representations of the angry and cruel repression that grips our country today. Human beings are put alone in a small cell with double steel doors and no window for 23 hours a day. No program, no work, no education, meals alone, and maybe one hour by oneself in a bare dog-run outside. A religious task force calls such conditions psychological pain and agony tantamount to torture. It lS torture. Here, now, in the following pages, people who are captives in these cells write about what goes on and how you can survive ...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Letters from Prisoners - Life in a control unit

II. Letters from Prisoners - Survival

III. Past Times

IV. The Community Outside

V. Acknowledgments