{"id":167,"date":"2015-03-28T01:51:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T01:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2015-08-29T22:06:08","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T22:06:08","slug":"hell-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/2015\/03\/28\/hell-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Hell on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Administrator\u2019s note: Today we welcome a new author\/contributor, Sister Marie. \u00a0We appreciate this insightful posting, and look forward to future work from her).<\/p>\n

$\"Supermax_prison,_Florence_Colorado\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA cleaner version of Hell\u201d is the phrase used by Robert Hood, to describe the place where he was warden during the years 2002-2005. \u00a0This \u201chell\u201d is the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo, or \u201cADX\u201d for short, also known as the \u201cAlcatraz of the Rockies\u201d. \u00a0Some of the worst Federal offenders are living out their remaining days here, including 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, the spy Robert Hanssen, Oklahoma City Bomber Terry Nichols, and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, to name just a few. ADX has gotten a rare detailed airing in the New York Times; You can find the full article here:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/03\/29\/magazine\/inside-americas-toughest-federal-prison.html?_r=1<\/a><\/p>\n

I was struck by two things when I read this article. \u00a0First, I find remarkable the appropriateness of the term \u201chell\u201d as a description. \u00a0It is said that inmates spend 23 hours of their days in solitary confinement, isolated from any human contact. \u00a0Their only glimpse outside of their cell is of a bit of sky through a 4\u00a0inch wide slit-shaped window. \u00a0Inmates in solitary confinement generally do\u00a0not cope well, as this article<\/a> states: Whatever the reasons, such extreme isolation and sensory deprivation can take a severe, sometimes permanent, toll on emotional and mental health. Researchers have found that prisoners in solitary quickly become withdrawn, hypersensitive to sights and sounds, paranoid, and more prone to violence and hallucinations. Craig Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has documented several cases of individuals with no prior history of mental illness who nonetheless developed paranoid psychosis requiring medical treatment after prolonged solitary confinement.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The aforementioned Mr. Hood sums it up: \u201cthis place is not designed for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isolation is also a hallmark of the Biblical Hell, described by Jesus as \u201couter darkness\u201d (For example, see the fate of the unprofitable servant in Matthew 25:30). \u00a0It is the loneliness of being shut out from God\u2019s presence. \u00a0In Matthew 7, Jesus states that some will be told \u201caway from me\u201d and \u201cI never knew you.\u201d \u00a0The Greek word that is commonly translated as \u201cHell\u201d in the New Testament is \u201cgehenna\u201d, which referred to the valley of Hinnom, which at the time was a desolate place outside the city of Jerusalem that was being used as a kind of garbage dump into which all kinds of excrement (including corpses) might be cast (See, for example, this entry from The New World Encyclopedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The second thing in this article that has struck me is how our far our earthly justice is from divine\u00a0justice. \u00a0Despite our best efforts, human justice is tainted and corrupt. \u00a0The mental illness found at the Supermax is not merely due to the deleterious effects of isolation. \u00a0\u00a0The reason that the NY Times article has emerged is that the U.S. has been incarcerating those who are mentally challenged, in contravention of our own statutes:<\/p>\n

The story of the largest lawsuit ever filed against the United States Bureau of Prisons begins, improbably enough, with this letter. Deborah Golden, the director of the D.C. Prisoners\u2019 Project, fields approximately 2,000 requests each year, but Bacote\u2019s, which she received in October 2009, caught her eye. \u201cI thought I might be missing something, because it was inconceivable to me that the Bureau of Prisons could be operating in such a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional manner,\u201d she said. Golden was referring to B.O.P. regulations that forbid the placement of inmates who \u201cshow evidence of significant mental disorder\u201d in prisons like the ADX.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m filing this one under \u201cReflections of the Fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo above: \u201cSupermax prison, Florence Colorado<\/a>\u201d by US Bureau of Prisons \u2013 http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/graphics\/rich_media\/1027903.html<\/a>. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"