_By Lance Tapley
At least eight inmates of the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement
Supermax unit in Warren
are on a hunger strike, protesting not being allowed to have radios to listen
to.
Recent letters to the Phoenix from two
of the protesters said 10 inmates had been on strike since Sunday, May 3. Denise
Lord, associate commissioner of the Department of Corrections, said on Wednesday, May 6, that “up to eight prisoners in the Special Management Unit . . . refused
meals beginning either Sunday night or Monday morning. At least one prisoner
has resumed eating.”
Lord said the prison’s medical staff was monitoring the inmates. She
confirmed that the strike was “related to a request for radios in their cells.”
“Most states recognize that it’s a necessity to have a TV or
radio to keep sane” in solitary confinement, one of the protesters, Jesse Baum,
wrote the Phoenix. “We will not eat any food until
we can have a radio, at the least.”
Baum — whose MySpace.com profile describes him as in his late 20s
and from Norway, Maine — believes authorities don’t allow radios because some
inmates might use their parts “to cut up” — to cut themselves, a common
behavior in the 23-hour-a-day lockdown of the Supermax, where many inmates are
mentally ill. He called this an unfair “mass punishment” of all Supermax
inmates.
He added: “Ask yourself, do you believe that keeping us . . . under
these conditions is good for a successful rehabilitation? I am a human being
that’s made a couple of mistakes. I didn’t come to prison to do a three-year
sentence to lose my sanity.”
Lord did not immediately answer the Phoenix’s
questions about why radios were not allowed in the Supermax, what the names were
of the striking inmates, whether the strike is disrupting the rest of the
prison, or whether the prisoners would be force-fed if their medical condition
degenerated to a dangerous state.
In a letter sent by Baum on Monday, he said prison medical staff
were weighing the strikers and taking pulse, blood pressure, and oxygen levels.
He said a nurse told him that because he was on a hunger strike he wouldn’t be
allowed to be treated for medical problems — he mentioned “night sweats,
abdominal pain, joint pain, and jaundice” — which he blamed in part on chronic
hepatitis C.
He said some prisoners were refusing water and psychotropic
medications. In a letter also received by the Phoenix
Wednesday, Michael James, another protester, said he’s drinking only a little
water and as of Monday had lost four pounds.
James is a severely mentally ill man whose incarceration at the
prison has long been controversial. Robin Dearborn, his mother, describes the
part of the Supermax where he is held as a “dungeon.” (For more on James, see “Punish
the Mentally Ill,” by Lance Tapley, April 13, 2007.)
The last Supermax mass hunger strike, which lasted for several
days, occurred in 2006 to protest the treatment of Ryan Rideout, a mentally ill
man who had hanged himself in his cell. (See “State Sued Over Inmate’s Death,”
by Lance Tapley, March 5, 2008.)