2/22/2024 0 Comments Dorishat cmusThe BOP maintains that there are broad guidelines determining who is eligible to be sent to these isolation units-indeed the criteria are so broad that thousands of people in the general prison population are potentially eligible. Individuals with "unpopular" political views, such as environmental and animal rights activists, are also housed in CMUs in a calculated effort by the BOP to "integrate" the units after critical press attention to the targeting of Muslims. Of the first 55 prisoners designated to the CMU, 45 were sent there because of terrorism-related convictions, but the other ten were designated because they were involved in "prohibited activities related to communication"-of that ten, eight self-reported as Muslim. This marks a vast overrepresentation, which cannot be explained away by virtue of the CMU's claim to be focused on terrorism. However, in practice, many people were sent to these isolation units for their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs, unpopular political views, or in retaliation for challenging poor treatment or other rights violations in the federal prison system.ĬMUs have been disproportionately used for Muslim prisoners: at the time the BOP disclosed information in 2014, of 178 total CMU designations, 101 were Muslim. The BOP claims that CMUs are designed to hold "dangerous terrorists" and other high-risk inmates who require heightened monitoring of external and internal communications. However, bias, political scapegoating, religious profiling, and racism keep them locked inside these special units. Many CMU prisoners have neither significant disciplinary records nor any communications-related infractions. Upon designation to the unit, there is no meaningful review or appeal process that allows CMU prisoners to be transferred back to general population. Individuals detained in the CMUs receive no meaningful explanation for their transfer to the unit or for the extraordinary communications restrictions to which they are subjected. All visits and calls must be conducted in English. Other types of communication are also severely limited, including interactions with non-CMU prisoners and phone calls with friends and family members. Unlike those in other BOP prisons, individuals detained in the CMUs are completely banned from any physical contact with visiting family members and friends. Much of the public information about CMUs comes from these documents, including that the units house between 60 and 70 prisoners in total, and the CMU population is disproportionately Muslim, even though Muslims represented only 6 percent of the general federal prison population. In 2014, hundreds of documents detailing the process of designating and keeping prisoners in the CMUs were made public through the Center for Constitutional Rights' litigation, Aref et al. Currently, there are two CMUs, one located in Terre Haute, Indiana and the other in Marion, Illinois. These isolation units have been shrouded in secrecy since their inception as part of the post-9/11 "counterterrorism" framework implemented by the Bush administration. In 20, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) created Communications Management Units (CMUs), prison units designed to isolate and segregate certain prisoners in the federal prison system from the rest of the BOP population.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |