Abstract

B-block days and nightmares

This article focuses on experiences of the author during his stay in the State Correctional Institute at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. It was late October 1989, the opening for furious days and nights when prisoners throughout the state slipped briefly free and erupted in rage. The scene had been replayed a thousand gruesome times, and the conflict it prompted, crushed ultimately by club and boot, by fire hose and taser electric stun gun, began with the modest demand that Huntingdon's administrators put an end to beatings of handcuffed prisoners in B-Block. As walls fall in riotous clamor in the Eastern bloc, and as demonstrators rejoice over an end to state police brutality, walls climb ever higher in the West, and club-wielding fists find frequent function in subduing the common urge to human dignity, whether by imprisoned or "free."