Prisons – especially prison systems designed by diabolical American minds – are meant to break men’s wills, to make them non-persons, groveling masses of flesh. Solitary confinement is the ultimate tool of the man-breaker, narrowing the scope of human activity to the bare functions of processing food into waste. For a person so restricted, the only mode of resistance available is to refuse to eat.
One day in 1990 I drove by Pelican State Prison in Crescent City, California--I was horrified. I saw an enormous, windowless concrete structure that looked like a scene from a film about a future fascist state. This picture--the best I could find--does not fully capture what I saw.
See also this, this, and this.
