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24-Hour Cell Lights

Prisoners confined in the oppressive and mentally debilitating environment of the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) at Walla Walla are being subjected to a highly effective form of sensory deprivation, a part of which being the lights in cells that are kept on 24 hours a day.

These lights, which just happen to be directly over the head of the bed, are kept on 24 hours a day. This is supposedly to enable the prison's watchdogs visual contact while making general rounds, and during count times. But this is just an excuse that masks a program of mental oppression. If the prison administration were not so preoccupied with surpassing the Hitler regime's technologies of mental torture they could simply order IMU guards to use flashlights for these count times, etc.

In reality, these lights are kept on in order to interrupt prisoners' natural sleeping patterns, thus said prisoners are kept continually tired, causing them to become less resistive and more passive prisoners.

The sickest result of this mental torture is that many of the 95 or so prisoners being held in the W.S.P. IMU are being left no valid alternative than to turn to the institution's mental health unit for those oh so well known and easily acquired mentally destructive drugs, of which are handed out like candy, just to set a little sleep.

Anybody wishing to correspond on this matter should direct response to: Tom Langbehn, P.O. Box 520 (IMU/B-11), Walla Walla, WA 99362.

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