Hilary Andersson , The Guardian; ‘It’s torture’: prisoners’ letters expose subterranean Oklahoma ‘dungeon’ known as the tombs
"Dungeons have housed American prisoners as far back as the revolutionary war, but most underground cells – including those at the notorious island prison Alcatraz – have long since been decommissioned.
Today, there is no national database for prisons that continue to use buried or partly buried facilities. A handful of other facilities do reportedly still use underground cells, but the practice is rare.
The letters from H Unit offer a glimpse into this sunless world. The prisoners – of whom there are currently 248 in total, according to prison authorities – write of living in squalor, and frequent violence and rape. Many are held in solitary confinement, with almost no human contact. Others stay in two-person cells, where they say violence is common because the space is not large enough for two men...
The Death Penalty Information Center said: “These allegations about Oklahoma’s H Unit raise new and serious concerns about whether the constitutional obligations of prison officials are being met, and they deserve close scrutiny.”"
