There Are Women Political Prisoners in U.S. — Shut Down the Lexington Women's Control Unit

About this record

Single-page organizing flyer issued in 1986-87 demanding the closure of the Lexington High Security Unit (HSU), a basement control unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky opened in October 1986 specifically to hold women political prisoners under conditions of sensory deprivation. The flyer profiles the three women then incarcerated in the unit: Alejandrina Torres (FALN, 35 years for seditious conspiracy), Susan Rosenberg (anti-imperialist, 58 years for weapons/explosives/false ID), and Silvia Baraldini (Italian anti-imperialist, 43 years RICO conspiracy from the 1981 Brink's investigation). The flyer documents the cost of the unit ($735,000), the U.S. importation of psychological-torture techniques from West Germany and Northern Ireland, and provides organizing instructions — letters to the Warden and Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Norman Carlson. The successful campaign to close the unit ran from 1986 to its 1988 shutdown.