Joseph Dole is currently serving a life sentence without parole at Tamms state supermax prison in Illinois. For the past eight years, he has been in solitary confinement (under conditions described by Dole himself here, and detailed in recent newspaper exposés here and here). His writing has been honored by the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Contest and appears in the book Lockdown Prison Heart.  This essay, which also recently appeared on the Prison Culture blog, was sent to us by The Real Cost of Prisons Project, which maintains an excellent archive of prisoner writings.

Rarely am I asked what it’s like to serve a life-without-parole sentence. Arguing for a death sentence for my first felony conviction, the State’s Attorney implored the judge not to allow me to spend the rest of my life on a virtual “vacation” in prison. I can unequivocally state that it is not vacation.

A life-without-parole sentence means a million things, because, as its name suggests, it encompasses a person’s entire remaining life.

It means enduring being reduced to a second-class citizen in the eyes of most  people. It means decades of discrimination from the courts and public. “Prisoner’” “inmate,” or “convict” each have a strictly pejorative use in the media or pop culture. Those terms become the sole defining characteristic of a man’s entire character.

It means that courts will turn a blind eye to any act against you unless it causes “atypical and significant hardship.” A free man may find protection in the courts from emotional and mental harm, but a prisoner can only find protection from “atypical and significant” physical harm, and that’s dependent on finding an objective and unbiased judge and enough citizens who can set aside their personal biases against prisoners to fill a jury box and render a fair verdict – a nearly impossible feat. So when you’re stripped naked and left in a concrete box with nothing but a toilet for four days without cause, as a prisoner you have no recourse in the courts. When you’re beaten to a bloody mess while handcuffed, as a prisoner you’re more likely to encounter a jury that will conclude you deserved what you got, regardless of the circumstances.

It means that after being “spared” the death penalty and receiving your life-without-parole sentence, you lack all the procedural safeguards against a wrongful conviction that a death sentence would have entailed, solely because you were found undeserving of immediate death. How ironic it is that the worse you are deemed to be, the better chance of proving your innocence and regaining your freedom.

It means a lifetime of censorship, where you’re told what books and magazines you can read, what movies can watch, even what hairstyles you can sport, and where every letter coming in or going out is subject to inspection.

It means a complete lack of privacy forever, and a complete indifference to your physical and medical health until someone fears being sued.

It means a constant, heightened risk of catching a deadly disease. You’re captive in an environment where staph infections run rampant, where people still die from tuberculosis, where the population has twice the rate of HIV infection compared to non-prisoners, and where up to forty percent are infected with hepatitis. An environment where there’s nowhere to run from many of these diseases because you’re forced to use communal toilets and showers.

It means three meals a day of the poorest quality food that the least amount of money can buy without killing the inmate population.

It’s a daily existence where trust is non-existent and compassion is not allowed. Not only is compassion viewed as a sign of weakness in the prison milieu, but it is, ironically, actively discouraged by the prison administration. If your neighbor is destitute and you want to assist him by giving him soap, paper, or even a snack to supplement the meager meals, you can only do so at risk of being written a disciplinary ticket for “trading and trafficking.”

It’s a never-ending pressure cooker where the stress and anxiety compound daily as you constantly have to watch your back. Soldiers returning from Iraq understand this. It’s a major factor in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The constant fear for your safety and the need for 24-7 situational awareness frays at your nerves.  Now imagine not a 12-month tour but a lifetime deployment.

It means you’re constantly being told that you aren’t worth rehabilitation and thus are ineligible for nearly every educational or vocational program. Your life sentence disqualifies you from any state or federal grants to pursue an education and even the Inmate Scholarship Fund (founded by a prisoner) has no qualms about telling you that you’re ineligible for a scholarship because you’re never going to get out and contribute to society.

It means convincing yourself daily that your life has value even when the rest of the world tells you you’re worthless. It’s a lifetime spent wondering what your true potential really is, and yearning for the chance to find out.

It mean decades of living with double standards, where any guard can call you every profanity ever invented without any fear of punishment, but where if you were to utter a single one in response, or say anything that even resembles insolence, you’ll be written a disciplinary ticket, lose privileges, such as phone calls and commissary, and be subjected to a month of disciplinary segregation.

It means the state constitution is irrelevant where lifers are concerned. Article 1, Section 11 of the Illinois Constitution states: “All penalties shall be determined both according to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship,” but the courts have decided that politics, revenge, and hatred of “criminals” trumps the constitution, and have thus rendered the above section essentially meaningless by their refusal to rule life-without-parole sentences unconstitutional, even if it is the defendants first felony conviction on a theory of accountability, as is my case. This also put the lie to the American maxim that everyone deserves a second chance.

It means that you’re especially vulnerable to incomprehensible punishments, such as a lifetime of disciplinary segregation. I was given indeterminate disciplinary segregation after being found guilty of my sole disciplinary infraction. That was 8 years ago, yet here I remain.  I’ve been told (on more than one occasion) that I will never be allowed out of indeterminate disciplinary segregation. So I will continue to endure conditions for the rest of my life which are known to cause mental illness after just 3 months.

It means that I will never tate another Hostess cake. Nor play softball or any group activity ever again. More importantly, it means that I will never have physical contact with another human being for the rest of my life, including my 11- and 12-year-old daughters.

It means being incapable of taking care of your grandparents and parents as they reach their final years.

It means missing out on every important event in your children’s lives, unable to raise them; impotent to protect them or assist them in any meaningful way.  It means they’ll grow up resenting you for the thousands of times they needed you and you weren’t there.

A life-without-parole sentence means constant contemplation of a wasted life. A continual despair as to your inability to accomplish anything significant with your remaining years. A life spent watching as each of your family members and friends slowly drift away from you leaving you in a vacuum, devoid of any enduring relationships.

It’s a persistent dashing of hopes as appeal after appeal is arbitrarily denied. It is a permanent experiment in self-delusion as you strive to convince yourself that there is still hope.

It’s a compounding of second upon second, minute upon minute, hour upon hour, of wasted existence, and decade upon decade of mental and emotional torture culminating in a final sentence of death by incarceration.

These, though, are simply futile attempts to describe the indescribable. It’s  like trying to describe a broken heart or communicate what it feels like to mourn the death of your soul mate. The words to convey the pain do not exist. When you’re serving a life-without-parole sentence it’s as if you’re experiencing the broken heart of knowing you’ll never love or be loved again in any normal sense of the word, while simultaneously mourning the death of the man you could have and should have been. The only difference is that you never recover, and can move on from neither the heart break nor the death because the pain is renewed each morning you wake up to realize that you’re still here, sentenced to life-without-parole. It’s a fresh day of utter despair, lived over and over for an entire lifetime.

Joseph Dole welcomes mail, and can be reached at K84446 Tamms CC, 8500 Supermax Rd., Tamms, IL 62988.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to significantly reduce the number of inmates in its state prisons, where conditions are so horrendous that the violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In an article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, physician researchers from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, run by Brown University and Providence’s  Miriam Hospital and Brown University suggest a straightforward cure for what they call the “epidemic of mass incarceration” that has swept the country in recent decades: Stop using prisons and jails as holding facilities for people with mental illness and drug addiction–who account for a full half of today’s prison population–and get them proper treatment instead.

Some 2.3 million Americans–1 in 100 adults–is now in prison at any given time, with an estimated 10 million cycling in and out of prisons and jails each year. The numbers have increased more than 600 percent in the past 40 years. According to the article:

Much of the increase in the prisoner census is a result of the “War on Drugs” and our country’s failure to treat addiction and mental illness as medical conditions. The natural history of these diseases often leads to behaviors that result in incarceration. The medical profession has the chance both to advocate for changes in the criminal justice system to reduce the number of people behind bars who would be better served in community-based treatment and to capitalize on the tremendous public health opportunities for diagnosing and treating disease and for linking patients to care after release.

Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill over the past 50 years and severe punishment for drug users starting in the 1970s have shifted the burden of care for addiction and mental illness to jails and prisons. The largest facilities housing psychiatric patients in the United States are not hospitals but jails. More than half of inmates have symptoms of a psychiatric disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), and major depression and psychotic disorders are four to eight times as prevalent among inmates as in the general population — yet only 22% of state prisoners and 7% of jail inmates receive mental health treatment while incarcerated.

Instead, prisoners are subject to conditions–including solitary confinement–that exacerbate, rather than address, their mental health problems. This is because “correctional facilities are fundamentally designed to confine and punish, not to treat disease,” the article continues. “The harsh and socially isolating conditions in jail or prison often exacerbate mental illness, especially when inmates are placed under solitary confinement, as is common in the ‘super maximum’ facilities that have proliferated extensively in recent years.”

A less punitive approach and greater access to treatment programs might keep some of these people out of the criminal justice system in the first place. When they do land in prison, “they are often released to the community without health insurance or access to appropriate medical care and treatment,” Josiah D. Rich, director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights and a co-author of the article, said in a press release. “Sadly, without these linkages to transitional care in the community, the majority of these individuals will re-enter the revolving door of the criminal justice system, which already costs our county $50 billion annually,” he adds.

The article argues that “there are tremendous medical and public health opportunities that can be created by addressing the health care needs of prisoners and former prisoners.” Sarah Wakeman, another article co-author, points out that “for some inmates, incarceration may represent their first intersection with the medical community, offering an invaluable opportunity to diagnose and treat the overrepresented rates of infectious and chronic diseases, addiction and mental illness.” Taking advantage of these opportunities, however, would take a major shift in public consciousness and public policy. The article urges the medical community to show leadership in pressing for this kind of change.

The Metro New York Religious Campaign Against Torture will be hosting a public event on the use of solitary confnement and other forms of torture and abuse within the New York State Prison System.

With close to 8 percent of its prison population in some form of segregation, New York far exceeds the national average for solitary confinement of prisoners. These inmates are even more invisible than they are in some other state systems, because New York has no high-profile supermax; rather, it isolates prisoners in Special Housing Units (SHUs) inside many of its 67 prisons.

The event–called “Torture in New York State Prisons?”–will take place on Tuesday, June 21st at 7 PM at Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue (above 120th Street) on the Upper West Side.

Two of the featured speakers have been leading voices in exposing the use and abuse of solitary confinement in New York.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is a reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal, whose work has documented, among other things, the fate of prisoners with mental illness in solitary confinement, and the high rate of suicides within New York’s SHUs.

Jack Beck directs the Visiting Project for the Correctional Association of New York, which has statutory authority to inspect prisons in New York State and to report its findings to the legislature and public; the CA’s report Lockdown New York is the best single source of information on solitary confinement in the state’s prisons.

A third speaker, from Riverside Church’s Prison Ministry, will talk about the ministry’s work inside New York State’s prisons.

The Metro New York Religious Campaign Against Torture is a chapter of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which recently initiated a campaign “to address the use of torture in U.S. prisons, with particular emphasis on the widespread use of long-term isolation.”

Less than a month after retiring from his post as Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Harley G. Lappin has been hired to a top positon at the nation’s largest private, for-profit prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In a move that has gone virtually unnoticed by the press except on the business pages, Lappin, who had run the BOP since 2003, has been named CCA’s Executive VP and Chief Corrections Officer. According to a company press release, his responsibilities will include ”the oversight of facility operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, [and] purchasing.”

Lappin announced his retirement in March, a few days before making public an earlier arrest on DUI charges in Maryland. In a memo apologizing to BOP employees, Lappin admitted to a ”lapse in my judgment…giving rise to potential embarrassment to the agency,” but he would not acknowledge any direct link between his arrest and his retirement. The announcement of his appointment to a leadership position at CCA came just over three weeks after his effective retirement date of May 7.

Taking advantage of two concurrent 30-year trends–toward mass incarceration and toward privatization of government services–CCA has grown to a $1.6 billion company that operates 66 facilities in 20 states, with approximately 90,000 beds. It has become notorious for its poor treatment of prisoners, and for numerous preventable injuries and deaths in its prisons and immigrant detention centers. About 40 percent of CCA’s business comes from the federal government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Bureau of Prisons. As BOP director, Lappin would have overseen government contracts with CCA worth tens of millions of dollars. CCA spends approximately $1 million annually on lobbying on the federal level alone.

A press release from the invaluable Private Corrections Working Group notes that Lappin’s quick trip through the government-to-industry revolving door is hardly unique in the Bureau of Prisons’ history: “Lappin joins another former BOP director already employed with CCA, J. Michael Quinlan, who was hired by the company in 1993. He retired as director of the BOP in 1992, several months after settling a lawsuit that accused him of sexually harassing a male BOP employee. While settling the suit, Quinlan denied allegations that he made sexual advances to the employee in a hotel room.”

In addition there’s the case of the recently appointed head of the U.S. Marshals Service, Stacia Hylton, who was until 2010 the Federal Detention Trustee. In between serving in these two high-ranking government positions, Hylton worked as a consultant for the GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison contractor. During Hylton’s tenure, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee gave several contracts to GEO; and the U.S. Marshals Service, like the BOP, houses federal detainees in privately owned prisons, including some run by GEO.

“Federal ethics rules do not prohibit former high-ranking employees such as Lappin and Hylton from working for private companies, even when those companies contract with the same federal agencies where those former officials were employed,” the Private Corrections Working Group points out. ”An Executive Order issued by President Obama restricts appointees from taking official actions that directly and substantially affect immediate former clients and employers; however, that ethics rule was not applied to Hylton and it has been waived for over two dozen other federal officials, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.”

Amnesty International has issued a press release, action alert, and detailed report on the case of the Angola 3, which has been extensively documented in Mother Jones (here, here, and here). The press release, issued yesterday, concerns the two members of the Angola 3 who remain in prison and have now entered their 40th year in solitary confinement.

The US state of Louisiana must immediately remove two inmates from the solitary confinement they were placed in almost 40 years ago, Amnesty International said today.

Albert Woodfox, 64, and Herman Wallace, 69, were placed in “Closed Cell Restriction (CCR)” in Louisiana State Penitentiary – known as Angola Prison – since they were convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1972. Apart from very brief periods, they have been held in isolation ever since.

“The treatment to which Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have been subjected for the past four decades is cruel and inhumane and a violation of the US’s obligations under international law,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Americas Deputy Director at Amnesty International.

The action alert urges readers to sign a petition to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. The twelve-page report describes the apparent miscarriages of justice involved in Woodfox and Wallace’s original murder conviction, and then asks, “Why are they still in isolation?” It goes on to explain:

In the early 1970s, conditions at Angola were brutal. Racism was rife. Inmates were racially segregated and guarded exclusively by white officers, as well as armed white inmates. The culture of violence that infused prison life was reflected in the high number of murders and the widespread use of sexual slavery among inmates.

In this toxic environment, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who were both imprisoned for unrelated cases of armed robbery, founded a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). They were later joined by Robert King and together the men campaigned for fair treatment and better conditions for inmates; racial solidarity between black and white inmates; and an end to the rape and sexual slavery that was then endemic in the prison.

“They tried to change conditions… the prison was considered the worst in the nation. They brought people together and brought in an ideology that said that despite the fact that you were prisoners, you still had some rights. Because of this, the administration saw them as being threats and they have paid dearly.” –Robert King, 2011

Throughout the long years of isolation, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have consistently maintained that they did not kill Brent Miller. They believe that they were falsely implicated in the murder because of their political activism in prison as members of the BPP. During the many years of litigation in the case, evidence has emerged to suggest that the decision to keep them in solitary was based at least in part on their political activism and association with the BPP.

“I would still keep [Albert Woodfox] in CCR. I still know he has a propensity for violence. I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kinds of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them. I would have chaos and conflict and I believe that. He has to stay in a cell while he’s at Angola.” –Burl Cain, Angola prison Warden, 2008. These remarks were made despite a finding by a US district judge in November 2008 that Albert Woodfox had maintained a clean conduct record for 20 years.

Since 1972, the prison review board has reviewed the prison’s original decision to keep the men in solitary on more than 150 occasions. At each review, without giving the men an opportunity to participate in the process or dispute the decision, the review board has determined that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace should continue to be held in CCR due to the “nature of the original reason for lockdown”.

In 1996, Louisiana prison policy was changed to remove “original reason for lockdown” as a factor to be taken into account by the review board when considering whether to continue an inmate’s confinement in CCR. This change has never been applied to reviews of the continued isolation of Albert Woodfox or Herman Wallace; the board simply continues to note “Original reason for lockdown” on all of the documents explaining why release from CCR has been denied.

Records show that neither man has committed any serious disciplinary infractions for decades and prison mental health records indicate that the men pose no threat to themselves or to others. However, none of this appears to merit consideration in the view of the prison Warden who in 2006 said of Herman Wallace: “his record… doesn’t really matter a lot. The original sentence, that’s why he’s there, that’s why he’s there and that’s why he’s going to stay there”.

Amnesty International believes that the men’s continued classification as CCR inmates serves no legitimate penal purpose. Under the direction of Warden Cain, who has dismissed the men’s clean disciplinary record as irrelevant, the review board has effectively ignored Louisiana prison policies for 15 years. It has failed absolutely to provide a meaningful review of the men’s continued isolation. By simply rubberstamping the original decision to confine the men in CCR, successive prison review boards have subjected Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace over the course of decades to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.

The Amnesty report goes on to describe in detail the conditions in which these men, both now in their sixties, continue to live.

Throughout their prolonged isolation, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions. Herman Wallace was transferred to the Elaine Hunt Correctional Center in 2009 and, the following year, Albert Woodfox was transferred to the David Wade Correctional Center. But although both men have now been moved out of Angola prison, the conditions in which they are held have not changed. They are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. When the weather is fine, they are allowed outside three times a week for an hour of solitary recreation in an outdoor cage measuring 1.8×4.5m. For four hours a week, they are allowed to leave their cells to shower or walk, alone, along the cell unit corridor.

Their cells measure 2x3m. All they can see from inside the cell is a small area just beyond the bars at the front. Each cell has a toilet, a mattress on a steel bed platform, sheets, a blanket, a pillow and a small metal bench attached to the wall. Natural light is limited to a very small window at the back of the cell.

They have restricted access to books, newspapers and TV. Throughout their imprisonment, they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation; they have never been allowed to work or to have access to education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls .

Lawyers report that both men are suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement. In the case of Herman Wallace, this includes osteoarthritis aggravated by inadequate exercise, functional impairment, memory loss and insomnia. Albert Woodfox is described as suffering from claustrophobia, hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia.

Decades of solitary confinement are also having a clear psychological effect on the men. After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, they are now subjected to equally harsh conditions, but 250 miles apart in separate institutions. Herman Wallace is being held on a tier alongside mentally ill people and says that the shouting and screaming of inmates is making it very difficult for him to sleep.

The report concludes with a call for the United States to honor its obligations under international treaties.

Amnesty International believes that the conditions in which the two men are held, including the length of time they have spent in isolation, violate international human rights treaties to which the USA is a party.

The USA has an obligation under international standards to ensure that all prisoners, regardless of their background, are treated humanely and that any security measures that may be necessary conform to this requirement. The prolonged and indefinite isolation of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace without meaningful review runs directly counter to this obligation.

The USA has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both of which prohibit torture and other ill-treatment. The relevant treaty monitoring bodies (the Human Rights Committee and the Committee against Torture) have found that prolonged solitary confinement can amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Both bodies have expressed concern that the harsh conditions of long-term isolation in some US segregation facilities are incompatible with the USA’s treaty obligations. Amnesty International believes their findings are particularly significant in the case of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace given that few, if any, other prisoners have spent so long in solitary confinement in recent times.

The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that a young prisoner who apparently suffered from serious mental illness died of starvation and dehydration after spending four months in the Salt Lake County Jail, much of them in solitary confinement. Carlos Umana, 20, weighed at 180 pounds when he entered the jail in October 2010; when he died on February 27, he weighed just 77 pounds. Tests showed that none of his prescribed psychiatric drugs were in his system at the time of his death.

As a teenager, Umana was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. According to the Tribune, his mother, Tammy Martinez, said that Umana had ”stopped taking his medication in the fall. ’Then he started hearing voices and thinking people was poisoning him,’ Martinez said. Umana was so concerned about people poisoning him, she said, that he started preparing all his own food.”

On October 26, Umana stabbed his mother’s boyfriend, who was preparing a meal in her kitchen; he later told the police that he believed the man was going to kill him. He was charged him with first-degree felony attempted murder and held in the county jail. The Tribune describes what happened next:

Martinez said within a few days of Umana’s arrest, she took the jail his medications. Jail staff wouldn’t take the pills, but did write down the prescriptions, she said.

It’s not clear when Umana stopped consuming food and water. [Lt. Mike] DeNiro said Umana had been in the jail’s health unit but was removed for bad behavior. DeNiro declined to elaborate.

Jail staff moved Umana to the administrative segregation unit. The unit has a higher level of security and each inmate there has a cell to himself. Each cell has a drinking fountain and meals are provided to the inmates.

Martinez said she saw her son a few days after Christmas. Then Umana lost his visiting privileges due to misbehavior. Martinez said she has never been told what her son did wrong.

On Jan. 20, staff decided to return Umana to the health unit. DeNiro said Umana’s refusal to consume food or water was just one reason for the move. DeNiro again declined to elaborate, but he did say that prior to 2008, a patient with Umana’s problems would have been moved to a hospital. In 2008, the jail opened an acute care unit in its own health ward…

On Feb. 8, Martinez said, a female jail employee called her to say Umana was refusing to eat and had taken only two showers since his arrival at the jail. According to Martinez, the woman said jail staff were having a meeting that day to decide what to do.

Martinez was allowed to see her son three days later. From the other side of the protective glass, Martinez said she could tell Umana was in trouble. He was thin, his eyes were sunken and he had trouble holding up his head. He said something about the water in the jail being too hot.

“He says, ‘Mom, I need to get out of here. I won’t make it in here,’ ” Martinez recalled.

The woman jail employee called Martinez the next day to ask how the visit went. Martinez told her Umana was not well. Martinez said she assumed the jail would take care of the problem. Meanwhile, Umana’s court case was delayed while the judge and the attorneys waited for results from a mental health professional about whether Umana was competent to stand trial. The results of that review have not been made public.

The last time Carlos Umana was seen with food was five days before his death, and even then he was only “picking” at his meal, according to a medical examiner’s report Martinez’s family shared with The Tribune . About 6 a.m. on Feb. 27, a guard performing a regular check found Umana kneeling over the toilet in his cell.

Umana did not respond to the guard’s calls. When staff entered the cell, Umana was unconscious. An IV was started, he was placed on a stretcher and staff began performing CPR.

At 6:42 a.m., as staff were preparing to wheel him to an ambulance, Umana was pronounced dead.

Martinez received a telephone message from someone on the jail staff telling her to call back right away to discuss her son. Martinez believed the message would be news that Umana had made a turn for the better. When Martinez called, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing when a jail employee said Umana was dead.

Postmortem tests did not find the presence of any drugs — an indication Umana was not taking medications for his mental illness. In his report, the medical examiner ruled the manner of death was natural causes due to starvation and dehydration, but the medical examiner listed Umana’s mental illness as a likely contributing factor.

A few days after the story broke in the Tribune, the Salt Lake County Sheriff told the paper that the jail would be revising its policies on when to commence forcefully feeding or medicating inmates. No legal action had been taken.

Now available is the first of a series of fact sheets on various aspects of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. The two-page fact sheet is available as a PDF at the following link:

FACT SHEET: Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement

This fact sheet, which references research on how solitary confinement affects the mental health of prisoners with and without underlying mental illness, was written by Sal Rodriguez, who is working with Solitary Watch this summer as a reporter/researcher. Sal is a student at Reed College and has completed internships with the Drug Policy Alliance and the Partnership for Safety and Justice. Watch for more fact sheets from Sal as the summer continues!

As Lance Tapley reported last week, recent developments in Maine demonstrate the difference that reform-minded leadership can make to prison conditions, including the use and abuse of solitary confinement. Even as it has grown exponentially over recent decades, the use of solitary has generally been treated not as a human rights issue but as a matter of correctional policy. As a result, tens of thousands of prisoners have been placed in isolation largely at the behest of prison guards and wardens, with the approval of state departments of protections. Now, Maine’s corrections commissioner is instead using his power to reform state policies and procedures in relation to solitary confinement.

“Less than three months into his job,” Tapley writes in the Portland Phoenix, ”Maine’s new corrections commissioner Joseph Ponte has begun to dramatically reform the Maine State Prison’s long-troubled solitary-confinement ‘supermax’ unit.” Ponte has thus far cut the unit’s population by more than half, from 132 inmates to 60, and “has ordered that an inmate can’t be placed in the supermax for longer than 72 hours without his personal approval.” Ponte also issued new rules that have stopped “brutal ‘cell extractions’ by guards of uncooperative inmates” (a practice that was widely exposed by Tapley’s reporting and leaked prison videos several years ago).  ”Extractions normally end with inmates strapped into a restraint chair. There were 54 extractions in 2010 and 74 in 2009, the Department of Corrections says, and before publicity about them in recent years the annual number was in the hundreds.” The article continues:

Ponte has made supermax problems a top department priority. Besides guard violence in handling inmates,…the Special Management Unit or SMU, has been beset by suspicious inmate deaths, suicide attempts, inmates cutting themselves, hunger strikes, and assaults on guards — especially, deranged or incensed prisoners throwing their feces, urine, or blood at them.

Ponte’s solutions include challenging a one-size-fits-all correctional-officer attitude quick to punish prisoners with solitary confinement for the slightest infraction — and then to let them languish in isolation for weeks, months, or even years…

As alternatives to solitary when prisoners do things they shouldn’t, he has asked guards to use what he calls “informal sanctions,” like taking away commissary or recreation privileges. And he stopped the practice of keeping people in the supermax beyond the term of their punishment because there wasn’t a bed available in a particular housing unit. The prison actually has plenty of unoccupied cells.

Sometimes inmates being investigated for in-prison crimes stayed in the supermax for months as investigations dragged on. Ponte has imposed a seven-day limit on such stays.

To continue with reforms, Ponte has created “a department-wide committee to which he has added representation from activists,” including the NAACP and the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Committee. MPAC had spearheaded recent efforts to pass legislation limiting solitary confinement, especially for inmates with mental illness. Those efforts failed to achieve their goals, but they did result in the commissioning of a report which made recommendations that are now guiding reform. Details about the report can be found in Tapley’s article, which should be read in full, not least for a sobering dose of reality to accompany these hopeful developments. As the article points out, the changes are, unsurprisingly, being met with resistance from some prison staff, and skepticism from som prisoners. “Not all supermax problems are likely to be quickly  solved, and not every recommendation of the report is universally supported — such as the suggestion that a law be passed to make it legally easier to force  mentally ill inmates to take psychiatric medication.” Some problems in the supermax “are tied to prison-wide conditions” such as substandard medical and mental health care, and solving them would cost money that the state is unwilling to spend. And of course, while half of the prisoners have been moved out of the supermax unit, the other half still remain there.

[MPAC leader Judy] Garvey and other activists think the ultimate solution  for supermax problems is to close down much of the rest of it. Then its former  inmates would have, for example, “room to exercise,” she says (most supermax  exercise is done in individual dog runs outdoors). They would be able to  participate in educational programs. They wouldn’t suffer the terrible mental  and physical effects of isolation. In other words, they would be treated more  like human beings.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion to last week’s Brown v. Plata decision, called the ruling “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”  Since Scalia is the ultimate legal literalist, we presumably ought to take his written opinions literally. So what is this decision that the Court’s most conservative justice finds more “radical” even than Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board of Education? It is no less than the notion that prisoners are human beings, entitled to the most basic human rights even while incarcerated.

In rendering the majority opinion in the Plata case, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons. Respect for that dignity animates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” And cruel and unusual punishment is what California prisoners are receiving, according to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling, in a prison system so overcrowded that it cannot provide anything close to adequate mental health care or medical care to its 147,000 inmates. To comply with the Court’s ruling California must remedy the situation by reducing its prison population to a mere 137.5 percent of capacity, rather than the current 175.5 percent.

It’s a decision that runs counter to the federal courts’ take on prisoners’ rights over at least three decades, especially since the passage of the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, which severely limited the ability of prisoners to file civil lawsuits and of courts to intervene on their behalf. In citing the “essence of human dignity” inherent even in the nation’s 2.3 million prison inmates, the decision also runs counter to the mentality of mass incarceration, by which prisoners have been so effectively dehumanized that otherwise decent people condone treating them in ways that often approach–and sometimes constitute–torture. Kennedy actually references torture in insisting that a “prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society.”

To show that California’s prisons have in fact reached this level of inhumanity, Justice Kennedy cites just a handful of examples from the voluminous documentation submitted on behalf of the plaintiffs by the Prison Law Office and others. (Solitary Watch readers will be particularly interested to note that Kennedy singles out the solitary confinement of prisoners with mental illness for a special dose of approbation.)

Prisoners in California with serious mental illness do not receive minimal, adequate care. Because of a shortage of treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets. A psychiatric expert reported observing an inmate who had been held in such a cage for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic. Prison officials explained they had “ ‘no place to put him.’ ” Other inmates awaiting care may be held for months in administrative segregation, where they endure harsh and isolated conditions and receive only limited mental health services. Wait times for mental health care range as high as 12 months. In 2006, the suicide rate in California’s prisons was nearly 80% higher than the national average for prison populations; and a court-appointed Special Master found that 72.1% of suicides involved “some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment, or intervention, and were therefore most probably foreseeable and/or preventable.”

Prisoners suffering from physical illness also receive severely deficient care. California’s prisons were designed to meet the medical needs of a population at 100% of design capacity and so have only half the clinical space needed to treat the current population. A correctional officer testified that, in one prison, up to 50 sick inmates may be held together in a 12- by 20-foot cage for up to five hours awaiting treatment. The number of staff is inadequate, and prisoners face significant delays in access to care. A prisoner with severe abdominal pain died after a 5-week delay in referral to a specialist; a prisoner with “constant and extreme” chest pain died after an 8-hour delay in evaluation by a doctor; and a prisoner died of testicular cancer after a “failure of MDs to work up for cancer in a young man with 17 months of testicular pain.”…Many prisoners, suffering from severe but not life-threatening conditions, experience prolonged illness and unnecessary pain.

Kennedy also takes the unusual step of appending photographs to his opinion. (These can be viewed in Mother Jones.com’s powerful montage, here.) Together with the written descriptions, they depict California prisons as something akin to Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings of an overcrowded Hell. Berkeley Law professor Jonathan Simon believes that the photographs forced the Court to confront “the sheer magnitude of California’s penal depravity,” and goes so far as to compare the images to another notorious set of photos: “Like the pictures from Abu Ghraib,” he writes, “these photos locate California’s penal practices in a place of inhumanity, degradation, and torture that cannot be tolerated (even by judges disciplined by decades of punitive populism and crime fear).”

Simon is among the many commentators who believe that the Plata decision has far-reaching implications, and even “represents a turning point. The system of mass incarceration depends deeply and irretrievably on a simple condition, the denial of the humanity of prisoners. Yesterday the Supreme Court overturned that denial.” If this is true, it may someday affect the host of other human right violations that take place every day in prisons across the country–from the tolerance for prison rape to the widespread use of solitary confinement. But it will take more than a single Supreme Court decision to wean the incarceration nation off of its 30-year addiction to prisons.

Triple-bunked human beings at the California Institution for Men, Chino, 2006.

We’ve just come across a widely circulated article from Agence France-Presse, published on May 18 while Dominique Strauss-Kahn was still languishing on Rikers Island, entitled “Strauss-Kahn’s Suicide Watch Cell Tiny, Isolated.” Here, some highlights from the story:

Under suicide watch, Dominique Strauss-Kahn wears a specially designed jumpsuit and lives in a tiny cell, monitored by a guard positioned just a few steps away, sources said Wednesday. The 11 x 13 foot (3.3 x 3.9 meters) cell is in the West Facility of the infamous Rikers Island prison, located in Manhattan’s swirling East River…[Straus-Kahn] is considered a suicide risk and has been placed on special guard.

Ordinarily, a suspect awaiting trial, considered innocent until proven guilty, is detained with numerous privileges, including the right to wear his own clothes and bring in possessions. Not Strauss-Kahn. A law enforcement source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the 62-year-old VIP has been placed in an area normally reserved for inmates  with contagious diseases.

That’s because the layout, with cells designed to isolate prisoners as much as possible, suits the requirements in this extraordinarily high profile case. So in that tiny space he has in addition to his bed a shower and toilet and table for eating. And he is entirely alone. Or almost. “There’s no one else there except guards. In this case, there is a guard just a very few feet away,” the source said…

The French politician, who denies all charges, is allowed to exercise one  hour daily outside. He also has the run of a day room where he can watch television, including the nearly non-stop news coverage of his own case.

Norman Seabrook, president of the correction officers union, said everything was being done to protect Strauss-Kahn from suicide — and other inmates on Rikers.

“Suicide cages,” Salinas Valley Prison

The article was only one of many in the overseas press depicting Rikers Island as an almost mythically dark and menacing place–though the descriptions often don’t quite measure up to the hype. One British piece called Rikers a “penal colony,” and continued: “Rikers is harsh, loud and dangerous, according to those who know the island jail well. ‘It’s crowded and the food is terrible,’ Gerald Lefcourt, a well-known defence lawyer, told Reuters…’There are really heavy-duty prison bars and gates that make a lot of clanging sounds every time they are open and closed.’”

In fact, DSK’s cell, at 11 x 13, or 143 square feet, is well over twice the size of the isolation cells in the Louisiana Prison system, where Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have spent 39 years in solitary; those cells measure approximately 6 x 9, or 54 square feet. The cell at ADX Florence federal supermax where Thomas Silverstein is approaching his third decade in solitary is 7 x 12, or 84 square feet. Few cells where American prisoners spend months, years, or decades in isolation are as large as that in which Dominique Strauss-Kahn spent a few days.

As for other prisoners on suicide watch, they are on occasion confined in what have been called “squirrel cages”–tiny enclosures so small that their occupants cannot lie down, where they are sometimes left to stand in their own excrement. Such cages, measuring 3 x 3 feet, were cited in a case in Louisiana last year, and in the Supreme Court decision on California’s prisons that came down earlier this week. Writing for the majority in Brown v. Plata, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stated: “Because of a shortage of treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in telephone-booth sized cages without toilets…A psychiatric expert reported observing an inmate who had been held in such a cage for nearly 24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly catatonic. Prison officials explained they had ‘no place to put him.’” (You can view more photos of these “suicide cages” and other abominations of the California prison system here.)

This account of life in Special Management Unit at SCI-Fayette in Pennsylvania comes to us via the Human Rights Coalition, a Philadelphia-based prison reform and social justice organization. As HRC describes it: “The Special Management Unit, or SMU, is billed by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections as a program designed to alter the behavior of prisoners who, in the langauge of prison administrators, are ‘unable to adjust successfully to a correctional settting.’ In practice this means that, as with other forms of solitary confinement, the SMU is used to isolate and punish prisoners who have angered prison officials.” The account begins with the prisoner’s arrival at Fayette.

I was immediately taken off a prison transport van by four guards and a lieutenant and cannon-balled straight to the SMU on L-Block. The pod was eerily silent that day, but I guess you can say that was the quiet before the storm because the next day all hell broke loose amongst the prisoners as they commenced to yell, scream, argue, bang on doors, throw urine and feces out their cell doors, threaten others, as well as threatening to mutilate or kill themselves. I then noticed the many psychiatric observation camera cells prisoners were confined in and how all of them were receiving psychotropic drugs. It then dawned on me that the SMU at Fayette State Prison was actually an “INSANE ASYLUM” for mentally ill prisoners and that I was placed in the thick of it all. Damn. Just my luck!

SCI-Fayette SMU L-Block

Fayette state prison is located in the Appalachian mountain range in rural Western Pennsylvania just a short drive from the city of Pittsburgh. SCI-Fayette has two Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) blocks, J-Block and L-Block. J-Block is used to confine prisoners on Disciplinary Custody (DC) and Administrative Custody (AC) status in the hole. And L-Block is used as the SMU program block to confine SMU prisoners.

The SMU (L-Block) consist of four pods labeled LA, LB, LC, and LD. Each pod has two tiers, a bottom level and a top level, which consist of twelve cells on the bottom and top levels making it twenty-four cells in all. Each of the twenty-four cells on the four L-Block pods are single-celled, which means the cells are to only confine one man per cell. On LB-Pod, cells 07 to 12 are equipped with psychiatric observation cameras, a shower in the cell and a back door leading to an adjacent caged area for yard exercise.

Each prisoner on SMU L-Block has to complete five levels that the SMU has designated before ‘graduating’ the behavior modification program. These levels are called Phases, and proceed from the most restrictive level- Phase 5, the beginning level for most prisoners- all the way down to Phase 1, which is release into another prison’s general prison population on a six month probation period. If the prisoner acquires a misconduct report during his probationary period he is returned to the SMU program to do another two-year stint beginning at Phase 5!

An Insane Asylum Disguised As A SMU Program

I had been placed on LB-Pod in the SMU program. The cell, typical to most empty cells on the pod, was filthy! Food had been splashed on the walls, dirt and tumbleweed-like dust balls covered the floor, the sink and toilet smelled of urine, and the smell of feces wafted into the cell from outside of the cell’s door. To make matters worse, the pigs refused to give me cleaning supplies that I may G.I (clean) the cell down, so I improvised with soap, water, and the t-shirt off my back and scrubbed the entire cell clean. Days later the pigs moved me on the top tier (with the other SMU prisoners) to another trifling cell!

There, the other SMU prisoners — some I’ve known from other prisons for years and others I just met — began to school me on the PA DOC/SCI-Fayette’s con-game, their so called SMU. Here, the SMU prisoners exposed the lie of the SMU program at SCI-Fayette and the PA DOC “hypocrisy” in regards to mentally ill prisoners and SMU prisoners. So let me tell y’all what’s truly going on at this isolated prison’s SMU program on L-Block.

The PA DOC and SCI-Fayette are really running a full-scale Insane Asylum operation for mentally ill prisoners under the guise of the SMU program, in which the PA DOC gets to kill two birds with one stone, figuratively speaking. They get to continue to receive Federal Grant money for operating a SMU program while really using the SMU program to run an insane asylum for mentally ill prisoners!! That’s the con-game aspect of it.

According to PADOC DC-Adm 6.5.1 Policy regarding the SMU program, the SMU prisoners must be ‘isolated’ – as super maximum security prisoners – from all non-SMU prisoners, such as RHU prisoners on DC/AC status and mentally ill RHU prisoners. But this is not the case at SCI-Fayette’s SMU L-Block. Here mentally ill DC status RHU prisoners are confined on the same L-Block pods that the SMU program prisoners are confined to!

On LA-Pod (Phase 5) there are ten SMU prisoners, and the remaining fourteen prisoners are mentally ill DC-status regular RHU prisoners. On LB-Pod (Phase 4) the twelve cells on the bottom level are all occupied by mentally ill DC-Status RHU prisoners whom we refer to as “the crazies” and whom are “suicidal” prisoners juiced up on psychotropic drugs such as Elevil. Every day there is drama with them, I’m talk’n capital “D” drama! The top level of LB-Pod (cells 13 to 24) confines supposedly SMU prisoners only, but mentally ill DC-Status regular RHU prisoners are confined on the SMU top tier as well. On LC-Pod (Phase 3) there is also a mixture of SMU prisoners, regular RHU prisoners on DC/AC status, and mentally ill prisoners. And on LD-Pod (Phase 2) there is a mixture of SMU prisoners, protective custody (PC) status prisoners, and one prisoner confined on Restricted Release List (RRL) status.

As of the date of this writing, there were only three SMU prisoners – including myself – on the SMU top tier on LB-Pod while all of the bottom tier cells are filled to capacity with “the crazies”! Two of the SMU prisoners have completed Phase 4 and were moved to another pod on Phase 3. Currently, I am the only SMU prisoner on LB-Pod! I am the last of the Mohicans left on LB-Pod Phase 4/SMU, surrounded by “the crazies.”

Punishment as Treatment = Hypocrisy!

Imagine that you encountered a group of people who treated their sick by sending them outside in the dead of winter to sit in that weather for 48 hours to cure their illness. You would think that such a people were foolish, right? Crazy, even! But this is exactly how the PA DOC officials think in regards to everything they do concerning prisoners, expecially the mentally ill and SMU prisoners. The PA DOC believes they can heal mentally ill prisoners and rehabilitate SMU prisoners by punishing and torturing them and treating them like animals and worse.

I have been on Phase 4 for a month now and during that time I have witnessed several mentally ill RHU prisoners threaten to commit suicide. I have observed how RHU prison officials eagerly geared up in black Star-Wars helmet, body pads, shields, pepper spray and stun guns and were just itch’n to use their new toys against mentally ill RHU prisoners during cell extractions. I have witnessed the SMU/RHU counselor and unit manager come on the pod and leave just as quick as they came, without even as much interviewing and evaluating the psyche of the prisoners, let alone addressing their concerns. The Psychologist does the exact same thing. What occurs is that the mentally ill RHU prisoners’ minds deteriorate even worse to the point of insanity from the years of total isolation in solitary, forced cell extractions, beatings, restraint chairs, stripped cells, semi-starvation on food loafs, constant harassment by guards, and psychotic drugs.

The SMU prisoners are also punished in this ordeal because we are forced to live around these same mentally ill RHU prisoners – who direct their madness against SMU prisoners – and are subjected to an “insane asylum” type environment. Consequently, half of the SMU prisoners are going “crazy” and are stuck on Phase 5. And SMU prisoners are now being treated as mentally ill prisoners. The psychological behavior of the mentally ill is having an adverse affect on the SMU prisoners. But, the PA DOC claims they wish to rehabilitate SMU prisoners.

Mentally ILL Prisoners Need Human Rights, Too

As I pen this report, even I am being taken through “Psych Warfare” by the crazies, they have no picks of who they direct their madness to. In the two cells below me are two insane (non-SMU) prisoners, and in the cell next door to me is another insane, non-SMU, prisoner. In the below two cells, one prisoner has “multiple personality disorder” while the other prisoner is manic depressive. The prisoner next door to me is soul-less, his mind is gone, he’s not even on this earth anymore. He urniates and defecates on himself every day and never bathes unless the guards force him to. He stinks so bad that the reeking odor of his body and waste drifts into my cell and outside his cell onto the entire top tier. The stench chokes you. My assigned cell and the other three cells’ air ventilation ducts are connected, and so every single day I am suffocated by the foul stench of my neighbor while the mentally ill prisoners in the two cells below me bang on their doors and scream at me through the air ducts. They are continuously cursing at me, disrespecting me, calling me the foulest of names, threatening to rape and kill my family, threatening to throw piss and shit on me and every other vile thing one can say to a person. This occurs 24-7!

I excuse their behavior and tolerate their insanity only because they are mentally ill. Although I have been placed through the wringer like this on many occasions throughout my 23 years of imprisonment as a juvenile Lifer, I can’t say I am not affected. Who wouldn’t be? I just drunk my first cup of coffee to calm my nerves, the bad part about it is I don’t even drink coffee! The crazies made me do it!

The HRC is calling on the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to “end the warehousing of mentally ill prisoners” in Fayette’s SMU, and urging others to do the same. More information can be found here.

A group of civil liberties and criminal justice reform groups is calling for a change in direction at the federal Bureau of Prisons, following the retirement of BOP head Harley Lappin, appointed during the Bush Administration. Under Lappin, the BOP continued to grow, adding new prisons and prisoners at a rate even higher than that of the states, according to analyses by the Sentencing Project and the Pew Center on the States.  Since 1995 alone, the number of federal inmates has more than doubled, to over 211,000. More than half of these prisoners are serving time on drug charges, and another 10 percent are held on immigration violations. In all, more than 72 percent are nonviolent offenders with no history of violence, and 34 percent are first-time nonviolent offenders.

Yet, as we wrote recently, the BOP’s FY 2012 budget request includes funds to open new maximum security prisons in Alabama and New Hampshire, and to acquire and renovate a new supermax prison in Thomson, Illinois, which would add and add up to 1,600 solitary confinement cells. It is in response to such plans that the consortium of groups is urging Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a reformer who will take the BOP in a different direction. According to an announcement issued by the 24 groups:

Two dozen more organizations have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to name a reformer to head the federal Bureau of Prisons. The position is vacant with the retirement of Harley Lappin. In a letter to Holder, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, and Sentencing Project urged the appointment of “an  individual with experience in systems reform and change. She or he must also have the courage and commitment to lower recidivism rates, improve conditions in BOP facilities, focus on rehabilitation and re-entry, and improve public safety through reforms in correctional practice and strategy.”

The groups said that currently, the prison bureau “functions at nearly 140%  capacity where prisoners are warehoused, rather than rehabilitated, and both staff and prisoners are routinely put at risk due to dangerous conditions. Unfortunately, the agency has not adapted its management strategy to take full advantage of the diverse population reduction authorities and cost-savings measures given to it by Congress, such as: expanded half-way house placement, compassionate release, and sentence reduction programs like good time and drug program participation. The consequence of this inaction is that the BOP has grown more bloated and more dangerous over time.” The American Bar Association, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Human Rights Watch made similar
points to Holder in recent letters.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have entered their 40th year in solitary confinement in the Louisiana prison system. A series of events in New Orleans last month marked the 39th “anniversary” of their placement in solitary, following the murder of Angola prison guard Brent Miller–a murder for which Wallace and Woodfox were later convicted on highly dubious evidence. The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, was convicted of a separate prison murder, and released after 29 years in solitary when his conviction was overturned.

King was among the 39 people who paid homage to Wallace and Woodfox’s four-decade ordeal by spending one hour inside a 6 x 9-foot replica “cell,” constructed by artist Jackie Sumell. The anniversary events, which took place at the headquarters of the organization Resurrection After Exoneration in New Orleans. Other events included the screening of the film In the Land of the Free, in which Brent Miller’s widow, Teenie Vernet, expresses her belief that her husband’s killers have not yet been caught. Of Wallace and Woodfox she says: “If they did not do it–and I believe they didn’t–they have been living a nighmare.”

The three men believe they were originally targeted because they were Black Panthers, organizing against conditions at Angola, and Wallace and Woodfox believe they remain in solitary for the same reason.  In a 2008 deposition, Angola Warden Burl Cain said Woodfox “wants to demonstrate. He wants to organize. He wants to be defiant…He is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them.”

Wallace and Woodfox were recently separated from the prison that made them famous–and from one another–and moved separately to other maximum security prisons. Wallace is now in the Hunt Correctional Center, down the river in St. Gabriel, while Woodfox is in the Wade Correctional Center in Homer, in the far northwest reaches of the state. Both remain in “Closed Cell Restricted” housing, or round-the-clock solitary confinement, with brief excursions for showers and solitary exercise in a “dog pen.” Woodfox is now in his mid-60s, and Wallace is nearing 70. Both depend upon mail to relieve their isolation; they can be reached at the following addresses:

Herman Wallace
#76759
Elayn Hunt Correctional Center
CCR – D – #11
PO Box 174
St Gabriel, LA 70776

Albert Woodfox
#72148
David Wade Correctional Center, N1A
670 Bell Hill Rd.
Homer, LA 71040

Robert King in replica cell. Photo by Chris Granger, The New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The suffering of solitary confinement extends beyond prisoners, to the families who wait for them outside. The anguish can be particularly keen for the families of inmates with mental illness.

Diana Montes-Walker’s son, whom we will call A, exhibited signs of mental illness from the time he was a young boy. When he was in his 20s, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder complicated by drug and alcohol dependencies. In 2005, A was charged with auto theft. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to Napa State Hospital for two years. While at Napa, Diana says, ”he jumped over an inner courtyard fence because he was hearing voices tell him to hit the psych tech that was walking with him, and A did not want to hit him.” A returned to the unit peacefully and voluntarily, but the administration called it an “attempted escape.” He was immediately sent to the maximum-security Atascadero State Hospital.

California’s Welfare and Institutions Code Section 7301 states that whenever “any person who has been committed to a state hospital pursuant to provisions of the Penal Code” is officially deemed to need placement ”under conditions of custodial security,” that person can be transferred “from an institution under the jurisdiction of the State Department of Mental Health to an institution under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections.” Without a hearing or court order, a resident of a state hospital can be sent to prison instead.

This is what happened to Diana’s son. After several years at Atascadero, A, again hearing voices, hit a guard who was making fun of him. No charges were pressed, and A was finally put on a medication that worked for him, and seemed to be making progress. But several months later, A was without warning transferred to Folsom Prison, where he was taken off the medication that worked (because it wasn’t allowed at Folsom) and placed in isolation. As Diana describes it:

Their common procedure for any mentally ill inmate sent to Folsom is that they go directly to solitary confinement. It’s the Psychiatric Services Unit (PSU); from their very first day there they are in solitary.  They have to work a program and earn points in order to move up to a level where they can have a little more freedom.

A had never been in such an environment–no phone calls, only 1 hour of exercise in an outdoor cage each day, 3 showers a week, and he was in handcuffs and shackles any time he was not in his cell. All meals were taken in the cell. He had to go to groups where he and the other men were placed in “modules” which are actually one-man cages the size of a small phone booth, and the counselor would stand or sit outside the cages to lead their group sessions.  All visits were non-contact (behind glass and on the phone, only). No canteen privileges if you could not meet at least 75% of the groups and other requirements they had, but they never told A about that until I complained after I sent him a Christmas package and they refused to give it to him because he had not wanted to go to all of his groups.

He became more and more isolated as he became more depressed. They told me that after one year, he could be eligible to go to the next level and have a little more freedom. I told them that I believed that in a year he would have killed himself already.

Because of Diana’s constant advocacy on behalf of A, he was moved to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. The facility is misleadingly named: it is not a hospital, but a prison for inmates with medical needs. There he is still in solitary; he “has a little more freedom, but not much,” says Diana. Last week, Diana drove to Vacaville from her home in Yuba City. Here, she describes the trip.

Today I drove the 75+ miles to the California Medical Facility at Vacaville ready to meet with my son’s psychiatrist and social worker, and praying, too, that maybe, just maybe, they might feel some compassion and allow me to see him.  I’d had this thought in my head  that, somehow, they would let me have a “contact” visit–meaning a person to person visit, not separated by glass from one another.

I had previously expressed how important I felt it was that A receive the warmth and comfort the human touch can bring and that they would see the sense of this and let me hug my son and hold his hand, touch his face, rub his head like I use to when he was younger.  He is nearly 30 now. They have him in solitary all the time now.

I listened to some good old gospel music on the way over there, praising God and asking Him to give me the right words to say to convince the doctor to let me see A.  Praying for some miraculous breakthrough by way of our meeting, some way that we could all work together to try to help A.  On the phone, the doctor had sounded so compassionate and sounded as though she was crying for A, too, as she told me how very lonely he was and how he was becoming more delusional.  This was why we had set up the meeting.  I had been told that it was never done; that a parent never came to meetings with the doctor or the treating team; but I had begged through the tears of a mother desperate to do whatever is necessary to bring help and comfort to my son and they had agreed.

I arrived about 11 a.m.  It was already very hot…I don’t get out much, not with the osteoporosis in my neck and back. Long drives are always very hard on my body, but A is worth all of it–it doesn’t matter, if there’s a chance that he can get some sort of relief and help.

I sat in the parking lot and called the prison, dialing the extension of the social worker to let her know I was there.  I got her answering machine and figured she’d be back to her office soon, so left her a message. Then I called to the unit counselor, who also didn’t pick up her phone, and left her the same message. I’d left them both my cell phone number so they could reach me in the parking lot.  I had arrived early, so I was not too concerned yet.  I then decided to call B, a man who answers the phone for the “acute” psychiatric unit.  He is always very nice and tries to get messages to whomever I need to speak to. Since Vacaville actually is a prison, they don’t give out direct phone numbers or extensions to the doctors.

It was starting to get too hot in the truck, so I packed up my things, got my I.D. out, and walked over to the lobby to check in and let them know I was there.  There was so much activity going on, so many officers walking in and out, others…I looked around and found a female officer standing at a booth where we usually go to check in whenever we visit on the weekends.  She was chatting it up with another female officer about switching shifts in the coming week. When she saw me, she asked what I needed; she was very polite. I pulled out my I.D. and let her know that I was there to see A’s social worker and psychiatrist.  She looked in a large binder to see if my name was written in the schedule for a meeting. She looked at me and asked if I had an appointment and I said yes, we had spoken and I was to meet them around this time, call from the parking lot, then go in for them to come out to meet me at the lobby. She did not find my name anywhere, returned my identification to me and said sorry, there wasn’t anything she could do.

It was already almost noon by then and getting hotter by the minute. I walked over to another counter where there were 3 officers sitting around, checking in the arriving employees. One of them asked if I needed assistance and I again told my story; he directed me to a phone on the wall and told me to call the social worker on that phone, which I did.  No answer. I tried B’s phone but he must have walked away and he didn’t answer either, but I left another message anyway.

I looked around at all the activity; people in uniforms and plain clothes walking in and out of the building, talking, joking, some of them looking very serious.  None of them seemed to pay any more attention to me.  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I dialed the social worker’s extension again and, again, got no answer.  I sat down on a very old-looking sofa that was against a wall and just waited and watched for about an hour.

Finally, my cell phone rang.  It was B. He told me that he had looked for the social worker and discovered that she had called in sick.  Then he said he had spoken to Dr. G and she had told him to tell me that she could not meet with me unless the social worker could be there with her and that she was very busy! B seemed very apologetic and courteous at the same time. I told him that I had driven from Yuba City, and his voice seemed to make the sound of shrugging shoulders as he told me there was nothing more he could do. He suggested I call back later and reschedule. I felt very helpless and just said ok and hung up. I gathered my things and slowly walked out the front door.

As I walked toward the parking lot where I had parked my car, which was quite a distance, I looked at all the huge, stone buildings.  All identical, painted white.  Some with a letter of the alphabet painted on the front of it.  My son is housed in building P, but I could not see that building.  It must be way in the back, I thought. What might he be doing at that very moment? Was he better?  Was he acting out? Would we be able to see him this weekend? Did he have a window? Was it hot in there? Had he had his lunch? Had he received our letters and was he able to read them? So many thoughts ran through my mind as I walked slowly back to my vehicle.

I didn’t want to leave. Just knowing that I was so close to him; that he was somewhere nearby. I prayed he would “feel” my presence there and felt so sad and very tired.  I had brought with me an envelope with some papers from A’s past and a photo of him from 9th grade so the doctor could see how cute he had been. In the photo, he is wearing a hat, slightly slanted to one side like my father used to wear it. He had on only a tank top and jeans, but he looked so happy. His face lit up with that great smile of his. I thought about how it had been so very long since I had seen that smile.

I reached the car, got in and started it to get the a/c going. I made some notations in my journal; it was so hard for me to go.  I just wanted to stay on the same property where I knew my son was; to somehow connect to him in some way.  To breath the same air he was breathing; to see the same sky he might be looking at. Finally, after about 30 minutes, I decided I’d better go before someone  kicked me off the property…

I drove home on the highway; I drove too slow because I kept thinking about A and forgetting to step on the gas…I didn’t play my music or the radio. Just quiet while I thought and thought. I didn’t know whether I  believed what B had told me, but there really was nothing else I could do. The place was a fortress and there was no shoving my way in…I  thought, that’s OK, God. You know what  you’re doing.  Maybe it just wasn’t  supposed to be yet. I will call and reschedule and discuss whether they really will allow me in.  I better make sure this time, before I leave. My whole body is aching from the drive…It’s OK, though, there will be another day. Tomorrow I will fax them a letter and call. I pray we will be able to see my son this weekend…I can’t give up.

“Control Unit” by Thomas Silverstein

Thomas Silverstein, who has been described as America’s “most isolated man,” has been held in an extreme form of solitary confinement under a “no human contact” order for 28 years. Originally imprisoned for armed robbery at the age of 19, Silverstein is serving life without parole for killing two fellow inmates (whom he says were threatening his life) and a prison guard, and has been buried in the depths of the federal prison system since 1983.

In his current lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Silverstein contends that his decades of utter isolation in a small concrete cell violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as its guarantee of due process. (The lawsuit, brought by the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Clinic, is described in detail in our article “Fortresses of Solitude.”) Update: On Friday, federal District Court Judge Philip Brimmer set a court date of January 23, 2012 for a jury trial in the Silverstein case.

In support of that lawsuit, Tommy Silverstein, now 59, has written a long “declaration,” the purpose of which “is primarily to describe my experience during this lengthy period of solitary confinement: the nature and impact of the harsh conditions I have endured in spite of a spotless conduct record for over 22 years, and my lack of knowledge about what, if anything, I can do to lessen my isolation.” After apologizing “for the actions that brought me here in the first place,” particularly the murder of corrections officer Merle Clutts, Silverstein contends that he has “worked hard to become a different man.” He continues, “I understand that I deserve to be punished for my actions, and I do not expect ever to be released from prison…I just want to serve out the remainder of my time peacefully with other mature guys doing their time.”

The bulk of the declaration is a detailed account of Silverstein’s experiences and surrounding in a series of what constitute the most secure and isolated housing in the federal prison system: in the notorious Control Unit at Marion, the supermax prototype; at USP Atlanta in a windowless underground “side pocket” cell that measured 6 x 7 feet (“almost exactly the size of a standard king mattress,”); at Leavenworth in an isolated basement cell dubbed the “Silverstein Suite”; on “Range 13″ at ADX Florence, where the only other prisoner was Ramzi Yusef; and finally in ADX’s D-Unit, where he can hear the sounds of other prisoners living in neighboring cells, though he still never sees them.

The following is from Tommy Silverstein’s description of his life at USP Atlanta:

The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture.

My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all…The walls were solid steel and painted all white.

I was permitted to wear underwear, but I was given no other clothing.

Shortly after I arrived, the prison staff began construction on the side pocket cell, adding more bars and other security measures to the cell while I was within it. In order not to be burned by sparks and embers while they welded more iron bars across the cell, I had to lie on my bed and cover myself with a sheet.

It is hard to describe the horror I experienced during this construction process. As they built new walls around me it felt like I was being buried alive. It was terrifying.

During my first year in the side pocket cell I was completely isolated from the outside world and had no way to occupy my time. I was not allowed to have any social visits, telephone privileges, or reading materials except a bible. I was not allowed to have a television, radio, or tape player. I could speak to no one and their was virtually nothing on which to focus my attention.

I was not only isolated, but also disoriented in the side pocket. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have a wristwatch or clock. In addition, the bright, artificial lights remained on in the cell constantly, increasing my disorientation and making it difficult to sleep. Not only were they constantly illuminated, but those lights buzzed incessantly. The buzzing noise was maddening, as there often were no other sounds at all. This may sound like a small thing, but it was my entire world.

Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was.

I tried to measure the passing of days by counting food trays. Without being able to keep track of time, though, sometimes I thought the officers had left me and were never coming back. I thought they were gone for days, and I was going to starve. It’s likely they were only gone for a few hours, but I had no way to know.

I was so disoriented in Atlanta that I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone. I now know that I was housed there for about four years, but I would have believed it was a decade if that is what I was told. It seemed eternal and endless and immeasurable…

There was no air conditioning or heating in the side pocket cells. During the summer, the heat was unbearable. I would pour water on the ground and lay naked on the floor in an attempt to cool myself…

The only time I was let out of my cell was for outdoor recreation. I was allowed one hour a week of outdoor recreation. I could not see any other inmates or any of the surrounding landscape during outdoor recreation. There was no exercise equipment and nothing to do…

My vision deteriorated in the side pocket, I think due to the constant bright lights, or possibly also because of other aspects of this harsh environment. Everything began to appear blurry and I became sensitive to light, which burned my eyes and gave me headaches.

Nearly all of the time, the officers refused to speak to me. Despite this, I heard people who I believed to be officers whispering into my vents, telling me they hated me and calling me names. To this day, I am not sure if the officers were doing this to me, or if I was starting to lose it and these were hallucinations.

In the side pocket cell, I lost some ability to distinguished what was real. I dreamt I was in prison. When I woke up, I was not sure which was reality and which was a dream.

In a summing up, Silverstein reflects on the physical and psychological effects of 28 years in solitary and on his own development as a self-taught artists and practicioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation. He reiterates his plea to be allowed into the BOP’s “Step-Down program” toward less isolated confinement. The complete declaration, which runs to 64 pages, can be read here.

Update: A declaration submitted as an exhibit in the case, by Dr. Craig Haney, one of the nation’s leading experts on the effects of prolonged solitary confinement, can be read here.

Solitary Watch has issued its first quarterly print edition, in a four-page newsletter format with selected articles from the previous three months.

The print edition is available to download as a PDF: Print Edition Spring 2011

Hard copies are available to prisoners and their families and advocates and to non-profit organizations. To request (single or multiple) copies, please email solitarywatchnews@gmail.com or write to Solitary Watch, PO Box 11374, Washington, DC 20008.

For seven years, Clair L. Beazer has been an inmate in the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City–which, as we’ve written before, qualifies as the solitary confinement capital of the Western World. In this essay, Beazer describes the effects of years of solitary confinement, pointing out that while it is particularly torturous for inmates already suffering from mental illness, this “interminable, indefinite” isolation also causes lasting psychological and physical  damage to all prisoners who endure it.

Beazer notes that “at long last,” some hope is offered by the bill introduced in the Colorado state legislature to limit the use of solitary confinement. In an instance of grim irony, we received his essay, written last month, just a day before lawmakers chose to back away from most meaningful portions of the bill.      

In most instances the law is a simple matter of doing what you should rather than what you want. One consequence of continuing to do what you want regardless is that a conscientious legislator someplace may find it necessary to propose a law to compel you to do what you should do.

Just such a circumstance has come about in the state of Colorado’s Department of Corrections (C.D.O.C.), of whom some are known to say the reason they’re called the “Department of Corrections” is because they’re always getting it wrong.

The C.D.O.C’s execrable practice of warehousing the mentally ill in lockdown 24/7 is unconscionable. To sentence men without due process to a solitary existence in a lonely cell with only the company of their psychoses  and personal demons for interminable, indefinite periods, some lasting decades would and does appear on the surface alone indefensible. To further exacerbate their evil usage by holding them thus until their mandatory release date only serves to discharge infinitely more dangerous parolees into the public.

Enduring this type of incarceration has many debilitating effects, the most common being depression with accompanying apathy and lethargy. The minimal activity and lack of meaningful exercise can atrophy their legs and some can barely walk after years of inactivity, and you can bet that there is little market for ex-cons who can’t even walk a quarter mile after release.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, motivated, active, angry inmates that compulsively work out 2, 4, 8 hours a day in the fashion of the hardened vengeful convict portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the movie “Cape Fear.” For months, then years, then decades, driven by their isolation, not even allowed IN PRISON to walk out of a cell without a two or three-man escort. In restrains, handcuffs, shackles, bellychains, lock-boxes. Surrounded by thick concrete walls, high fences, barbed wire, razor wire, armed tower and perimeter guards, electrified kill fences.

Ominously and inevitably their long-awaited day arrives, and when it does the C.D.O.C. dutifully, imprisoned in full restraints, escorts them to the prison gates, where and when they unleash them upon the public. Not surprisingly, their recidivism rate is exponentially and in some cases horrifyingly higher, as is their toll on society…you know, the public the C.D.O.C. ostensibly exists to defend.

The public may want to consider if perhaps the Prison Industrial Complex (of which the C.D.O.C. is definitely a part with its Incarceration Capitol of the World designation and proud title) finds it more profitable to release their home-made monsters. After all, we all know that high-profile horrific crimes can and often do drive news cycles, and have for years. Surely after all these years of high-profile horrific crimes that lead the news cycles somebody, anybody, everybody must have noticed that they drive incarceration rates.

Even so, no one is surprised that the C.D.O.C. has come out in fierce opposition to the Senate Bill 176 (introduced by Sen. Morgan Carroll, if passed the C.D.O.C would need to limit the solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners –Denver Post, March 14, 2011) , as they claim it is because they say there is no indication officials are abusing the use of solitary confinement. Please allow me, from my true insider perspective, to disabuse you of that notion because for those of us actually in solitary confinement, we say they are abusing the over-use of solitary confinement.

They also make the preposterous claim that the average stay is 18 months. Let me tell you that those numbers are about as an off the books as C.D.O. (Collateralized Debt Obligation) at AIG. I personally have been in Ad Seg for 7 years. Let me to a survey, to my immediate right 7 years, to my left 8 years, next to him 4 years and under me 10 years. In my 7 years, I’ve only witnessed 2 men get of Ad Seg. 2!

The C.D.O.C. is in need of correction and the honorable Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire Levy are the conscientious lawmakers trying to write another C.D.O.C. with Senate Bill 176, which is a start, a good start, at least, at long last.

I (we) don’t have much hope up here in the shameless incarceration capital of the world, and maybe, just maybe these venerable legislators can compel the C.D.O.C to stop doing what it wants and force it to begin doing what it should.

You can read an earlier essay by Clair Beazer here. Thanks to the Real Cost of Prisons Project, which maintains an excellent collections of prisoners’ writings, for passing on his work to Solitary Watch.

Clair Beazer welcomes mail at the following address: Mr. Clair L. Beazer, CSP #49801, C.C.F. Box Number 600, Canon City, CO 81215-0600.

In Colorado, one of the nation’s solitary confinement capitals, state legislators recently brought hope to prisoners and their families and advocates by introducing a bill mean to limit the use of solitary. Now, that bill has been revised in committee, in favor of what the Associated Press bluntly described as “watered-down measures”:

Colorado lawmakers have backed away from sweeping new rules on solitary confinement in state prisons.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted instead Tuesday for a watered-down measure that makes only small changes to how the Colorado Department of Corrections decides to put an inmate in solitary.

The bill would have required state prisons to have a physician evaluate inmates with some mental illnesses before they’re placed in solitary confinement.

The revised bill gives the Department of Corrections guidelines on determining whether an inmate a security risk worth putting in solitary. But most of the department’s solitary confinement policies are unchanged. The bill now heads for a vote by the full Senate.

In the Colorado Independent, Joseph Boven, provided a more detailed explanation of the “pared down” bill, and of how the changes came about:

Senate Bill 176, sponsored by Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, underwent a significant transformation when it was amended due to concerns from the Colorado Department of Corrections that the bill might interfere with changes already planned. The bill, which would have prevented some mentally ill prisoners from being placed in solitary confinement, will now fund mental health programs in prisons, reduce sentences, and ensure prisoners are placed in solitary confinement based on conduct not associations.

During negotiations on the bill, originally intended to radically change when and why prisoners are placed in solitary confinement, the Department of Corrections raised concerns that the bill might affect their ability to control public safety within institutions and said its prescriptive clauses might interfere with implementing recommendations they expect to receive from a review being conducted by the National Institute of Corrections.

The outcome is not dissimilar to what happened in Maine, where a bill with specific “prescriptive” demands to limit the use of solitary, particularly for inmates with mental illness, was replaced by a promise to “study” the issue. Both bills are valuable in placing solitary confinement on the public agenda, but both, in their final form, are largely toothless.

In Colorado, the Department of Corrections will use a grant from the federal National Institute of Corrections “to fund an assessment of the Department’s classification system used in determining the placement of offenders in prison,” according to the Independent. “That assessment will look at factors such as mental health, crime and institutional behavior, and provide data on whether they are appropriately weighted or should still be used as factors at all.”

Senator Carroll said that the DOC had applied for the federal grant “since we last met,” and said that its intent to review the inmate classification was “very encouraging news from the department.” From the outside, it looks more like an end run around the legislature’s effort.

A more concrete effect of the bill might be what the Independent describes as “a change from [the DOC's] current use of associations to dictate whether a prisoner should be placed in solitary confinement. The DOC agreed to change its policy to constrain the use of penalties for associations and instead begin using action-based criteria to determine whether an inmate should be placed in administrative segregation.” Presumably this demands that an inmate will actually have to do something bad to end up in solitary, rather than just hang out with bad guys, including gang members. But the decision will still be solely the DOC’s.

Most importantly, the bill does nothing to immediately address the problem of prisoners with mental illness ending up in solitary. By Colorado’s own estimates, 37 percent of the inmates in segregation suffer from serious mental illness. They end up in administrative segregation because of “action-based criteria”–yet these actions are largely the symptoms of untreated mental illness. As the Independent reports:

The ACLU of Colorado expressed doubt that concerns for the mentally ill will be addressed. They said the Department of Corrections already has a study with over a decade of data indicating the mentally ill are being kept in solitary confinement. The ACLU said the time for studies was over and it is time to act.

“We are still very concerned that the mentally ill are being housed in solitary confinement because there are no other options,” Jessie Ulibari, legislative director for the ACLU of Colorado, said. “That concern is not really addressed with this amendment and we think that the DOC needs to be pushed and is addressing the moral concerns of housing them in long-term solitary confinement.”

A report released yesterday by the Human Rights Coalition, a nonprofit organization concerned with prisoners’ rights, provides a vivid and grim picture of life inside the solitary confinement unit of the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon in south-central Pennsylvania. The report describes what it calls a “culture of terror” in the prison’s Restricted Housing Unit (RHU).

For purposes of this report, a culture of terror is defined as a set of assumptions and practices that divide a community into those with absolute power and those who are absolutely powerless. This dynamic is inherent within the logic of prisons, and is at its most intense in the solitary confinement units…Those with power in this culture reinforce their rule through a strict code of silence whereby they refuse to inform on one another to those higher up or outside of the prison hierarchy. Prison guards enforce their rule through threats and use of force, along with deprivations of basic necessities such as food, water, hygienic items, cleaning supplies, clothing, and bedding. Prison administrators and top officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) adopt an informal though strictly enforced policy of turning a blind eye to reports of torture and abuse.

Those without power—prisoners—are more often than not divided against one another, enticed to assault and inform on one another in exchange for more favorable treatment. Those individuals who strive to cultivate an ethic of solidarity amongst the oppressed are viewed as the system’s greatest threat and consequently made an example of via relentless abuse and indefinite, potentially permanent placement in solitary confinement.

The core elements of this culture of terror include:

• arbitrary, biased process for establishing who is placed in solitary;
• utilization of fabricated misconducts as a tool of retaliation;
• systematic denial of prisoner grievances regardless of their merit;
• the use of violence as a standard technique for enforcing obedience;
• refusal to engage in constructive dialogue on the part of prison authorities;
• targeting witnesses of abuse for purposes of intimidation;
• displays of overt racism as a tool of dehumanization.

The report does an exceptional job of explaining and documenting the mechanics of the process by which prisoners are placed and held–sometimes indefinitely–in solitary. Inmates end up in solitary largely on the say-so of guards, against which they have virtually no recourse. “The threat of solitary confinement and the ability to impose it upon a prisoner arbitrarily creates a predictable and intentional stifling of grievances,” the report argues. “Intimidating prisoners into not pursuing grievances discourages them from filing lawsuits as well, since federal law mandates that prisoners must ‘exhaust administrative remedies’ prior to filing a lawsuit” under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. When an inmate does go ahead and file a grievance, it is likely to go nowhere. According to the report, ”97.89 percent of the 43,853 grievances filed by prisoners [in 2008] were rejected for various reasons,” based on the Department of Corrections’ own records.

Prisoners who file grievances or otherwise protest their conditions are also subject to retaliation. The HRC report provides several examples, including withholding food, water, showers, and mattresses as well as forced cell extractions and the use of pepper spray and restraint chairs. It calls retaliation ”the lynchpin holding together the culture of terror in the solitary units at Huntingdon, as it involves the targeted application of violence and the deprivation of basic necessities with the deliberate intent of silencing protest, public exposure, and legal action.” One prisoner who says he was punished for trying to report abuse in the RHU asks in a letter, “Are we worthy of the same rights as a civilian witness who is being intimidated not to testify or are we unworthy of protection due to the fact that we are convicts?”

What makes the depth and detail of this report remarkable is the extreme difficulty of obtaining information about what goes on in solitary confinement. It is generally close to impossible for journalists, researchers, and advocates to gain access to these units. HRC based its report largely on what it describes as a “review of more than a thousand pages of letters, affidavits, grievances, misconducts, other prison documents, legal paperwork, and conversations with family members” over the past year. Critics of the report will no doubt raise questions about the veracity of the prisoners’ accounts, but they have the ring of truth and echo what we have heard from and about prisoners in other facilities. More importantly, they represent the public’s only window into a deeply hidden world about which we know virtually nothing–but for which we are, ultimately, responsible. 

If nothing else, this report should lead to other investigations and eventually some form of meaningful action and oversight by the state legislature, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, and Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. HRC ends the report with a series of recommendations that include such investigations. The group has sent the report to state and federal officials, and provides their addresses here.

We missed this post yesterday, but it’s too good to pass up so we’re sharing it a day late. This is from Scott Henson’s Grits for Breakfast, which provides the blogosphere’s best coverage of the Texas criminal justice system. 

Easter is strikingly filled with criminal justice themes, isn’t it? The Christian religion was essentially founded on a repudiation of Roman capital punishment. Easter celebrates the sinless Man-God killed for His beliefs who triumphed over the grave, mooting, even while respecting to the end, the earth-bound laws that condemned Him. Jesus, a blameless man executed, is the all-time poster child for the innocence movement. Corrupt and biased prosecutors prevailed in His case because of a judge’s personal indifference and deference to the mob. Christ’s betrayal by Judas was the archetype cementing into Christian values a lingering distrust of snitches and informants. Romans accused the disciples of grave robbery. St. Peter committed assault with a deadly weapon in the Garden of Gethsemane then thrice lied about his identity to avoid arrest. And taken as a whole, the passion story documents Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution all taking place in an incredibly short span, as though criminal convictions could be obtained as quickly in real life as on an episode of Law & Order.

Christmas is a story about family. Easter is a story about a wrongful criminal conviction, the misapplication of the death penalty, the overweening power of the state, and the irrepressible urge of humanity to resist it.