The Dart Society, which supports journalism “covering trauma, conflict and human rights,” has published an essential new article and accompanying video on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. The story, called “The Gray Box,” is by Susan Greene, who as a columnist at the Denver Post often wrote about the widespread use of solitary in Colorado’s prisons and at the federal supermax, ADX Florence.
This is one of the most comprehensive articles ever written about solitary confinement in the United States, and is particulary noteworthy for including the voices of prisoners, obtained through correspondence with those buried in isolation. It is also passionate and personal. The opening follows–but this piece needs to be read in full.
A few weeks ago, on the fifteenth anniversary of his first day in prison, Osiel Rodriguez set about cleaning the 87 square feet he inhabits at ADX, a federal mass isolation facility in Colorado.
“I got it in my head to destroy all my photographs,” he writes in a letter to me. “I spent some five hours ripping each one to pieces. No one was safe. I did not save one of my mother, father, sisters. Who are those people anyway?”
Such is the logic of the gray box, of sitting year after year in solitude.
Whether Rodriguez had psychological problems when he robbed a bank, burglarized a pawn shop and stole some guns at age 22, or whether mental illness set in during the eight years he has spent in seclusion since trying to walk out of a federal penitentiary in Florida – it’s academic. What’s true now is that he’s sick, literally, of being alone, as are scores of other prisoners in extreme isolation.
Among the misperceptions about solitary confinement is that it’s used only on the most violent inmates, and only for a few weeks or months. In fact, an estimated 80,000 Americans — many with no record of violence either inside or outside prison — are living in seclusion. They stay there for years, even decades. What this means, generally, is 23 hours a day in a cell the size of two queen-sized mattresses, with a single hour in an exercise cage, also alone. Some prisoners aren’t allowed visits or phone calls. Some have no TV or radio. Some never lay eyes on each other. And some go years without fresh air or sunlight.
Solitary is a place where the slightest details can mean the world. Things like whether you can see a patch of grass or only sky outside your window – if you’re lucky enough to have a window. Or whether the guy who occupies cells before you in rotation has a habit of smearing feces on the wall. Are the lights on 24/7? Is there a clock or calendar to mark time? If you scream, could anyone hear you?
In the warp of time and space where Rodriguez lives, the system not only has stripped him of any real human contact, but also made it unbearable to be reminded of a reality that has become all too unreal. It’s ripping him apart.
“Looking at photos of the free world caused me so much pain that I just couldn’t do it any more,” writes Rodriguez, 36. “Time and these conditions are breaking me down.”
This is what our prisons are doing to people in the name of safety. This is how deeply we’re burying them.
Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill Bichsel is reportedly being held in solitary confinement at SeaTac Federal Detention Center south of Seattle. According to friends, Bichsel has not eaten solid food since January 10 in protest of his treatment.
Fr. Bichsel, known to friends and colleagues as “Bix,” is a member of the Disarm Now Plowshares group. He has been arrested several times in connection with nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. Most recently, he served a three-month sentence at SeaTac for a July 2010 action at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, future site of a new nuclear weapons plant.
On January 10, Bichsel was moved to a halfway house in Tacoma. According to the Disarm Now Plowshares blog, he was told that the facility had a rule prohibiting visitors for the first 72 hours of residency. But on the evening of his arrival, a pair of Buddhist monks and a small group of students, on their way to a local protest, “made a small detour and stopped by the house Bix was in, to drum and pray for him outside the building for a few minutes.” The blog continues:
Bix was very happy to see and hear all who came to visit and wanted either to invite everyone in or go out and be with them. He had a strong sense they were angels, which gave him intense joy. He went onto comment that “it was so right they should be there.”
His captors on the other hand had a slightly different experience. First reprimanding him for being out of compliance (whatever that meant), he was told he was going to be “written up” and what happened was to be “reported.” The rest is history – in early morning he was suddenly awakened, grabbed out of bed, shackled, and returned to SeaTac by the marshals.
Their actions and manner of treatment made it known to him how he would proceed. Upon his arrival at SeaTac he made it clear he intended to be in complete non compliance with their demands; their recourse, which was to be expected, would be to place him in “protective custody or the special housing unit (SHU)”…“the hole”!
Bichsel, who suffers from circulation problems as well as a heart condition, reported to friends that it was “very cold for me all of the time” in his SHU cell at SeaTac, and that he was going “24 hours a day without sleep, fighting off the chill. I have asked for a jacket or a pillow or a mattress; they do not comply.” After supporters held a candlelight vigil outside of the prison last week, he was provided with additional blankets.
According to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, “A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that while he couldn’t comment on the case of a specific inmate, he did say that the ‘typical issue’ for all inmates in the federal system is a blanket and sheet, and that there is a ‘full health services staff on duty at all of our facilities.” A public information officer for the BOP told the paper: “’If we receive information either from the inmate or the inmate’s doctor on the street that there was some sort of pre-existing condition that was being treated, obviously we would pick up the ball from there.’”
Several other religious peace activists have been held in solitary confinement at the SeaTac SHU in recent years. They include members of a group of others (all of them over 60 years old) who in 2009 broke into the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Seattle, where nuclear submarines are kept. At their trial for trespassing and conspiracy, the judge criticized the defendents’ “lack of remorse” and called their protest “a form of anarchy” that could lead to a “breakdown in the social order.”
According to fellow activist Blake Kermer, who visited Bichsel on Saturday, “Bix wants everyone to know that as he continues on his fast – yesterday was his eleventh day – that he feels stronger and more confirmed in his resolution…Bix says that Christians can unite in conscience where God speaks to all of us, to abolish nuclear weapons and to oppose those policies of the US that are without conscience. This was a point that Bix was reminded of when he was taken back to the BOP and told by his jailer that his re-arrest was a matter of policy, not of conscience. Bix talked about how policy without conscience reminded him…of the White Rose and their courage in protesting Nazi policies without conscience, even though they were beheaded for their resolve.”
Disarm Now Plowshares has provided addresses for public officials to whom supporters can write, as well as the prison address of Fr. Bichsel.
Solitary Confinement in Great Britain: Still Harsh, But Rare
- Wandsworth Prison, London. © Copyright Derek Harper.
Even though Great Britain (including England, Wales and Scotland) has the highest per capita incarceration rate in Western Europe, with 153 out of 100,000 behind bars, the figure pales in comparison to the United States’ 743 per 100,000. The use of solitary confinement is also comparatively low in the UK – not every prison has segregation facilities and the supermax trend is still non-existent. There are very few prisoners in long-term segregation, and these have carefull tailored programs that encourage good behavior and social engagement. Although far from a perfect system, a complex mechanism of prison oversight coupled with an increased legal protection of human rights have ensured that UK solitary confinement has not reached the levels or the conditions of that in the U.S.
Prison segregation in the UK is used fairly sparingly and for a limited number of reasons. There are two types of segregation in the UK: the first is similar to U.S. segregation and takes place in what are named intensive management units, while the second, arguably more experimental, type sees prisoners housed in small groups in “Close Supervision Centers.”
Rules governing prisoners’ entry into intensive management units are quite similar to those in U.S. prisons, in that they depend almost exclusively upon the judgment of prison officials. UK Prison Rule 45, known as the G.O.O.D. rule, states: “Where it appears desirable, for the maintenance of good order and discipline or in his own interests, that a prisoner should not associate with other prisoners, either generally or for particular purposes, the prison director may arrange for the prisoner’s removal from association accordingly.”
While this type of segregation is administered on a case-by-case basis and is officially non-punitive, there are some concerns that confinement orders may constitute punishment, sometimes arbitrarily. The G.O.O.D. rule is fairly open to abuse, as staff may place a prisoner in confinement merely if they believe that he may be a breach to security. Examples of the application of the G.O.O.D. rule include segregating prisoners who are suspected of possessing drugs or those who engage in “dirty protests” using body wastes, which is often a manifestation of a mental health problem.
Inmates may also be placed in intensive management as punitive “cellular confinement,” for attacks on other prisoners and guards. This is used as a disciplinary measure by prison authorities. Adults may be held for 21 days and young adults (including those under 18) for 10. Very short stints in solitary confinement are extremely common: In 2009, over a quarter of prisoners segregated in Wandsworth, the UK’s second largest prison, were allowed to rejoin integrated units after a few hours of isolation. An average-sized prison with a segregation wing typically has approximately 15 cells in it, a small number of which will be occupied at any one time. As there are no centrally collated statistics on segregation, it is difficult to estimate the total number of prisoners held in isolation at any given time. A very rough estimate of this number is 500, based on the number of prisons that have segregation facilities. In the United States, the total number of inmates in segregation is at least 80,000, with 25,000 in supermax facilities alone.
A second type of segregation takes place in small groups. Groups of less than ten people occupy cells in Close Supervision Centers. These centers, set up in 1998 in response to widespread prison violence, were intended to indefinitely separate the most disruptive prisoners from the mainstream prisons to “address their anti-social disruptive behavior in a controlled environment” and to “stabilise behaviour and prepare them for a return to the mainstream with minimum disruption.” There are approximately 30 prisoners in CSCs at any one time in the UK. Read more…
NYCLU to Host Meeting on Solitary Confinement in New York State
Tomorrow, the New York Civil Liberties Union will host a meeting of advocates on the issue of solitary confinement in New York State prisons. According to a report by the Correctional Association, New York State has the highest rate of disciplinary segregation in the country, and one of the highest rates of isolated segregation in general. More recent data suggests that these rates may still be growing–despite efforts to exclude inmates with mental illness from the Special Housing Units, and even as the prison population in New York falls.
All are welcome to attend, but advance notice is necessary. Details from the NYCLU’s announcement appear below.
Prolonged Isolation in New York Special Housing Units (SHUs)
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is a non-profit legal organization that seeks to defend and expand the civil rights and civil liberties of all New Yorkers, including individuals incarcerated in New York’s prisons.
The NYCLU recently launched a project to investigate the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s (DOCCS) use of Special Housing Units (SHUs). As part of this project, the NYCLU has begun organizing a broad-based coalition, including prisoners’ rights and mental health advocates, family members of the incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated individuals, to coordinate efforts to raise awareness about and advocate for an end to the NY SHUs.
The NYCLU will be holding its next coalition meeting on January 19th at 6 PM. We welcome participation by all those whose lives have been affected by the NY SHUs.
If you would like to attend this meeting or learn more about the coalition, please contact:
Scarlet Kim
125 Broad Street, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10004
skim@nyclu.org
(212) 607-3343
Voices from Solitary: Prison Transfer
Editors’ Note: Tewhan Butler, a former leader of the Bloods in New Jersey, is five years into a 30-year in federal prison sentence. His writing appears, along with that of other former gang members now serving time, on the website Live from LockDown, a project of Raise UP! Media. On Live from Lockdown, he describes his situation this way: ”Having been prosecuted by then-US Attorney and New Jersey’s current Governor, Christopher J. Christie – Tewhan “Massacre” Butler is currently serving his 30-year sentence in the Special Management Unit of a United States Penitentiary under the Federal jurisdiction of the US Bureau of Prisons. The Special Management Unit is beyond maximum security and is for inmates deemed by the Bureau of Prisons to need extraordinary levels of supervision. Butler is confined 23 hours or more each day, allowed only one phone call a month and one family visit by teleconference per month. Live from LockDown is meant to illustrate this harsh reality for those still in the streets.”
Last month, Tewhan Butler received word that he had earned his way to a transfer from USP Lewisburg in Pennsylvania to USP Pollock in rural central Louisiana, a high-security prison where he may nonetheless be somewhat less restricted than he has been in Lewisburg’s Special Management Unit. In the following post, title “The Process,” he describes his long route from prison to prison. (Ironically, shortly after Butler’s arrival, Pollock went on lockdown following a fight among inmates, meaning all prisoners faced round-the-clock confinement to cells with no visits–conditions similar to those at the SMU.)
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Again, I find myself in pursuit of the penitentiary’s dangers. I am told to pack up. My turn has come. I couldn’t fill the plastic bags with my property quick enough. For the past twentymonths, I fell in love with my dictionary, thesaurus, world almanac, Book of Morals, and the world’s best poets to have ever lived. For a brief moment they are forced to be boxed-up and not heard from again until we reach Level 6 Penitentiary Pollock. Level 6 means violence. Violence. Sleep. Violence. Wake-up. Violence. Only a few escape such violence…
After having my things ready to go my door was unlocked and opened by a unit officer, a stand-in officer and a Lieutenant. There were no intimidating looks and NO cuffs. I, to a certain degree, was free; certainly a long time coming…
In the unit’s dayroom I joined nine others who had successfully completed the aches and pains categorized as “The Program” (S.M.U.). The date was November 29, 2011. The time was 4:45am. Only once a week is the penitentiary’s rule of absolute silence ignored, and this day was one of them. The nine of us begin yelling to those we have journeyed with who still have to travel through extreme hardships, “Keep your head up”, “Stay safe” and “Remain solid”. Such words on the inside speak of a man’s care for another who struggles. We have those we would want to stand beside and fight with to the end. However, the Federal Bureau Of Prisons (FBOP) understands this and separates comrades by thousands of miles in attempt to block the brotherly love. Our shouts are returned. Then, “Let’s roll men” the Lieutenant ordered.
Mumia Abu-Jamal Moved Off Death Row–and into Solitary Confinement
According to his attorneys and advocates, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been moved from Pennsylvania’s Death Row to a solitary confinement cell at the State Correctional Institute at Mahanoy, in rural Frackville. After 30 years on death row, his death sentence was overturned by the federal courts.
A statement and call to action being circulated by Prison Radio and the Human Rights Coalition describes Mumia’s conditions. It also notes that he hopes to use his status as perhaps the nation’s best-known prisoner to draw attention to the plight of the tens of thousands of other inmates being held in solitary confinement.
Mumia is being kept in solitary in SCI Mahanoy’s dungeon. Its restrictions and conditions belie its modern construction. Mumia just told us on Friday that he wants all of his supporters to broaden this call, to not just focus on his case, but to understand that all torture units must be shut down…
Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in extremely repressive conditions. And like thousands of prisoners, residents of solitary confinement and isolation units in every hole in every prison across the country, Mumia is being subject to draconian, dehumanizing and brutal conditions. Solitary confinement. He is shackled whenever he is outside his cell, even to the shower. He is shackled around his ankles, waist and wrist. He is shackled while behind Plexiglas during visits. Subject to strip searches before and after visits. Unable to walk freely. Having bits of paper to write notes on, with a rubber flex pen. No shelves, 4 books. No access to news reports, letters delayed. Restricted visiting. Glaring lights on 24 hours a day. Only one brief phone call to his wife. No access to adequate food or commissary. These conditions are worse than death row.
Attorney Rachel Wolkenstein argues that “There is no legal basis for Mumia to be confined in AC. At the point he was no longer under a death sentence, he should have been transferred into general population. This is not dependent on a court date for Mumia to be formally resentenced to life imprisonment.” In response to her inquiries, the Department of Corrections said that ”Mumia is in AC pending resentencing and further evaluations.” But Wolkenstein points out that “The District Attorney has stated there will be no trial to obtain a new death sentence..nor is there a reason or basis for “further evaluation.” Mumia has been confined in Pennsylvania prisons for some thirty years. The DOC unquestionably knows his history, conduct and behavior. There is nothing in Mumia’s personal record to justify holding him in Administrative Custody.”
Conditions for the 2,500 other inmates currently in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania’s “Restricted Housing Units” has been well documented in reports from the Human Rights Coalition; they can be read here, here, and here.
Update: Attorney Rachel Wolkenstein reported last night: “Mumia informed me tonight in a legal phone call that today he was given a new, additional reason for being held in AC status — his long dreadlocks. For over eight years Mumia had been held in disciplinary custody on death row for no stated reason except his hair. DC [disciplinary custody] is yet one step below AC in the prison’s torture blocks. No books at all, no outside communication. No commissary. It has taken over five weeks for the DOC to come up with this.”
The Guantánamos Next Door
- LA County Jail
The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay turns 10 today, and activists are marking the anniversary with protests and petitions, reports and retrospectives. A decade after its founding, Guantánamo remains a dark stain on the national soul.
Even today, while the worst instances of torture may have ceased under the Obama Administration, prisoners are still subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of deprivation and abuse. According to a February 2009 report from the Center of Constitutional Rights: “The descriptions of ongoing, severe solitary confinement, other forms of psychological abuse, incidents of violence and the threat of violence from guards, religious abuse, and widespread forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers indicate that the inhumane practices of the Bush Administration persist today at Guantánamo.”
Then there’s the fact that the prisoners at Guantánamo have been deprived of their liberty without any semblance of due process. Over the last decade, 779 prisoners have been held at Gitmo; 171 remain. Only six have ever been convicted of a crime.
When it comes to depriving people of their human and civil rights, Guantánamo stands as an unprecedented extreme. But it is far from the only place where these things happen. Today, in our cities and towns, in every state in America, there are places where individuals are incarcerated without trial, and where they suffer deprivation and abuse. They are our local jails.
Take the issue of pre-trial detention. According to the Pre-Trial Justice Institute, a full 61% of U.S. jail inmates–nearly half a million in all–have not yet been convicted of any crime. Many have not even been accused of a violent crime. The majority of them are in jail because they cannot afford the modest bail required for their release. A 2010 study by Human Rights Watch looked at defendants in New York City arrested on nonfelony charges. ”Most were accused of nonviolent minor crimes such as shoplifting, turnstile jumping, smoking marijuana in public, drug possession, trespassing, and prostitution.” It found that “87 percent were incarcerated because they were unable to post the bail amount at their arraignment,” even though bail had been set at $1,000. These defendants faced weeks, months, or years in pre-trial confinement for no reason other than poverty.
While awaiting trial, these individuals face appallingly overcrowded conditions, inadequate food–and far worse. On New York City’s Rikers Island, nearly one in twelve prisoners is held in solitary confinement at any given time; the jail maintains two isolation units specifically for inmates with mental illness, and another for juveniles. Pre-trial solitary is routinely used on underaged inmates, to separate from the adult jail population; one report out of Texas found juveniles in the Harris County Jail spending a year or more in complete isolation. In the most extreme cases–such as that of Syed Fahad Hashmi, pre-trial detainees are held under “Special Administrative Measures” that constitute acute sensory deprivation.
The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition today reports on the content of a meeting held in late December with an undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), regarding the future of the state’s Security Housing Units (SHUs). Prisoners in the SHUs at Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and elsewhere are held in round-the-clock solitary confinement, some for years or even decades; many are there because they have been “validated” as gang members based on the word of other prisoners.
Following a series of highly publicized hunger strikes and a hearing in the California State Assembly, the CDCR promised to revisit the process through which it condemns prisoners to long terms in the SHU. Any proposed changes apparently would not affect the Administrative Segregation Units, or ASUs, where prisoners are also held in solitary; a number of hunger strikers have been sent to ASU.
The following notes from the December meeting serve as a status report on that process.
On December 28, 2011, two members of Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s mediation team spoke with Undersecretary Terri McDonald about the status of the new regulations on gang validation/SHU classification policies and procedures.
Undersecretary McDonald stated the following:
- CDCR is changing to a behavior-based policy about SHU consignment, so that prisoners could be designated as members of “security threat groups” without being sent to the SHU. Others currently in SHU who have not had behavior issues could be returned to the general population. It remains to be seen how broadly CDCR will define “behavior.”
- In addition, CDCR is designing a 4-step “stepdown program” designed for exiting gang members. Step 1 is high security and step 4 is transition to general population. Debriefing is not required to qualify for this program.
- CDCR has drafted a “concept paper” about these new policies, which it intends to send to its national experts in early January. CDCR did not adopt the prior recommendations of the 2007 experts’ report, mostly because of cost. CDCR’s concept paper will not be available to prisoners and their advocates until after the experts weigh in. Read more…
Solitary Confinement in Virginia’s Prisons
For anyone who missed it, this front page article in Sunday’s Washington Post gives excellent coverage to the widespread use of solitary confinement in Virginia’s state prisons. It begins with a glance at one of the nation’s most notorious supermax prisons, Red Onion, and then goes on to discuss efforts to limit the use of solitary in Virginia–which include both a lawsuit and a possible legislative initiative.
At Red Onion State Prison, built on a mountaintop in a remote pocket of southwest Virginia, more than two-thirds of the inmates live in solitary confinement.
In a state where about 1 in 20 prisoners are held in solitary, Red Onion, a so-called supermax prison, isolates more inmates than any other facility, keeping more than 500 of its nearly 750 charges alone for 23 hours a day in cells the size of a doctor’s exam room…
As more becomes known about the effects of isolation — on inmate health, public safety and prison budgets — some states have begun to reconsider the practice, among them Texas, which, like Virginia, is known as a law-and-order state…
Now critics have set their sights on Virginia, where lawyers and inmates say some of the state’s 40,000 prisoners, including some with mental-health issues, have been kept in isolation for years, in one case for 14 years…
The Legal Aid Justice Center, which represents 12 inmates in isolation in Virginia, has requested an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently launched a probe into a 1,550-bed Pennsylvania prison where inmates complain of long periods of isolation and a lack of mental-health treatment…
A group of legislators…have been visiting prisons, including Red Onion, to examine how their most violent inmates are treated. Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), who is leading the effort, said he will urge the General Assembly to study ways to limit the use of solitary confinement and offer more treatment before inmates are released.
California Bill Would Increase Media Access to Prisoners
The nation’s supermax prisons and solitary confinement units are virtual black sites, off-limits and therefore invisible to both the public and the press. While laws vary from state to state, the media are for the most part barred from touring these facilities, and forbidden to conduct in-person interviews with prisoners being held in solitary confinement. These rules are made by the prisons themselves, in the name of safety and security, and with few exceptions the courts have acquiesced, ruling that the freedom of the press stops at the prison gate.
A bill introduced in the California State Assembly seeks to challenge the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations ban on interviewing prisoners in its notorious Security Housing Units (SHUs) and ease restrictions on interviews with other prisoners. Assembly Bill 1270 was introduced by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano of San Francisco. Ammiano chairs the Public Safety Committee, and held hearings on California’s SHUs in August 2011, following the historic inmate hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay State Prison in July.
According to a fact sheet released by Ammiano’s office, AB 1270 “seeks to restore the media’s ability to conduct pre-arranged in-person interviews with specific prison inmates…It would allow the media to provide more balanced information about our prison systems to keep the public informed and our institutions both transparent and accountable.” (The full fact sheet appears at the end of this post.)
The fact sheet notes: “Media is even more restricted access to the most controversial correctional facilities such as the secure housing units (SHUs).” It goes on to describe the extreme isolation of the SHUs, and mentions findings that link solitary confinement to mental illness and suicide.
