New Federal Budget: Plenty of Money for Prisons
The following article originally appeared on MotherJones.com.
President Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes cuts to everything from Medicare and Medicaid to defense and even homeland security. But federal prisons are among its “biggest winners,” according to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion.
So what kind of criminals are we spending all this money to incarcerate? If you’re thinking terrorists and kidnappers, think again. According to the Sentencing Project, only 1 in 10 federal prisoners is locked up for a violent offense of any kind. More than half are drug offenders—hardly surprising, since federal prosecutions for drug offenses more than doubled between 1984 and 2005. The 1980s also produced mandatory minimum sentences, which meant we were not only sending more people to prison, we were keeping them there far longer—a perfect formula for an exploding prison population.
Indeed, the federal prison population ballooned from fewer than 25,000 inmates in 1980 to 210,000 in 2010—an eightfold increase—while the federal prison budget grew by a whopping 1,700 percent. Nowadays, as state prison populations have begun to fall for the first time in decades—the product of a steady decline in violent-crime rates, lawsuits over prison conditions, and deficits that have forced state officials to rethink their incarceration policies—the number of federal inmates continues to grow by about 3 percent a year. The projected 2013 federal prison population is 229,268 inmates—6,500 or more than in 2012. “Increasing funding for more prison beds has been shown to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” notes the Justice Policy Institute. “If you build it, they will come.”
According to Obama’s new budget, new federal prisons opening in Mississippi and West Virginia will house some 2,500 of those additional prisoners. Another 1,000 will be placed in private prisons—which now hold 18 percent of federal prisoners, far more than most state systems. The remainder of the new inmates will presumably be jammed into the existing federal prison facilities, which are already operating at 142 percent of capacity.
Factored into the budget request is $44 million in savings from an expansion of programs that let prisoners shave time off their sentences by behaving well and participating in educational and vocational programs, plus a compassionate release program for seriously ill inmates who have served most of their time—a smart move for the BOP, since it would shift its costliest medical cases onto Medicaid. But there’s no guarantee that these “program offsets” will pass, especially given that Congress nixed similar proposals last year.
Conspicuously absent from the Obama budget is an item the administration requested for 2011 and 2012: money to purchase and retrofit a disused Illinois prison to serve as Gitmo North, a home for detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay. Since late 2009, Obama has floated plans to buy Thomson state prison and convert it into a second supermax for Gitmo residents who were tried and convicted on American soil. But Congress has yet to come through with the cash, and it seems, at least in this budget, that the White House has thrown in the towel.
If the federal government acquires Thomson, it will not be for the purpose of replacing Guantanamo, but “to meet critical federal prison capacity needs,” a Department of Justice spokesperson told TPM. In other words, we could end up with Gitmo on top of a new federal supermax like the one in Florence, Colorado—the closest thing to a torture chamber that exists in America today.
Chart courtesy of The Sentencing Project
Family of California Prisoner Who Died on Hunger Strike Speaks Out
The family of Christian Gomez, the 27-year-old prisoner who died while on hunger strike at California’s Corcoran State Prison, is speaking out about the loss of their family member in the hope that similar incidents in the future are avoided.
In a phone call with Solitary Watch, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Terry Thornton confirmed that Gomez had been placed in solitary confinement in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) pending investigation of assault on another inmate with a weapon on January 14, 2012. Thornton would not confirm the status of this investigation. Gomez was serving a life sentence for first degree murder and attempted murder.
Christian Gomez had not told his family members of his intentions to participate in the January 27-February 13 hunger strike held by ASU inmates in protest of their conditions. According to an interview with Gomez’s sister, Y.L., she “found out when the coroner Tom [Edmonds] implied that there was a possibility of a chemical imbalance due to a hunger strike he was participating in. That’s the first I heard of this. Back in [September or October] when he first was transferred there he did tell me that they were having a hunger strike to fight for their rights but he was in general population.”
Contrary to earlier reports that he had only been on a hunger strike for four days when he died, Terry Thornton confirmed to Solitary Watch that Gomez joined the strike on January 27 with 31 other inmates. This means that he had been on hunger strike for a week at the time of his death.
The family says that Gomez had high blood pressure, thyroid and kidney problems. According to Y.L., before being sent to Corcoran he had been incarcerated at High Desert State Prison for four years. “He told me things were a lot different at this prison and that he didn’t receive the same medical attention he received over at high desert,” said Y.L.
Gomez was found unresponsive in his cell at an unconfirmed time on February 2. Reports from other inmates indicate that they had pounded on their cell doors and screamed to get the attention of the correctional officers. He was declared dead at Corcoran District Hospital at 12:22 PM.
According to Y.L., “My mother received the call of my brother’s death on Thursday February 2, 2012 at approximately 1pm. She then called me hysterically and that’s when I went over to her house. When I got there I asked her who called and she said someone from the prison. [I] asked her if they gave her a number were we could call to obtain more info and she said no. They told her that she would receive a letter in the mail explaining everything and where we could claim the body… I was so upset that things were being handled this way, for God sake we were talking about a human being not an animal.”
Asked how she would like people to remember her brother, Y.L. responded,”he was a genuine person that had not lost hope in the system. He knew that he would eventually get out. Although he had made bad choices in who he hung around with he didn’t murder anyone. The witnesses in his case never identified him on the contrary, but yet he was still convicted. Unfortunately we couldn’t afford a good attorney and he got screwed. He was very caring with his family and friends and therefore he will be greatly missed by those who knew him. He had matured a lot in prison and can be remembered by those who knew him as a prankster. There was never a dull moment with him. He always had a big smile when we visited him and never discussed how bad things were in there to not worry us. He always said he was fine. Even in the last letter he wrote on Jan 30th which my mom received on Feb 3rd he wrote that he was fine.”
Update, February 24: Yajaira Lopez (Y.L.), sister of Christian Gomez, appeared on Democracy Now! this morning to talk about her brother’s life and death. Democracy Now! also interviewed Carol Strickland of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition and Prisoners With Children, as well as Terry Thornton of the CDCR.
Illinois Governor Proposes Closing Controversial Tamms Supermax Prison
In a budget briefing held this afternoon, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn proposed closing the state’s notorious Tamms supermax prison. The proposal is part of a package of deep spending cuts to nearly all areas of state government, which Quinn called a “rendezvous with reality.”
Tamms holds more than 200 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement in conditions that have been denounced as torturous. Prisoners at Tamms spend at least 23 hours a day locked down in small cells, leaving them only to shower or to exercise alone in a concrete pen. They are fed through slots in their cell doors, and are allowed no communal activities, no phone calls, and no contact visits.
As in most supermax prisons, a high percentage of prisoners at Tamms suffer from serious mental illness, and for them the torment is even worse. In its 14-year history, Tamms has witnessed inmate suicides, suicide attempts, and self-mutilations.
When it opened in 1998, Tamms was purported to be a short-term solution for prisoners with disciplinary problems. Yet ten years later, a third of the original prisoners were still there, held in solitary for more than a decade.
In addition to its human costs, incarcerating prisoners at Tamms is also extraordinarily expensive: According to one calculation, the cost of keeping an inmate in the supermax exceeds $92,000 per year–two to three times the cost of the state’s other maximum security prisons.
With Illinois several years into a serious fiscal crisis, the immediate impetus for the proposed closure of Tamms is clearly financial. But years of activism and litigation, along with scathing press exposes, undoubtedly helped sway the state to put Tamms on the chopping block.
Grassroots advocacy, spearheaded by the group Tamms Year Ten, began in earnest in 2008, on the tenth anniversary of Tamms’ opening. In addition to mounting various educational and organizing efforts, the Tamms Year Ten campaign exerted pressure on state legislators, the governor, and the Illinois Department of Corrections–which in 2009 announced a “ten-point plan” for reforming the supermax. Subsequently, however, the head of the IDOC was pushed out, and most of the reforms were never implemented.
The movement gained traction, nonetheless, as a result of a series of investigations by reporters at the Belleville News-Democrat, which released its series “Trapped in Tamms” in August 2009. The series portrayed a nightmarish place where sane prisoners were driven mad, and where those with underlying mental illness suffered daily as a result of their extreme isolation.
In 2010, following a ten-year legal battle by Chicago’s Uptown People’s Law Center, a federal judge ruled that inmates at Tamms were being denied their Constitutional rights by being placed in long-term solitary without any semblance of due process. The same judge found that the “crushing monotony” and total deprivation of human contact were likely to “inflict lasting psychological damage and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods.”
Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center told Solitary Watch that in combination with the pressure from advocates, the legal case “gave the imprimatur of a federal judge to our long-time contention that long term isolation at Tamms inflicts serious harm on men’s minds—harm that continues even after they are released from Tamms.” In addition, said Mills, ”by finally requiring the Department [of Corrections] to provide meaningful due process hearings to determine why each man was at Tamms” it forced the DOC to realize ”that many of the prisoners who had spent years there, really didn’t need to be there. They transferred over 25 men out of Tamms as a result of this review process. I am guessing that during these reviews the Department began to seriously question what the real criteria should be for placement at Tamms—and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.” Finally, “All of this was crystallized by the desperate need to save money somewhere.”
Prisoner advocates were today affirming Quinn’s decision to promote the closure of Tamms, calling it “long overdue.” Tamms Year Ten leader Laurie Jo Reynolds told the Belleville News Democrat: “From the day it opened, Tamms has been a financial boondoggle and a human rights catastrophe. The staff to prisoner ratio is the highest in the system and the mental health worker to prisoner ratio is vastly higher…Because men can’t work or leave the cell, we just pay for excess correctional staff to shackle them, move them around, and push food into their cells. Then we pay to treat them when they become insane due to the isolation.”
But they also warned that the closure of Tamms is far from accomplished, and will face resistance from a number of directions–including not only corrections officials and unions and Republican legislators, but also Democrats from the southern tip of the state where Tamms is located. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The rumored Tamms closure was drawing heavy criticism from Southern Illinois legislators throughout the day Tuesday. The criticism was directed at Quinn, a Chicagoan. ‘I’m mad as hell. I don’t know where this guy is coming from,’ state Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, wrote in a Twitter feed.”
Advocates urged backers of the Tamms closure to immediately contact the governor’s office to state their support for the plan.
- Protestors outside the LA County Jail
Solitary confinement was very much on the agenda during yesterday’s “Occupy for Prisoners”protests at more than a dozen sites around the country. This was particularly true in California, where recent prisoner hunger strikes have called attention to conditons in the state’s all-solitary Security Housing Units (SHUs) and Administrative Segregation Units (ASUs).
The largest rally was staged at the east gate of San Quentin, north of San Francisco, which is the state’s oldest prison and the home of its death row. At least 700 people gathered there on Monday afternoon for a peaceful demonstration. As the Guardian reports:
The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California’s Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights…
Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandela described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.
“In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary,” Fattal added.
Bauer said “a prisoner’s greatest fear is being forgotten.” He described how hunger strikes became the hikers’ own “greatest weapon” in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that “this movement, this Occupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons.”…
Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called “three strikes, you’re out” laws.
Ironically–but perhaps predictably–prison officials responded to news of the impending protest by increasing restrictions on prisoners. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “San Quentin was placed on lockdown, meaning prisoners were kept in their cells, in anticipation of the protest.”
While the rally was taking place at San Quentin, another group of about 100 advocates was demonstrating in front of the Los Angeles County Jail. Members of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), ACLU of Southern California, and California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement were there “to protest long-term solitary confinement in American prisons, show support for prisoners, and advocate for legislation that would limit the use of solitary confinement,” according to a statement from NRCAT.
One attendee, NRCAT board member Virginia Classick, said that the event was “an opportunity to be in solidarity with family members” inside California’s prisons and jails, and to be “visible as part of the witness” to a practice that the religious coalition considers a form of torture. The group’s executive director, Rev. Richard Killmer, stated: “Long-term solitary confinement denigrates a person’s inherent dignity and hinders genuine rehabilitation. As people of faith, we have been deeply concerned about prison conditions in California that led to the recent prisoner hunger strikes.”
Voices from Solitary: “The Isolated Prisoner”
The following poem comes from an inmate at Utah State Prison’s Draper supermax unit. Initially convicted of a non-violent drug offense, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison, he has been held in isolation for more than three years. He is also corresponding for an upcoming Solitary Watch article on the practice of solitary confinement in Utah. He is held in his cell 46 hours and 45 minutes straight before being allotted 75 minutes to shower and use the phone. .
Isolated tension so thick you can see it, feel it when you walk into our section, or hear it if you stop and pay attention.
Intense anger and open fury evoked by constant frustration. Hidden cries and silent tears from hopes of false delusions.
Shattered dreams and broken promises from Men who played against reality, or some just out here on some type of adversity.
Still, the outcome is the same, a cell designed for my undeclared torture, for an inconceivable amount of time intended deep within the future.
Forty-six hours in a single cell with the very minimal needs given, while my sanity and well-being is constantly in a struggle of being taken.
Suffering from the hands of time that seem to never turn, while anticipating some type of unfulfilling yearn.
Sentenced to this heinous life like a chaotic scream! Stranded in a prison within a prison, designed with immorality.
A week after Solitary Watch first reported the death of 27-year-old hunger striker Christian Gomez, information about the recent strike in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Corcoran State Prison remains hard to come by.
Officially, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has given varying accounts about the hunger strike. CDCR Spokesperson Terry Thornton, in an email to Solitary Watch, stated that the hunger strike officially began on January 27 and that on Thursday, February 9, “all inmates in the ASU except one resumed eating state-issued food.” This was followed up by Nancy Kincaid, Director of Communications with California Correctional Health Care Services, who stated to Solitary Watch that “all accepted food trays last Thursday [February 9].”
This information has been contradicted by a relative of one hunger striker, who told Solitary Watch that the strike was still ongoing on February 10th, when at least two inmates fainted and had to receive medical attention. Medical problems seemed to have plagued many strikers, as noted in a letter to activist Kendra Castaneda dated February 5, in which one of the strikers writes that “inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously.” The relative reported that the striker appeared to have lost a significant amount of weight during a recent visit, and that he had been very dizzy during the visit.
The striker, who had only recently been placed in the ASU for an indeterminate amount of time, reportedly knew Christian Gomez and described the day of his death. He told his relative that several inmates were screaming and pounding their fists on their cell doors trying to get the attention of the correctional officers. His knuckles were noticeably battered during the visit. CDCR officials continue to assert that autopsy results show Gomez did not die of starvation, although the cause of death has not been made public.
Affirming the statements of one of the December ASU strike petitioners, who asserted that the strike “has no ending date unless some or all demands are met,” the striker hinted that there will be future strikes if the CDCR doesn’t reform conditions in the ASU at Corcoran. It is currently unclear why the hunger strike ended when it did. A January 31st letter from one of the petitioners indicated that prison officials may have entered into talks with the strikers, but this remains unconfirmed.
Currently, there are over 350 inmates in the ASU at Corcoran. According to a 2009 Office of the Inspector General report, there are over 8,000 administrative segregation beds in CA. The report examined a number of ASUs, not including Corcoran, but indicated that several ASUs involved unjustifiably delayed classification hearings, holding inmates with expired SHU terms, and transfer delays. Such issues were noted by the Corcoran petition in December. The prisoners third demand is “That inmates not be further punished upon completion of their SHU terms,” and reads in part:
Inmates are being placed in the ASU after the completion of their SHU terms supposedly “pending transfer.” These inmates are then stuck here for four, five months, in many instances even longer, before finally being transferred to general population. This practice of illegally placing inmates in ASU upon the completion of their SHU terms for long periods of time without proper procedure and with excessive delays on their transfers is resulting in unjustified punishment for these inmates.
Furthermore, inmates undergoing the DRB (Departmental Review Board) process after the completion of their SHU terms are being held in ASU for months and even years while the counselors and committee ignore their repeated requests for a timely hearing on their case. This is in blatant violation of their procedural due process rights.
Time will tell whether or not reform of such practices comes at Corcoran any time soon. However, KALW News reported on February 15 that “Thornton said revisions to its policies regarding security threat group management and changes to the gang validation process is nearly complete. [She] anticipates the revision will go out for legislators and inmate advocacy groups to review near the end of this month.”
For more on the potential reforms, read this January Solitary Watch post on the matter. Solitary Watch will continue to publish updates on the Corcoran hunger strike as information becomes available.
Update (February 13): Theresa Cisneros, Public Information Officer at Corcoran, confirmed to Solitary Watch that Christian Gomez, 27, was hunger striking at the time of his death in the Administrative Segregation Unit. Official autopsy results still pending. Nancy Kincaid of California Correctional Health Care Services told Solitary Watch that Gomez had been “medically monitored for hunger strike activity and had been on strike for four days” at the time of his death on February 2nd. She further said that “the preliminary autopsy report does not indicate hunger strike activity contributed to his death.”
News of a death in Corcoran State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit is emerging as an underreported hunger strike in the prison’s ASU comes to a close. Inmates in the ASU are held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. Many have been in isolation for years and even decades.
California State Prison, Corcoran, which houses over 1400 in Security Housing Units and an additional 350 in ASUs, has been the site of two waves of hunger strikes since late December 2011. Unlike the highly publicized hunger strikes last year that originated in Pelican Bay State Prison’s SHU, the Corcoran strikes have remained relatively small and have received little press attention.
On December 19, 2011, three inmates at Corcoran announced a hunger strike protesting the conditions of the ASU. They listed eleven demands ranging from educational and rehabilitative programming to timely medical care. According to California Department of Corrections spokesperson Terry Thornton:
On Dec. 28, 59 inmates housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit at Corcoran State Prison refused their state-issued meals. On Dec. 29, that number dropped to 54. On Dec. 30, 49 inmates refused state-issued meals. By Dec. 31, all inmates resumed eating state-issued food.
According to Pyung Hwa Ryoo, one of the main petitioners of the December 2011 hunger strike:
Three days after the strike began, prison officials came to the ASU and let the strikers know that the petition, and demands of the strike, would be granted. They requested three weeks to make the changes happen; and to give them the benefit of the doubt, the request was granted and the strike was put on hold.
It has been a little more than 2 weeks since the strike stopped. So far, there has been some improvements in this ASU, but the majority of the promised changes have not yet occurred.
According to a letter from strike petitioner Juan Jaimes dated January 31st:
…this hunger strike commenced on December 28, 2011 and it has no ending date unless some or all demands are met…
He also indicated (as confirmed by CDCR’s inmate locator) that he was transferred from Corcoran to Kern Valley State Prison. Though unconfirmed, he has also indicated that the two other strike petitioners were also transferred away from each other.
There is conflicting information suggesting that some inmates continued to strike during the period between the “official” strikes. The following, however, has been confirmed by Thornton:
On Jan. 27, 32 inmates in Corcoran State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) refused to eat breakfast and started a hunger strike. As of Feb. 9, all inmates in the ASU except one resumed eating state-issued food.
In an email to Solitary Watch from Nancy Kincaid, Director of Communications for California Correctional Health Care Services, stated that all strikers resumed eating February 9th.
A letter to California activist Kendra Castaneda from a Corcoran ASU striker, however, indicated that “on or about Feb 2nd or 3rd 2012 an inmate has passed away due to not eating.”
While the cause of death and its possible relationship to the hunger strike remains unconfirmed, Thornton responded to questions from Solitary Watch with an apparent affirmation that an inmate death had taken place, and the statement: ”I do not know the results of the autopsy.”
In response to a phone call, Tom Edmonds, Chief Deputy Coroner in Kings County confirmed that inmate Christian Gomez died on February 2nd at Corcoran, but also did not share the cause of death.
Solitary Watch will provide updates as information becomes available.
New Video: Daughter of Russell Maroon Shoats, Held in Solitary Confinement for Nearly 30 Years
Theresa Shoats is an activist and the daughter of Russell Maroon Shoats, who was a member of the Black Panther Party and a founding member of the Black Unity Council. He is serving multiple life sentences for the 1970 murder of a Philadelphia area police officer. Now 70 years old, Shoats has spent the last 21 years in continuous solitary confinement at Pennsylvania’s SCI Greene, and he did several earlier terms in solitary as well–for a total of close to 30 years in all.
More information can be found on the blog maintained by Teresa Shoats at http://russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com/. Solitary Watch reporter and videographer Valeria Monfrini talked with Teresa Shoats last fall.
Lawsuit Challenges South Carolina’s Use of Solitary Confinement on Prisoners with Mental Illness
Research by an advocacy group found that inmates with mental illness in South Carolina’s prisons receive inadequate care and “spend an inordinate amount of time in solitary confinement.” The group has sued the state’s Corrections Department in a case that went to court this week. The Associated Press reports:
A Columbia-based advocacy group that sued South Carolina’s prisons agency over the care of mentally ill inmates is finally getting its day in court. Circuit Court Judge Michael Baxley is expected to begin hearing arguments Monday in the case that accuses the Corrections Department of subjecting mentally ill inmates to cruel and unusual punishment.
Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities sued the agency in 2005, saying that mentally ill inmates were severely punished for disciplinary infractions and were not given enough access to psychiatric care.
The advocacy group sued along with four mentally ill South Carolina inmates. One man, according to court papers, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and “believes that at night, while he is sleeping, doctors come into his cell and perform surgery on him.” Instead of being placed at the prison system’s sole psychiatric hospital, attorneys for the group wrote, the man “has lived for most of the last sixteen years in an SCDC lock-up unit,” where he is kept alone in a cell nearly 24 hours a day and sees a counselor only once a month.
Protection and Advocacy said it sued on behalf of all of South Carolina’s mentally ill inmates, a number the group estimated is as many as 4,400, or about 19 percent of the state’s inmate population. Those inmates, according to the group, spend an inordinate amount of time in solitary confinement when compared to other inmates. Studying disciplinary records for 110 mentally ill inmates, the group said nearly all of them — 98 percent — spent more than a year in solitary confinement, while 20 percent were in solitary for more than five years.
Attorneys for the South Carolina Corrections Department, according to the AP, have argued that ”all new inmates are screened for mental health issues within 30 days of arriving at the state’s prisons,” and “denied that mentally ill inmates were punished any differently than other prisoners. Even when in solitary confinement, the agency’s attorneys wrote, inmates receive visits from mental health specialists.”
Read the full article here.
In what promises to be “the first in an occasional series of columns and editorials on mental illness and Michigan’s criminal justice and mental health care system,” the Detroit Free Press has published a powerful piece by Jeff Gerritt on the fate of prisoners with mental illness, who end up languishing in solitary–or worse.
According to the article, “A 2010 University of Michigan study found that more than 20% of the state’s prisoners — about 10,000 inmates out of a population of 45,000 — had severe mental disabilities. The same study found that 65% of those with severe mental disabilities had received no treatment in the previous 12 months.”
Many of these prisoners end up among the thousand or so held in administrative segregation in Michigan. “MDOC administrators acknowledge that the percentage of mentally ill inmates in segregation is probably higher than in the overall population. Prisoners in segregation are handcuffed when they leave their cells, eat off serving trays pushed through the slots of steel doors, and generally lack the few privileges extended to those in general population, such as telephone calls, contact visits and television. Some stay in segregation for months, even years.”
Gerritt leads with the story of one young prisoner whose symptoms of untreated mental illness landed him in solitary, and eventually shackled to his bed.
On Jan. 10 of last year, corrections officers at Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility found 19-yearold Kevin DeMott banging his head against a blood-stained cell wall.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 11, inmate No. 608233 had languished in solitary for four months, sometimes without the psychotropic medication his psychiatrist prescribed. Normally 5-foot-10 and 171 pounds, he had lost 25 pounds.
Officers ordered DeMott to stop banging his head, but he continued.
After DeMott told officers who tried to restrain him that they would have to kill him, he was hit twice with pepper spray, then manacled in belly chains and leg irons, according to a critical incident report. Soon after, prison authorities charged him with disobeying a direct order, resulting in 30 days’ loss of privileges.
Too often, the Department of Corrections punishes instead of treats mental illness. Michigan’s 32 prisons hold thousands of mentally ill inmates, including as many as 200 isolated in segregation cells, where they are locked up for 23 hours a day, or longer, unable to participate in treatment programs, and sometimes cut off from the medications prescribed to help manage their illnesses.
It’s an insidious cycle: Mentally ill inmates act out and exhibit unstable or destructive behavior. Prison officials respond by further restricting their movements and their opportunities to get treatment.
Privately, MDOC officials acknowledge that many mentally ill inmates don’t belong in prison, where security demands trump treatment needs. Over the last two decades, however, Michigan has slashed spending on in-patient treatment, leaving courts with few options but to send mentally ill offenders to jail or prison.
“We don’t control who comes to us,” said Russ Marlan, administrator of MDOC’s executive bureau.
Read the full story, complete with chilling photographs, here.
