Deaf Prisoners in Florida Face Abuse and Solitary Confinement

May 21, 2013 By 1 Comment

sign_language_interpreterIn the a Florida prison called the Reception and Medical Center, a corrections officer appears at a cell door and begins mocking fake sign language to the man inside, who is deaf. Then he pulls Sam Hart out of the cell and escorts him for a haircut. After half his hair is shaved off one side of his head, the guard orders the haircutter to stop.

As Hart describes in a letter, the officer then says, “Look, not only is he deaf but now he even looks dumb.”

Hart, who was born hearing and can speak and read lips, replies, “Don’t play with me, I do not play with you and I do not disrespect you.”

“Fuck you,” says the officer. “Mother fucker.” The next day the same officer stops by Hart’s cell. “Did you get to show it to the warden, dummy?” he asks.

“The abuse experienced by deaf prisoners housed in the Florida Department of Corrections defies imagination” Talila Lewis, founder and president of HEARD (Helping  Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf ), a group that supports deaf prisoners, wrote in the op-ed pages of the Sun Sentinel, the south Florida newspaper. She continued:

The Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) has systematically created a culture of fear and hopelessness for disabled prisoners. The DOC’s failure to  provide adequate accommodations for and protections to this vulnerable population is beyond reproach.  Countless deaf prisoners, their family members, and advocates have expressed concern for the safety and well-being of these prisoners in Florida’s state prison facilities.  Many of Florida’s deaf prisoners, fearful of  brutal retaliation and assured of prison official’s apathy or complicity, have all but given up hope of ever living safe from fear of sexual and physical assault.

Lewis said her information is based on 21  deaf prisoners out of a total of 40 in Florida, held  in six different prisons across the state. Overall, Lewis writes, “HEARD’s Deaf and Deaf-Blind Prisoner Database includes information on more than 400 men and women, in 38 states, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The abuse and violations occuring in Florida are, by far, the worst that we have seen.”

Lewis said she has sent letters to the Governor Rick Scott, Department of Corrections head Michael D. Crews, and state prison inspector general  Jeff Beasley. So far she has received no replies. She also wrote to and met with officials in the Justice Department’s disability rights section, and received no response from there, either. Inquiries by Solitary Watch to Ann Howard, press spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections, so far have not been answered.

“This past year, one deaf prisoner [later revealed to be Sam Hart] risked his life to report to the Office of the Inspector General horrendous physical and sexual abuse of other prisoners with disabilities as well as other serious violations occurring at the prison [Tomoka Correctional Facility],” Lewis wrote in her op-ed. She continued:

Though this prisoner’s complaint resulted in at least two officers being fired and numerous prisoners being transferred out of the facility, the Office of the Inspector General informed staff at Tomoka that this prisoner was responsible for lodging this “anonymous” complaint.  As a result of this breach of confidentiality, this prisoner’s life has been threatened by staff and prisoners at Tomoka.  Just last week, despite numerous requests from advocates not to send him back to this facility, the Florida Department of Corrections sent this prisoner back to what can only be described as a living hell for this man who sacrificed his own safety to protect others.  As of the writing of this letter, he has not been heard from by any of those community members with whom he consistently maintains contact.

Lewis told Solitary Watch she “fears Hart will be killed just as soon as he is released from solitary in late May.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, featured posts, Florida, retaliation, sexual assault, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , ,

Louisiana Attorney General Says Angola 3 “Have Never Been Held in Solitary Confinement”

March 21, 2013 By 4 Comments
woodfox wallace 70s

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in the early 1970s, when they were placed in solitary confinement. (Photo from “In the Land of the Free.”)

James “Buddy” Caldwell, attorney general of the state of Louisiana, has released a statement saying unequivocally that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two still-imprisoned members of the Angola 3, “have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system.”

In fact, Wallace, now 71, and Woodfox, 66, have been in solitary for nearly 41 years, quite possibly longer than any other human beings on the planet. They were placed in solitary following the 1972 killing of a young corrections officer at Angola, and except for a few brief periods, they have remained in isolation ever since.

The statement from Caldwell follows on the heels of a ruling by a federal District Court judge in New Orleans, overturning Albert Woodfox’s conviction for the third time–in this instance, on the grounds that there had been racial bias in the selection of grand jury forepersons in Louisiana at the time of his indictment. Subsequently, Amnesty International, along with other activists, mounted a campaign urging the state of Louisiana not to appeal the federal court’s ruling. In the absence of an appeal, Woodfox would have to be given a new trial or released.

Caldwell’s statement–which was rather mysteriously sent out to an email list that included numerous prisoners’ rights advocates who have supported the Angola 3–begins: “Thank you for your interest in the ambush, savage attack and brutal murder of Officer Brent Miller at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) on April 17, 1972. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace committed this murder, stabbing and slicing Miller over 35 times.”

Caldwell clearly states that he has every intention of appealing the District Court’s decision to the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit: “We feel confident that we will again prevail at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, if we do not, we are fully prepared and willing to retry this murderer again.” Caldwell asserts that the evidence against Woodfox is ”overpowering”: “There are no flaws in our evidence and this case is very strong.”

These statements belie the fact that much of the evidence that led to Wallace and Woodfox’s conviction has since been called into question. In particular, the primary eyewitness was shown to have been bribed by prison officials into making statements against the two men. (For more details on the case, see our earlier reporting in Mother Jones, here, here, here, and here.) The two men believe that they were targeted for the murder, and have been held in solitary for four decades, because of their status as Black Panthers and their efforts to organize against prison conditions. (The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, convicted of a separate prison murder, was released after 29 years in solitary when his conviction was overturned in 2001).

But Caldwell’s most controversial assertion is that Wallace and Woodfox’s conditions of confinement over the past 40 years do not qualify as solitary confinement:

Contrary to popular lore, Woodfox and Wallace have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system. They have been held in protective cell units known as CCR. These units were designed to protect inmates as well as correctional officers. They have always been able to communicate freely with other inmates and prison staff as frequently as they want. They have televisions on the tiers which they watch through their cell doors. In their cells they can have radios and headsets, reading and writing materials, stamps, newspapers, magazines and books. They also can shop at the canteen store a couple of times per week where they can purchase grocery and personal hygiene items which they keep in their cells.

These convicted murderers have an hour outside of their cells each day where they can exercise in the hall, talk on the phone, shower, and visit with the other 10 to 14 inmates on the tier. At least three times per week they can go outside on the yard and exercise and enjoy the sun if they want. This is all in addition to the couple of days set aside for visitations each week.

These inmates are frequently visited by spiritual advisors, medical personnel and social workers. They have had frequent and extensive contact with numerous individuals from all over the world, by telephone, mail, and face-to-face personal visits. They even now have email capability. Contrary to numerous reports, this is not solitary confinement.

Caldwell’s description does not, in fact, refute the fact that the two men are held for 23 hours a day in closed cells that measure approximately 6 x 9 feet–smaller than the average parking space. CCR, or Closed Cell Restricted, is the Louisiana prison system’s euphemism of choice for solitary confinement. [Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, lawsuits/litigation, Louisiana, older prisoners, physical effects, political prisoners, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Solidarity and Solitary: When Unions Clash With Prison Reform

February 21, 2013 By 21 Comments

tamms protestOn January 4, 2013, Tamms Supermax in southern Illinois officially closed its doors. The prison, where some men had been in solitary confinement for more than a decade, had become notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners with mental illness–and for driving sane prisoners to madness and suicide. The closure of Tamms, under order of Governor Pat Quinn, was celebrated as a victory by human rights and prison reform groups, and by the local activists who had fought for years to do away with what they saw as a torture chamber in their own backyards.

The major force that had opposed the closure of Tamms–and indeed, delayed it for many months–was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSCME challenged Quinn’s order through its legislative allies, stalled it through the courts, and mounted a public campaign to keep the prison open. The battle over the future of Tamms became the most visible and contentious example of a phenomenon seen, in one form or another, around the country: Otherwise progressive unions are taking reactionary positions when it comes to prisons, supporting addiction to mass incarceration. And when it comes to issues of prisoners rights in general, and solitary confinement in particular, they are seen as a major obstacle to reform.

With more than 1.6 million members nationwide, AFSCME is generally viewed as a liberal-minded organization that played an important part in developing the trade union movement in the public sector. It was during a march in support of an AFSCME strike in Memphis that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Today AFSCME is seen as a prime labor force behind Obama’s presidential victories, a great backer of health care reform, and, in a time of labor’s decline, the biggest organizing union in the AFL-CIO.

In a commentary in the Chicago Sun-Times, scholar and activist Stephen F. Eisenman of the group Tamms Year Ten pointed out that in the 1960s and 70s, “AFSCME’s leadership understood that workers’ rights and human rights were inseparable.” Then-president Jerry Wurf, he writes, “combined compassion with organizing zeal. When the big psychiatric hospitals, such as New York’s Creedmoor, were being decertified, he did not argue to keep them all open. Instead, he fought to ensure that de-institutionalized mental health patients received adequate community and home care. Because he knew these hospitals were hellholes, he was willing to sacrifice some union jobs for the good of people with mental illnesses. But Wurf lost that battle. The national recession of the 1970s intervened, and a generation of patients were turned out in the streets without proper support. These are precisely the people who now fill our nation’s jails and prisons.”

Today, in contrast, AFSCME fights to keep these prisons open even when no jobs appear to be at stake. From the start, all of the union’s members working at Tamms were guaranteed placement in other prisons, and no jobs were lost when the supermax closed.  But the union took the position that conditions at Tamms–which had been widely denounced as cruel, inhumane, and ineffective–were necessary to maintaining prison safety and security, as well as keeping jobs in southern Illinois. In response, Tamms Year Ten mounted protests in which prisoner’s family members held signs stating, “Torture Is a Crime–Not a Career,” ”My Son Is Not a Paycheck,” and “We Support Unions That Support Human Rights.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, featured posts, Florida, Illinois, Maine, New York, politics of punishment, private prisons, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , ,

New York Prisoner Gets Five Years in Solitary for Cell Phone Smuggled in by Guard

September 20, 2012 By 8 Comments

Philip Miller was midway through a twenty-year sentence for robbery at Sing Sing Prison in New York, with an almost spotless prison record, when he was caught with a mobile phone in his cell in April 2010. He was charged with two disciplinary violations: ”possession of contraband” and also “altering state property,” since he had hidden the cell phone and charger in “a compartment carved out of the windowsill.”

Miller was brought before an internal prison disciplinary hearing and pled guilty to the two charges. But he sought to call various inmates who could attest to his good behavior and to describe what actually had happened. The hearing officer denied him  his request, claiming that he, the prison officer, knew all about Miller and it wasn’t necessary to call the witnesses. Miller was found guilty of both charges and sentenced to 60 months—five years—in solitary, with a proviso that 24 months might be suspended if he incurred no further disciplinary charges. Despite the nonviolent nature of his offenses, Miller was shipped off to serve his time at Southport, the all-solitary supermax facility south of Elmira.

Long stretches in the so-called Special Housing Unit (“the SHU” or, more commonly, ”the box”) is an everyday punishment in New York State prisons. Currently, about  4,500 inmates are serving time in some form of 23-hour-a-day lockdown, with sentences ranging from months to decades. As we wrote in an earlier article, New York leads the nation in the use of “disciplinary segregation,” and isolation “is very much a punishment of first resort, doled out for minor rule violations as well as major offenses. In New York, the most common reason for a stint in solitary is creating a ‘disturbance’ or ‘demonstration.’…Second is ‘dirty urine’—testing positive for drugs of any kind…Other infractions include refusing to obey orders, ‘interfering with employees,’ being ‘out of place’ and possession of contraband—not only a shiv but a joint, a cellphone or too many postage stamps.”

Miller appealed his conviction and sentence within the prison system, insisting that he had been denied his right to have witnesses testify on his behalf.  He lost. He then went to state court and lost there. Finally, he took his case to the state court’s appellate division where the decision against him, handed down in August 2012, contained this rather incoherent passage:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: due process, lawsuits/litigation, New York, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , ,

New Audio: Is Solitary Confinement Torture?

July 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In this podcast produced by The Nation magazine as part of its Nation Conversations series, Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella talks with Nation Associate Editor Liliana Segura about our recent article, “New York’s Black Sites,” and the broader question of whether solitary confinement constitutes torture. Click on the logo to listen.

Filed Under: New York, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , ,

New Video: “Solitary Confinement: The Season of Sorrow”

July 26, 2012 By 2 Comments

The following video, titled “Solitary Confinement: The Season of Sorrow,” was directed and produced by our gifted videographer and reporter Valeria Monfrini, who also shot the other original videos on Solitary Watch’s YouTube channel. Here is her brief description of the content:

This short documentary explores the experience of solitary confinement through the testimonies of former inmates held in prolonged isolation and their family members, from the city of Philadelphia.

LuQman Abdullah, 48, spent 5 years in solitary. Since his release, he has worked to turn his life around, working as a community activist and raising his two daughters. Lynell Wesley, 29, believes discovering art helped him to endure the 3 years he spent in isolation. Theresa Shoats, 49, is the daughter of Russell Shoats—a former Black Panther, who has already served more than 30 years in solitary confinement.

Filed Under: Pennsylvania, psychological effects, solitary confinement, video Tagged With: ,

Congress Unlocks America’s Hidden Shame of Solitary Confinement

June 21, 2012 By 7 Comments

The title of this post is the title of an op-ed by us, published in the Guardian on Tuesday. An excerpt follows; click through to the Guardian site to read the full piece.

Imagine a place filled with closed, windowless cells. Each cell may be so small that you can extend your arms and touch the side walls. It may contain a bunk of poured concrete, a toilet, perhaps a small table and stool. A few personal possessions – books, family photos – may be permitted, or they may not. The door to the cell is solid steel.

Three times a day, a food tray slides in through a slot in the door; when that happens you may briefly see a hand, or exchange a few words with a guard. It is your only human contact for the day. Five times a week, you are allowed an hour of solitary exercise in a concrete-walled yard about the same size as your cell. The yard is empty, but if you look straight up, you can catch a glimpse of sky.

Imagine that a quarter of the people who live in this place are mentally ill. Some have entered the cells with underlying psychiatric disabilities, while others have been driven mad by the confinement and isolation. Some of them scream in desperation all day and night. Others cut themselves, or smear their cells with faeces. A number manage to commit suicide in their cells.

You may remain in this place for months, years, or even decades. The conditions in which you live have been denounced as torture by UN officials and by a host of human rights, civil liberties, and religious groups. And yet you remain where you are.

This place is located not in some distant authoritarian nation or secret black site abroad, but here on US soil. In fact, there are places like it in nearly every state in the union, within sight of our own cities and towns. On any given day in the United States, supermax prison and solitary confinement units hold at least 80,000 men, women, and children in conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation.

Most of them have committed nonviolent offenses against prison rules or have been categorically branded as “high risk”. A large and disproportionate percentage suffer from serious mental illness. Some of them are children. Condemned to solitary by prison officials, they spend 23 hours a day in their cells without work, rehabilitative programming, or human contact of any kind.

These prisoners live out of sight of the public and the press. Their conditions have, with few exceptions, been condoned by the courts and ignored by elected officials. As a result, over the past three decades, the use and abuse of solitary confinement in US prisons has grown into one of the nation’s most pressing domestic human rights issues – yet it also remains one of the most invisible.

On Tuesday, for the first time, the US Congress has taken a look at these domestic black sites. The Senate judiciary subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights, and human rights held a hearing in which corrections officials, lawyers, and mental health experts – along with one lone survivor of prison isolation – testified to the “human rights, fiscal, and public safety consequences” of solitary confinement.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, cost/budget issues, due process, featured posts, juveniles, mental illness, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , ,

New Video: “What Do You Know About Solitary Confinement?”

June 17, 2012 By 4 Comments

In the runup to the first Congressional hearing on solitary confinement, we are featuring a video made last fall by Solitary Watch videographer Valeria Monfrini. She took a microphone to Lafayette Park, opposite the White House and two miles west of the Capitol, where she asked locals and tourists the question: “What do you know about solitary confinement?”

While some had an inkling of what solitary confinement is, none knew the extent to which it is used in the United States, where on any given day at least 80,000 people are isolated in the nation’s prisons and jails. Safe to say this is no accident, since most states and the federal government deny that they use solitary confinement (preferring terms like “administrative segregation” or “security housing”). Supermax prisons and solitary units serve as virtual domestic black sites, where inmates live out of sight of the public, the press, and sometimes even their own families.

Filed Under: solitary confinement, video Tagged With: ,

First Congressional Hearing on Solitary Confinement to Be Held June 19

June 8, 2012 By 7 Comments

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, chaired by Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, has announced that it will hold a hearing later this month on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails–the first-ever Congressional hearing on this subject. The subcommittee released the following information today:

Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences

Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights

Date:               Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Time:               10:00 a.m.

Location:         Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226

Description:  U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate’s Assistant Majority Leader, will chair a hearing on the human rights, fiscal, and public safety consequences of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers.  This is the first-ever Congressional hearing on solitary confinement.  Over the last several decades, the United States has witnessed an explosion in the use of solitary confinement for federal, state, and local prisoners and detainees.  The hearing will explore the psychological and psychiatric impact on inmates during and after their imprisonment, the higher costs of running solitary housing units, the human rights issues surrounding the use of isolation, and successful state reforms in this area.

This hearing is open to the public.  The list of witnesses will be announced on a future date.

Chairman Durbin invites interested advocates and experts to submit written testimony to be included in the hearing record.  Statements should be less than 10 pages, and should be emailed to Nicholas Deml at Nicholas_Deml@judiciary-dem.senate.gov as early as possible, but no later than Friday, June 15, 2012 at 5:00 PM.

Senator Dick Durbin is Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights.  The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights was formed by merging the Constitution Subcommittee and the Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee, which Senator Durbin previously chaired.  The Subcommittee has jurisdiction over all constitutional issues, and all legislation and policy related to civil rights, civil liberties and human rights.  The Ranking Member of the Subcommittee is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Advocates are urging colleagues to submit statements and attend the hearings. David Fathi, who heads the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called the hearing a “huge opportunity” for those who support reform to make their voices heard.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, cost/budget issues, human rights, legislation, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , ,

Solitary Watchers Named 2012 Soros Justice Fellows

June 3, 2012 By 6 Comments

We are pleased to be able to tell all of you, our readers and supporters, that we were awarded a 2012 Soros Justice Media Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations. As fellows, we will “document and report on the use and abuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and youth facilities, increasing public awareness of this pervasive but hidden practice.” The year-long shared fellowship will give us the time and support we need to not only keep Solitary Watch going, but also do investigative reporting and commentary on various aspects of solitary confinement for publication in other venues.

Every day now we receive letters from those locked away in solitary–letters of thanks, but most of all of encouragement to keep going, to dig deeper. To tell the truth about these all but buried people, and provide them with a way to express themselves, is at the very heart of our project. And this fellowship will help us carry forward these efforts.

Soros Justice Fellowships are awarded to both journalists and advocates “working to advance fairness and transparency in the U.S. criminal justice system.” A complete list of the 2012 fellows appears here. (Notably, it includes two others who are working on the issue of solitary confinement.)

This is a major event in the short history of Solitary Watch, and in addition to thanking the Open Society Foundations, we want to express our gratitude to all of the people who made it possible for us to reach this point:

  • our donors, whose generosity, faith in us, and belief in our mission have enabled us to take Solitary Watch from an earnest idea to a flourishing reality;
  • our interns, who joined a shoestring operation and brought to it all of their brilliance and energy;
  • our readers, whose growing numbers attest to their concern for this vital but hidden domestic human rights issue;
  • the advocates who work tirelessly on this issue, and who kindly shared their expertise with us; and
  • the current and former prisoners and their families who trusted us to tell or share their stories.
Filed Under: media, solitary confinement Tagged With: , ,
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