“Systemic Failures Persist” in California Prison Mental Health Care, Judge Rules

April 8, 2013 By 4 Comments
California Security Housing Unit Cell

California Security Housing Unit Cell

California Governor Jerry Brown’s bid to end federal control over the state prison system’s mental health system was denied in federal court on Friday, April 5, in a sharply worded ruling by U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton. In the 68-page ruling, Judge Karlton determined that “systemic failures persist in the form of inadequate suicide prevention measures, excessive administrative segregation of the mentally ill, lack of timely access to adequate care, insufficient treatment space and access to beds, and unmet staffing needs.”

The ruling comes following months of campaigning and litigating by Governor Brown and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to end federal oversight of the California prison system. Friday’s ruling is the latest enforcement of the 1995 case Coleman v. Wilson, a federal class action suit filed against then-California Governor Pete Wilson, which resulted in  federal oversight over CDCR’s mental health and medical treatment that continues under the jurisdiction of Judge Karlton.

An additional federal class action lawsuit, Plata v. Schwarzenegger was merged with the Coleman lawsuit and in 2009, California was ordered to reduce it’s prison population to 137% capacity, as it was determined that Constitutionally acceptable medical and mental health delivery was hindered by the beyond-capacity prison population, which was deemed an 8th Amendment violation. California in turn appealed the order to reduce it’s prison population and in 2011, in Brown v. Plata, the US Supreme Court ordered California to reduce it’s prison population by 30,000 inmates. Governor Brown has an additional appeal of this order before U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson.

Governor Jerry Brown has gone on the record to claim that California  has “one of the finest prison systems in the United States,” and no longer requires federal oversight. In a January 2013 press release, Governor Brown stated: “After decades of judicial intervention in our correctional system and the expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars, the time has come to restore California’s rightful control of its prison system.” In February, CDCR announced the completion of a new mental health treatment building at the California Medical Facility, and declared that the facility “reinforces CDCR’s ongoing commitment to provide a constitutional level of mental health treatment in California’s prisons.”

Judge Karlton’s ruling, however, strongly rebukes these claims by Brown and CDCR, saying “based on defendants’ conduct to date, the court cannot rely on their averments of good faith as a basis for granting termination. There is overwhelming evidence in the record that much of defendants’ progress to date is due to the pressure of this and other litigation.”

A major factor in Judge Karlton’s ruling was the significant rate of suicides in the California prison system, which has previously been reported to be well above the national prison average.

“In summary, for over a decade a disproportionately high number of inmates have committed suicide in California’s prison system describable inadequacies in suicide prevention in the CDCR,” Judge Karlton writes,”Defendants have a constitutional obligation to take and adequately implement all reasonable steps to remedy those inadequacies. The evidence shows they have not yet done so. In addition, while defendants represent that they have fully implemented their suicide prevention program, they have not. An ongoing constitutional violation therefore remains.”

Judge Karlton cited the overuse of solitary confinement, particularly among individuals with severe mental health problems, as a continuing problem in the California prison system. The ruling states that such individuals “face substantial risk of serious harm, including exacerbation of mental illness and potential increase in suicide risk.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons 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: , , , , ,

New Mexico Man Gets $15.5 Million for His Two-Year Ordeal in Solitary

March 17, 2013 By 3 Comments

slevinWhen Stephen Slevin was released after 22 months of solitary confinement in a New Mexico county jail, he looked like someone emerging from a medieval dungeon: filthy and emaciated, with long hair and beard, sunken features, and haunted eyes. Slevin had never been convicted of a crime, never even had a hearing. But in 2005, he was thrown in solitary and effectively forgotten.

Even in a nation where prisoner abuse is an everyday occurrence and prisoner lawsuits are routinely suppressed, Slevin’s ordeal was enough to earn him his day in court. And even in a nation where long-term solitary confinement in itself is not considered a violation of civil rights, Slevin successfully sued the county that had incarcerated him–and recently, settled for $15.5 million.

As MSN News reports:

Slevin was arrested in August 2005 on charges of DWI and receiving a stolen vehicle, though he maintained the car was given to him by a friend. At the time of his arrest, Slevin was battling depression and was attempting to leave Las Cruces, N.M.

In jail, officers believed he was suicidal, so they threw him in a padded cell for three days, [Slevin's attorney Matthew] Coyte told NBC News. Slevin received a medical examination during that period, but for the rest of his 22 months in jail — much of which he spent in solitary confinement, in a cell without natural light — he was not allowed to see a doctor, even after telling a prison nurse in letters that his depression was worsening and he needed treatment for other health issues.

According to Coyte, Slevin was forced to remove his own tooth because prison officials would not allow him to see a dentist. He also developed skin fungus and bed sores because he was deprived of showers, according to court documents. His toe nails grew so long that they curled around his foot.

Slevin spent two weeks in a mental health facility in 2007 for psychiatric review, court documents said. His health improved there, but he was sent back to solitary confinement until his release.

Charges were finally dropped against Slevin when he was deemed unfit to participate in his own defense. Coyte says his client was let go only because his sister had started calling county officials and legislators asking about his condition.

According to MSN News, from the time of his arrest, Slevin wrote more than a dozen letters to the jail nurse:

“I have not slept in days,” says one letter from Sept. 4, 2005, a couple weeks into solitary confinement. “I’m in a deep depression.” The letter also mentions his lack of appetite. . .

Two months later, KOB.com reported, Slevin wrote a letter again pleading for help, saying, “My dreams have been both weird and bizarre.” By the end of November 2005, he wrote, “I’m afraid to close my eyes.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, New Mexico, physical effects, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , ,

Guarding the Fortresses: How Prison Policies Limit Media Access to Solitary Confinement

March 5, 2013 By 5 Comments

adx watchtowersJournalists face serious obstacles to reporting on prisons–and even more to uncovering the truth about solitary confinement. (See James Ridgeway’s essay “Fortresses of Solitude.”)

Public oversight of governmental institutions, which can help to prevent corruption and abuse by those in power, is seen as a hallmark of an engaged, democratic citizenry. However, when it comes to obtaining information about individuals kept in solitary confinement, the press, and by extension the public, are often kept in the dark.

The Supreme Court ruled, in Pell v. Procunier, that the First Amendment does not guarantee the press special access to prisons beyond what is generally afforded the public. The Court reasoned that since other methods of communication feasibly exist, like letter writing, freedom of the press is not compromised by even severe limitations on access to prisons and prisoners. Suffice to say, these barriers to entry and examination, involving layers of bureaucracy as well as outright bans, help to minimize investigative inquiry and avoid close scrutiny of prison practices.

The Society for Professional Journalists recently published a study by Jessica Pupovac of press access policies to prisons in general, which vary greatly from state to state. Policies related to solitary confinement tend to be even more restrictive, and even more variable.

In an investigation of the prison systems with the largest numbers of prisoners in solitary confinement, Solitary Watch has compiled a brief summary of some notable differences and takeaways between the states’ policies.  We examined the Federal Bureau of Prisons, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Differences in policy are evidenced by–among other things–supervision of interviews, access to certain types of prisoners, access to certain areas of prisons, and the ability to use recording devices. Many states leave themselves the right to deny interviews if they feel it will cause “a disturbance” but none of the policies state what that would qualify or how that would be measured, and thus the bottom line is that in most cases, prison officials usually have considerable latitude in deciding whether a reporter may interview a particular prisoner.

Our hope is that this initial look will spark a wider conversation about public awareness with regards to U.S. citizens who are locked away for weeks, months, or years in solitary confinement.  While there are alternative means for obtaining information, these are often insufficient in eliciting the types of things that can be learned through a journalist’s first-hand observations, and through face-to-face conversation.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, featured posts, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, media, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fortresses of Solitude: Journalists Barred from Prison Isolation Units

March 5, 2013 By 9 Comments

The following essay by Solitary Watch’s James Ridgeway appears in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, which also includes an excellent story on the difficulties involved in reporting on prisons in general. For more on prison media policies, see our accompanying article by Rachel M. Cohen.

adx-florence-4Supermax prisons and solitary confinement units are our domestic black sites—hidden places where human beings endure unspeakable punishments, without benefit of due process in any court of law. On the say-so of corrections officials, American prisoners can be placed in conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for months, years, or even decades.

At least 80,000 men, women, and children live in such conditions on any given day in the United States. And they are not merely separated from others for safety reasons. They are effectively buried alive. Most live in concrete cells the size of an average parking space, often windowless, cut off from all communication by solid steel doors. If they are lucky, they will be allowed out for an hour a day to shower or to exercise alone in cages resembling dog runs.

Most have never committed a violent act in prison. They are locked down because they’ve been classified as “high risk,” or because of nonviolent misbehavior—anything from mouthing off or testing positive for marijuana to exhibiting the symptoms of untreated mental illness.

A recent lawsuit filed on behalf of prisoners in adx, the federal supermax in Florence, CO, described how humans respond to such isolation over the long-term. Some “interminably wail, scream, and bang on the walls of their cells” or carry on “delusional conversations with voices they hear in their heads.” Some “mutilate their bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, and writing utensils” or “swallow razor blades, nail clippers, parts of radios and televisions, broken glass, and other dangerous objects.” Still others “spread feces and other human waste and body fluids throughout their cells [and] throw it at the correctional staff.” While less than 5 percent of US prisoners nationwide are held in solitary, close to 50 percent of all prison suicides take place there.

After three years of reporting on solitary confinement for Solitary Watch, a website I co-founded, I’m convinced that much of what happens in these places constitutes torture. How is it possible that a human-rights crisis of this magnitude can carry on year after year, with impunity?

I believe part of the answer has to do with how effectively the nature of these sites have been hidden from the press and, by extension, the public. With few exceptions, solitary confinement cells have been kept firmly off-limits to journalists—with the approval of the federal courts, who defer to corrections officials’ purported need to maintain “safety and security.” If the First Amendment ever manages to make it past the prison gates at all, it is stopped short at the door to the isolation unit.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, Colorado, Constitution, featured posts, Illinois, Maine, media, New York, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

State Bar Association Calls on New York to “Profoundly Restrict” Its Use of Solitary Confinement

January 30, 2013 By 4 Comments
Upstate supermax prison in Malone, New York

Upstate supermax prison in Malone, New York

The New York State Bar Association last week passed a resolution calling for a dramatic transformation and curtailment of solitary and other forms of isolated confinement it its state prisons and city jails. The strongly worded resolution, written by NYSBA’s Civil Rights Committee, cites “the damage caused by prolonged solitary confinement and the ability to ensure prison and public safety without resorting to its use.”It urges the New York State legislature to hold hearings on solitary confinement, and on Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the state and city departments of corrections to undertake sweeping changes in their prison practices.

After laying out the problem, the document presents the following resolution:

RESOLVED, that the New York State Bar Association calls upon the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) and New York City Department of Correction (DOC) to profoundly restrict the use of long-term solitary confinement, by adopting clear and objective standards to ensure that prisoners are separated from the general prison population only in very limited and very legitimate circumstances and only for the briefest period and under the least restrictive conditions practicable.

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the New York State Bar Association calls upon the Commissioners of DOCCS and DOC to adopt stringent criteria, protocols and safeguards for separating violent or vulnerable prisoners, including clear and objective standards to ensure that prisoners are separated only in limited and legitimate circumstances for the briefest period and under the least restrictive conditions practicable; and auditing the current population in extreme isolation to identify people who should not be in the SHU, transitioning them back to the general prison population, and reducing the number of SHU beds accordingly.

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the New York State Bar Association urges the Governor of New York State, the Mayor of the City of New York and the Commissioners of DOCCS and DOC to take necessary steps to proscribe the imposition of long-term solitary confinement on persons in the custody of DOCCS and DOC beyond 15 days.

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the New York State Bar Association calls upon the State Legislature to hold public hearings to inquire into the harmful effects of long-term solitary confinement and to solicit both professional and academic commentary on the matter and comments from persons who have been placed in long-term solitary confinement, and to otherwise conduct these hearings in a manner that will best inform lawmakers and the public at large regarding the effects of long-term isolation.

An excellent report attached to the resolution takes as its epigraph a statement from a former prisoner at Guantanamo: ”Please torture me in the old way … Here they destroy people mentally and physically without leaving marks.”

The report traces the history of solitary confinement both nationally and in New York State; documents the psychological and physical damage caused by isolation and its widespread abandonment by the international community; and notes that solitary is counterproductive to the goals of prisoner protection, discipline, rehabilitation, and reintegration.” It concludes: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Constitution, New York, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , ,

Indiana’s Treatment of Mentally Ill Prisoners in Solitary Confinement Violates Constitution

January 15, 2013 By 3 Comments
Isolation unit at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.

Isolation unit at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

Just before the new year began a Federal District Court Judge in Indianapolis handed down a decision with important implications for prisoners with mental illness in Indiana and across the country. Stating that “prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution,” Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled that the treatment for mentally ill individuals in Indiana’s state prisons violated their Constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

As reported by the Indianapolis Star:

Weeks after a suicidal inmate at New Castle Correctional Facility told a prison doctor his behavior was the result of being placed in a segregation unit, the Indiana Department of Correction put the inmate back in an isolation cell.

Days later, he was dead — one of at least 11 mentally ill inmates who committed suicide while in IDOC segregation units from 2007 through July 2011.

Now, state officials and advocates are scrambling for solutions after a federal court found the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in segregation units at Indiana prisons violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt issued the decision Monday in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on behalf of the Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services Commission and a group of inmates.

Pratt found “mentally ill prisoners within the IDOC segregation units are not receiving adequate mental health care in terms of scope, intensity, and duration.”

The judge also noted IDOC was aware of concerns about its treatment of mentally ill prisoners and “has been deliberately indifferent.”

Ken Falk, the ACLU of Indiana’s legal director, hailed the ruling as a win not only for mentally ill inmates, but for all Hoosiers.

The majority of inmates with mental illness, Falk explained, eventually will be released, and it is better for everyone if their problems are addressed before they re-enter society. Treatment also can help reduce recidivism, saving tax dollars.

“The ACLU of Indiana is happy the court has entered this decision that will force the Indiana Department of Correction to provide minimally adequate treatment to prisoners who will one day rejoin society,” Falk said.

The judge’s order does not prescribe specific changes needed at IDOC. Instead, Pratt said further court proceedings will be conducted “as to the relief to which the plaintiffs are entitled.” In general, the order says, that means at least basic mental health care…

The piece goes on to discuss the “colliding trends” that have turned supermax prisons and solitary confinement units into the new warehouses for people with untreated mental illness.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Constitution, Eighth Amendment, Indiana, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide Tagged With: , , , , ,

NYCLU Files Suit Challenging Solitary Confinement in New York State Prisons

December 6, 2012 By 5 Comments

“Life in the box stripped me of my dignity, and made me feel like a chained dog,” said Leroy Peoples, a New York State prisoner and the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed today by the New York Civil Liberties Union. ”The ceaseless torment of being locked up every day in a tiny cell with another person is hard to describe.” It is also, according to the NYCLU suit, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishment and guarantees due process before anyone–even a prisoner–can be further deprived of liberty.

The lawsuit challenges, on 8th Amendment and 14th Amendment grounds, the “system-wide policies and practices governing solitary confinement that are responsible for the arbitrary and unjustified use of extreme isolation on thousands of individuals incarcerated in New York’s prisons every year,” according to a press release from the NYCLU.

Further excerpts from the press release follow. For more background on solitary confinement in New York State prisons, read the NYCLU’s report, Boxed In, and our article in The Nation, ”New York’s Black Sites.” Solitary Watch will continue to cover the lawsuit as events unfold.

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The plaintiff, Leroy Peoples, spent 780 days locked in tiny, barren cell the size of an elevator with another prisoner for 24 hours a day as punishment for misbehavior that involved no violence and no threat to the safety or security of others…

The lawsuit maintains that Mr. Peoples’ grossly disproportionate punishment was caused by unconstitutional policies that similarly affect thousands of individuals incarcerated in New York prisons. It alleges that the frequency with which New York prisons use isolation as punishment is a direct result of official policies that permit staff to impose extraordinarily long isolation sentences regardless of whether the individual’s behavior demonstrated any danger to the safety and security of prison staff or other prisoners, with few guidelines or restraints, and with inadequate consideration of the physical and psychological risk that isolation may pose to a particular individual.

From 2007 to 2011, New York issued over 68,000 sentences to extreme isolation as punishment for violating prison rules. On any given day, approximately 4,500 people – about 8 percent of the entire New York State prison population – are locked down for 23 hours a day in isolation cells.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, New York, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Massachusetts Court Rules Against Solitary Confinement Without Due Process

November 30, 2012 By 2 Comments

On November 27, in a ruling that may have wider implications for the use and abuse of soliary confinement in American prisons, a Massachusetts inmate won a longstanding case against the prison that illegally held him in segregation, as well as the Massachusetts Commissioner of Corrections. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found that the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC) in Shirley, Massachusetts had violated inmate Edmund LaChance’s constitutional due process rights when it held him in solitary confinement for over ten months without a hearing.

In December 2005, LaChance received a disciplinary report for throwing a cup of pudding at a fellow inmate. After a disciplinary hearing, the prison gave him seven days’ detention in the “special management unit,” or SMU, as a sanction. According to prison officials, when LaChance learned of the sanction, he threatened the other inmate “with violence,” and for that offense he received an additional seven days. However, after his fourteen days were up, prison officials did not release him back to his housing unit, but kept him in the SMU indefinitely “awaiting action status.” Throughout his stay in the SMU, he was never given a hearing.

Although the regulations require a hearing for inmates held in the departmental segregation unit (“DSU”), which is for disciplinary purposes, they do not require a hearing for inmates held in the special management unit (“SMU”) for administrative purposes, such as inmates “awaiting action status.” According to the prison officials, the regulations only required that a prison official review LaChance’s status on a weekly basis, and provide him with the written notifications when the rationale for his detainment in the SMU changed as a result of a review. Ten months after LaChance completed his fourteen-day disciplinary sanction, the prisoner at whom LaChance had thrown the pudding had been moved, and the prison released LaChance out of the SMU and back to his previous housing unit.

Five months into his confinement in the SMU, in June 2006, LaChance filed a pro se complaint. The prison filed a motion to dismiss, which a judge in the Superior Court denied in June 2007. Then, LaChance obtained an attorney, Bonita Tenneriello, through Prisoner Legal Services in Boston. PLS filed an amended complaint that claimed that the prison had violated his rights under the regulations and his right to due process under the State and Federal Constitutions when they did not have a hearing, and also that, under DOC policies, the prison could not hold LaChance, who was a protective custody prisoner, in segregation on “awaiting action status” for more than ninety days–in other words, for administrative, not disciplinary, purposes. After several appeals, motions and cross-motions, the highest court in Massachusetts found that LaChance’s ten-month administrative segregation in the SMU on “awaiting action status,” during which he had the benefit of only informal status reviews, was unlawful.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, lawsuits/litigation, Massachusetts, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , ,

Federal Government Seeks Dismissal of Supermax Suicide Lawsuit

September 25, 2012 By 4 Comments

The U.S. government is currently contending with two federal lawsuits that challenge the torturous conditions at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. Both suits allege that the social isolation and sensory deprivation at ADX are so extreme that they drive prisoners to madness, self-mutilation, and suicide–yet the Bureau of Prisons offers them next to nothing in the way of mental health treatment.

We’ve published two previous posts (here and here) tracking Andrew Cohen’s excellent, detailed reporting on these lawsuits. Yessterday, Cohen reported on the federal government’s latest move, which was to file a motion to dismiss one of the suits. It concerns the death of Jose Martin Vega, who hanged himself in his cell at ADX in May 2010. (Although Vega was unconscious and possibly dead when guards found him, they nonetheless shackled his hands and feet before removing him from his cell, as shown in photos from the Fremont County Coroner’s Office.) Vega’s family is alleging that “former ADX-Florence warden Blake R. Davis and other Bureau of Prison officials were “deliberately indifferent” to Vega’s medical needs, including his mental health needs, which the family says were extensive and obvious.”

The complaint alleges, in graphic detail, how Vega lost his mind at Supermax. How he began to mutilate his own body. How he came to believe that the guards were poisoning his food and “violating his bodily integrity.” When he complained, as he often did, in writing, prison staff typically told him that the results of his complaints were “not disclosable to” him. Now that he is dead, now that he can no longer testify about what was done to him, here is what the feds say to try to rid themselves of the responsibility of an accounting:

Plaintiff makes no allegation that inmate Vega was in fact suffering from a serious mental illness requiring treatment at the time of his death (or at any time when Mr. Davis was the Warden at the ADX)… There are similarly no facts showing that any treatment was prescribed (or even indicated) for inmate Vega’s mental condition. Further, there are no facts alleged showing that, objectively, inmate Vega was at an increased risk of suicide

His prior (unidentified) suicide attempt in 2005 and self-mutilation in 2010 are insufficient to show, objectively, that inmate Vega was diagnosed by a physician with a serious mental illness mandating treatment or was suffering from a condition that was so obvious that even a lay person would easily recommend the necessity for a doctor’s attention.

You follow that twisted logic? The prison staff’s repeated failure or refusal to treat Vega for his obvious mental illness now is being used as evidence by the government that Vega didn’t need to be treated for his obvious mental illness. And since a “lay person”—like a juror, for example—wouldn’t have viewed Vega’s conduct before his suicide as “mandating treatment” lay people—like jurors—should not be allowed to review the evidence in this case to decide for themselves whether Supermax officials failed to meet their legal obligations to this prisoner.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, federal prisons, human rights, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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