Voices from Solitary: “Extradition”

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment
talha family

Talha Ahsan’s brother, mother, and father in their London home.

Today we arrive in London, where on Thursday we will speak at a forum entitled “Extradited to a Future of Torture: The Reality of Solitary Confinement in America.” Hosted by the International State Crimes Initiative (ISCI) at Kings College London, the event features the premiere of a film made by the Yale Visual Law Project, The Worst of the Worst, about Northern Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s supermax prison. It will also include talks by Tessa Murphy of Amnesty International and Hamja Ahsan, the brother of Talha Ahsan, a young British national who is currently being held in pre-trial solitary confinement at Northern.

Talha Ahsan is one of five UK residents extradited last year to the United States to face terrorism-related charges. The story of their extraditions was not big news in the United States (though we covered it on Solitary Watch, here, here, and here). In the UK, however, it was a huge and controversial story involving inside British politics and the European Court of Human Rights. The story of the extraditions–and particularly, of Talha Ahsan, who suffers from Asberger’s Syndrome and is accused under vague “material support” charges of participating in a jihadist website–is told in dramatic detail by the ISCI’s Ian Patel in a recent New Statesman article, “The Impossible Injustice of Talha Ahsan’s Extradition and Detention,” which deserves to be read in full.

Talha Ahsan is a poet who has continued to write throughout his imprisonment. The following poem was composed while he was being held in (comparatively unrestrictive) detention in Her Majesty’s Prison Long Lartin. It refers to ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado, which is where Ahsan, with good reason, fears he will end up.

. . . . . . . . . .

Five years ago they brought me to a cell

and ever since a waiting game plays here.

As they decide on sending me away,

my parents grow so grey and sad at home.

How will they manage visiting me there

or must they wait until the end of time?

 

Ma, hear my oath, by him whose hand is time,

bars stand in worship with me in this cell.

So even if I’m extradited there

and taken from my humble parents here,

then tell them paradise is our true home

whose gardens years will never fade away.

 

To Florence prison I’ll be sent away

It doesn’t matter what will be my time.

No prison ever can be called my home,

how ever long they put me in a cell.

A higher power occupies me here

who’s closer to me even over there.

 

Perhaps they’ll clean their hands of me once there.

And then my country feels I’m wiped away.

Though germs stay always floating from me here:

these particles will gather born in time,

a culture breeding from a tiny cell,

to carry on infecting every home.

 

Theresa May, a minister at home

though feeble servant to her masters there;

a solitary torture chamber cell,

To put me in, she’ll simply say, ‘Away!’

So let me while I can devote my time

to work for my own justice over here.

 

I pitch a tent for battle waiting here.

And in this heart of mine you’ll find a home,

free from the crumbling effects of time

or any rotting thoughts of being there.

It is a sin for me to run away

As patience brings my glory to this cell.

 

For time will be a brief sojourning here,

and there, or anywhere I make a home -

Away! A caravan escapes my cell.

 

–HMP Long Lartin, 19 July 2011

 

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Connecticut, federal prisons, human rights, international, international agreements, media, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Judge Refuses to Dismiss Federal Supermax Lawsuits

April 25, 2013 By 1 Comment

adxAndrew Cohen continues his coverage for the Atlantic of two potentially groundbreaking lawsuits directed at the treatment of those incarcerated in the notorious ADX Florence, where about 400 men live in extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for years or decades. Today he reports on a federal judge’s decision to allow the lawsuits to proceed, rejecting the federal governments efforts to have them dismissed.

In a rebuke to the Obama Administration, a noted federal judge in Denver Tuesday refused to dismiss two pending civil rights lawsuits filed last year against Bureau of Prisons’ officials accused of the widespread abuse and neglect of mentally ill federal inmates at the sprawling ADX-Florence prison facility in Colorado. If the allegations of the detailed complaint are true, said U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, “you don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know something is wrong” inside Supermax, America’s most famous prison.

The judge’s order keeps alive for now Vega v. Davis, a wrongful death action brought in May 2012 by the family of Jose Martin Vega, an inmate in Colorado who hanged himself in his cell in 2010 following what plaintiffs’ lawyers say was an extend period of mental illness left untreated by prison staff. Judge Matsch also permitted to proceed further toward trial a case styled Cunningham v. Bureau of Prisons, a broader civil rights challenge alleging longtime patterns of abuse and neglect of the mentally ill at America’s most famous federal prison.

The essence of both cases is that federal prison officials at ADX-Florence are violating the rights of mentally ill inmates to be free from “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. The inmates allege that they have been tortured and abused by their jailors and deprived of basic medical and mental health needs by prison doctors. Many of the inmates have taken to self-mutilation in their cells, while mental health counseling remains sporadic and ineffective. ”Why shouldn’t we be addressing that?” Judge Matsch asked early in the hearing.

Read the rest here on the Atlantic’s website

The lawsuits’ detailed revelations of abuse and suffering–often rising to the level of torture–at ADX Florence are especially disturbing in light of the federal government’s recent decision to open a second supermax prison, to be called “ADX USP Thomson,” at a recently purchased property in Illinois.

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

Seven Days in Solitary [4.20.13]

April 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

solitaryThe following roundup features noteworthy news, reports, and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts.

•  According to a piece by Susan Greene in the Colorado Independent, the “Colorado ACLU reports young people are being forced to spend lengthy stints in cement isolation rooms referred to as ‘reflection cottages’” at the El Pueblo treatment facility. “People need to know what’s going on in there. They need to know that they’re torturing kids,” said the father of a 14-year-old who spent a month in solitary at one of the cottages.

•  The Associated Press reports that a man serving a 10-year sentence in a North Carolina prison died after swallowing multiple objects. The prisoner “had been cited by prison staff at least 25 times for infractions related to attempts to harm himself.  He was in solitary confinement when he died.”

•  According to a radio piece by WKUT in Austin, “An estimated 25 percent of Texas inmates in solitary confinement suffer from mental health issues. A bill in the Legislature would create a task force to find out more about these prisoners and provide them with safer alternatives.”

•  In a powerful commentary, CNN’s John Sutter argues that “No kid should be in solitary confinement.” The piece links to an online petition drive launched by the ACLU, urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to “ban the solitary confinement of youth held in federal custody.”

•  The Guardian reports on the European Court of Human Rights’ decision to block the extradition of a UK-based terrorism suspect who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. It did so on the grounds that removing him to an American supermax prison would constitute “inhuman or degrading treatment” under international law. (Other British suspects, including Asberger’s sufferer Talha Ahsan, were extradited and are now in extended pre-trial solitary confinement.)

•  The Pennsylvania-based Human Rights Coalition launched a month-long campaign to have Russell Maroon Shoats released from isolation. Shoats has spent a total of 30 years in solitary, including the last 22 consecutive years.

•  The Other Death Penalty Project, an organization led by life-sentenced prisoners, launched a campaign to print and distribute a collection of writing by lifers, aimed at “raising awareness nationwide that life without parole sentences are the death penalty and must be abolished.”

•  California’s Stop the Torture Campaign, described as “in support of the prisoner-initiated human rights movement to end long term solitary confinement in California,” ramped up its activism with a series of events in the Los Angeles area featuring a model of a cell from the Pelican Bay SHU.

•  As the week began, hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay were violently forced from their communal cellblocks into solitary confinement cells. According to Carol Rosenberg in the Miami Herald, “The pre-dawn operation took place hours after delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross left the remote island prison and during a blackout of news media access to the crisis in the prison camps.” And the resultant “scenario described by the military—individual men locked one to a cell, maximum-security style, in a facility designed for communal medium-security confinement—returned the prison camps to an austere detention approach dating back to the Bush administration.”

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, federal prisons, human rights, international, juveniles, legislation, life without parole, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , ,

Obama’s 2014 Budget Confirms Plans for “ADX Thomson,” New Federal Supermax Prison

April 13, 2013 By 13 Comments

Thomson-CC-1The Obama Administration’s 2014 budget request for the Department of Justice, released this week, confirms that the federal government will open a second ultra-secure supermax prison within the next two years. The new prison will be an “Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary.” Administrative Maximum is a security classification currently held only by the notorious ADX Florence in Colorado, where some 400 individuals are held in isolation and sensory deprivation so extreme that it has been challenged in a series of lawsuits and widely denounced as torture.

The new supermax will be created by renovating Thomson Correctional Center, an unused maximum security prison in Illinois, which was purchased by the federal government last year. Originally, the Obama Administration envisioned Thomson as a future home for Guantanamo detainees–a move that was blocked by Republicans in Congress. Instead, while Guantanamo remains open, the Bureau of Prisons is moving ahead with plans to open hundreds, and perhaps thousands of new isolation cells at Thomson to “reduce crowding in high security facilities.”

The following summary appears in a Budget Fact Sheet on “Prisons and Detention,” released along with the federal budget numbers last week:

The FY 2014 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons and detention, a 3.5 percent increase over the FY 2012 appropriated level. Of this amount, $6.9 billion is requested for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which is a 4 percent increase ($195.1 million) over FY 2012…

For BOP, the current services level includes resources to fully activate two prisons: Federal Corrections Institution (FCI) Aliceville, AL, and FCI Berlin, NH. These prisons received partial activation funding in FY 2012, and full activation will increase federal prison capacity and alleviate overcrowding and related security issues.

Program increases totaling $236.2 million provide for the activations of newly constructed prisons and for new contract beds, allowing BOP to keep pace with the increased number of inmates. Specifically, increases for BOP include $53.4 million to begin activating two prisons: FCI Hazelton, WV (1,280 beds), and U.S. Penitentiary Yazoo City, MS (1,216 beds), for which construction will be completed in FY 2013. There is $15 million to renovate the Thomson Correctional Center and $43.7 million to begin activating the facility as an Administrative-Maximum U.S. Penitentiary in FY 2014. [Emphasis added.] The request also includes $26.2 million to procure 1,000 new contract beds. These resources are essential for ensuring the secure detention of a growing inmate population.

A subsequent section of the Budget Fact Sheet, detailing “Program Increases,” states that Thomson will have 2,100 beds, employ 749 corrections officers, and cost $58.7 million to renovate and operate.

ADX USP Thomson, IL: $58.7 million and 1,158 positions (749 correctional officers)

$15 million to renovate the Thomson Correctional Center for high security federal prison use. $43.7 million to begin activating ADX USP Thomson (2,100 beds) as an administrative-maximum high security facility. ADX USP Thomson is expected to reduce crowding in high security facilities from 59 percent by 43 percent by the end of FY 2015…

Solitary Watch has requested additional information from the Bureau of Prisons to determine precisely what conditions of confinement will be for the 2,100 prisoners held at Thomson. When we asked about Thomson for an article published back in February, BOP spokesperson Chris Burke said in an email that “Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates.” Federal SMUs, or Special Management Units, such as those found in Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hold their prisoners in 23-hour-a-day lockdown in two-person cells. At ADX, prisoners are in 23- to 24-hour solitary confinement. Both are forms of long-term isolated confinement, and both have been denounced by human rights and prisoners rights groups as an inhumane and ineffective form of punishment often amounting to torture.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, cost/budget issues, featured posts, federal prisons, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Thirty Days in Solitary

March 30, 2013 By 9 Comments

solitarySolitary confinement is in the news on a daily basis nowadays, though just a few years ago it was a rarity to find any mention of it outside of Solitary Watch. What follows is a roundup of noteworthy stories that came out in the past month but didn’t make it into our posts. We will be running these roundups once a week from now on.

• PRI radio reports that at Guantanamo, the “Hunger Strike Grows As Despair Sets In“–and interviews one of the few reporters who have been inside Gitmo since the strike began.

• Al Jazeera presents a documentary and roundtable discussion on “The Ethics of Solitary Confinement.”

• From Citizen Radio’s Marc Kilstein, a powerful hour-long radio documentary on the history and practice of solitary confinement.

• A bill introduced in Massachusetts aims to limit time in solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and jails. So does a similar bill in Nevada.

• Ted Koppel, on NBC’s Rock Center, reports on the “Criminal justice system’s ‘dark secret’: Teenagers in solitary confinement.”

• The Toronto Globe and Mail reports that solitary confinement is on the rise in Canadian prisons.

• The Atlantic‘s Andrew Cohen writes, “Enough Is Enough—Time for the Feds to Investigate Prison Abuse“–especially prisoners with mental illness held in solitary confinement in federal prisons.

• Individuals with mental illness are held in solitary confinement in strip cells at a Virginia jail.

• Chris Hedges writes about solitary confinement (and about the inspiring Bonnie Kerness and Ojore Lutalo) in “The Shame of America’s Gulags.”

• Despite opposition, Arizona plans to build 500 more supermax prison beds.

• New York Advocacy groups, survivors of solitary, and families of the incarcerated unite to form the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement in New York’s prisons and jails.

• The sister of a man imprisoned at Pelican Bay writes of her brother’s 23 years in solitary confinement, calling it “beyond cruel and unusual.”

• The ACLU and other advocacy groups testify on solitary confinement before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

• Courthouse News Service reports that a “scathing study” on solitary confinement in Illinois was buried amid local politics.

• A Maryland family says that their son, who suffers from autism and mental illness, has been held in solitary confinement for four years, and denied visits and phone calls for two.

• More than 100 men imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay launch a hunger strike to protest conditions at the camp and the hopelessness of their situation.

• The ACLU releases a comprehensive–and inspiring–report on solitary confinement reform in the state of Maine.

• The New York Civil Liberties Union files a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of people in solitary in New York State prisons became a class action suit.

• “Solitary Confinement: Punishment Or Cruelty?“, a segment on NPR, traces the history and current controversies. (Can’t it be both?)

• Advocates from the New York City Jails Action Committee protest recent increases in solitary confinement and brutality on Rikers Island.

• Representatives of the men in Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Units send an Open Letter to the California State Legislature.

• “Death at Dawson: Why Is Texas’ Worst State Jail Still Open?“, from the Texas Observer, tells the story of a woman who gave birth prematurely in a holding cell, and was sent to solitary on a “suicide watch” when her infant died.

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

U.S. Holds Hundreds of Detained Immigrants in Solitary Confinement

March 25, 2013 By 5 Comments

A cover story in yesterday’s New York Times exposes the widespread use of solitary confinement on immigrant detainees. Citing figures that it says are incomplete and ”probably low,” the Times states:

On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data.

Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days.

According to the adviser who assisted the immigration agency in reviewing the numbers behind the reasons for placement in segregation, an estimated two-thirds of the cases were attributable to disciplinary infractions like breaking rules, talking back to guards or getting into fights.” The review further revealed that oftentimes immigrants were placed in segregation because they were perceived as a threat to other incarcerated individuals or prison authorities “or for protective purposes when the immigrant was gay or mentally ill.

The article goes on to tell the stories individual immigrant detainees, and the shocking reasons for their placement in solitary:

After federal immigration authorities caught up with him, Rashed BinRashed, an illegal arrival from Yemen, was sent to a detention center in Juneau, Wis. He was put in solitary confinement, he says, after declining to go to the jail’s eating area and refusing meals because he wanted to fast during Ramadan.

Federal officials confined Delfino Quiroz, a gay immigrant from Mexico, in solitary for four months in 2010, saying it was for his own protection, he recalls. He sank into a deep depression as he overheard three inmates attempt suicide. “Please, God,” he remembers praying, “don’t let me be the same.”

About 1 percent of detained immigrants are placed in solitary, but as the Times points out, “this practice is nonetheless startling because those detainees are being held on civil, not criminal, charges. As such, they are not supposed to be punished; they are simply confined to ensure that they appear for administrative hearings.” Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and one of the nation’s leading experts on the human costs of solitary, told the Times:  “I.C.E. is clearly using excessive force, since these are civil detentions…And that makes this a human rights abuse.”

The piece also describes the conditions that immigrants in solitary endure–conditions more or less identical to those of supermax prisons:

While the conditions of confinement vary, detainees in solitary are routinely kept alone for 22 to 23 hours per day, sometimes in windowless 6-foot-by-13-foot cells, according to interviews with current and former detainees and a review of case records involving more than three dozen immigrants since 2010.

Access to phones and lawyers is far more restricted in solitary; occasionally such communications were permitted only in the middle of the night when it was unlikely anyone would be available. Immigrants are typically given an hour or so of recreation each day, detainees said. In some facilities, that is limited to pacing in what detainees call “the cage,” a sparse indoor enclosure with concrete floors and fencing on all sides, similar to an indoor dog kennel…

Although the immigration agency’s new guidelines limit the use of solitary to 30 days for each disciplinary infraction, there are exceptions, and such confinement can be indefinite, according to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit journalism organization based at American University.

Solitary confinement is widely viewed as the most dangerous way to detain people, and roughly half of prison suicides occur when people are segregated in this way. Deprived of meaningful human contact, otherwise healthy prisoners often become deeply troubled. Paranoia, depression, memory loss and self-mutilation are not uncommon. No data is available on how many of the 18 suicides out of 133 deaths of detained immigrants since 2003 occurred in solitary units.

This must-read article appears in full here. For more on the solitary confinement of immigrant detainees, see the report released last September by the National Immigrant Justice Center and Physicians for Human Rights.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, federal prisons, human rights, immigrants, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide Tagged With: , , , ,

Tracking the Rise of Solitary Confinement in America———-and of the Struggle Against It

March 1, 2013 By 1 Comment

marion lockdown_demoThe use of long-term solitary confinement was born in the United States in the late 18th Century, at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail and later its Eastern State Penitentiary. It was largely abandoned after it was found to cause madness and death, and was used only sparingly for a century and a half. The widespread use of long-term solitary was reborn in 1983, in what came to be known as the Marion Lockdown. Following the murders of two prison guards at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, the entire prison was put on lockdown status–and never taken off. Prisoners were held in round-the-clock solitary confinement, and Marion became the model for “control unit prisons”–the supermaxes and Special Housing Units that were built in large numbers in the two decades following the lockdown.

A new book by Nancy Kurshan, published by the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, details the history of the movement that rose up in response in the form of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), which Kurshan co-founded in 1985 and which eventually turned into a broader campaign against isolated confinement. Out of Control: The Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons, is available online in an abridged version, and the book can be purchased from the Freedom Archives.

Earlier this month, Angola 3 News published a long interview with Nancy Kurshan. The first few questions and answers are reprinted below; the full interview can be read on the A3 News site.

Angola 3 News: Your new book chronicles fifteen years of organizing against control unit prisons, from 1985-2000. Can you begin the interview by explaining exactly what a control unit prison is?

Nancy Kurshan: There are at least 2 ways to answer that question. One is to describe the daily workings. The other is to elucidate the underlying dynamics.

There are variations from prison to prison, but generally speaking, a control unit prison is one in which every prisoner is locked away in their own individual box about 23 hours a day under conditions of severe sensory deprivation. The prisoner eats, sleeps and defecates in the windowless cell. Meals come through a slot in the door. In some cases the prisoner may be out of the cell a couple of times a week for exercise, but in other circumstances the exercise area is even more limited and is attached to the cell itself. Most control unit prisons have little access to education or any recreational outlets.

Usually, control units severely restrict the prisoner’s connection not just with other prisoners, but with family and friends in the outside world. At Marion, only family members could visit, upon approval, and only for a small number of visits per month. The amount of time allowed per visit was severely restricted, and there was no privacy whatsoever and no contact permitted between prisoner and visitor. Visiting took place over a plexiglass wall and through telephones. Guards were always within earshot. The prisoner had to be searched before and after, sometimes cavity searched. The visitor had to undergo a body search as well. The prisoners were brought to the visit in shackles.

Regarding the underlying dynamics, the intent is to make the prisoner feel that his or her life is completely out of control. That is not an unintended consequence. The purpose of the control unit is to make the person feel helpless, powerless and completely dependent upon the prison authorities. The intent is to strip the individual of any agency, any ability to direct his or her own life. A control unit institutionalizes solitary confinement as a way of exerting full control over as much of the prisoner’s life as possible.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, federal prisons, political prisoners, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Bradley Manning Marks 1,000 Days in Pre-Trial Detention

February 23, 2013 By 4 Comments

manningAs of today, alleged Wikileaker Bradley Manning has been held without trial for 1,000 days. More than nine months of that time was spent in solitary confinement in the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. To mark the date, we recommend reading Chase Madar’s book The Passion of Bradley Manning–or, next best, the long excerpt from the book that was published last fall by the Brooklyn Rail under the title “The Torture of Bradley Manning.” Parts of that excerpt follow, but it deserves to be read in full (and not only because he kindly cites Solitary Watch). Madar is one of the very few to point out that Manning’s treatment was deeply rooted in the norms of the U.S. criminal justice system.

By July 29, Pfc. Manning was “detained” at Quantico Marine Corps brig on “Prevention of Injury” watch: 23 hours of solitary confinement a day, with a ban on push-ups and sit-ups in the cell, with lying down and leaning against the walls also prohibited. Manning was deprived of all personal items in his cell, but equipped with a “tear-proof security blanket” that gave the prisoner rashes and carpet burns. There was also the unrelenting repetitive stress of having to respond every five waking minutes to the guards’ query, “Are you okay?” And if Manning slept at night—he was not permitted to sleep during the day—in such a position that his guards could not see him, he was awakened and repositioned. Eventually, Manning’s reading glasses were confiscated; so was all of his clothing.

If this were done to a U.S. soldier held captive in North Korea or Iran, few American pundits would hesitate to call this torture. But for nine months this treatment was inflicted on Manning, and for nine months the Quantico brig’s psychiatrists urgently insisted that there was no medical or psychiatric justification for this treatment. By April of 2011, political pressure, mainly from overseas, got Manning transferred to the medium-security prison population at Fort Leavenworth.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, federal prisons, human rights, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , ,

Feds to Open New Supermax Prison Cells at “Gitmo North”

February 8, 2013 By 5 Comments

thomsonEven as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed to Solitary Watch that a newly acquired prison ln Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions. “Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates,” said BOP spokesperson Chris Burke in an email.

Thomson is the unused prison that the federal government recently bought from the state of Illinois. ADX, the notorious federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, holds its prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation and near-total sensory deprivation. Federal SMUs, or Special Management Units, such as those found in Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hold their prisoners in round-the-clock lockdown in two-person cells. Both are forms of long-term isolated confinement, and both have been denounced by human rights and prisoners rights groups as an inhumane and ineffective form of punishment, sometimes amounting to torture.

The revelation of the BOP’s plans to introduce new supermax cells at Thomson comes on the heels of an announcement that the Bureau has agreed to undergo a “comprehensive and independent assessment of its use of solitary confinement in the nation’s federal prisons.” The assessment, to be conducted by the National Institute of Corrections (an agency of the BOP), will reportedly be oriented toward reducing the population of “segregated” prisoners in the federal system.

In recent months, according to Monday’s announcement, the BOP has already “reduced its segregated population by nearly 25 percent. In addition, it has closed two of its Special Management Units, a form of segregated housing, due to the reduction in the segregated population.” Prior to the reported reduction, the BOP held more than 11,000 prisoners in some form of isolated confinement. Thomson is built to house 1,600.

When asked by Solitary Watch why the BOP needed to build new supermax cells despite reducing its segregated population, spokesperson Chris Burke replied: “The reduction in our special housing unit population does not lessen the need for these beds.  The Bureau of Prisons has not constructed any new ADX type units since 1994, when our population was only 85,000 (our current population is approximately 218,000).”

He continued: “‘Special Housing’ refers to units within our prisons where inmates are placed on a temporary basis as a result of misconduct or as a result of circumstances that warrant their separation from the general population.” The distinction suggests that Thomson will be used for long-term, sometimes indefinite segregation of the kind common in ADX and the SMUs–in other words, for the most extreme forms of isolated confinement.

The lucrative sale of Thomson to the feds was engineered largely by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. The prison, in the northeastern part of the state, was built by the state of Illinois but never opened. The Obama Administration initially showed interest in Thomson as a possible stateside home for Guantanamo detainees (and it was quickly dubbed “Gitmo North“).

The sale was blocked for years by Congressional Republicans, even after the president promised that it would be used only for overflow from existing federal prisons, and not for prisoners from Guantanamo. But last fall, the administration made an end run around the Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, and bought Thomson by presidential directive. “Finally, the Department of Justice this afternoon is going to present the $165 million check…for the transfer,” said Durbin on October 2, “At this point, the president had to intervene and do this directly. I hope people understand he’s doing it for his state.”

Ironically, Durbin, the Democratic Assistant Majority Leader, is also widely credited with drawing attention to the issue of solitary confinement and pressing for national reform. In June he chaired the first-ever Congressional hearing on the practice. According to Monday’s press release from his office: “In his hearing last year, Durbin emphasized the importance of reforming the way we treat the incarcerated and the use of solitary confinement in prisons and detention centers around the country. Following that hearing, Durbin has twice met with Bureau of Prisons Director Samuels to push for additional reforms and encourage a sufficiently robust assessment of the Bureau’s segregation practices.”

When asked about the fact that Thomson would include supermax cells, Durbin spokesperson Max Gleischman responded with the following statement: ”As the first member of Congress ever to hold a hearing on solitary confinement, Senator Durbin is committed to reforming America’s segregation policies and practices.  As a part of his efforts, Senator Durbin has met with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and continues to work with its director to reform BOP’s segregation policies and practices.  One important step in solitary confinement reform, and prison reform generally, is to reduce high rates of overcrowding.  The BOP’s acquisition of Thomson prison will greatly reduce this overcrowding crisis and Senator Durbin will work with BOP to ensure that all of its inmates are treated fairly and humanely.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: featured posts, federal prisons, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Federal Bureau of Prisons to Undergo Review of Solitary Confinement Practices

February 5, 2013 By 3 Comments
Cell at ADX federal supermax

Cell at ADX federal supermax

On Monday, the office of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin put out the following press release, announcing that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had agreed to submit to a review of its solitary confinement practices.

In 2010, a spokesperson for the BOP said that federal prisons held approximately 11,150 prisoners in some form of segregated “special housing.” This figure includes the 400 men held in ultra-isolation at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, which is currently the target of federal lawsuits claiming conditions there lead to mental illness and suicide, and violate the Constitution.

The planned review follows on the first-ever Congressional hearing on solitary confinement, held last June by a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee chaired by Durbin. It is described as a “comprehensive and independent assessment,” though it will be carried out by the National Institute of Corrections, which is an agency of the BOP.

Solitary Watch will report further on this story in the coming days, including the BOP’s assertion that it has already “reduced its segregated population by nearly 25 percent.”

DURBIN STATEMENT ON FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS ASSESSMENT OF ITS SOLITARY CONFINEMENT PRACTICES

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement today announcing that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has agreed to a comprehensive and independent assessment of its use of solitary confinement in the nation’s federal prisons. This first-ever review of federal segregation policies comes after Durbin chaired a hearing last year on the human rights, fiscal and public safety consequences of solitary confinement. Last week, Durbin and Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels discussed the assessment, which will be conducted through the National Institute of Corrections.

“The announcement by the Bureau of Prisons that it will conduct its first-ever review of its use of solitary confinement is an important development,” Durbin said. “The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation in the world and the dramatic expansion of solitary confinement is a human rights issue we can’t ignore. I am confident the Bureau of Prisons will permit a thorough and independent review and look forward to seeing the results when they are made public. We can no longer slam the cell door and turn our backs on the impact our policies have on the mental state of the incarcerated and ultimately on the safety of our nation.”

In his hearing last year, Durbin emphasized the importance of reforming the way we treat the incarcerated and the use of solitary confinement in prisons and detention centers around the country. Following that hearing, Durbin has twice met with Bureau of Prisons Director Samuels to push for additional reforms and encourage a sufficiently robust assessment of the Bureau’s segregation practices.

Since Durbin’s hearing, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has reportedly reduced its segregated population by nearly 25 percent. In addition, it has closed two of its Special Management Units, a form of segregated housing, due to the reduction in the segregated population.

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Filed Under: federal prisons, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , ,
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