The Art of Activism: Closing Tamms Supermax

May 6, 2013 By 1 Comment

tamms mudA new article from Creative Time Reports highlights the role played by politically engaged art in the campaign to shut down Tamms supermax prison in southern Illinois. Tamms closed its doors for good in January, but only after a protracted battle in which family members of the incarcerated, grassroots activists, and artists–joined to form the group Tamms Year Ten. Their goal was to “End Torture in Illinois”–the message of the mud stencils that members painted on walls and sidewalks across Chicago.

Creative Time showcases one of the campaign’s most resonant projects, “Photo Requests from Solitary.” As Laurie Jo Reynolds and Stephen F. Eisenman of Tamms Year Ten describe it:

“Photo Requests from Solitary” was one of many projects launched by Tamms Year Ten to build publicity for the campaign. The men in Tamms were invited to request a photograph of anything in the world, real or imagined. The resulting requests were touching and often surprising. They included: the sacred mosque in Mecca, comic book heroes locked in epic battle, Egyptian artifacts, Tamms Year Ten volunteers and a brown and white horse rearing in weather cold enough to see his breath. Willie Sterling III asked for a photograph of a vigil at Bald Knob Cross on top of a hill in southern Illinois to pray for his deliverance from Tamms and to be granted parole…

Photo by Rachel Herman, May 6, 2011.

Photo by Rachel Herman, May 6, 2011.

Photographers from across the country offered to fill photo requests for men in isolation. Chicago animator Lisa Barcy, Dutch photographer Harry Bos and Baltimore filmmaker Stephanie Barber each orchestrated a version of one prisoner’s detailed request for a lovesick clown: “A lovesick clown: holding a old fashioned feathered pen: as if writing a letter: from the waist up: in black and white. As close up as possible: as much detail as possible: & the face about 4 inches big.”

From left to right: photos by Lisa Barcy, Harry Bos and Stephanie Barber, 2012.

From left to right: photos by Lisa Barcy, Harry Bos and Stephanie Barber, 2012.

 

Read the rest of the story of Tamms Year Ten’s campaign here. And for more photos, see the companion piece on the Daily Beast.

Filed Under: activism, Illinois, media, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture 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: , , , , , , ,

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: , ,

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: , , , , ,

The End of Tamms Supermax

January 9, 2013 By 1 Comment

tamms-chicago-4-224x300As the new year began, the notorious Tamms state supermax in southern Illinois closed its doors forever. The closure marked the end of a decade-long effort that combined legal and political pressure with press exposes and tireless grassroots organizing. One excellent recap of this effort and its remarkable outcome was published by In These Times, here. Two more can be found on ACLU’s Blog of Rights, here and here. The second piece, quoted below, describes the role played by the men who were buried alive in Tamms.

Put simply, men were sent to Tamms to disappear.

Tamms was sold to the public as necessary to control the “worst of the worst” prisoners in Illinois. Yet when it opened in 1998, the majority of prisoners had virtually no disciplinary history at all. Rather, Tamms was populated by men who had sued the Department, filed grievances, and otherwise complained about illegal conduct by prison officials—wardens were looking for a way to get rid of these headaches. Other men transferred to Tamms had long histories of mental illness—which had never been treated in prison. Many were sent to Tamms because someone had claimed, at some point in the past, that they were gang leaders—even though most had never been found guilty of any gang activity. When the Uptown People’s Law Center challenged the placement of our clients in Tamms, we were told that these men were not entitled to a hearing, and would not be told why they had been sent to Tamms.

Some of these men have spent the last 15 years in complete and total solitary confinement at Tamms.

Tamms officially closes its doors today, first and foremost because the men sent there did not disappear. Rather than buckle under the extreme psychological pressure of solitary confinement, they banded together, fought back, and reached out and educated and organized their families and friends…

Like other “supermax” facilities, Tamms was designed to ensure that prisoners could be housed in complete isolation—never coming in contact with another prisoner, and only rarely coming in contact with staff. There is no dining hall; there is no chapel; there is no library; there are no classrooms; there is no yard. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are brought to prisoners in their cells—passed through a slot in a steel door. Medical and mental health care is generally provided through the cell door—with no privacy, and minimal ability for medical professionals to examine or even conduct a meaningful conversation with the men they are supposed to be caring for.

In a brave act, the men at Tamms initiated a prison-wide hunger strike in 2000. They asked for such simple things as shoes to wear outside that would protect their feet; the right to clean their own showers; and for other activities to productively occupy their time. The vast majority of prisoners refused meals the first day; dozens refused meals for a week; three lasted over 30 days…

Two of the last men out in December, 2012, were also two of the first men to arrive at Tamms in March, 1998. They survived almost 15 years in total isolation. While closing Tamms is a tremendous victory, we cannot forget the terrible price paid by human beings as a result of this 15 year experiment in torture.

For more background, see “Trapped in Tamms,” the groundbreaking series published in the Belleville News-Democrat, as well as our earlier piece on Tamms in Mother Jones.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tamms Supermax: Report Reveals More Guards Than Prisoners, Soaring Costs

December 4, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Belleville News-Democrat known for a 2009 exposé that helped rouse opposition to conditions at Tamms Supermax, has now provided new ammunition in the longstanding battle to close the notorious prison. In addition to being both unnecessary and abusive, Tamms is incredibly inefficient, according to a new story by George Pawlaczyk and Beth Hundsdorfer.

Tamms Supermax, which is part of the Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois, holds all its inmates in solitary confinement, which was the purpose of the facility’s design. After years of activist opposition and legal wrangling, it is now two-thirds empty. According to the News-Democrat:

Tamms has 208 guards and supervisors in its maximum-security unit, or C-max, to handle 138 prisoners, for a security-staff-to-inmate ratio of 1.5-to-1. At Alcatraz in the 1940s, the ratio was 1-to-3, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The Tamms security staff also clocked at least $884,000 in overtime since about this time last year, according to state payroll records for a one-year period ending Nov. 12. Overtime was accrued despite the fact that inmates in the solitary confinement supermax unit are held in their cells 23 hours a day and have no contact with other prisoners.

In addition, there are 16 food supervisors earning an average of $71,600 a year working at Tamms. That’s the same number of food supervisors as at the Pontiac Correctional Center, which houses around 1,700 maximum- and medium-security inmates.

In all, there are 300 employees for the entire Tamms operation, which includes an adjacent minimum-security camp with 89 inmates and about 13 guards, with an annual payroll of approximately $18.7 million, according to figures from the Illinois Department of Corrections. . . .

At the current 138 C-max inmate population level, it costs approximately $85,000 just to guard one maximum-security prisoner per year excluding overtime. . . .

Most Illinois prisons have a per-inmate annual cost of between $15,000 and $24,000.

Governor Pat Quinn has sought to close the facility to save money in a state with an ongoing budget crisis, but efforts were stalled when the guards’ union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), filed a lawsuit claiming that closing the prison would make conditions unsafe at other prisons. However, according to the news story, a state arbitrator who was agreed upon by both sides in the lawsuit ruled that closing Tamms would not increase danger to prison guards. Currently, state legislators are considering whether to restore funds to keep Tamms open, which would require them to override Quinn’s veto.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Tamms Supermax Prison Closure Temporarily Halted

September 10, 2012 By 9 Comments

On September 4th, Alexander County Circuit Court Judge Charles Cavaness  temporarily halted Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s plan to close the Tamms supermax prison, where hundreds of inmates have been held in solitary confinement. The ruling came days after an arbitrator ruled that the Governors plan was in violation of union contracts. Prison union employees with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to block the closure of Tamms. The AFSCME has argued that closing the supermax facility would “destabilize the entire prison system, worsen dangerous overcrowding and put the safety of employees, inmates, youth and the public at risk.”

Critics have countered that Tamms currently holds only about 180 inmates, and that many of them would be more accurately described as “the sickest of the sick” in terms of their mental health rather than “the worst of the worst.”

Governor Quinn has cited budgetary concerns as chief among his reasons for closing down Tamms. Despite only housing approximately 400 inmates (half of whom in the supermax unit), Tamms has cost taxpayers over $20 million annually to operate.

One former Tamms inmate, Brian Nelson, described his experience at Tamms this way,

I spent 12 years in solitary confinement and I was never told why I was placed in solitary. I am a human being and every day I still struggle with the trauma being held in that gray box. I wake screaming at night. I can’ get it out of my head some days. Solitary confinement in my opinion is worse than being beaten. That I spent twelve years in such conditions in America is appalling.

On August 8th, Tamms inmates, represented by Alan Mills and Nicole Schult of the Uptown People’s Law Center, filed a motion urging the court to allow inmates to present evidence of the negative psychological impact of supermax incarceration. [Read more...]

Filed Under: corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Shutting Down a Supermax: An Interview With Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center

July 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

Alan Mills is the Legal Director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, Illinois.  The Center has been involved in ongoing litigation on behalf of Illinois prisoners challenging the procedures used to send inmates to Tamms, the state’s supermax facility.  Shortly after Illinois Governor announced plans to close Tamms, he spoke with Solitary Watch about the path that led him to prisoner’s rights work and the Tamms litigation.

Thanks for agreeing to talk to us.  You’ve done a lot of prisoner’s rights work; can you tell us about your background and how you got involved in this sort of litigation?

Oh, man.  [Laughs.]  You may have to edit it down.  It comes from my youth I suppose—my mother was very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Baltimore in the mid-sixties.  One of my first memories is stuffing envelopes for a demonstration.  And during that process she became interested in jails, and then when I was in college she spent a lot of time working on prison and jail issues in Maryland.  So that’s an issue I’ve been interested in since I was a little kid.

Then once I got to the People’s Uptown Law Center, the Law Center has always had the firm belief that people who are in prison need to be treated as members of your community.  We are a community-based law center, and people go to prison from the community and people from prison come back into the community.  It’s silly to deal with them as totally separate entities.  From our community work, we represent a lot of the families from which people go to prisons, so they continue to write us.  So the correctional institutions have always been part of the mission of the Uptown People’s Law Center.  We’ve always considered them as part of the mission that we serve.

In the early 1980s I started work at the Law Center as a volunteer.  In 1981 we were contacted by one former uptown resident who was in a hellacious setting in the old Joliet prison, which was built before the Civil War.  He complained that he and another prisoner had been taken out and—they had been gassed, essentially, and plywood was placed in front of their cells and they passed out.  They came fairly close to dying.  He wanted to sue.  We found him a lawyer for that and [the case] grew from there, and the [two main plaintiffs] claimed they hadn’t been given meaningful access to the courts.  And if you want to do advertising in prison, do a case about access to the courts, because you get contact with all the jailhouse lawyers throughout the system.  So from there our practice really grew, and we do dozens and dozens of prisoner cases. [Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, cost/budget issues, due process, featured posts, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “I Lost the Will to Live”

June 24, 2012 By 8 Comments

The following is an excerpt from testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights, which held a hearing on solitary confinement on June 19th. Brian Nelson, in written testimony, testifies to his 12 years in Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in Illinois.  Nelson, transferred from a minimum security prison in New Mexico, describes a harrowing experience of prison isolation and the significantly detrimental effects on his health and well-being. Tamms has recently been in the news for a contentious debate over its closure; this week, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced its  closure by August 31st.For the full testimony, click here. –Sal Rodriguez

As the time went by I remained in he gray box I degenerated even worse. I lost the will to live. I lost hope, even though I was scheduled to be released in a couple years. Depression overwhelmed me. Then a lawsuit as filed over the treatment of inmates with serious mental illness not being properly treated  at Tamms. I was named in that suit. In reply, Tamms mental health employees began to harass me and started placing me on suicide watches for no reason. I was given the Minnesota Multi Personality Test. When the results came back, the head psychologist called me to the infirmary had me locked in a bathroom and screamed at me that I was making her look bad. She then ordered officers to strip me naked–which they did leaving me locked on the bathroom for approximately 10 hours. The psychologist then ordered that my medication be immediately stoped. As part of the case, our lawyer arranged for two doctors to come into Tamms to evaluate me–Dr. Kathryn Burns and Dr. Terry Kupers. Both doctors confirmed that I was severely depressed and the conditions at Tamms exacerbated the depression. Both found that I was actively suicidal. Even though Drs. Burns and Kupers are experts on the conditions of supermax prisons, the Tamm’ psychologist refused to initiate any of the therapy they proposed. I got worse. Another serious suicide attempt followed and I lost so much weight that the Deputy Director, after seeing me in the holding cell, ordered that some sort of treatment be started, and immediately had me weighed. I weighed 119 lbs. All the boned in my body protruded. I shuffled instead of walked. I had no appetite and wanted to die.

Everyday I went to sleep I got down on my knees and prayed that I would die in my sleep, yet God’s will was not mine. When I woke up in the night I prayed harder for death. I couldn’t sleep, and during thos period got no more than 16 hours of sleep a week. I went days pacing back and forth like a zombie (a condition now recognized as a sign of severe mental illness when exhibited by animals in zoos–but apparently its okay when people suffer this way). I looked like I was already dead and I had no will to live. Day after day all I saw was gray walls and over time my world became the gray box. I fought hard with my own mind, and I prayed. I copies the Catholic Bible word for word which took me 1 year 9 months and 2 days. I copied the Rule of St. Benedict 3 times and studied with Cisterician Monks and Priests. I watched a friend give up and kill himself at Tamms. Sadly, several minutes before he died, he told the nurse and mental health worker that he was going to commit suicide. They just didn’t care and walked away. Marcus Chapman was finally released from the gray box in a black body bag on August 24, 2005.

He concludes his testimony with the following:

I spent 12 years in solitary confinement and I was never told why I was placed in solitary. I am a human being and every day I still struggle with the trauma being held in that gray box. I wake screaming at night. I can’ get it out of my head some days. Solitary confinement in my opinion is worse than being beaten. That I spent twelve years in such conditions in America is appalling.

Filed Under: Illinois, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary
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