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: , , , , ,

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.

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

“Millennium Bomber,” Scarred by 12 Years in Solitary, Is Sentenced to 37 More

October 26, 2012 By 10 Comments

A federal judge this week decried the effects of solitary confinement on a prisoner convicted on terrorism-related charges, who has spent 12 years inside ADX Florence supermax. The same judge then proceeded to sentence the prisoner in question to 37 more years, which will most likely be spent in the same torturous conditions. But these 37 years were in fact a lesser alternative to life sentence sought by federal prosecutors, who are angered by the prisoner’s decision to stop supplying them with evidence against other terrorism suspects. The Los Angeles Times reports:

A federal judge criticized the effects of solitary confinement Wednesday and refused to impose a life sentence on Ahmed Ressam, convicted in 2001 of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Instead, the judge ordered the Algerian national to serve 37 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said Ressam’s decision to stop providing evidence against fellow Al Qaeda suspects was not “obstructionism,” as U.S. prosecutors argued in seeking a life sentence, but “a deranged protest” against the severe conditions of his imprisonment. The changes in Ressam as a result of his confinement for the last 12 years — alone in a cell the size of a small bathroom — were  “marked and stunning,” the judge said.

“It is my ethical responsibility not to hold him culpable for the harmful and involuntary consequences of that punishment,” the judge said. “I will not sentence a man to 50 lashes with a whip, and then 50 more for getting blood on the whip.”

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Filed Under: federal prisons, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Extradited to a Future of Torture in a U.S. Supermax Prison

October 6, 2012 By 5 Comments
Guest Post by Laura Rovner

ADX Florence: “This is what torture looks like.”

Last week, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights rejected appeals from five terror suspects challenging their extraditions from Britain to the United States. The unanimous decision from the judges affirmed the Court’s earlier ruling that “detention conditions and length of sentences of five alleged terrorists would not amount to ill-treatment” if they were extradited to the U.S. and held in solitary confinement in ADX, the U.S.’s only federal supermax prison. The decision is profoundly troubling, not only its outcome, but also the process by which the Court rendered its decision and in the public silences surrounding it.

The decision stands in stark contrast to international opinion that has grown increasingly critical of the use of prolonged isolation, viewing it in some instances as a form of torture. Indeed, the week after the Court released the decision, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture resoundingly condemned it: “As we speak my office is sending a communication, dealing with the possible extradition to the US of five people who will be subjected to solitary confinement…The UN Convention Against Torture states you cannot extradite or deport someone to any place if he or she could be tortured.” He concluded, “I think there [are] very good arguments that solitary confinement and SAMs ["special administrative measures," which impose severe restrictions on communication with other inmates or the outside world) would constitute torture and prevent the UK from extraditing these men."

Yet in the days since the European Court issued its decision, the silence from human rights organizations and the American media has been deafening. The silence is especially striking in light of the considerable—and warranted—criticism of the use of prolonged solitary confinement in correctional facilities other than our federal prisons. This past week alone saw condemnation of California’s supermax prisons in a report by Amnesty International that criticized conditions in the strongest terms—conditions that are, in the main, nearly the same as those at ADX. Other reports have highlighted the detrimental mental health effects of prolonged solitary confinement. And at a time when the conditions of the men detained in Guantanamo still appropriately command significant attention from human rights advocates who have repeatedly decried the lack of accountability for Bush-era torture, the discussion of ongoing torture in our domestic federal prisons has received significantly less coverage.

It’s hard not to wonder whether the silence from human rights groups about the European Court’s decision is born of the same mindset underlying the decision itself, namely, the resistance to believing that the U.S. could be engaging in torture in its federal prisons. Or perhaps this abuse is harder to see because it runs counter to current campaigns focused on the states, on massively overcrowded California prisons or deep South prisons that seem like holdovers from Jim Crow days—with the implicit corollary that federal penitentiaries are well run and well regulated. Maybe the reluctance to speak stems from the still-pervasive Islamophobia that makes us blind to the treatment of Muslims, especially those who are being prosecuted for terrorist crimes. Given the prioritization of advocacy urging the closure of Guantanamo and the prosecution of terror suspects in the federal courts, many human rights groups and advocates have been reluctant to scrutinize and speak out against the practices in our federal prisons for fear of complicating their message. If torture is happening at ADX, what does it mean for these groups to be calling for men to be tried in the federal system?

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, featured posts, federal prisons, guest posts, human rights, international, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Bureau of Prisons Chief Sends Memo to Federal Inmates, Urging Them Not to Kill Themselves

August 4, 2012 By 6 Comments

The Atlantic‘s Andrew Cohen, who has been reporting extensively on a lawsuit challenging solitary confinement and mental health care at the ADX Florence, the federal super-supermax in Colorado, has obtained a copy of a memo sent to all federal prisoners last month. Cohen’s own commentary on the memo is trenchant, so we are republishing excerpts from his article, which includes quotation from the memo. The full memo can be read here on the Atlantic‘s website.

Faced with two new federal lawsuits alleging prisoner mistreatment and abuse, one of which chronicles in grim detail the 2010 suicide of an inmate at the Supermax facility in Colorado, the Federal Bureau of Prisons last month sent an extraordinary “Suicide Prevention” memo to “all Bureau Inmates.” Charles E. Samuels, Jr., director of the BOP, urged prisoners “unable to think of solutions other than suicide” not to “lose hope” and urged them to “be willing to request help from those around you.”…

[The memo] is dated July 20, 2012, one month after a class-action lawsuit was filed against federal officials alleging that they have violated the constitutional rights of prisoners by refusing or failing to provide even the most basic treatment for mentally ill prisoners at the Colorado facility. This lawsuit came one month after prison officials were sued over the suicide of an ADX Florence inmate, Jose Martin Vega, who had hanged himself in his cell after allegedly failing to get proper mental health treatment.

The memo concludes with a quotation from Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” This would seem a cruel joke when directed at men whose past, present, and future consist of  absolute isolation a bare concrete cell. (Read, for example, Thomas Silverstein’s description of his 10,000+ days in extreme solitary confinement–a condition that he has little to no prospect of ever changing.)

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Filed Under: Constitution, federal prisons, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “Loneliness is a Destroyer of Humanity”

July 7, 2012 By 6 Comments

The following comes from an inmate at United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado. Initially sentenced to five years in prison when he was 17 for grand larceny, he was given a life sentence for the murder of a death row inmate in Mississippi’s Unit 32. He has been in solitary confinement for eight of the last 12 years. He describes describes his time in solitary as consisting of walking around in circles and losing his social skills. A collateral consequence of his time in solitary, he’s written, is having families members “watch you get older and crazier.” He will be corresponding with Solitary Watch about the conditions at ADX. —Sal Rodriguez

I refuse to embrace the solitude. This is not normal. I’m not a monster and do not deserve to live in a concrete box. I am a man who has made mistakes, true. But I do not deserve to spend the rest of my life locked in a cage–what purpose does that serve? Why even waste the money to feed me? If I’m a monster who must live alone in a cage why not just kill me?

Our country has thousands of its people confined to concrete cages. Years pass, lives pass. The suffering does not. Our families suffer most, watching us grow old and go crazy in a cage. This is my biggest pain knowing my mother and sister suffer with me. I can not see how this is helpful to society. Most men will spend years in a cage alone and be released back into society filled with hate and rage. It is an ugly truth. We as a country are blind to the reality of our prison system.

It has become normal. And we the inmates are voiceless. Our voices are not heard. If they are heard, they are thought of as lies. I heard the head of the BOP in Congress (on radio) saying they do not have insane inmates housed here. This is what should be thought of as a lie. I have not slept in weeks due to these non-existing inmates beating on the walls and hollering all night.  And the most “non-insane” smearing feces in their cells.

This is reality.

This place is horrific with the solitary, and the lack of communication outside these walls. I’ve been in prison without release for over 12 years, and eight of them I’ve been in a cage walking around in circles. I was released for 23 days in 2000 after completing a boot camp/drug program. I was rearrested for drinking beer, a violation of probation. So I am pretty in tune with the concept of solitary. Prison. Cages and craziness.

Out my window I see into a concrete yard surrounded by red brick walls. There is a drain in the middle of it and out of it weed are growing. I thought they were weeds until a few blossomed into these beautiful yellow and brown flowers.

Every now and then a pair of owls roosts on the security lights. This spring they had two babies. We watched them grow up and fly away. On any given day the sky here is breathtaking. The beauty out my window stays in my mind. I look around this cage at plain concrete walls and steel bars and a steel door, a steel toilet and I endure its harshness because I am able to keep beauty in my mind. The window helps greatly.

I’m in the hole so there is no TV. Books help me escape better than my words could ever explain, but most of all its the love of my family, the memories of beauty and the knowledge of humanity.

Loneliness is a destroyer of humanity.

Filed Under: federal prisons, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Lawsuit Challenges Conditions at ADX Federal Supermax

June 25, 2012 By 5 Comments

On Monday, June 18th, a class action lawsuit, Bacote v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, was filed against the Federal Bureau of Prisons on behalf of five plaintiffs, all of them inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum–commonly known as ADX–in Florence,  Colorado. A must-read three-part series of articles by Andrew Cohen, published this week by The Atlantic, covers details of the lawsuit and the treatment of prisoners with mental illness living inside the facility.

In the first two articles in the series, Cohen excellently summarizes the lawsuit as well as emphasizing the horrific conditions in which mentally ill inmates at ADX languish. The lawsuit maintains that the five plaintiffs, along with six other “interested individuals” housed in ADX, all have mental illness or mental retardation, and have been denied adequate treatment. The details regarding their treatment, or lack thereof, are shocking, and outlined in graphic detail. Tragically, the gruesome descriptions may have a familiar ring for those versed in the treatment of mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement in supermax prisons and special housing units across the country.

Cohen quotes from the lawsuit: “Prisoners interminably wail, scream and bang on the walls of their cells. Some mutilate their bodies with razors, shards of glass, writing utensils and whatever other objects they can obtain. Some swallow razor blades, nail clippers, parts of radios and televisions, broken glass and other dangerous objects.”

Another section of the lawsuit states that “in 2010, a severely and chronically depressed prisoner who had attempted to kill himself a few months earlier was escorted to the ADX [Special Housing Unit] after throwing milk at a corrections officer. He was placed in a cell just vacated by another chronically ill prisoner who had smeared the cell’s floors, walls, bed and mattress with feces. The prisoner was given no cleaning supplies, and was not issued a blanket, towel or sheet. He used a roll of toilet paper in the cell to try to wipe the feces off of a spot on the floor that was large enough to enable him to lie down. For two days, he remained lying on that single ‘clean’ space.”

ADX, known as “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” is the nation’s most secure supermax prison, and its 490 residents live in extreme isolation. It is supposedly intended to hold the “worst of the worst,” and is never supposed to house the seriously mentally ill, according to Bureau of Prisons policy. However, individuals with mental illness often end up there or, argues the lawsuit, become mentally ill during their confinement at ADX, largely due to the isolation and deprivation suffered there.

The third article in the series focuses on the lawsuit and The Eighth Amendment. The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages for the plaintiffs; rather, it calls for an injunction to improve the treatment of inmates with mental illness in federal facilities. Cohen highlights one of the most salient problems with the United States prison system: the profound lack of accountability or oversight. While the Federal Bureau of Prisons website states that it “protects society by confining offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens,” the rapidly increasing public concern over abuses inside federal facilities reflects the abject failure of the BOP to uphold its commitment.

The lawsuit was filed during the same week as the Congressional hearing on solitary confinement, and directly contradicts some of the testimony provided by BOP head Charles Samuels. Solitary confinement is being examined with unprecedented scrutiny on a federal level, and, as Cohen notes, this particular lawsuit was filed by attorneys and organizations who have experience and expertise in prison reform litigation, including the DC Prisoners’ Project of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and the law firm of Arnold & Porter. Solitary Watch will continue to report on emerging developments.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, federal prisons, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

America’s Most Isolated Federal Prisoner Describes 10,220 Days in Extreme Solitary Confinement

May 5, 2011 By 152 Comments

“Control Unit” by Thomas Silverstein

Thomas Silverstein, who has been described as America’s “most isolated man,” has been held in an extreme form of solitary confinement under a “no human contact” order for 28 years. Originally imprisoned for armed robbery at the age of 19, Silverstein is serving life without parole for killing two fellow inmates (whom he says were threatening his life) and a prison guard, and has been buried in the depths of the federal prison system since 1983.

In his current lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Silverstein contends that his decades of utter isolation in a small concrete cell violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, as well as its guarantee of due process. (The lawsuit, brought by the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Clinic, is described in detail in our article “Fortresses of Solitude.”) Update: On Friday, federal District Court Judge Philip Brimmer set a court date of January 23, 2012 for a jury trial in the Silverstein case.

In support of that lawsuit, Tommy Silverstein, now 59, has written a long “declaration,” the purpose of which “is primarily to describe my experience during this lengthy period of solitary confinement: the nature and impact of the harsh conditions I have endured in spite of a spotless conduct record for over 22 years, and my lack of knowledge about what, if anything, I can do to lessen my isolation.” After apologizing “for the actions that brought me here in the first place,” particularly the murder of corrections officer Merle Clutts, Silverstein contends that he has “worked hard to become a different man.” He continues, “I understand that I deserve to be punished for my actions, and I do not expect ever to be released from prison…I just want to serve out the remainder of my time peacefully with other mature guys doing their time.”

The bulk of the declaration is a detailed account of Silverstein’s experiences and surrounding in a series of what constitute the most secure and isolated housing in the federal prison system: in the notorious Control Unit at Marion, the supermax prototype; at USP Atlanta in a windowless underground “side pocket” cell that measured 6 x 7 feet (“almost exactly the size of a standard king mattress,”); at Leavenworth in an isolated basement cell dubbed the “Silverstein Suite”; on “Range 13″ at ADX Florence, where the only other prisoner was Ramzi Yusef; and finally in ADX’s D-Unit, where he can hear the sounds of other prisoners living in neighboring cells, though he still never sees them.

The following is from Tommy Silverstein’s description of his life at USP Atlanta:

The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture.

My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all…The walls were solid steel and painted all white.

I was permitted to wear underwear, but I was given no other clothing.

Shortly after I arrived, the prison staff began construction on the side pocket cell, adding more bars and other security measures to the cell while I was within it. In order not to be burned by sparks and embers while they welded more iron bars across the cell, I had to lie on my bed and cover myself with a sheet.

It is hard to describe the horror I experienced during this construction process. As they built new walls around me it felt like I was being buried alive. It was terrifying.

During my first year in the side pocket cell I was completely isolated from the outside world and had no way to occupy my time. I was not allowed to have any social visits, telephone privileges, or reading materials except a bible. I was not allowed to have a television, radio, or tape player. I could speak to no one and their was virtually nothing on which to focus my attention.

I was not only isolated, but also disoriented in the side pocket. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have a wristwatch or clock. In addition, the bright, artificial lights remained on in the cell constantly, increasing my disorientation and making it difficult to sleep. Not only were they constantly illuminated, but those lights buzzed incessantly. The buzzing noise was maddening, as there often were no other sounds at all. This may sound like a small thing, but it was my entire world.

Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was.

I tried to measure the passing of days by counting food trays. Without being able to keep track of time, though, sometimes I thought the officers had left me and were never coming back. I thought they were gone for days, and I was going to starve. It’s likely they were only gone for a few hours, but I had no way to know.

I was so disoriented in Atlanta that I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone. I now know that I was housed there for about four years, but I would have believed it was a decade if that is what I was told. It seemed eternal and endless and immeasurable…

There was no air conditioning or heating in the side pocket cells. During the summer, the heat was unbearable. I would pour water on the ground and lay naked on the floor in an attempt to cool myself…

The only time I was let out of my cell was for outdoor recreation. I was allowed one hour a week of outdoor recreation. I could not see any other inmates or any of the surrounding landscape during outdoor recreation. There was no exercise equipment and nothing to do…

My vision deteriorated in the side pocket, I think due to the constant bright lights, or possibly also because of other aspects of this harsh environment. Everything began to appear blurry and I became sensitive to light, which burned my eyes and gave me headaches.

Nearly all of the time, the officers refused to speak to me. Despite this, I heard people who I believed to be officers whispering into my vents, telling me they hated me and calling me names. To this day, I am not sure if the officers were doing this to me, or if I was starting to lose it and these were hallucinations.

In the side pocket cell, I lost some ability to distinguished what was real. I dreamt I was in prison. When I woke up, I was not sure which was reality and which was a dream.

In a summing up, Silverstein reflects on the physical and psychological effects of 28 years in solitary and on his own development as a self-taught artists and practitioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation. He reiterates his plea to be allowed into the BOP’s “Step-Down program” toward less isolated confinement. The complete declaration, which runs to 64 pages, can be read here.

Update: A declaration submitted as an exhibit in the case, by Dr. Craig Haney, one of the nation’s leading experts on the effects of prolonged solitary confinement, can be read here.

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Filed Under: Constitution, due process, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, federal prisons, lawsuits/litigation, life without parole, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , ,

No Budget Cuts for Federal Prisons

April 13, 2011 By 8 Comments

In the midst of an epic budget battle that could transform the American landscape for decades to come, the White House and Republicans in Congress appear to agree on one point: Federal prisons need more money.

With more people and a higher percentage of the population locked up than any other country, the United States would seem more than ripe for cuts in both its incarceration rate and its prison spending. A number of states have initiated such measures, and a growing chorus of critics on the right and left are decrying the devastating fiscal costs of mass incarceration. Yet the Obama Administration’s combined budget requests for FY 2011 and FY 2012 call for a full 10 percent increase over 2010 levels in funding to the federal Bureau of Prisons, to more than $6.8 billion. The increase, says the BOP, is necessary to accommodate a still-growing federal inmate population. And the latest budget deal reached with Republican leadership indicates that this particular category of discretionary spending will emerge from the budget battles comparably unscathed.

There is ample precedent for an expansion of federal prisons under a Democratic administration. According to analyses by the Sentencing Project and the Pew Center on the States, the growth rate in the BOP’s population has far outstripped that of the states (which itself has increased by than 700 percent in the past 40 years). Federal growth was most dramatic during the Clinton years, when a host of new offenses were federalized: Since 1995 alone, the number of federal inmates has more than doubled, to over 211,000. More than half of these prisoners are serving time on drug charges, and another 10 percent are held on immigration violations. In all, more than 72 percent are nonviolent offenders with no history of violence, and 34 percent are first-time nonviolent offenders.

What’s more, the federal government is now bucking a state trend toward decreasing inmate levels and closing prisons. The Pew Center found that in 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, the overall state prison population fell for the first time in 38 years. States as tough on crime as Texas, Georgia, and Florida are now pushing reforms that range from lighter sentences to early release programs—all under the leadership of Republican governors. In contrast, the BOP population continues to rise, with an increase of 11,000 projected this year, according to Attorney General Eric Holder.

No wonder, then, that federal prisons are overcrowded, and the government is still opening new ones. According to the Justice Department’s FY 2012 budget request for the Bureau of Prisons:

The biggest challenge facing the BOP is managing the ever increasing federal inmate population and providing for their care and safety, while maintaining appropriately safe and secure prisons required to ensure the safety of BOP staff, inmates, and surrounding communities, which is why the requested base resources for BOP’s operations budget (S&E) and for modernization and repair are vital.

BOP anticipates finalizing the construction of Federal Correctional Center (FCI) Aliceville, AL, a secure female facility in FY 2012. This facility will add 1,792 more beds to rated capacity. Assuming the requested FY 2012 funding is received, the BOP will begin the activation process of FCI Berlin, NH and the acquisition and renovation process of administrative maximum U.S. Penitentiary (ADX USP) Thomson, IL. If realized, FCI Berlin, NH will add 1,280 beds and ADX USP Thomson, IL will be activated as a federal institution and add up to 1,600 high security cells after modifications.

The “activation” of the new ADX (“administrative maximum”) prison in 2012 depends upon the purchase of that prison in 2011 from the state of Illinois, and its retrofitting as a federal supermax. This has been by far the most controversial facet of the BOP’s future plans, since the new ADX in Thomson was originally proposed as a new home for Guantanamo detainees.

Obama’s plans to close Gitmo and move its residents to the American mainland were stymied by Congress, but the White House decided to buy Thomson nonetheless. In a letter sent just last week, Eric Holder assured Illinois’s Democratic Senator Dick Durban and Republican Senator Mark Kirk that “consistent with current law, we will not transfer detainees from Guantanamo to Thomson, or otherwise house Guantanamo detainees at Thomson. The Thomson facility would only house federal inmates and would be operated solely by the Bureau of Prisons.”

What the White House is calling for, then, is the creation of a second federal supermax on the model of the notorious Florence ADX in Colorado—a place where solitary confinement has been raised to a torturous art, and inmates seldom, if ever, see another human being. Conditions at this “Alcatraz of the Rockies” are so harsh that the European Court of Human Rights is currently refusing to extradite terrorism suspects to the United States lest they end up in ADX. Yet this new prison has also become the centerpiece of Obama’s plans for prison expansion. The letter from Holder to Durbin and Kirk continues:

As you know, the Department wishes to acquire the Thomson facility in order to provide critically needed high security bed space for the federal Bureau of Prisons. The current population of high security federal penitentiaries is 51 % above rated capacity, and continues to grow…I appreciate your leadership in addressing the dangers of prison overcrowding, and in fostering community support for the federal government’s acquisition of this unused state facility.

The President’s FY11 budget requested $237 million for the acquisition, renovation, and operation of the Thomson facility. However, under the FY11 Continuing Resolutions, the Department lacks sufficient money to purchase or activate Thomson using currently available funds. We look forward to working with you to obtain additional appropriated funds for this important and needed project.

So far, this new prison remains a sticking point in the latest budget deal. With $6.3 billion for the BOP, it includes much of the other prison funding requested by the White House, and represents a significant increase over 2010 levels. But it is still $239 billion below the White House’s 2011 request, and doesn’t contain funding for the Thomson purchase. Durbin and Kirk have not given up on the plan, however, and will continue pressing the Justice Department to come up with funds to finance the new prison.

The BOP’s standing in the House Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal is less clear. Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s ”Path to Prosperity” calls for more than $10 billion in cuts to programs that fall under the broad spending category “Administration of Justice.” The plan is more of a manifesto than an actual budget, and it doesn’t specify where these cuts should be made—though history would suggest that civil rights prosecutions and the like would be more obvious targets for Republican cuts than prison spending. In another rare show of bipartisan unity, House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) and ranking member John Conyers (D-MI) have already joined in writing to the House Budget Committee, warning them against making cuts to federal law enforcement in 2012.

What belies all this agreement on increasing federal prison spending is a bipartisan trend, growing over the past several months, that calls for precisely the opposite. Fall 2010 saw the birth of the group Right on Crime, spearheaded by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Ed Meese, making the “conservative case for criminal justice reform”—including a reduction in prison populations. Norquist also joined the NAACP last week to endorse its Smart and Safe Campaign for criminal justice reform, and publicize its new report Misplaced Priorities: Under Educate, Over Incarcerate. Another recently formed coalition, calling itself Smart on Crime, brings together the Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and Prison Fellowship with the Innocence Project and the ACLU. Smart on Crime advocates for criminal justice reforms that are “fair, accurate, effective, proven, and cost efficient,” and makes a particularly sharp critique of the “overcriminalization of conduct” and “overfederalization of criminal law.”

What think tanks and pundits do, of course, is quite a different matter from what elected officials are willing to undertake. Few politicians will risk being declared “soft on crime” in the next election. And in the end, the generous funding for prisons makes a grim kind of sense, in the context of a budget that slashes education, health care, and social services: A country that can’t spare the funds to properly educate its children or care for its sick, poor, or unemployed is destined to remain an incarceration nation.

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Filed Under: cost/budget issues, federal prisons, legislation, politics of punishment, sentencing, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fahad Hashmi Joins 1,400 Others in the Solitary Confinement Capital of the World

October 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

A letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder today by several civil rights groups expresses “urgent concern about Syed Fahad Hashmi’s conditions of confinement.” The letter, from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York (CAIR-NY), Educators for Civil Liberties, and the Muslim Justice Initiative, reads in part:

For nearly three years before his case was scheduled to go to trial in April 2010, Syed Fahad Hashmi was held in solitary confinement under “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMs), which added a severe additional layer of isolation to his confinement. Numerous civil liberties organizations, human rights groups and concerned citizens called attention to the severity and inhumanity of these pretrial conditions of confinement. These included a Statement of Concern signed by 550 academics and writers…and weekly vigils outside the prison in lower Manhattan where Syed Hashmi was held.

Facing four counts and a possible 70-year sentence, Syed Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on the eve of trial and pleaded guilty to a single terrorism charge of “conspiracy to provide material support” for allowing an acquaintance to stay in his apartment with a suitcase of waterproof socks and rain ponchos which the acquaintance then took to Al Qaeda in Pakistan. For this, he was sentenced to 15 years. Over the summer he was moved to the high-security prison at the Florence Correctional Center in Florence, Colorado. He remains in solitary confinement and under SAMs.

Scholarly and medical research has overwhelmingly demonstrated the severe health effects of prolonged solitary confinement; military officials and Vietnam veterans including Senator John McCain have testified to its damaging results. The use of prolonged solitary confinement puts the United States increasingly out of step with world opinion and is an affront to American values of civil rights and humane treatment. Other people convicted of terrorism-related charges, including John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, and Matt Hale have seen their SAMs not renewed. We ask the U.S. Department of Justice to not renew Syed Hashmi’s SAMs and to end his solitary confinement.

As the letter describes, Hashmi’s conditions of confinement were at one time the focus of high-profile protests–in part because he had not yet been convicted of any crime, but perhaps also because he was being held in these torturous conditions right in the middle of downtown Manhattan. Now Hashmi has been placed in the solitary confinement capital of the world, where there will be no candlelight vigils for him or for any of the hundreds of other human being living in similar conditions.

As we noted in an earlier post, the complex of federal and state prisons in and around Cañon City, Colorado, contains some 1,400 solitary confinement cells. Hashmi shares ADX Florence, the most secure prison in the federal system, with about 400 others. Even if the Justice Department lifts his Special Administrative Measures–which impose additional restrictions on communications and visitation–he will be held in extreme isolation in a prison described by one former warden as “a clean version of hell.”

Hashmi, as the letter states, is subject to this punishment because he consorted with someone who sent socks to Al Qaeda. This may seem like an extreme case, but it is not an isolated one. Among the 1,400 other men in solitary confinement in Cañon City, many are there for such offenses as fighting with other inmates or guards, being identified as gang members, trying to escape, having contraband, or failing to follow orders. Still others are there, effectively, because they are Muslims, because they suffer from mental illness, or because they are children.* Any of these things can condemn a prisoner to spending months or years living in conditions that much of the world considers torture. 

* See the most recent additions to our new video collection for examples from the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Colorado, federal prisons, human rights, juveniles, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , ,
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