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: , , , , , , , ,

Seven Days in Solitary [4.4.13]

April 4, 2013 By 1 Comment

solitaryThe following roundup features noteworthy news, reports and opinions on solitary confinement  from the past week.

•  First Run Features announces the New York premiere of Herman’s House this week. The film, which explores the “injustice of solitary confinement and the transformative power of art,” will be opening April 19,2013, at Cinema Village in New York City.

• WUSA9 reports that Christoper Harper, who suffers from mental illness, is being held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania. Harper’s mother says that Harper, 40, has the mental capacity of an 11-year-old.

• Truthout reports on “The US Criminal (In)Justice System” and the mistreatment of incarcerated people, citing the “widespread, abusive and counterproductive” use solitary confinement as a prime example of this.

• Andrew Cohen calls into question the BOP’s policies in dealing with behavior frequently accompanied by mental illness, including suicide attempts and self-mutilation, pointing out that regulatory body’s “inmate policies” actually call for more severe punishment of behaviors typical of people with mental illness.

• Former prisoner Daniel McGowan writes that court documents prove he was put in Communication Management Units (CMU), a form of segregation, for his political speech.

• The New York Times publishes an editorial about the use of arbitrary and abusive solitary confinement on immigrant detainees in the US, emphasizing that the unbridled use of solitary by ICE ”is not a model of humane incarceration.”

• Ian Urbana discusses the excessive use of solitary confinement on immigrant detainees in the US on the Leonard Lopate show. For those who missed the show, listen to the audio at WNYC .

• The New Yorker reports that a shocking proportion of the detainees at Guantanamo are hunger striking, reaching a total 37, or almost one in four of the 166 people imprisoned there. A story in The Atlantic states  that the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay will likely be ineffective since the people doing the striking are a ” group of foreigners whose prison is synonymous with the War on Terror,” as opposed to “sympathetic, politically popular characters.”

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, mental illness, 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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Federal Government Seeks Dismissal of Supermax Suicide Lawsuit

September 25, 2012 By 4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: , , ,

New Federal Budget: Plenty of Money for Prisons

February 25, 2012 By 3 Comments

The following article originally appeared on MotherJones.com.

President Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes cuts to everything from Medicare and Medicaid to defense and even homeland security. But federal prisons are among its “biggest winners,” according to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion.

So what kind of criminals are we spending all this money to incarcerate? If you’re thinking terrorists and kidnappers, think again. According to the Sentencing Project, only 1 in 10 federal prisoners is locked up for a violent offense of any kind. More than half are drug offenders—hardly surprising, since federal prosecutions for drug offenses more than doubled between 1984 and 2005. The 1980s also produced mandatory minimum sentences, which meant we were not only sending more people to prison, we were keeping them there far longer—a perfect formula for an exploding prison population.

Indeed, the federal prison population ballooned from fewer than 25,000 inmates in 1980 to 210,000 in 2010—an eightfold increase—while the federal prison budget grew by a whopping 1,700 percent. Nowadays, as state prison populations have begun to fall for the first time in decades—the product of a steady decline in violent-crime rates, lawsuits over prison conditions, and deficits that have forced state officials to rethink their incarceration policies—the number of federal inmates continues to grow by about 3 percent a year. The projected 2013 federal prison population is 229,268 inmates—6,500 or more than in 2012. “Increasing funding for more prison beds has been shown to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” notes the Justice Policy Institute. “If you build it, they will come.”

According to Obama’s new budget, new federal prisons opening in Mississippi and West Virginia will house some 2,500 of those additional prisoners. Another 1,000 will be placed in private prisons—which now hold 18 percent of federal prisoners, far more than most state systems. The remainder of the new inmates will presumably be jammed into the existing federal prison facilities, which are already operating at 142 percent of capacity.

Factored into the budget request is $44 million in savings from an expansion of programs that let prisoners shave time off their sentences by behaving well and participating in educational and vocational programs, plus a compassionate release program for seriously ill inmates who have served most of their time—a smart move for the BOP, since it would shift its costliest medical cases onto Medicaid. But there’s no guarantee that these “program offsets” will pass, especially given that Congress nixed similar proposals last year.

Conspicuously absent from the Obama budget is an item the administration requested for 2011 and 2012: money to purchase and retrofit a disused Illinois prison to serve as Gitmo North, a home for detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay. Since late 2009, Obama has floated plans to buy Thomson state prison and convert it into a second supermax for Gitmo residents who were tried and convicted on American soil. But Congress has yet to come through with the cash, and it seems, at least in this budget, that the White House has thrown in the towel.

If the federal government acquires Thomson, it will not be for the purpose of replacing Guantanamo, but “to meet critical federal prison capacity needs,” a Department of Justice spokesperson told TPM. In other words, we could end up with Gitmo on top of a new federal supermax like the one in Florence, Colorado—the closest thing to a torture chamber that exists in America today.

Chart courtesy of The Sentencing Project

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

From BOP to CCA: Federal Prison Director Defects to Private Prison Company

June 7, 2011 By 4 Comments

Less than a month after retiring from his post as Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Harley G. Lappin has been hired to a top positon at the nation’s largest private, for-profit prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In a move that has gone virtually unnoticed by the press except on the business pages, Lappin, who had run the BOP since 2003, has been named CCA’s Executive VP and Chief Corrections Officer. According to a company press release, his responsibilities will include ”the oversight of facility operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, [and] purchasing.”

Lappin announced his retirement in March, a few days before making public an earlier arrest on DUI charges in Maryland. In a memo apologizing to BOP employees, Lappin admitted to a ”lapse in my judgment…giving rise to potential embarrassment to the agency,” but he would not acknowledge any direct link between his arrest and his retirement. The announcement of his appointment to a leadership position at CCA came just over three weeks after his effective retirement date of May 7.

Taking advantage of two concurrent 30-year trends–toward mass incarceration and toward privatization of government services–CCA has grown to a $1.6 billion company that operates 66 facilities in 20 states, with approximately 90,000 beds. It has become notorious for its poor treatment of prisoners, and for numerous preventable injuries and deaths in its prisons and immigrant detention centers. About 40 percent of CCA’s business comes from the federal government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Bureau of Prisons. As BOP director, Lappin would have overseen government contracts with CCA worth tens of millions of dollars. CCA spends approximately $1 million annually on lobbying on the federal level alone.

A press release from the invaluable Private Corrections Working Group notes that Lappin’s quick trip through the government-to-industry revolving door is hardly unique in the Bureau of Prisons’ history: “Lappin joins another former BOP director already employed with CCA, J. Michael Quinlan, who was hired by the company in 1993. He retired as director of the BOP in 1992, several months after settling a lawsuit that accused him of sexually harassing a male BOP employee. While settling the suit, Quinlan denied allegations that he made sexual advances to the employee in a hotel room.”

In addition there’s the case of the recently appointed head of the U.S. Marshals Service, Stacia Hylton, who was until 2010 the Federal Detention Trustee. In between serving in these two high-ranking government positions, Hylton worked as a consultant for the GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison contractor. During Hylton’s tenure, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee gave several contracts to GEO; and the U.S. Marshals Service, like the BOP, houses federal detainees in privately owned prisons, including some run by GEO.

“Federal ethics rules do not prohibit former high-ranking employees such as Lappin and Hylton from working for private companies, even when those companies contract with the same federal agencies where those former officials were employed,” the Private Corrections Working Group points out. ”An Executive Order issued by President Obama restricts appointees from taking official actions that directly and substantially affect immediate former clients and employers; however, that ethics rule was not applied to Hylton and it has been waived for over two dozen other federal officials, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.”

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Filed Under: corrections industry, federal prisons, immigrants, politics of punishment, private prisons, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Groups Urge Holder to Clean House at the Bureau of Prisons

May 19, 2011 By 9 Comments

A group of civil liberties and criminal justice reform groups is calling for a change in direction at the federal Bureau of Prisons, following the retirement of BOP head Harley Lappin, appointed during the Bush Administration. Under Lappin, the BOP continued to grow, adding new prisons and prisoners at a rate even higher than that of the states, according to analyses by the Sentencing Project and the Pew Center on the States.  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.

Yet, as we wrote recently, the BOP’s FY 2012 budget request includes funds to open new maximum security prisons in Alabama and New Hampshire, and to acquire and renovate a new supermax prison in Thomson, Illinois, which would add and add up to 1,600 solitary confinement cells. It is in response to such plans that the consortium of groups is urging Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a reformer who will take the BOP in a different direction. According to an announcement issued by the 24 groups:

Two dozen more organizations have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to name a reformer to head the federal Bureau of Prisons. The position is vacant with the retirement of Harley Lappin. In a letter to Holder, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, and Sentencing Project urged the appointment of “an  individual with experience in systems reform and change. She or he must also have the courage and commitment to lower recidivism rates, improve conditions in BOP facilities, focus on rehabilitation and re-entry, and improve public safety through reforms in correctional practice and strategy.”

The groups said that currently, the prison bureau “functions at nearly 140%  capacity where prisoners are warehoused, rather than rehabilitated, and both staff and prisoners are routinely put at risk due to dangerous conditions. Unfortunately, the agency has not adapted its management strategy to take full advantage of the diverse population reduction authorities and cost-savings measures given to it by Congress, such as: expanded half-way house placement, compassionate release, and sentence reduction programs like good time and drug program participation. The consequence of this inaction is that the BOP has grown more bloated and more dangerous over time.” The American Bar Association, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Human Rights Watch made similar
points to Holder in recent letters.

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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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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