Bill to Limit Solitary Confinement Introduced in Colorado Legislature

February 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

A bill just introduced in the Colorado state legislature would place curbs on the use of solitary confinement in state prisons, especially on prisoners with mental illness. As we’ve written before, Colorado makes liberal use of solitary confinement. The practice has spurred public debate over the opening of an second costly supermax prison in the midst of a budget crisis, and over a controversial study of prisoners in the all-solitary Colorado State Penitentiary.

The new bill emphasizes the economic costs of solitary confinement as well as its human costs. The following is from a press release issued this morning by the ACLU:

A bill introduced last night in the Colorado state legislature will end the all-too-common practice of warehousing prisoners with serious mental illness in solitary confinement. The bill would require a mental health evaluation for prisoners before they are placed in solitary and permit long term isolation only in extreme situations. It also would support mental and behavioral health alternatives to solitary confinement through cost-saving mechanisms and ensure that prisoners are
reintegrated into the general prison population before their community release.

The bill is the first to be introduced anywhere in the nation since the beginning of economic crisis that takes a serious look at the extraordinary cost to taxpayers of overusing solitary confinement.

“Using solitary confinement is enormously expensive, jeopardizes our public safety and is fundamentally inhumane,” said David Fathi, Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “The vast majority of prisoners who are forced into solitary confinement eventually are released back into the community, making it imperative that we invest in proven alternatives that lead to greater rehabilitation and pave the way for successful re-entry.”

S.B. 176, introduced by Sen. Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora) and Rep. Claire Levy (D-Boulder), is a response to the growing number of inmates in Colorado prisons who have been diagnosed as mentally ill or developmentally disabled, and the staggering cost of using solitary confinement, rather than mental or behavioral health alternatives, as the default placement without regard to medical needs, institutional security or prisoner and public safety.

In Colorado, 37 percent of those in solitary confinement are prisoners with mental illness or developmental disabilities – up from 15 percent just a decade ago. The more than 1,400 Colorado inmates in solitary confinement spend 23 hours a day in isolation, for 16 months on average, at an increased additional cost of up to $21,485 per year, per inmate…

“By undermining the innate human need for social interaction, solitary confinement works against our goals as a society,” said Jessie Ulibarri, Public Policy Director for the ACLU of Colorado. “Releasing inmates directly from solitary confinement to the streets without any time to readjust to human interaction is a dangerous practice. What we want are people ready to fully integrate back into their communities, not people who are released from solitary confinement and led directly to the
prison gate, only to return again.”

A copy of the bill is available online at the following link: http://www.leg.state.co.us/CLICS/CLICS2011A/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/A88F4FFC795C5C79872578080080E624?Open&file=176_01.pdf

And here is an editorial supporting the bill from the Boulder Daily Camera: http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_17395457?source=rss

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Filed Under: Colorado, cost/budget issues, legislation, mental illness, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Supermaxed Out in Colorado

August 1, 2010 By 6 Comments

Even in the context of a nation in lockdown, the state of Colorado stands out for the sheer number and visibility of its supermax prison facilities. Colorado is home to the federal government’s most famous supermax, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, commonly known as ADX. The nearby Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) has a 750-man lockdown unit that was featured in the recent National Geographic Explorer documentary on solitary confinement. And on September 1, the state will open CSP II, which will hold more than 300 solitary confinement cells. Remarkably, all of these prisons–and several others–are located in a single county, Fremont County in rural south central Colorado. (Fremont and its county seat, Cañon City, are the subject of an interactive web documentary called Prison Valley.)

CSP II was the subject of controversy and protest earlier this year, when cash-strapped Colorado made deep cuts to education and other state services, but managed to come up with the $10.8 million to open the new prison. This, in part, is the subject of this essay by Clair L. Beazer, an inmate in Administrative Segregation at CSP. He sent this piece, which he calls “Lock Downs and Monsters,” to Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, along with a note that explains: “ Here in the lock-down (Administrative Segregation) I receive no earned time and good time is dependent on discretionary parole where 99% don’t receive discretion. Colorado will be opening its new C.S.P. II even though it costs three times as much to house someone like this. Colorado already has double (or more) the national average of these types of cells.”

In a recent hour long broadcast on the National Geographic Channel, Colorado’s C.S.P. (Colorado State Penitentiary) maximum security lock-down facility was featured. At one point its warden Susan Jones described the isolation of the penitentiary’s inmates as part of a behavior modification program. Indeed, she then further described the main focus of the facility’s reason for existing as a form of behavioral modification and her responsibilities as the supervisor of this “program.”

Of course, as a measure of any purpose or program there must be a number who fail and those that succeed in having modified their behavior. She never actually utters what percentage that is, as any person proud of a success would, and with good reason. That reason is because very, very few succeed in a grim, draconian program that is based on an isolation that exacerbates every phobia, psychosis, psychopathology, and antisocial tendency already run rampant among them.

Furthermore, it would be obvious to any unbiased perspective that any behavior modification “program” that fails to modify behavior is an outright and abject failure. Moreover, one that magnifies and grievously worsens and increases antisocial behaviors that it is specifically designed to “modify” is a travesty and a behavior modification “program” in name only.

In addition many courts have found that this type of incarceration to be unconstitutional, and those of us unfortunate to be suffering through it can testify that is it both cruel and very unusual.

The fact that Colorado will now expand upon its hidden failure is outrageous! After building the new C.S.P. II, the state finds it must now fund this albatross to the tune of what will eventually amount to billions and is the most expensive, inefficient and ineffective program in the entire state.

How could this be, and where in the world would such a foolish failure see the light of day? Right here in the incarceration capital of the world where failure is not only rewarded, it is now being duplicated with the soon to open C.S.P. II.

Here in the home of sinecure, base of the prison of the prison industrial complex, the public pays: Pays to put the inmates in prison,  pays for the upkeep and millions in salaries. Pays for the duration of the stay, and if that isn’t enough they will pay yet another pound of flesh when these modified monsters are unleashed back onto the public after being warehoused for years and building their frustration, anger and enmity.

In Mary Shelley’s classic man/monster tale, Dr. Frankenstein slowly assembled his monster piece by piece as Colorado now does on  a much larger scale. Up here in the rarified air they call it job security, and the Department of Corrections is our personal Dr. Frankenstein in woefully misnamed Freemont County.

The author welcomes mail and can be contacted at:  Mr. Clair L. Beazer, C.S.P. #49801, P.O. Box 777, Canon City, CO 81215-0777.

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Filed Under: Colorado, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Eighth Amendment, media, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Cash-Strapped Colorado Comes Up With Funds for New Supermax

April 11, 2010 By 8 Comments

Colorado’s $18.2 billion budget, which state lawmakers passed this week after contentious debate, makes substantial cuts to public education, colleges and universities, and tax breaks for small businesses and senior citizens. In the face of shrunken revenues (and dwindling federal stimulus funds), Colorado even reduced its overall corrections budget. But in the midst of all these deep cuts to vital services, the Colorado legislature managed to find $9.37 million to open one wing of a new supermax prison, containing 316 additional “administrative segregation” cells where prisoners will live in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement.

Colorado already has more than 1,100 solitary confinement beds throughout the prison system, according to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC). As a percentage of total prison beds, this is more than three times the national average. The state’s existing supermax facility, the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP-I), is less than 20 years old and holds more than 750 prisoners in solitary confinement. Yet in 2003, the state initiated construction of a second supermax, CSP-II, at the cost of $208 million. 

CSP-II was delayed by a lawsuit, and by the time it was completed last year, Colorado governor Bill Ritter put its opening on hold because of budget shortfalls. But Ritter changed his mind, and despite resistance from a coalition of state civil liberties, human rights, and criminal justice reform groups, lawmakers voted through the funds to open one tower of CSP-II.

At the same time, Colorado has cut funds for inmate vocational training, re-entry programs, and mental health care–despite the fact that close to 40 percent of the prisoners in administrative segregation are believed to suffer from mental illness. Corrections department officials and others who support the opening of CSP-II say it is needed to protect guards and inmates alike from violent and unruly prisoners. But statistics do not support the contention that greater use of solitary confinement reduces risk. As CCJRC argues, ”Colorado can not ‘segregate’ its way to safety.”

In a strange confluence of events, the vote came just days before Sunday night’s airing of “Explorer: Solitary Confinement,” an episode of the popular National Geographic documentary series that focuses on prisoners in solitary at CSP-I. While it takes pains to present a “balanced” view, the show manages to convey something of the cruelty of Colorado’s liberal use of administrative segregation. On Sunday, Denver Post columnist Susan Greene wrote about the documentary:

“Solitary Confinement”…follows inmates through the 23 hours they spend each day locked down in cells, their food pushed through slots in their door. The 24th hour is for exercise, also alone.

The film debunks conceptions that these guys are all Hannibal Lecters. One is doing time for identity theft. Another stole a car. The average stint in isolation–or “ad-seg,” short for administrative segregation, as officials call it–is two years. Prisoners end up there not because of the crimes they committed, but for violations that corrections officials say threaten their administrative efficiency. It’s an attempt to modify behavior….

Colorado has no limit on how long the system can keep inmates in conditions that many experts call torturous. “When you move into a cell, you look on the floor and you’ll see where cement wore out from the last person who did the same thing you’ll be doing–walking from the bunk to the door, bunk to the door. Turn. Turn. Turn. . . . It does seem to break something inside you,” says Josue Gonzales, who has spent seven of his 29 years alone in CSP-I.

Greene quotes Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who has done extensive research on solitary confinement, and is featured in the National Geographic documentary. “It’s virtually guaranteed to make people worse,” Grassian says. “Ninety-five percent of these people will get out and be released back on the streets. All isolation will have done is make them as violent, crazy and dangerous as possible when they get out,” he continues. “This isn’t getting tough on crime. It’s getting tough on the community.”

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Filed Under: Colorado, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, legislation, mental illness, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,