Seven Days in Solitary [5/13/13]

May 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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

•  Media coverage on the urgency of closing Guantanamo was heavy throughout the past week, with an estimated 100  of the 166 detainees hunger striking. Most recently, Al Jazeera publishes a Guantanamo prison military document exposing the brutality of the force-feeding. According to the story, detainees “undergo a brutal and dehumanising medical procedure that requires them to wear masks over their mouths while they sit shackled in a restraint chair for as long as two hours…”

•  The New York Times reports that New York City is planning to change the way it disciplines incarcerated people with mental illness, creating alternatives to the use of solitary confinement. “[T]he city Correction Department will transfer severely mentally ill inmates to an internal clinic where psychiatrists will administer treatment and medicine, and the less seriously mentally ill will go to counseling programs designed to help them change their future behavior.”

•  The Los Angeles Times publishes an editorial on the harm inflicted on kids who are subjected to isolation, stating “[s]olitary confinement is ultimately a mental health issue for anyone who goes through it, and the practice, if it is to continue, should at the very least be documented for public review and monitored by mental health professionals.”

•  The Seattle Times reports on a new program at Washington State Penitentiary seeking to to ease violence in some of the most dangerous units inside the prison, minimizing the liklihood of reoffending. “Rival gang members — Norteños and Sureños, Bloods and Crips, white supremacists — all brought together to discuss ways to stay out of trouble, both in prison and when they get out.”

•  Angola 3 News reports on a federal lawsuit filed by Russell Maroon Shoatz’s lawyers protesting his 22 consecutive years in solitary confinement. The story also features a recent interview with activist Bret Grote and Shoatz’ lawyer, Dan Kovalik, taking a closer look at the lawsuit and confronting human rights abuses in U.S. prisons.

•  Momentum builds to end the solitary confinement of youth, with The Nation calling for support in urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to ban the use of solitary confinement on youth. The post links to an open letter “in support of a call by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and the ACLU imploring [Holder] to ban the practice of holding young people in federal custody in solitary confinement.”

•  The Republic reports on a federal lawsuit alleging that correctional officers at North Carolina’s Central Prison brutally beat prisoners held at the facility, using “blind spots” to avoid being seen by security cameras. “An amended complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court by lawyers at North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services says the beatings occurred in Unit One, a cell block known as “The Hole” where inmates are kept in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons.”

•  NDTV reports on the solitary confinement of Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at a high-security housing unit at a federal medical detention center in Massachusetts. “The only time Tsarnaev gets out of his tiny cell, that contains a sink, toilet, shower and a bed bolted to the floor, is for an hour of recreation every day.”

•  The Colorado Independent reports that Colorado’s El Pueblo Boys and Girls Ranch held Kiondre Davison, a 14-year old with an array of developmental disabilities, in solitary confinement for 25 days. “Of particular concern is imposing isolation on developmentally delayed kids. Kiondre is typical of such cases. He struggled to understand what was happening to him and so only loosely tied his actions at El Pueblo to the consequences they brought.”

•  Alan Prendergast reports that the legal team of Troy Anderson, who is currently incarcerated at Colorado’s supermax prison, has filed court papers contending that Department of Corrections officials have failed to comply with a previous ruling by a federal judge that Anderson is entitled to three hours a week of outdoor activity. Anderson’s attorneys assert that “their client is worse off than before, with less effective mental health treatment, following a transfer from the supermax to solitary confinement at the Sterling Correctional Facility.”

•  In an op-ed published on Times Union, Donn Rowe, President of New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, responds to a recent story on the harm inflicted on mentally ill people who are subjected to solitary confinement.   According to Rowe, “Special Housing Units are for inmates who are a danger to others and themselves.”

•  SFGate reports that Colorado has banned a youth treatment center in El Pueblo from placing teens in solitary confinement. The state found three violations of Colorado regulations in its investigation, which followed complaints by the ACLU that the program was violating the constitutional rights of youth.

•  Black Agenda Report reports that people held in isolation at California’s Pelican Bay may once again go on hunger strike, stating that “more than 200 inmates at the [facility] have been in solitary confinement for between five and ten years and nearly 100 have been shut off from most human contact for 20 years or more.” The story also calls for outside support, emphasizing the importance of having support networks in place beforehand.

•  New York City Councilmember Daniel Dromm denounces solitary confinement as “cruel and unusual” in a recent editorial, stating “[a]s a matter of fundamental human rights, how the DOC uses solitary confinement must radically change.”

•  The Boston Globe reports that the use of segregation units has come under increased scrutiny in Massachusetts, where approximately 500 of the state’s 11,000 prisoners are held in isolation on any given day. According to the story, “Prisoner-rights advocates, legislators, and even corrections commissioners in other states are increasingly denouncing the use of solitary confinement, while others defend the practice as an essential part of prison management.”

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Days in Solitary [5/4/13]

May 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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

•  Media coverage on the urgency of closing Guantanamo was particularly heavy this week, with numerous organizations and groups calling on President Obama to take immediate action. Most recently, The Economist described the prison as “a deeply un-American disgrace” in a story entitled “Guantanamo: Enough to make you gag,” an obvious reference to the unethical force-feeding of hunger strikers by authorities at the prison. The story outlines the U.S. government’s failure to take action to close the prison camp, concluding ”Mr. Obama should think about America’s founding principles, take out his pen and end this stain on its history.”

•  The Los Angeles Times reports that California Gov. Jerry Brown “appealed for relief from court orders over prison conditions” within just 24 hours of unveiling his plan to reduce overcrowding in the state’s prisons, which, according to another Times story, “would free some inmates early to ease crowding, but still miss court’s target.”

•  The Los Angeles Times reports that people held in isolation in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison are seeking class-action status in their federal lawsuit “alleging the state’s segregation policies equate to cruel and inhumane treatment.” In the motion filed  in U.S. District Court in Oakland, the plaintiffs assert that they have been subjected to prolonged confinement in ”windowless cells… with little meaningful contact with others, restricted food, limited communication and no access to educational or treatment programs.”

•  The Denver Channel reports that Evan Ebel, who is suspected of killing Colorado’s prison chief, filed two grievances in the final days of his incarceration in which he appealed his being kept in isolation up until his release, writing ”Do you have an obligation to the public to reacclimatize ‘dangerous’ inmates to being around other human beings prior to releasing them into society after they have spent years in solitary confinement & if not, why not?”

•  Slate publishes a three-part series of excerpts from the declassified memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who has been held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay for almost 11 years. The story describes Slahi’s handwritten 466-page manuscript as “a harrowing account of his detention, interrogation, and abuse.”

•  WHYY Public Media discusses the history of solitary confinement and the contemporary controversies surrounding these isolation practices in a Radio Times program. Guests include Sean Kelley (Senior Vice President and Director of Programming and Public Relations at Eastern State Penitentiary), Jules Lobel (University of Pittsburgh Law Professor and President of the Center for Constitutional Rights) and Shirley Moore (Executive Deputy Secretary of the Pennsylvania DOC).

•  Stars and Stripes reports on “life under lockdown”  for Guantanamo detainees, stating that “[w]ith nearly every one of the 166 Guantanamo prisoners now under lockdown — back in solitary existence after years of communal living — the military has reverted to a battle rhythm reminiscent of the Bush administration.”

•  Sharon Herald reports on the federal lawsuit filed by the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania and the ACLU charging that the use of solitary confinement on mentally ill people in Pennsylvania prisons qualifies as a violation of Constitutional rights. The lawsuit, which is seeking “changes in the way prisons respond to the mentally ill,” describes the state’s use of solitary confinement on mentally ill people as a “Dickensian nightmare.”

• James Ridgeway was named a finalist for an NCCD Media for a Just Society Award for his article on growing old in prison, “The Other Death Sentence.”

 

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Days in Solitary [4.27.13]

April 27, 2013 By 1 Comment

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

•  The Queens Chronicle reports on efforts by activists and New York City Council Members to increase transparency and and place stricter limits on the use of solitary confinement in New York City’s jails.

•  Susan Greene, in the Colorado Independent, continues her reporting on how years of solitary confinement may have affected Evan Ebel, prime suspect in the killing of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements.

•  Albany Times Union reports on the widespread use of solitary confinement on people with mental illness in New York State. The damage caused by solitary is illustrated in the story of the formerly incarcerated Jeff Rockefeller, who to this day struggles with uncontrollable crying, difficulty sleeping and nightmares.

•  Human Rights Watch reports  that 93 of the 166 detainees have joined the hunger strike at Guantanamo.

•  The Houston Chronicle reports on two bills currently under consideration by the Texas Legislature (House Bill 1266 and Senate Bill 1003) that would call for an examination of the state’s use of solitary confinement in order to identify feasible alternatives the practice. In the article, Texas death row exonoree Anthony Graves provides a powerful account of the tortuous conditions to which he was subjected in his over 18 years of administrative segregation.

•  The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces Shane Bauer as a a 2013 Hillman Prizes recipient for his article “No Way Out: A Special Report on Solitary Confinement from Former Hostage Shane Bauer.” The prize is awarded to “journalists whose work highlights important social and economic issues and helps bring about change for the better.”

•  The ACLU reports on a series of proposed bills that would restrict the use solitary confinement on youth in Texas. The story also details the state’s “failure  to take into account age when determining if a kid should be placed in solitary and a disregard for the mental-health of children held in isolation.”

•  KUT News reports on the abusive use of solitary confinement on youth in Texas, stating “juvenile offenders in Texas were placed in solitary confinement 36,820 times last year.”

•  Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz speaks out against the use of solitary confinement on youth, calling for support of a proposed bill in California (SB 61) that would “lead the way nationally in increasing access to rehabilitation and reducing harm for our young people.”

•  Prisoners rights group NCTT-Cor-SHU alleges that, in a blatant disregard of California state policies, administrators at Corcoron SHU instructed staff to cease all medical treatment of hunger strikers at the facility.

• Angola 3 News features an interview with Teresa Shoats, daughter of Russell Maroon Shoats, who has spent 28 of the last 30 years in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prisons, and is now the subject of an activist campaign to win his release from isolation.

Filed Under: mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Seven Days in Solitary [4.20.13]

April 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven Days in Solitary [4.12.13]

April 12, 2013 By 1 Comment

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

• Developments surrounding the systemic failures in California prisons were covered heavily by the media. Most recently, the Los Angeles Times reported on California judges’ threat to find Gov. Jerry Brown in contempt of court if he and the state do not “quickly produce a plan to remove thousands of convicts from California’s packed prisons.”

• In a strongly worded editorial, Bloomberg View denounces on the inhumane practice of solitary confinement in the U.S., stating that its use in “prisons and detention centers has broken the bounds of reason and decency.”

• The Toronto Star reports on the high-profile inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the teen who died in solitary confinement in Canada. Lawyers representing Smith’s family and advocacy groups “want to ensure the inquest leads to significant reductions in the use of segregation in Canadian prisons, and a ban on it for mentally ill offenders.”

• Susan Greene, writing in the Colorado Independent, reports on a recent statement by fellow Colorado State Penitentiary prisoner Troy Anderson, that Evan Ebel’s suicide note shows he was “‘ruined’ by solitary and ‘bent on revenge.’”

• Writing on The Hill’s Congress blog, Ian Kysel, author of Growing Up Locked Down, urges the U.S. government to ban the use of solitary confinement on children in federal custody. While solitary is harmful to adults, Kysel writes, ”the potential damage to children, who do not have the maturity and resilience of an adult and are at a particularly vulnerable, formative stage of life, is much greater.”

• The ACLU of Colorado calls on the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to end the solitary confinement of kids in Colorado’s El Pueblo Residential Treatment Center.

• The New York World  reports on the torments experienced by Rasaun Bullock during his 49 months in solitary confinement on Rikers Island.

• The Investigative Writing Workshop reports on the government’s review of solitary confinement practices in immigration centers in the U.S. The article referenced new government data (first revealed by the New York Times) showing that “about 300 immigrant detainees are in solitary in the top centers around the country while they wait for a finding of their legal status.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, 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: , , , , , , ,

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

February 8, 2013 By 5 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Read more...]

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

Guantanamo “Is Not an Aberration”: How the War on Terror Came Home

July 6, 2012 By 3 Comments

An important new article by Laura Rovner and Jeanne Theoharis appears in the current issue of American University Law Review. Both Rovner and Theoharis have been deeply involved in the issue of solitary confinement: As director of the Civil Rights Clinic and the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, Rovner has overseen several challenges in the federal courts to the use of long-term solitary confinement, both at the federal supermax known as ADX Florence and at the Colorado State Penitentiary. Theoharis, a professor of political science at the City University of New York, is co-founder of Educators for Civil Liberties and has written and advocated on behalf of her former student Syed Fahad Hashmi. Arrested in 2006, Hashmi was held in pre-trial solitary confinement under “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMs) in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Detention Center for nearly three years before pleading guilty to conspiring to supply material support to a terrorist organization (largely in the form of clothing), after which he was again placed in extreme solitary confinement, at ADX Florence.

The Hashmi case forms the core of the new article, titled “Preferring Order to Justice.” Rovner and Theoharis point out that “In the decade since 9/11, much has been written about the ‘War on Terror’ and the rights violations of people detained at Guantanamo, in naval brigs, or subjected to rendition and torture in CIA black sites.” They continue:

In challenging these detentions, advocates for the detainees focused their efforts on federal court habeas review, and more recently, as prosecutions of Guantanamo detainees have resumed, many commentators have invoked the federal courts as exemplars of justice, contrasting them to military commissions. Because of the prioritization of advocacy around Guantanamo detainees, many human rights groups and advocates have been reluctant to scrutinize and to speak out against the practices used in those courts for fear of giving ammunition to conservatives and contradicting their own message to bring the Guantanamo detainees into the system. The federal courts are thus often referenced as the “gold standard” of American justice and held up to show what due process looks like when it is done right.

But todays federal courts are far from being “exemplars of justice,” the authors argue, especially when it comes to trying terrorism-related cases. Instead, while the attention of advocates has been focused on rights violations at “such places as Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Baghram,” the federal system here at home has been “similarly infected”–to such an extent that it now provides little real justice. [Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, due process, Eighth Amendment, federal prisons, human rights, physical effects, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture 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: , , , , , , ,

The Guantánamos Next Door

January 11, 2012 By 13 Comments
LA County Jail

The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay turns 10 today, and activists are marking the anniversary with protests and petitions, reports and retrospectives. A decade after its founding, Guantánamo remains a dark stain on the national soul.

Even today, while the worst instances of torture may have ceased under the Obama Administration, prisoners are still subjected to solitary confinement and other forms of deprivation and abuse. According to a February 2009 report from the Center of Constitutional Rights: “The descriptions of ongoing, severe solitary confinement, other forms of psychological abuse, incidents of violence and the threat of violence from guards, religious abuse, and widespread forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers indicate that the inhumane practices of the Bush Administration persist today at Guantánamo.”

Then there’s the fact that the prisoners at Guantánamo have been deprived of their liberty without any semblance of due process. Over the last decade, 779 prisoners have been held at Gitmo; 171 remain. Only six have ever been convicted of a crime.

When it comes to depriving people of their human and civil rights, Guantánamo stands as an unprecedented extreme. But it is far from the only place where these things happen. Today, in our cities and towns, in every state in America, there are places where individuals are incarcerated without trial, and where they suffer deprivation and abuse. They are our local jails.

Take the issue of pre-trial detention. According to the Pre-Trial Justice Institute, a full 61% of U.S. jail inmates–nearly half a million in all–have not yet been convicted of any crime. Many have not even been accused of a violent crime. The majority of them are in jail because they cannot afford the modest bail required for their release. A 2010 study by Human Rights Watch looked at defendants in New York City arrested on nonfelony charges. ”Most were accused of nonviolent minor crimes such as shoplifting, turnstile jumping, smoking marijuana in public, drug possession, trespassing, and prostitution.” It found that “87 percent were incarcerated because they were unable to post the bail amount at their arraignment,” even though bail had been set at $1,000. These defendants faced weeks, months, or years in pre-trial confinement for no reason other than poverty.

While awaiting trial, these individuals face appallingly overcrowded conditions, inadequate food–and far worse. On New York City’s Rikers Island, nearly one in twelve prisoners is held in solitary confinement at any given time; the jail maintains two isolation units specifically for inmates with mental illness, and another for juveniles. Pre-trial solitary is routinely used on underaged inmates, to separate from the adult jail population; one report out of Texas found juveniles in the Harris County Jail spending a year or more in complete isolation. In the most extreme cases–such as that of Syed Fahad Hashmi, pre-trial detainees are held under “Special Administrative Measures” that constitute acute sensory deprivation.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, due process, human rights, juveniles, mental illness, New York, solitary confinement, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts