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

Florida Bill Would Limit Use of Solitary Confinement on Children

March 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

When asked to describe his experience in solitary confinement in a Florida jail at the age of 16, Henry R. (pseudonym) stated:

The only thing left to do is go crazy—just sit and talk to the walls… I catch myself [talking to the walls] every now and again. It’s starting to become a habit because I have nothing else to do. I can’t read a book. I work out and try to make the best of it. But there is no best. Sometimes I go crazy and can’t even control my anger anymore… I can’t even get [out of solitary confinement] early if I do better, so it is frustrating and I just lose it. Screaming, throwing stuff around… I feel like I am alone, like no one cares about me sometimes I feel like, why am I even living?

The quote comes from the 2012 report Growing Up Locked Down, which covers the use of solitary confinement on children and teens under the age of 18 in U.S. jails and prisons. The comprehensive report, prepared by the ACLU and Humans Rights Watch, calls for an end to the isolation of young people, based on evidence of the profound psychological damage such isolation can cause.

Now, Florida legislators are considering a bill that would help prevent kids like Henry R. from being subjected to the abusive use of solitary confinement. Filed last month by State Senator Audrey Gibson, the bill, called the Youth in Solitary Confinement Reduction Act (SB 812), seeks to reduce the detrimental impact of solitary confinement on young persons by prohibiting the use of the practice except under specific circumstances.

The proposed legislation requires that the confinement be “the least restrictive to maintain the safety of the youth prisoner and the institution.” The bill further imposes time limits on the use of confinement by situation, restricting emergency confinement and disciplinary confinement to 24 and 72 hours, respectively, also requiring time out of solitary cells to lessen the effects of psychological damage.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Florida, human rights, juveniles, legislation, psychological effects, solitary confinement Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Kids in Solitary Confinement: America’s Official Child Abuse

October 11, 2012 By 16 Comments

The title of this post is the title of our most recent piece for The Guardian. It draws on a new report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, titled Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States. The report is a shocking and powerful document, and should not be missed. Our piece on it follows.

Molly J said of her time in solitary confinement: “[I felt] doomed, like I was being banished … Like you have the plague or that you are the worst thing on earth. Like you are set apart [from] everything else. I guess [I wanted to] feel like I was part of the human race – not like some animal.”

Molly was just 16 years old when she was placed in isolation in an adult jail in Michigan. She described her cell as “a box”: “There was a bed – the slab. It was concrete … There was a stainless steel toilet/sink combo … The door was solid, without a food slot or window … There was no window at all.”

Molly remained in solitary for several months, locked down alone in her cell for at least 22 hours a day.

No other nation in the developed world routinely tortures its children in this manner. And torture is indeed the word brought to mind by a shocking report released today by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. Growing Up Locked Down documents, for the first time, the widespread use of solitary confinement on youth under the age of 18 in prisons and jails across the country, and the deep and permanent harm it causes to kids caught up in the adult criminal justice system.

Ian Kysel, author of the 141-page report, interviewed or corresponded with more than 125 young people who had spent time in solitary as children in 19 states. To cope with endless hours of extreme isolation, sensory deprivation and crippling loneliness, Kysel learned that some children made up imaginary friends or played games in their heads. Some hid under the covers and tried to sleep as much as possible, while others found they could not sleep at all.

“Being in isolation to me felt like I was on an island all alone dying a slow death from the inside out,” a California teen wrote in a letter to Human Rights Watch.

One young woman, who spent three months in solitary in Florida when she was 15, described becoming a “cutter” while in isolation: “I like to take staples and carve letters and stuff in my arm … Each letter means something to me. It is something I had lost.” She started by carving into her arm the first letter of her mother’s name. Another girl who cut herself in solitary said, “because it was the only release of my pain.”

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Filed Under: Eighth Amendment, featured posts, human rights, international agreements, juveniles, psychological effects, sexual assault, solitary confinement, suicide Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

New Report Shows Juvenile Lifers Suffering in Solitary Confinement

January 3, 2012 By 5 Comments

The United States is the only national in the world that doles out life sentences for crimes committed while the offender was below the age of 18. According to a report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch, “approximately 2,570 youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons,” and as inmates they ”experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights.”

The report “draws on six years of research, and interviews and correspondence with correctional officials and hundreds of youth offenders serving life without parole,” and presages the Supreme Court’s upcoming review of juvenile LWOP. “Youth offenders are serving life without parole sentences in 38 states and in federal prisons,” HRW reports. “Prison policies that channel resources to inmates who are expected to be released often result in denying youth serving life without parole opportunities for education, development, and rehabilitation.”

Among the report’s shocking findings is the fact that “nearly every youth offender serving life without parole reported physical violence or sexual abuse by other inmates or corrections officers.” Unsurprisingly, “Youth offenders commonly reported having thoughts of suicide, feelings of intense loneliness, or depression. Isolation was frequently compounded by solitary confinement. In the past five years, at least three youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States have committed suicide.”

In its section on “Protective and Punitive Isolation,” the report finds that “Youth offenders often spend significant amounts of their time in US prisons isolated from the general prison population. Such segregation can be an attempt to protect vulnerable youth offenders from the general population, to punish infractions of prison rules, or to manage particular categories of inmates, such as alleged gang members. Youth offenders frequently described their experience in segregation as a profoundly difficult ordeal.”

It continues: “Life in long-term isolation usually involves segregating inmates for 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch described the devastating loneliness of spending their days alone, without any human contact, except for when a guard passes them a food tray through a slot in the door, or when guards touch their wrists when handcuffing them through the same slot before taking them to the exercise room or for a shower once a week. Youth had the same experience and feelings whether they had been isolated to protect or to punish them.”

The report’s findings on the use of solitary confinement on juvenile lifers (with corresponding footnotes) appears below. You can also read the full report–which includes a series of recommendations to the president, Congress, corrections officials, and judges–online or as a PDF.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, human rights, juveniles, life without parole, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , ,

Tuesday Night in NYC: Forum on Solitary Confinement Features UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

October 17, 2011 By 7 Comments

Tonight, a coalition of human rights and civil rights groups and faith communities will host a briefing and panel discussion on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails, featuring some of the leading experts and advocates on this issue as well as the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, who tracks torture worldwide. The following material comes from the flyer about the forum.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), The General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Human Rights Watch, Rabbis for Human Rights- North America, Physicians for Human Rights, Metro New York Religious Campaign Against Torture, The Mennonite Central Committee UN Office, Unitarian Universalist Association United Nations Office, Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, Amnesty International USA

Invite you to attend a briefing and panel discussion on

The Dangerous Over-Use of Solitary Confinement: Pervasive Human Rights Violations in Prisons, Jails & Other Places of Detention

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 6:00 PM- 7:30 PM

Church Center for the United Nations, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, New York

44th Street Entrance – Second Floor Conference Room

Each day tens of thousands of prisoners and detainees in the U.S. and abroad are held in solitary confinement.  Usually in isolation for at least 23 hours a day and denied all meaningful human contact, these prisoners and detainees are frequently held for months, years, and sometimes decades in conditions that the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council has found can amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and even torture.  This briefing will examine the detrimental impacts of solitary confinement, the science that supports its finding as a human rights violation, and the disproportionate impact of its use on mentally ill persons and youth. Panelists will also explore the legal framework for protecting prisoners and detainees from solitary confinement and strategies advocates and others are currently using to end its abusive use.

Keynote by

Juan E. Mendez, Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment

Panel discussion by

*        Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director, National Religious Campaign Against Torture

*        David Fathi, Director, National Prison Project, American Civil Liberties Union

*        Jamie Fellner, Senior Advisor, U.S. Program, Human Rights Watch

*        Dr. Homer Venters, MD MS, Center for Health and Human Rights, NYU Medical School

*        Prof. Craig Haney, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz

In August, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, issued an interim report on the use of solitary confinement internationally. The report summary follows, but the full report is well worth reading.

Interim report of the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

Summary

In the present report, submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 65/205, the Special Rapporteur addresses issues of special concern and recent developments in the context of his mandate. The Special Rapporteur draws the attention of the General Assembly to his assessment that solitary confinement is practised in a majority of States. He finds that where the physical conditions and the prison regime of solitary confinement cause severe mental and physical pain or suffering, when used as a punishment, during pre-trial detention, indefinitely, prolonged, on juveniles or persons with mental disabilities, it can amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and even torture. In addition, the use of solitary confinement increases the risk that acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment will go undetected and unchallenged.

The report highlights a number of general principles to help to guide States to re-evaluate and minimize its use and, in certain cases, abolish the practice of solitary confinement. The practice should be used only in very exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, for as short a time as possible. He further emphasizes the need for minimum procedural safeguards, internal and external, to ensure that all persons deprived of their liberty are treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, international agreements, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Solitary Confinement Is a “Challenge for Medical Ethics”

August 11, 2010 By 3 Comments

Los Angeles County Jail: America's largest mental health facility. (Riker's Island is second.)

Anyone interested in solitary confinement should be aware of this article in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law: “Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics,” by Jeffrey L. Metzner, MD and Jamie Fellner, Esq. Metzner is a respected forensic psychiatrist and professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine; Fellner is senior counsel in the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch. 

Several professional organizations and activist groups made up of medical and mental health practitioners have condemned the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere in the so-called war on terror. In particular, they have denounced the idea that members of their professions should play any role in that treatment. But as Metzner and Fellner point out, there has been “scant professional or academic attention to the unique ethics-related quandary of physicians and other health-care professionals when prisons isolate inmates with mental illness.” This despite the fact that for some prisoners, “isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.”

The authors provide an overview of the use of extended solitary confinement, both on prisoners in general and on those who suffer from mental illness. As we’ve written before, prisons and jails are now the nation’s largest institutions for the mentally ill, and solitary confinement cells in particular serve as our new asylums. Yet “very few physicians in the APA [American Psychiatric Association] and AMA [American Medical Association] have experience or knowledge regarding correctional mental health care, let alone correctional environments in general,” write Metzner and Fellner.  ”Administrative segregation, supermax, rules infractions, mental health rounds, and ‘kites’ are terms most noncorrectional physicians do not understand.” A ”serious educational effort” is needed, they argue, so that mental health practitioners understand such practices as “the isolation of seriously ill patients for months, even years, that would never be condoned in a noncorrectional mental health setting.”

Metzner and Fellner end by urging these professionals to take an ethical stand, and to “use their institutional authority” to challenge the torturous practices.

The professional organizations should acknowledge that it is not ethically defensible for health care professionals to acquiesce silently to conditions of confinement that inflict mental harm and violate human rights. They should affirm that practitioners are ethically obligated, not only to treat segregated inmates with mental illness, but also to strive to change harmful segregation policies and practices. Finally, the organizations should not be content with clarifying the ethics-related responsibilities of individual practitioners in these circumstances. They should actively support practitioners who work for changed segregation policies, and they should use their institutional authority to press for a nationwide rethinking of the use of isolation. The medical professions’ commitment to ethics and human rights would be well served by such steps.

What follows is the abstract of the article. The full piece, which is accessible to readers with no background in medicine or the law, is available online. 

In recent years, prison officials have increasingly turned to solitary confinement as a way to manage difficult or dangerous prisoners. Many of the prisoners subjected to isolation, which can extend for years, have serious mental illness, and the conditions of solitary confinement can exacerbate their symptoms or provoke recurrence. Prison rules for isolated prisoners, however, greatly restrict the nature and quantity of mental health services that they can receive. In this article, we describe the use of isolation (called segregation by prison officials) to confine prisoners with serious mental illness, the psychological consequences of such confinement, and the response of U.S. courts and human rights experts. We then address the challenges and human rights responsibilities of physicians confronting this prison practice. We conclude by urging professional organizations to adopt formal positions against the prolonged isolation of prisoners with serious mental illness.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, human rights, international agreements, mental illness, physical effects, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

U.S. Supermax Prisons Are Challenged in the European Court of Human Rights–and Lose the First Round

July 8, 2010 By 6 Comments

The Federal Penitentiary Administrative Maximum ("ADX") in Florence, Colorado, where conditions may violate the European Convention on Human Rights' prohibition against "torture or inhuman and degrading treatment"

For years, four British nationals have been fighting against their extradition to the United States to face various terrorism charges, arguing that such a move would place them at risk of human right violations, as defined by the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. When courts in the UK ruled against the four men, they took their cause to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Among other things, the British suspects have argued that if extradited, they could face a lifetime of solitary confinement under “special administrative measures” (SAMs), most likely at ADX Florence, the notorious federal supermax prison in Colorado. Such confinement, they contend, would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The UK sought to have the suspects’ complaint dismissed. But today, the European Court of Human Rights “declared admissible” the portions of the complaint dealing with supermax conditions, as well as with life sentences without the possibility of parole.

A press release issued earlier today by the Registrar of the European Court summarized the case (Babar Ahmad and Others v. the United Kingdom) this way:

The applicants alleged in particular that, despite the diplomatic assurances provided by the United States, they were at risk, if extradited, of being subjected to an unfair trial–due to the use of evidence obtained through torture and/or of coercive plea bargaining–at the conclusion of which they could be designated as enemy combatants. They also alleged that, once extradited, they were at risk of extraordinary rendition and life imprisonment without parole and/or extremely long sentences in a “supermax” prison such as ADX Florence where special administrative measures would be applied to them. They relied on Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), 5 (right to liberty and security), 6 (right to a fair trial), 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination).

Based on promises made by the United States, the Court ruled that if extradited, the British suspects would not be at risk of extraordinary rendition, of being tried as enemy combatants, or of unfair trials or discrimination. It had also received assurances that the suspects would not face the death penalty. When it came to confinement for life in Florence ADX, however, the Court found a credible case could might be made that such punishment would violate the European Convention. The Court requested further briefing on a number of questions, including the following, before it issues its final ruling:

  • Given the length of the sentences faced by [three of the four suspects] if convicted, would the time spent at a “supermax” prison, the US Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum, Florence, Colorado (“ADX Florence”), amount to a violation of Article 3?
  • Does the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution (prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment”), as interpreted by the federal courts, provide protection equivalent to Article 3 of the Convention?

The four British terrorism suspects are represented by the firm of renowned British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce (who wrote about the case here). The information presented to the European Court on Human Rights on their behalf reads like a rundown of evidence for the torturous nature of solitary confinement in general, and lockdown at ADX Florence in particular. Following are the relevant paragraphs from the Court’s decision.

90. The applicants relied on a series of newspaper articles on ADX Florence, including a Time magazine article of 5 November 2006 described spartan cells and almost no contact between prisoners and other people, since food, mail and laundry were passed through a slot in the cell door. Prisoners were strip-searched before they were allowed to exercise. There were also staff shortages which caused irregular meal times, reduced telephone calls and exercise time. A television interview with a former warden also described frequent force-feeding as a result of hunger strikes by prisoners in protest at their conditions.

91. The applicants also provided a report by a psychiatrist, Dr Terry Kupers, which had been prepared specifically for the present proceedings. He considered that a supermax prison regime did not amount to sensory deprivation but there was an almost total lack of meaningful human communication. This tended to induce a range of psychological symptoms ranging from panic to psychosis and emotional breakdown. All studies into the effects of supermax detention had found such symptoms after sixty days’ detention. Once such symptoms presented, it was not sufficient to return someone to normal prison conditions in order to remedy them. If supermax detention were imposed for an indeterminate period it also led to chronic despair. Approximately half of suicides in prison involved the 6-8% of prisoners held in such conditions. The effects of supermax conditions were worse for someone with pre-existing mental health problems. Dr Kuper’s conclusions were supported by a number of journal articles by psychologists and criminologists, which the applicants provided.

92. The applicants also provided a copy of the Istanbul statement on the use and effects of solitary confinement, which was adopted at the International Psychological Trauma Symposium in December 2007. Its participants included the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. The statement included the following on the effects of solitary confinement:

“it has been convincingly documented on numerous occasions that solitary confinement may cause serious psychological and sometimes physiological ill effects. Research suggests that between one-third and as many as 90 per cent of prisoners experience adverse symptoms in solitary confinement. A long list of symptoms ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis has been documented. Negative health effects can occur after only a few days in solitary confinement, and the health risks rise with each additional day spent in such conditions.

Individuals may react to solitary confinement differently. Still. a significant number of individuals will experience serious health problems regardless of the specific conditions, regardless of lime and place, and regardless of pre-existing personal factors. The central harmful feature of solitary confinement is that it reduces meaningful social contact to a level of social and psychological stimulus that many will experience as insufficient to sustain health and well-being.

The use of solitary confinement in remand prisons carries with it another harmful dimension since the detrimental effects will often create a de facto situation of psychological pressure which can influence the pretrial detainees lo plead guilty. When the element of psychological pressure is used on purpose as part of isolation regimes such practices become coercive and can amount to torture.”

93. The applicants also submitted a report from the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver, which had acted for a number of prisoners at ADX Florence. The report noted that conditions were even more severe for those prisoners who were subjected to special administrative measures. For example, such prisoners could only communicate with his “attorney of record”. This made it impossible to contact an attorney to request representation to challenge special administrative measures. Requests made directly to the court to have an attorney appointed were denied. There had been no successful challenges to designation to ADX Florence and challenges could only succeed where confinement in supermax affected the prisoner’s date of release or where he was severely mentally ill. The report accepted that the step-down programme could take a minimum of three years but prisoners could be removed from it and returned to “general population” if they were found guilty of misconduct or for “administrative reasons”. The report highlighted the cases of several Muslim prisoners who had fulfilled all of the criteria for admission to the step-down programme except for the requirement that the original reasons for placement at ADX Florence be “sufficiently mitigated”. However, several prisoners had only been transferred from lower security prisons to ADX Florence after 11 September 2001 (despite no evidence of their involvement in the attacks) and thus it was difficult for them to demonstrate that the reason for their placement had been mitigated. Two Muslim clients of the Civil Rights Center had spent respectively five and ten years in general population units but had not been admitted to the step-down programme. Another had spent five years in a general population unit and had only been admitted after retaining the Center in a lawsuit.

94. Both the applicants and Government made reference to a letter dated 2 May 2007 from Human Rights Watch to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons which followed a tour the organisation had been given of ADX Florence. The letter expressed concerns that a number of prisoners convicted of terrorism offences had been sent to the prison based on the nature of their crimes and, despite good conduct since their arrival, had remained in general population units and thus outside the step-down programme for up to nine years. The letter made suggestions for improvement in respect of recreation, mail, telephone use, the library. It also noted that progress was to be made on better meeting prisoners’ religious needs, such as the provision of a full-time imam and commended the educational programmes available through the prison’s television system. The letter urged the prison authorities to investigate reports of retaliation against prisoners who were on hunger strike in the form of transfer to harsher cells. The letter also said that Human Rights Watch was extremely concerned about the effects of long-term isolation and highly limited exercise on the mental health of prisoners and criticised reports of rushed consultations between prisoners and psychologists, as well as the fact that evaluations were carried out via closed circuit television.

95. The applicants obtained a second letter from Human Rights Watch, dated 21 August 2008, which stated that Human Rights Watch considered conditions at ADX violated the United States’ treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. It was unremarkable that “minor adjustments” had been made to the regime but it remained in essence one of “long-term and indefinite incarceration in conditions of extreme social isolation and sensory deprivation”.

96. Human Rights Watch’s second letter also provided extracts from two United Nations reports from 2006 on supermax detention. In the first, the United Nations Human Rights Committee stated:

“The Committee reiterates its concern that conditions in some maximum security prisons are incompatible with the obligation contained in article 10 (1) of the Covenant to treat detainees with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. It is particularly concerned by the practice in some such institutions to hold detainees in prolonged cellular confinement, and to allow them out-of-cell recreation for only five hours per week, in general conditions of strict regimentation in a depersonalized environment. It is also concerned that such treatment cannot be reconciled with the requirement in article 10 (3) that the penitentiary system shall comprise treatment the essential aim of which shall be the reformation and social rehabilitation of prisoners. It also expresses concern about the reported high numbers of severely mentally ill persons in these prisons, as well as in regular in [sic] U.S. jails.

The State party should scrutinize conditions of detention in prisons, in particular in maximum security prisons, with a view to guaranteeing that persons deprived of their liberty be treated in accordance with the requirements of article ID of the Covenant and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.”

97. The second report was from the United Nations Committee Against Torture, which stated:

“The Committee remains concerned about the extremely harsh regime imposed on detainees in ‘supermaximum prisons’. The Committee is concerned about the prolonged isolation periods detainees are subjected to, the effect such treatment has on their mental health, and that its purpose may be retribution, in which case it would constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (art. 16). The State party should review the regime imposed on detainees in ‘supermaximum prisons’, in particular the practice of prolonged isolation.”

For more on ADX Florence, see 60 Minutes, “Supermax: A Clean Version of Hell” and the ADX page at Supermaxed.com.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Colorado, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, federal prisons, human rights, international, international agreements, lawsuits/litigation, physical effects, psychological effects, sentencing, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, terrorism cases, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Supreme Court Decision Limits Juvenile Life Without Parole (Within Limits)

May 17, 2010 By 8 Comments

CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN

The U.S. Supreme Court today barred a practice that is already considered unconscionable in the rest of the world. In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that sentencing juveniles to life without the possibility of parole for any crime short of murder violates the Constitution’s 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court ordered a parole hearing for Terence Graham, who was sentenced to LWOP forcrimes committed when he was 17. Graham was convicted of taking part in an armed robbery and home invasion in which no one was killed. The Court also struck down laws in 37 states that allow sentences of LWOP terms for non-homicides by juveniles. Currently, 129 inmates nationwide are serving such terms; 77 of them are in Florida. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court, said a life prison term with no chance for parole is too extreme for a juvenile criminal whose offenses involve robbery or assault. He also noted that prior to today, ‘The United States is the only nation that imposes life without parole sentences on juvenile non-homicide offenders.’ Kennedy said these young criminals are not entitled to a ‘guarantee’ of eventual release, but they do deserve ‘some realistic opportunity to obtain release’ if they can show they are no longer a danger to the community.

The issue of juvenile LWOP is closely tied to solitary confinement, since as we have written before, a large number of young offenders end up in long-term isolation in adult prisons, either because they are considered disciplinary problems, because they feel compelled to join prison gangs, or because they have to be isolated from adult offenders “for their own protection.”

The ruling will help a small group of prisoners, including Ian Manuel, who was given LWOP for a botched robbery attempt in Tampa, in which a woman suffered a non-fatal gunshot wound. According to one of several pieces on his case by Meg Laughlin in the St. Petersburg Times, when Ian Manuel ”arrived at the prison processing center in Central Florida [in 1991], he was so small no one could find a prison uniform to fit him…Someone cut 6 inches off the boy’s pant legs so he would have something to wear.” An assistant warden told Laughlin that Manuel was “scared of everything and acting like a tough guy as a defense mechanism…He didn’t stand a chance in an adult prison.” Within months, Manuel was placed in solitary, where he has remained ever since.

Laughlin wrote a new piece about Manuel last week, as he awaited the Supreme Court decision that would determine how he spends the rest of his life. 

Manuel, now 33, has spent nearly all of his time in prison in solitary confinement, caught in an endless cycle of misbehavior and punishment. As Florida’s longest-serving inmate in solitary, he has no work skills, no formal education and so much psychological damage that he once set himself on fire.

People always assumed — whether he killed himself or died of old age — that Ian Manuel’s death would happen behind bars. Not anymore. He may walk out of prison in the next year…

Confronted with the possibility of his release, prison officials, who had kept Manuel as far away from civilization as they could, are scrambling to prepare him for life outside. And his attorneys are laying out a plan that will attempt to protect Manuel from a world he fears will present him with more choices than he can handle. ”The uncertainty out there makes me nervous,” he says, “but I’m determined to succeed.”

When he began his sentence in a tough adult prison at age 14, he was small and defensive. Afraid to appear vulnerable, he got into trouble immediately. He’d veer into the grass instead of walking on the path in the prison yard. When guards yelled at him, he’d yell back. When they came at him, he’d make obscene gestures. In less than a year, he was in solitary.

From there, the disciplinary infractions multiplied — for storing aspirin, for sticking his hand through the food flap, for standing at his cell door, for masturbating and for cursing. He would go six months at a time lying on his bed in what he called “a state of hibernation” to stay out of trouble. But it didn’t matter. Each infraction added months and after a while the hole was so deep he couldn’t get out.

Recently, he received a visit from someone not on his legal team. It was his first in 15 years. Leaning forward toward the glass separating him from his visitor, he tried to explain what kept him there: “I’d tell myself to keep quiet and behave. But I was so desperate I couldn’t control my impulses.”

The result has been a life stripped of life. No programs or education. No visitors, phone calls or human touch. No books, magazines, TV or radio. No talking. No standing at the cell door and looking out. Three 10-minute showers a week. Meals pushed through a flap in the door. Enforced idleness in a concrete box, year after year.

According to corrections reports, Manuel became a cutter at 17 — slicing his arms with tiny fragments of glass and metal and watching the blood flow. “It gave me relief from the intolerable numbness,” he said.

At different times over the years he went on a hunger strike, overdosed on pills and even set himself on fire with a smuggled match and newspaper he tied to his legs with strips of bedsheet. The result wasn’t therapy, it was harsher solitary: No clothes, no mattress, no sheet. A bare cell with 24-hour lights, 60-degree temperatures and no view out. “It’s a miracle I haven’t totally lost my mind,” he said.

In 2007, he testified by video from solitary confinement at a hearing before Jacksonville federal judge Henry Adams. Manuel described a life of “complete hopelessness.” When he finished talking about trying to kill himself “to end the pain,” Adams called a recess because Manuel’s circumstances so upset him he had to leave the courtroom.

University of California psychologist Craig Haney evaluated solitary confinement at three prisons where Manuel has been held, as part of a case filed by a group of inmates. “Glaringly inhumane,” wrote Haney in his report, citing “harsh treatment, deprived conditions and excessive punitiveness.”

“Ian learned to live under extraordinary control and deprivation,” Haney said recently. “He can’t undo the effects of almost 20 years on his own. He’s facing enormous psychological challenges if he’s released.”

Keep in mind, however, that the Supreme Courts decision affects on a fraction of the inmates serving life without parole for crime committed as juveniles. These number more than 2,500 in all, victims of an explosion in adult sentencing of children  in the final decades of the 20th century. The Heritage Foundation marked the Supreme Court’s decision today in a blog post titled “Court Upholds Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers.” Any child convicted of a homicide can still be sentenced to die in prison. This includes the estimated 26 percent serving LWOP “for felony or ‘accomplice’ murder, in which the juvenile was not the person who killed the victim,” according to a report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  

Research by the Equal Justice Initiative, which issued the 2007 report Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison, found ”73 cases where children 13 and 14 years of age have been condemned to death in prison,” nearly two-thirds of them children of color. In most of the cases, “the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences have never been reviewed” because the children don’t have lawyers to mount such challenges. Most of the sentences were mandatory, and “the court could not give any consideration to the child’s age or life history.” Even among homicides, many were “offenses where older teenagers or adults were involved and primarily responsible.”

Finally, as Sara Mayeux points out on her Prison Law Blog, being eligible for parole by no means guarantees that these inmates will ever actually see the light of day: ”[I]nsofar as juveniles have now won a right to a parole hearing,” Mayeux writes, “we might question how meaningful of a right that really is (notwithstanding the “some meaningful opportunity” language [in Kennedy's opinion]) given that in many states, parole hearings have become a sort of charade in which the prisoner can never actually win release, because the parole board routinely denies parole eligbility based solely upon the facts of the underlying crime, which is the one thing that the prisoner, of course, can never change.”

In other words, for thousands of child offenders, the Supreme Court’s decision today offers no hope.

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Filed Under: Constitution, Eighth Amendment, Florida, human rights, juveniles, life without parole, psychological effects, race, sentencing, solitary confinement, suicide Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Solitary Confinement Cells Have Become America’s New Asylums

February 20, 2010 By 7 Comments

Our article “Locking Down the Mentally Ill” appeared last week on The Crime Report, the online publication of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College, City University of New York. We’re posting a few excerpts here, but hope you will read the entire piece on The Crime Report‘s site.

“If you want to know where they are all being kept,” said Todd Winstrom, “they’re down in the hole.”

Winstrom, a staff attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, was talking about what happens to mentally ill offenders when they enter his state’s prison system. Without treatment options—and without anyplace else to put them—these prisoners quickly end up in solitary confinement, where they may remain for months or years.

Since solitary confinement has been shown to cause severe psychological trauma in prisoners without underlying psychiatric conditions, it would be difficult to imagine a more damaging place to incarcerate the mentally ill….

Wisconsin is far from alone in these practices. While there are no national statistics to indicate how many mentally ill prisoners end up in lockdown, a 2003 report from Human Rights Watch, based on available data from states around the country, found one-third to one-half of prisoners held in what are usually called “secure housing units” (SHUs) and “special management units” (SMUs) were mentally ill.

The report concluded that “persons with mental illness often have difficulty complying with strict prison rules, particularly when there is scant assistance to help them manage their disorders….eventually accumulating substantial histories of disciplinary infractions, they land for prolonged periods in disciplinary or administrative segregation.”

In the article, we look at what happened in recent years in New York State when the group Disability Advocates sued on behalf of mentally ill inmates, and an organized movement began pressing for state legislation to ban their placement in solitary confinement.

The movement’s ammunition came largely from a 2003 report by the non-profit Correctional  Association of New York. The group had visited nearly all of New York’s 26 SHUs, where some 5,000 prisoners were held in lockdown for periods that in some cases lasted 23-hours-a-day or more.  Its report found that a quarter—and in some units as many as half—of the prisoners were “identified as seriously mentally ill.” The SHUs held about 10 percent of the system’s prisoners, but accounted for nearly half of its suicides.

A third of the SHU prisoners engaged in cutting or other forms of self-mutilation. “Unthinkable to outside observers,” the Correctional Association said, “the Department [of Corrections] issues misbehavior reports to inmates who attempt to kill or harm themselves”—and the punishment was often more time in lockdown. While the state’s prison population had tripled in the previous 20 years, it still had the same number of places—just 200—in its sole psychiatric center. The Correctional Association’s Executive Director Robert Gangi would later describe placing mentally ill inmates in solitary as “state-inflicted brutality.”

The lawsuit was settled in 2007 and the law was passed in 2008–a considerable triumph, relative to other states. But there is, unsurprisingly, continuing controversy over who is classified as mentally ill, how much treatment they are really receiving, and at what pace changes are taking place. More from the article:

While most advocates see the settlement and especially the legislation as what a 2007 New York Times editorial called “a step toward basic human decency,”  Few believe that it goes far enough. “Maltreatment of mentally ill prisoners is a national shame,” the Times editorial continued. “The basic problem is that severely ill inmates should not be held in lockdown at all.” In the eyes of some critics, what New York and a handful of other states have done is simply reduce the frequency and severity of a practice they equate with torture.

The UN Human Rights Committee, European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all, in various terms, deemed long-term solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment for all prisoners. A 2003 Human Rights Watch report stated: “Even if they have no prior history of mental illness, prisoners subjected to prolonged isolation may experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember.”

When it comes to mentally ill prisoners, several U.S. Courts have joined in denouncing the use of any segregated confinement. In the most famous of the relevant cases, Madrid v. Gomez, a federal judge in California  declared that solitary confinement “may press the outer bounds of what most human beings can psychologically tolerate,” while for mentally ill prisoners it is “the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.”

No widespread ban on the lockdown of mentally ill prisoners is likely to take place without changes in the trend toward criminalizing the mentally ill, which has been underway for more than 20 years. In 2003, Human Rights Watch concluded that America’s prisons and jails held three times as many mentally ill people as its psychiatric hospitals. The Los Angeles County Jail and New York’s Rikers Island effectively functioned as the nation’s two largest inpatient mental health facilities, and incarceration had become its default treatment for mental illness.

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics data more than half of all prison and jail inmates self-report that they suffer from mental health problems—five times the rate in the general population. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness approximately 24 percent of inmates in U.S. prisons and 17 percent of those in local jails have what would be diagnosed as serious mental illness.

Photo by Jenn Ackerman from "Trapped"

Also, take a look at “Trapped: Mental Illness in America’s Prisons,” documentary photographer Jenn Ackerman’s powerful collection of photos of prisoners in lockdown in a psychiatric treatment unit. (We learned about these from Pete Brooks’s excellent Prison Photography blog.)

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, featured posts, human rights, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, New York, physical effects, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture, Wisconsin Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Children in Lockdown: Solitary Confinement of Teens in Adult Prisons

January 30, 2010 By 23 Comments

While there are no concrete numbers, it’s safe to say that hundreds, if not thousands of children are in solitary confinement in the United States–some in juvenile detention facilities, and some in adult prisons. Short bouts of solitary confinement are even viewed as a legitimate form of punishment in some American schools.  In this first post on the subject, we address teenagers in solitary confinement in adult prisons.

In large part, this grim reality is simply a symptom of the American criminal justice system’s taste for treating children as adults. A study by Michele Deitch and a team of student researchers at the University of Texas’s LBJ School found that on a given day in 2008, there were more than 11,300 children under 18 being held in the nation’s adult prisons and jail. According to Deitch’s 2009 report From Time Out to Hard Time, ”More than half the states permit children under age 12 to be treated as adults for criminal justice purposes. In 22 states plus the District of Columbia, children as young as 7 can be prosecuted and tried in adult court, where they would be subjected to harsh adult sanctions, including long prison terms, mandatory sentences, and placement in adult prison.” These practices set the United States apart from nearly all nations in both the developed and the developing world.

Documentation on children placed in solitary confinement in adult prisons is spotty. But the cases of several teens in long-term lockdown have been featured in recent reports on kids sentenced to life without parole (another uniquely American practice, addressed in an earlier post.)

According to a 2005 report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, teenagers in adult prisons often end up in solitary, either because they are considered disciplinary problems, because they feel compelled to join prison gangs, or because they have to be isolated from adult offenders “for their own protection.” An administrative officer at the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) who was interviewed for the report believed the behavior that lands kids in solitary is often defensive:

One [factor] is age—when you come in at a young age with life without, there’s not a whole lot of light at the end of the tunnel. Also, it’s kind of a guy thing: the young ones come in with a lot of fear, anxiety, paranoia, and they want to make a name for themselves—so they have a tendency to act out. And if they are part of a gang, they are almost required to act out . . . They say [to themselves] “I’ve got to impress everyone with what a bad-ass I am.”

The PBS “Frontline” documentary When Kids Get Life focuses on five children in Colorado who were among 45 juveniles serving LWOP in the state in 2007 . Among them is Andrew Medina, convicted in 1999, when he was age 15, of taking part in a botched carjacking that led to murder.  He is in solitary confinement at CSP, where he was interviewed in 2004 by Human Rights Watch. As reported on the “Frontline” web site:

For unclear reasons, Andy, who has been in prison for nearly eight years from the time of his first arrest, is now jailed at the Colorado State Penitentiary, the state’s “supermax” high-security prison. Andy was transferred to the supermax roughly a year after his sentencing, when prison officials claimed he was the leader of a gang that had started a riot.

Andy explained the sequence of events as best he understands them to Human Rights Watch: “They were doing a routine shakedown of our cell. … I guess they found some contraband, … so they end up giving me twenty days punitive [solitary confinement]. I was getting ready to go back in the population. … All the beds were filled up so they were waiting for somebody to get in trouble, go to segregation, before I could go back out there. Then out of the blue, I’m ready to go, and they serve me … papers saying, we got confidential information that you’re involved with this security group [gang]. … I didn’t understand, you know? It just came out of the blue.”

Andy’s lawyer says he has no tattoos or gang symbols and that it’s ludicrous to think that a teenager could head a prison gang. But when Andy sent a letter asking to involve his lawyer in a review of the transfer decision, he was told no private counsel are permitted to intervene in the process and that its proceedings are confidential.

The state says Andy has not made enough progress to transfer back to a lower-security prison. Over the course of more than four years in the supermax, his lawyer says he’s developed twitches and become demoralized. Andy’s mother lamented the limits imposed on their visits: “I can’t hug him or give him a kiss on the cheek or buy him a pop or a snack or anything, no. He’s alive, but it feels like he’s not,” she told “Frontline.”

Ian Manuel in 2007, after more than 15 years in solitary for a crime committed at age 13. Photo by Glenn Paul from "Cruel and Unusual."

Some children have entered lockdown when they were even younger than Andrew Medina. A 2007 report from the Equal Justice Initiative, Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison, described the case of Florida prisoner Ian Manuel, who was “raised in gruesome violence and extreme poverty,” raped by a sibling at age four. “When Ian was 13,” the report continues, ”he was directed by gang members to commit a robbery. During the botched robbery attempt, a woman suffered a nonfatal gunshot wound and a remorseful Ian turned himself in to the police. Ian’s attorney instructed him to plead guilty and told him he would receive a 15-year sentence.” Instead, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.  

Ian Manuel was also featured in a powerful article by Meg Laughlin, published in 2006 in the St. Petersburg Times, on solitary confinement in Florida, which has the nation’s highest percentage of prisoner’s in lockdown. Laughlin wrote about the nearly 15 years Manuel had spent in lockdown.

Now 29, Manuel has spent half his life in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. His food comes through a slot in the door. He never sees another inmate. Out of boredom he cuts himself just to watch the blood trickle. Attorneys who advocate on behalf of prisoners call Manuel “the poster boy” for the ill effects of solitary confinement….

In 1991, when Manuel arrived at the prison processing center in Central Florida, he was so small no one could find a prison uniform to fit him, Ron McAndrew, then the assistant warden, recalled. Someone cut 6 inches off the boy’s pant legs so he would have something to wear. “He was scared of everything and acting like a tough guy as a defense mechanism,” said McAndrew, now a prison and jail consultant in Florida. “He didn’t stand a chance in an adult prison.”

Within months, Manuel was sent to Apalachee Correctional Institution in Jackson County, which McAndrew called “one of the toughest adult prisons in the state.” At Apalachee, the boy mouthed off to other inmates and correctional officers and made obscene hand gestures, racking up disciplinary infractions that landed him in solitary.

On Christmas Eve 1992, he was allowed to make one phone call. He called Debbie Baigrie, the woman he had shot. “This is Ian. I am sorry for all the suffering I’ve caused you,” she remembers him saying. They began to correspond regularly. Baigrie said she was impressed with how well he wrote.

She asked prison officials to let him take the General Educational Development test and take college courses. “I got a second chance in life. I recovered and went on,” Baigrie said. “I wanted Ian to have the same chance.” But the rules of solitary forbade Manuel from participating in any kind of self-improvement or educational program. Instead, he sat in his cell day in and day out, without reading materials or human interaction, racking up more infractions for “disrespect,” which only extended his time in solitary.

After several years, Baigrie gave up. “Not because of Ian,” she said, “but because the system made it impossible for him to improve. What does it say when a victim tries to do more for an inmate than the very system that’s supposed to rehabilitate him?”…

“It’s my belief,” [Manuel said at a federal court hearing], “that the reason I haven’t been able to progress off CM (close management) all these years is the way the system is set up. One DR (disciplinary report) will keep you there for six months and those six months add up to years and those years turn into decades.” In the past seven months, prison records show Manuel received three disciplinary writeups: one for not making his bed, another for hiding a day’s worth of prescription medicine instead of taking it, and yet another for yelling through the food flap when a correctional officer refused to take his grievance form. Those reports extended his stay on the strictest level of solitary for nine months.

Manuel told the judge that in isolation he has become a “cutter,” slicing his arms and legs with whatever sharp object he can find – a fragment of a toothpaste tube or a tiny piece of glass….In the past year, Ian Manuel has attempted suicide five times. In late August he slit his wrists. A prison nurse closed the wounds with superglue and returned him to his solitary cell. When the judge asked him why he attempted suicide, Manuel said, “You kind of lose hope.”

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Filed Under: Colorado, Eighth Amendment, Florida, human rights, juveniles, life without parole, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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