The Art of Activism: Closing Tamms Supermax

May 6, 2013 By 1 Comment

tamms mudA new article from Creative Time Reports highlights the role played by politically engaged art in the campaign to shut down Tamms supermax prison in southern Illinois. Tamms closed its doors for good in January, but only after a protracted battle in which family members of the incarcerated, grassroots activists, and artists–joined to form the group Tamms Year Ten. Their goal was to “End Torture in Illinois”–the message of the mud stencils that members painted on walls and sidewalks across Chicago.

Creative Time showcases one of the campaign’s most resonant projects, “Photo Requests from Solitary.” As Laurie Jo Reynolds and Stephen F. Eisenman of Tamms Year Ten describe it:

“Photo Requests from Solitary” was one of many projects launched by Tamms Year Ten to build publicity for the campaign. The men in Tamms were invited to request a photograph of anything in the world, real or imagined. The resulting requests were touching and often surprising. They included: the sacred mosque in Mecca, comic book heroes locked in epic battle, Egyptian artifacts, Tamms Year Ten volunteers and a brown and white horse rearing in weather cold enough to see his breath. Willie Sterling III asked for a photograph of a vigil at Bald Knob Cross on top of a hill in southern Illinois to pray for his deliverance from Tamms and to be granted parole…

Photo by Rachel Herman, May 6, 2011.

Photo by Rachel Herman, May 6, 2011.

Photographers from across the country offered to fill photo requests for men in isolation. Chicago animator Lisa Barcy, Dutch photographer Harry Bos and Baltimore filmmaker Stephanie Barber each orchestrated a version of one prisoner’s detailed request for a lovesick clown: “A lovesick clown: holding a old fashioned feathered pen: as if writing a letter: from the waist up: in black and white. As close up as possible: as much detail as possible: & the face about 4 inches big.”

From left to right: photos by Lisa Barcy, Harry Bos and Stephanie Barber, 2012.

From left to right: photos by Lisa Barcy, Harry Bos and Stephanie Barber, 2012.

 

Read the rest of the story of Tamms Year Ten’s campaign here. And for more photos, see the companion piece on the Daily Beast.

Filed Under: activism, Illinois, media, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

The End of Tamms Supermax

January 9, 2013 By 1 Comment

tamms-chicago-4-224x300As the new year began, the notorious Tamms state supermax in southern Illinois closed its doors forever. The closure marked the end of a decade-long effort that combined legal and political pressure with press exposes and tireless grassroots organizing. One excellent recap of this effort and its remarkable outcome was published by In These Times, here. Two more can be found on ACLU’s Blog of Rights, here and here. The second piece, quoted below, describes the role played by the men who were buried alive in Tamms.

Put simply, men were sent to Tamms to disappear.

Tamms was sold to the public as necessary to control the “worst of the worst” prisoners in Illinois. Yet when it opened in 1998, the majority of prisoners had virtually no disciplinary history at all. Rather, Tamms was populated by men who had sued the Department, filed grievances, and otherwise complained about illegal conduct by prison officials—wardens were looking for a way to get rid of these headaches. Other men transferred to Tamms had long histories of mental illness—which had never been treated in prison. Many were sent to Tamms because someone had claimed, at some point in the past, that they were gang leaders—even though most had never been found guilty of any gang activity. When the Uptown People’s Law Center challenged the placement of our clients in Tamms, we were told that these men were not entitled to a hearing, and would not be told why they had been sent to Tamms.

Some of these men have spent the last 15 years in complete and total solitary confinement at Tamms.

Tamms officially closes its doors today, first and foremost because the men sent there did not disappear. Rather than buckle under the extreme psychological pressure of solitary confinement, they banded together, fought back, and reached out and educated and organized their families and friends…

Like other “supermax” facilities, Tamms was designed to ensure that prisoners could be housed in complete isolation—never coming in contact with another prisoner, and only rarely coming in contact with staff. There is no dining hall; there is no chapel; there is no library; there are no classrooms; there is no yard. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are brought to prisoners in their cells—passed through a slot in a steel door. Medical and mental health care is generally provided through the cell door—with no privacy, and minimal ability for medical professionals to examine or even conduct a meaningful conversation with the men they are supposed to be caring for.

In a brave act, the men at Tamms initiated a prison-wide hunger strike in 2000. They asked for such simple things as shoes to wear outside that would protect their feet; the right to clean their own showers; and for other activities to productively occupy their time. The vast majority of prisoners refused meals the first day; dozens refused meals for a week; three lasted over 30 days…

Two of the last men out in December, 2012, were also two of the first men to arrive at Tamms in March, 1998. They survived almost 15 years in total isolation. While closing Tamms is a tremendous victory, we cannot forget the terrible price paid by human beings as a result of this 15 year experiment in torture.

For more background, see “Trapped in Tamms,” the groundbreaking series published in the Belleville News-Democrat, as well as our earlier piece on Tamms in Mother Jones.

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tamms Supermax: Report Reveals More Guards Than Prisoners, Soaring Costs

December 4, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Belleville News-Democrat known for a 2009 exposé that helped rouse opposition to conditions at Tamms Supermax, has now provided new ammunition in the longstanding battle to close the notorious prison. In addition to being both unnecessary and abusive, Tamms is incredibly inefficient, according to a new story by George Pawlaczyk and Beth Hundsdorfer.

Tamms Supermax, which is part of the Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois, holds all its inmates in solitary confinement, which was the purpose of the facility’s design. After years of activist opposition and legal wrangling, it is now two-thirds empty. According to the News-Democrat:

Tamms has 208 guards and supervisors in its maximum-security unit, or C-max, to handle 138 prisoners, for a security-staff-to-inmate ratio of 1.5-to-1. At Alcatraz in the 1940s, the ratio was 1-to-3, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The Tamms security staff also clocked at least $884,000 in overtime since about this time last year, according to state payroll records for a one-year period ending Nov. 12. Overtime was accrued despite the fact that inmates in the solitary confinement supermax unit are held in their cells 23 hours a day and have no contact with other prisoners.

In addition, there are 16 food supervisors earning an average of $71,600 a year working at Tamms. That’s the same number of food supervisors as at the Pontiac Correctional Center, which houses around 1,700 maximum- and medium-security inmates.

In all, there are 300 employees for the entire Tamms operation, which includes an adjacent minimum-security camp with 89 inmates and about 13 guards, with an annual payroll of approximately $18.7 million, according to figures from the Illinois Department of Corrections. . . .

At the current 138 C-max inmate population level, it costs approximately $85,000 just to guard one maximum-security prisoner per year excluding overtime. . . .

Most Illinois prisons have a per-inmate annual cost of between $15,000 and $24,000.

Governor Pat Quinn has sought to close the facility to save money in a state with an ongoing budget crisis, but efforts were stalled when the guards’ union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), filed a lawsuit claiming that closing the prison would make conditions unsafe at other prisons. However, according to the news story, a state arbitrator who was agreed upon by both sides in the lawsuit ruled that closing Tamms would not increase danger to prison guards. Currently, state legislators are considering whether to restore funds to keep Tamms open, which would require them to override Quinn’s veto.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Tamms Supermax Prison Closure Temporarily Halted

September 10, 2012 By 9 Comments

On September 4th, Alexander County Circuit Court Judge Charles Cavaness  temporarily halted Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s plan to close the Tamms supermax prison, where hundreds of inmates have been held in solitary confinement. The ruling came days after an arbitrator ruled that the Governors plan was in violation of union contracts. Prison union employees with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to block the closure of Tamms. The AFSCME has argued that closing the supermax facility would “destabilize the entire prison system, worsen dangerous overcrowding and put the safety of employees, inmates, youth and the public at risk.”

Critics have countered that Tamms currently holds only about 180 inmates, and that many of them would be more accurately described as “the sickest of the sick” in terms of their mental health rather than “the worst of the worst.”

Governor Quinn has cited budgetary concerns as chief among his reasons for closing down Tamms. Despite only housing approximately 400 inmates (half of whom in the supermax unit), Tamms has cost taxpayers over $20 million annually to operate.

One former Tamms inmate, Brian Nelson, described his experience at Tamms this way,

I spent 12 years in solitary confinement and I was never told why I was placed in solitary. I am a human being and every day I still struggle with the trauma being held in that gray box. I wake screaming at night. I can’ get it out of my head some days. Solitary confinement in my opinion is worse than being beaten. That I spent twelve years in such conditions in America is appalling.

On August 8th, Tamms inmates, represented by Alan Mills and Nicole Schult of the Uptown People’s Law Center, filed a motion urging the court to allow inmates to present evidence of the negative psychological impact of supermax incarceration. [Read more...]

Filed Under: corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Shutting Down a Supermax: An Interview With Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center

July 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

Alan Mills is the Legal Director of the Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, Illinois.  The Center has been involved in ongoing litigation on behalf of Illinois prisoners challenging the procedures used to send inmates to Tamms, the state’s supermax facility.  Shortly after Illinois Governor announced plans to close Tamms, he spoke with Solitary Watch about the path that led him to prisoner’s rights work and the Tamms litigation.

Thanks for agreeing to talk to us.  You’ve done a lot of prisoner’s rights work; can you tell us about your background and how you got involved in this sort of litigation?

Oh, man.  [Laughs.]  You may have to edit it down.  It comes from my youth I suppose—my mother was very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Baltimore in the mid-sixties.  One of my first memories is stuffing envelopes for a demonstration.  And during that process she became interested in jails, and then when I was in college she spent a lot of time working on prison and jail issues in Maryland.  So that’s an issue I’ve been interested in since I was a little kid.

Then once I got to the People’s Uptown Law Center, the Law Center has always had the firm belief that people who are in prison need to be treated as members of your community.  We are a community-based law center, and people go to prison from the community and people from prison come back into the community.  It’s silly to deal with them as totally separate entities.  From our community work, we represent a lot of the families from which people go to prisons, so they continue to write us.  So the correctional institutions have always been part of the mission of the Uptown People’s Law Center.  We’ve always considered them as part of the mission that we serve.

In the early 1980s I started work at the Law Center as a volunteer.  In 1981 we were contacted by one former uptown resident who was in a hellacious setting in the old Joliet prison, which was built before the Civil War.  He complained that he and another prisoner had been taken out and—they had been gassed, essentially, and plywood was placed in front of their cells and they passed out.  They came fairly close to dying.  He wanted to sue.  We found him a lawyer for that and [the case] grew from there, and the [two main plaintiffs] claimed they hadn’t been given meaningful access to the courts.  And if you want to do advertising in prison, do a case about access to the courts, because you get contact with all the jailhouse lawyers throughout the system.  So from there our practice really grew, and we do dozens and dozens of prisoner cases. [Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, cost/budget issues, due process, featured posts, Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, politics of punishment, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

Testimony from Hearing on Closure of Tamms Supermax Prison

April 21, 2012 By 2 Comments

Following Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s proposal to close Tamms Prison, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability held a contentious hearing, with proponents and opponents of the closure voicing their views on the controversial supermax facility. Nearly 700 pages of testimony is available.

What follows is a sampling of some pieces of testimony to provide a glimpse into the debate–with links, where available, to the full written testimonies.

In support of closure:

The ACLU argues that “the devastating effects of solitary confinement have long been well known” and reviews evidence that solitary confinement has well-documented negative psychological effects, particularly when used for long periods of time. They cite a 2010 Illinois court decision finding that “Tamms imposes drastic limitations on human contact, so much as to inflict lasting psychological and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods.”

Further, the ACLU points to the reduction of supermax units in other states as examples that such reductions can be responsibly done without public safety concerns materializing. As one argument, they point to evidence that inmates released from prison from solitary confinement have higher recidivism rates than “comparable prisoners released from general population.”

Echoing concerns over the potential for supermax facilities to aggravate psychological problems, NAMI argues that “supermax facilities such as Tamms have highly negative long term psychological effects on prisoners who are confined in these facilities. For individuals with pre-existing serious mental illnesses, the effects of confinement in supermax facilities can be particularly cruel and disabling. For example, the symptoms of schizophrenia, e.g. delusions and hallucinations, will very likely worsen in settings characterized by extreme social deprivation and isolation, such as supermax.”

These problems are expanded upon in a joint statement of Dr. Stuart Grassian, Dr. Craig Haney, and Dr. Terry Kupers, who argue that “long-term solitary confinement places prisoners at grave risk of psychological harm without reliably producing any tangible benefits in return.” Responding to concerns that “the outright closure of a facility will result in heightened security threats and prison violence” they note the “recent experience in Mississippi found exactly the opposite—that a drastic reduction in the supermax population was followed by a reduction in prison misconduct and violence.”

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (pgs. 216-17), citing negative budgetary, safety, and psychological effects of solitary confinement, argue that the “excessive use of solitary confinement is a stain on our society and a moral and fiscal price we cannot afford to pay. Closing Tamms is not only common sense, it is a matter of conscience.”

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections (pg. 138): “One of the reasons Tamms was chosen for closure is because it is by far the most expensive facility to operate. At an average of over $64,800 per inmate per yearm housing an inmate at Tamms is more than three times as expensive as the state average of $21,405.Closing Tamms by August 31, 2012 would save taxpayers $21.6 million in FY13 and $26.6 million on an annualized basis.”

In opposition to closure:

Prison officials, however, argue that Tamms is a necessary component of system wide safety.

Tamms Lieutenant Bradley Shields (pgs. 153-4) writes, “Justice has been served, and the Tamms Super Max facility has done exatly what it was designed to do. It’s removed the most violent offenders, along with leaders of Security Threat Groups (a.k.a. GANGS), and housed them where they can no longer influence or be a threat to others.”

Scott Farner (pgs. 99-101), Correctional Lieutenant at Shawnee Correctional Center, expands on this point and argues that the closure of Tamms represents a negative economic and public safety threat.“Before Tamms Correctional Center opened 38 Illinois Correctional Officers were killed while on duty,” he writes, and continues,”since Tamms Correctional Center opened there have been zero staff killed in the line of duty.” Lt. Farner therefore argues that Tamms “has actually saved the taxpayers’ of Illinois, by decreasing staff assaults, inmate violence, riots and escapes.”

That supermax facilities reduce system-wide violence is generally supported by two academic papers published on pages 13-78.

Others, however, urged Governor Quinn to keep Tamms in operation for economic reasons. The Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative, for example (pg. 84), argues that “closing this facility, which is located in an already financially depressed area of the state, will negatively impact the lives of the area residents, correction officers and local businesses.” This is a perspective echoed by the Egyptian Community Unit School District No. 5 (pg. 86), and the AFSCME.

According to the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees: “Tamms is a well lit, well maintained clean facility” where, “far from being 23-hour ‘solitary confinement’” inmates at Tamms “have human contact that is often more meaningful and focused on positive outcomes than may occur in the general prison population.” Further, they argue, “Tamms is a crucial economic anchor in an area of our state that has few employment opportunities—especially for jobs that play a decent wage on which it’s possible to support a family.”

Regarding the potential economic impact, the Southern Five Regional Planning District and Development Commission (pg. 7) claim that “based upon our forecasting models the loss of these 250 jobs will result in the loss of an additional 201 indirect and induced jobs. The closing of the Tamms Correctional Facility will result in lost earnings alone of $24 million for those 451 jobs affected. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Southern Five Region will be reduced by $55 million. The total lost economic output will be approximately $92 million.”

Three current Tamms inmates submitted testimony in support of keeping the facility open (pgs. 177-182). One of them, who asserts that he has “a rage problem,” writes that “Tamms has an excellent mental health unit. I am keeping myself in check because the staff cares.” He goes on to say that Tamms “is a deterrent from keeping us from hurting” the staff, and urges people to “just remember there has been no correction officer deaths by inmates since this place opened.” Another Tamms inmate who was “sent to Tamms for taking a hostage…and sexually assaulting her” writes that “I need to be in Tamms for the safety of others and safety of myself from others.”

 

Filed Under: corrections industry, cost/budget issues, Illinois, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Leading Mental Health Experts Urge Illinois Legislators to Close Tamms Supermax

March 29, 2012 By 6 Comments

When it comes to the psychological effects of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, there are three acknowledged experts: Drs. Stuart Grassian, Craig Haney, and Terry Kupers. The three have collaborated on a joint statement on the closure of Tamms supermax prison, which was proposed last month by Illinois governor Pat Quinn. The statement is directed at the relevant committee of the Illinois state legislature, which will hold hearings on the prison closure next week. We are publishing this important statement in full.

Comments by Dr. Stuart Grassian, Dr. Craig Haney, and Dr. Terry Kupers to the April 2, 2012 Hearing of the Illinois Legislature Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability regarding the proposal to close Tamms Correctional Center

Tamms Correctional Center has been open for over ten years, and some of its resident prisoners have been at the facility since it opened.  We have been informed that the Governor of Illinois has recommended that the Tamms facility be closed. As three long-time researchers and nationally recognized experts on the psychological effects of solitary confinement, we write to express our strong support of that recommendation.

We believe that the Governor’s recommendation is entirely consistent with a growing national trend away from the use of long-term solitary confinement.[1] Of course, there are compelling economic justifications that partially explain this trend. Supermax prisons such as Tamms are very expensive to operate.  In addition, however, there are important mental health concerns and public safety justifications that support this development. Research has shown that long-term solitary confinement places prisoners at grave risk of significant psychological harm.[2] Because this kind of confinement is not only painful but also potentially damaging—and, for some prisoners, perhaps irreversibly so—it can be a cruel and singularly inappropriate form of punishment. Beyond doing more to debilitate than rehabilitate the prisoners who are subjected to it, solitary confinement undermines the ability of many of them to succeed in the community after their eventual release from prison.[3] This evidence—that it appears to increase rather than reduce recidivism—raises public safety concerns.

The structure and operation of supermaximum security units such as Tamms are conducive to the creation of a punitive atmosphere and even a “culture of cruelty” that can harden and dispirit prisoners and correctional officers alike. Aspects of its negative atmosphere and culture may spread to and negatively affect prevailing attitudes and practices in the larger correctional system. Moreover, supermax prisons such as Tamms do not reliably reduce violence or disciplinary infractions within the larger prison systems in which they function; in some instances they appear to make it worse.[4] Nor do they alleviate the problem of prison gangs. The California Department of Corrections has aggressively pursued the use of long-term solitary confinement for more than 20 years and the state prison system is now plagued with perhaps the worst gang problem in the nation.

Our views on these matters are based on a careful review of the existing literature on solitary confinement and our own direct observations and analyses of the effects of long-term solitary confinement in work that we have been engaged in for more than three decades. Each of us has toured and inspected numerous “supermax”-type penal institutions, interviewed and evaluated numerous prisoners confined under these severe conditions, and discussed isolation practices and procedures with correctional staff and officials from around the country. We have sometimes been asked to render expert opinions in legal cases that were focused on whether being housed in supermax facilities such as Tamms constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” One of us (Dr. Haney) is an academic psychologist and two of us (Drs. Grassian & Kupers) are university-affiliated psychiatrists. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Illinois, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, prison health care, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Illinois Governor Proposes Closing Controversial Tamms Supermax Prison

February 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a budget briefing held this afternoon, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn proposed closing the state’s notorious Tamms supermax prison. The proposal is part of a package of deep spending cuts to nearly all areas of state government, which Quinn called a “rendezvous with reality.”

Tamms holds more than 200 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement in conditions that have been denounced as torturous. Prisoners at Tamms spend at least 23 hours a day locked down in small cells, leaving them only to shower or to exercise alone in a concrete pen. They are fed through slots in their cell doors, and are allowed no communal activities, no phone calls, and no contact visits.

As in most supermax prisons, a high percentage of prisoners at Tamms suffer from serious mental illness, and for them the torment is even worse. In its 14-year history, Tamms has witnessed inmate suicides, suicide attempts, and self-mutilations.

When it opened in 1998, Tamms was purported to be a short-term solution for prisoners with disciplinary problems. Yet ten years later, a third of the original prisoners were still there, held in solitary for more than a decade.

In addition to its human costs, incarcerating prisoners at Tamms is also extraordinarily expensive: According to one calculation, the cost of keeping an inmate in the supermax exceeds $92,000 per year–two to three times the cost of the state’s other maximum security prisons.

With Illinois several years into a serious fiscal crisis, the immediate impetus for the proposed closure of Tamms is clearly financial. But years of activism and litigation, along with  scathing press exposes, undoubtedly helped sway the state to put Tamms on the chopping block.

Grassroots advocacy, spearheaded by the group Tamms Year Ten, began in earnest in 2008, on the tenth anniversary of Tamms’ opening. In addition to mounting various educational and organizing efforts, the Tamms Year Ten campaign exerted pressure on state legislators, the governor, and the Illinois Department of Corrections–which in 2009 announced a “ten-point plan” for reforming the supermax. Subsequently, however, the head of the IDOC was pushed out, and most of the reforms were never implemented.

The movement gained traction, nonetheless, as a result of a series of investigations by reporters at the Belleville News-Democrat, which released its series “Trapped in Tamms” in August 2009. The series portrayed a nightmarish place where sane prisoners were driven mad, and where those with underlying mental illness suffered daily as a result of their extreme isolation.

In 2010, following a ten-year legal battle by Chicago’s Uptown People’s Law Center, a federal judge ruled that inmates at Tamms were being denied their Constitutional rights by being placed in long-term solitary without any semblance of due process. The same judge found that the “crushing monotony” and total deprivation of human contact were likely to “inflict lasting psychological damage and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods.”

Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center told Solitary Watch that in combination with the pressure from advocates, the legal case “gave the imprimatur of a federal judge to our long-time contention that long term isolation at Tamms inflicts serious harm on men’s minds—harm that continues even after they are released from Tamms.” In addition, said Mills, ”by finally requiring the Department [of Corrections] to provide meaningful due process hearings to determine why each man was at Tamms” it forced the DOC to realize ”that many of the prisoners who had spent years there, really didn’t need to be there. They transferred over 25 men out of Tamms as a result of this review process. I am guessing that during these reviews the Department began to seriously question what the real criteria should be for placement at Tamms—and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.” Finally, “All of this was crystallized by the desperate need to save money somewhere.”

Prisoner advocates were today affirming Quinn’s decision to promote the closure of Tamms, calling it “long overdue.” Tamms Year Ten leader Laurie Jo Reynolds told the Belleville News Democrat: “From the day it opened, Tamms has been a financial boondoggle and a human rights catastrophe. The staff to prisoner ratio is the highest in the system and the mental health worker to prisoner ratio is vastly higher…Because men can’t work or leave the cell, we just pay for excess correctional staff to shackle them, move them around, and push food into their cells. Then we pay to treat them when they become insane due to the isolation.”

But they also warned that the closure of Tamms is far from accomplished, and will face resistance from a number of directions–including not only corrections officials and unions and Republican legislators, but also Democrats from the southern tip of the state where Tamms is located. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The rumored Tamms closure was drawing heavy criticism from Southern Illinois legislators throughout the day Tuesday. The criticism was directed at Quinn, a Chicagoan. ‘I’m mad as hell. I don’t know where this guy is coming from,’ state Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, wrote in a Twitter feed.”

Advocates urged backers of the Tamms closure to immediately contact the governor’s office to state their support for the plan.

Filed Under: Constitution, cost/budget issues, due process, Illinois, media, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

Supermax Prisons: “21st Century Asylums”

August 10, 2011 By 9 Comments

While taking some vacation time, we missed this powerful opinion piece by Helen Redmond, which appeared last week on Al Jazeera English. It describes in visceral detail the brutality of life in America’s supermax prisons.

“People walked by and asked: ‘How are you doing?’ I answered: ‘How am I supposed to be doing? That’s the craziest question I ever  heard.’ The mental health people asked: ‘Are you having any suicidal ideation? What are you thinking right now?’ I said: ‘Where the f*** am I? That’s what I’m thinking. Ain’t this America?’”

–Brian Nelson, on his transfer to Tamms supermax prison in Illinois. He was locked, chained and naked in a holding cell.

The recent hunger strike at Pelican Bay supermax prison in California exposed for three weeks the carefully planned and executed barbarism of life in supermax America. The utter desperation of the human cargo behind the concertina wire, buried deep inside concrete coffins was gut wrenching and heart breaking. Hunger strikes are a tactic of last resort for the completely subjugated; a slow,  painful, non-flammable version of self-immolation.

Brian Nelson, a survivor of 12 years in solitary confinement at Tamms supermax prison in Illinois, understands the conditions that drove the men in Pelican Bay to stop eating. Distraught and anxious, Nelson paced in his cell for more than ten hours a day–causing severe, bloody blisters on the soles of his feet. He tried to hang himself. In the year 2000, Nelson went on hunger strike for 42 days with four other prisoners to protest many of the same conditions that exist at Pelican Bay.

The demands of Tamm’s hunger strikers were similar, too: better food, shoes with arches, appropriate clothing, access to education, inmates with mental illness be transferred out, bilingual staff and abolition of the “renunciation policy”–the “debriefing policy” related to gangs that Pelican Bay prisoners demanded be abolished. Guards tried to break the hunger strike at Tamms by leaving carts of fried chicken and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the wing. The delicious smells didn’t break Nelson.

Supermax prisoners’ daily lives are chock full of alienating and undignified experiences, so empty of positive human interaction, thousands are willing to risk death than endure such inhumane conditions. That alone speaks volumes about the reality of life in supermax prisons.

One of the most humiliating aspects of life for inmates are the frequent strip searches–forced to be naked, ordered to bend over by guards and spread the buttocks apart to have the anus inspected for contraband while coughing. Strip searches are the old normal. The photos of nude prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq shocked the world, but to be stripped naked for hours or even days is standard operating procedure in supermaxes.

Nelson explained: “Every time you leave your cell you’re strip searched … They do this to degrade and shock you…Sometimes the guards would make ‘homosexual’ comments like: ‘Hey baby, spread your cheeks’. Darrell Cannon, a survivor of a nine-year stretch in Tamms, described the strip search: ‘They tell you to open your mouth, raise your tongue, hold your hands up, they go through your fingers and toes and tell you to turn around and spread your cheeks up against the chuckhole … It’s degrading to have two other human beings looking at you like you’re some kind of specimen. It is extremely degrading.”

Rehabilitation not an option

Prisoners on suicide watch are routinely left naked in their cells. And inmates have been punished by “caging”, they’re held naked or partially clothed in outdoor holding cages in inclement weather.

There is no pretence of rehabilitation in supermax prisons; the purpose is harsh punishment. Prisoners endure supersized portions of psychological punishment as a result of strict and prolonged solitary confinement. Inmates are confined for 23 to 24 hours a day, every day, in cells that measure 7-by-12 square feet. It is psychological torture.

Supermax prisons are intended to isolate prisoners and to deny human contact. Cannon said: “Everything you do, you do alone … It [supermax] was designed to break you mentally, by not allowing you to have another human being right there with you that you can interact with.”

This extreme environment of sensory deprivation and social seclusion makes men go mad. Supermax prisons are filled with inmates with mental illnesses  diagnosed. “It is a form of insanity to put people in a place that provokes mental illness … Either they went in crazy, or they go crazy once they are there,” said Laurie Jo Reynolds, an organiser for the Tamms Ten Year Committee and a Soros Justice Fellow.

Prisoners resort to cutting their flesh: A form of self-mutilation that results in thick scarring. Small shavings of concrete, plastic ‘sporks’ or paper clips are used to cut and cause bleeding to arms, legs and genitals. Cannon remembers some prisoners cutting themselves, “just to feel something … they were willing to do anything to get out of their cell and into the infirmary to be around other people”.

Nelson recalled an inmate who continually tightened a piece of string around his finger. It became gangrenous and was amputated. Men who injured themselves told him: “I need the pain, to feel real”.

‘They’re not faking’

“Gassing” is also common in supermax prisons. It is a word used to describe prisoners throwing urine and faeces at guards. Gassing is treated as a security threat and is met with excessive force by a tactical team.

Prison mental health staff label inmates who engage in cutting and gassing as malingering and “acting out”, not as suffering from mental illness. And yet there is decades of indisputable, well-documented evidence that solitary confinement causes mental breakdown and self-injurious behaviour.

Dr Terry A Kupers, a psychologist who has conducted hundreds of assessments of prisoners in supermax prisons, explained in an article in the Belleville News-Democrat. “Twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell causes many inmates to brutally attack themselves,” he wrote. “In the adult male population of the United States, self-mutilation occurs only in solitary confinement. It’s an epidemic across the country. They’re not faking.”

Supermax prisons are modern, high-tech, taxpayer funded concentration camps. The architecture is a twisted blend of Fascist-Stripped-Classical and Functionalist designed to facilitate the One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest punishment of inmates. They are located in rural areas in small, conservative, majority white towns desperate for jobs. Pelican Bay was built on an abandoned logging site and is completely cut off from its surroundings. Tamms supermax is located in the far corner of Illinois in the village of Tamms, population: 724. The remote location of supermax prisons keeps them hidden and away from public scrutiny and protest. Media are not allowed in.

On the perimeter of supermax prisons loom large and imposing guard towers with gun turrets and floodlights that resemble German Flak towers.

The interior of supermax prisons is built on the architectural principles of isolation, surveillance and über-control. Doors and gates are controlled electronically. A panoptic central guard tower is encircled by prisoner “pods” and closed-circuit TV cameras allow guards to see into every cell. Privacy is nonexistent. Concrete cells contain a poured concrete bed, immovable concrete desk/stool, stainless steel sink, toilet and mirror. Metal wire mesh cell doors have a slot to deliver food and other items. Some doors have Plexiglas covers that insulate cells from sound, air and vision.

Architects have partnered with penal authorities to create austere, hermetically sealed dungeons devoid of natural light, colour or beauty. They are milieus full of monotony, guaranteed to provoke mental despair. Architects who build prisons call themselves “justice” architects. In response to that outrageous claim and to the boom in prison building, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (AAPSR) launched a prison design boycott. The organisation acknowledges the barbaric consequences of supermax incarceration and encourages architects to sign a pledge not to do any work that “furthers the construction of prisons or jails”.

Daily routines in supermax prisons are rigidly controlled. Prison guards and administration have total power and domination over every aspect of prisoners’ lives through a series of capricious rules and regulations that, if broken, result in “tickets”, loss of privileges or additional prison time. Inmates’ bodies, belongings and cells are subjected to relentless searches, inspection and video monitoring. Authorities decide the number of showers per week (one to five) and the amount of time (15 minutes), exercise time (1 hour), clothes, TV/radio access, food, visitation rights – and can withdraw medication. Inmates aren’t allowed to speak to other inmates when outside their cells. If prisoners stray off the yellow line walking to the shower or exercise cage, they can be shot.

The hunger strikers in Pelican Bay sent the world a distress signal: A supermax SOS. They are buried alive but still able to fight against the most appalling prison conditions imaginable. Those of us on the outside have a moral and ethical responsibility to hear and answer that call and fight to shut every supermax prison down.

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Filed Under: California, civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, human rights, Illinois, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: ,

Voices from Solitary: The Meaning of “Life”

June 11, 2011 By 6 Comments

Joseph Dole is currently serving a life sentence without parole at Tamms state supermax prison in Illinois. For the past eight years, he has been in solitary confinement (under conditions described by Dole himself here, and detailed in recent newspaper exposés here and here). His writing has been honored by the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Contest and appears in the book Lockdown Prison Heart.  This essay, which also recently appeared on the Prison Culture blog, was sent to us by The Real Cost of Prisons Project, which maintains an excellent archive of prisoner writings.

Rarely am I asked what it’s like to serve a life-without-parole sentence. Arguing for a death sentence for my first felony conviction, the State’s Attorney implored the judge not to allow me to spend the rest of my life on a virtual “vacation” in prison. I can unequivocally state that it is not vacation.

A life-without-parole sentence means a million things, because, as its name suggests, it encompasses a person’s entire remaining life.

It means enduring being reduced to a second-class citizen in the eyes of most  people. It means decades of discrimination from the courts and public. “Prisoner’” “inmate,” or “convict” each have a strictly pejorative use in the media or pop culture. Those terms become the sole defining characteristic of a man’s entire character.

It means that courts will turn a blind eye to any act against you unless it causes “atypical and significant hardship.” A free man may find protection in the courts from emotional and mental harm, but a prisoner can only find protection from “atypical and significant” physical harm, and that’s dependent on finding an objective and unbiased judge and enough citizens who can set aside their personal biases against prisoners to fill a jury box and render a fair verdict – a nearly impossible feat. So when you’re stripped naked and left in a concrete box with nothing but a toilet for four days without cause, as a prisoner you have no recourse in the courts. When you’re beaten to a bloody mess while handcuffed, as a prisoner you’re more likely to encounter a jury that will conclude you deserved what you got, regardless of the circumstances.

It means that after being “spared” the death penalty and receiving your life-without-parole sentence, you lack all the procedural safeguards against a wrongful conviction that a death sentence would have entailed, solely because you were found undeserving of immediate death. How ironic it is that the worse you are deemed to be, the better chance of proving your innocence and regaining your freedom.

It means a lifetime of censorship, where you’re told what books and magazines you can read, what movies can watch, even what hairstyles you can sport, and where every letter coming in or going out is subject to inspection.

It means a complete lack of privacy forever, and a complete indifference to your physical and medical health until someone fears being sued.

It means a constant, heightened risk of catching a deadly disease. You’re captive in an environment where staph infections run rampant, where people still die from tuberculosis, where the population has twice the rate of HIV infection compared to non-prisoners, and where up to forty percent are infected with hepatitis. An environment where there’s nowhere to run from many of these diseases because you’re forced to use communal toilets and showers.

It means three meals a day of the poorest quality food that the least amount of money can buy without killing the inmate population.

It’s a daily existence where trust is non-existent and compassion is not allowed. Not only is compassion viewed as a sign of weakness in the prison milieu, but it is, ironically, actively discouraged by the prison administration. If your neighbor is destitute and you want to assist him by giving him soap, paper, or even a snack to supplement the meager meals, you can only do so at risk of being written a disciplinary ticket for “trading and trafficking.”

It’s a never-ending pressure cooker where the stress and anxiety compound daily as you constantly have to watch your back. Soldiers returning from Iraq understand this. It’s a major factor in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The constant fear for your safety and the need for 24-7 situational awareness frays at your nerves.  Now imagine not a 12-month tour but a lifetime deployment.

It means you’re constantly being told that you aren’t worth rehabilitation and thus are ineligible for nearly every educational or vocational program. Your life sentence disqualifies you from any state or federal grants to pursue an education and even the Inmate Scholarship Fund (founded by a prisoner) has no qualms about telling you that you’re ineligible for a scholarship because you’re never going to get out and contribute to society.

It means convincing yourself daily that your life has value even when the rest of the world tells you you’re worthless. It’s a lifetime spent wondering what your true potential really is, and yearning for the chance to find out.

It mean decades of living with double standards, where any guard can call you every profanity ever invented without any fear of punishment, but where if you were to utter a single one in response, or say anything that even resembles insolence, you’ll be written a disciplinary ticket, lose privileges, such as phone calls and commissary, and be subjected to a month of disciplinary segregation.

It means the state constitution is irrelevant where lifers are concerned. Article 1, Section 11 of the Illinois Constitution states: “All penalties shall be determined both according to the seriousness of the offense and with the objective of restoring the offender to useful citizenship,” but the courts have decided that politics, revenge, and hatred of “criminals” trumps the constitution, and have thus rendered the above section essentially meaningless by their refusal to rule life-without-parole sentences unconstitutional, even if it is the defendants first felony conviction on a theory of accountability, as is my case. This also put the lie to the American maxim that everyone deserves a second chance.

It means that you’re especially vulnerable to incomprehensible punishments, such as a lifetime of disciplinary segregation. I was given indeterminate disciplinary segregation after being found guilty of my sole disciplinary infraction. That was 8 years ago, yet here I remain.  I’ve been told (on more than one occasion) that I will never be allowed out of indeterminate disciplinary segregation. So I will continue to endure conditions for the rest of my life which are known to cause mental illness after just 3 months.

It means that I will never tate another Hostess cake. Nor play softball or any group activity ever again. More importantly, it means that I will never have physical contact with another human being for the rest of my life, including my 11- and 12-year-old daughters.

It means being incapable of taking care of your grandparents and parents as they reach their final years.

It means missing out on every important event in your children’s lives, unable to raise them; impotent to protect them or assist them in any meaningful way.  It means they’ll grow up resenting you for the thousands of times they needed you and you weren’t there.

A life-without-parole sentence means constant contemplation of a wasted life. A continual despair as to your inability to accomplish anything significant with your remaining years. A life spent watching as each of your family members and friends slowly drift away from you leaving you in a vacuum, devoid of any enduring relationships.

It’s a persistent dashing of hopes as appeal after appeal is arbitrarily denied. It is a permanent experiment in self-delusion as you strive to convince yourself that there is still hope.

It’s a compounding of second upon second, minute upon minute, hour upon hour, of wasted existence, and decade upon decade of mental and emotional torture culminating in a final sentence of death by incarceration.

These, though, are simply futile attempts to describe the indescribable. It’s  like trying to describe a broken heart or communicate what it feels like to mourn the death of your soul mate. The words to convey the pain do not exist. When you’re serving a life-without-parole sentence it’s as if you’re experiencing the broken heart of knowing you’ll never love or be loved again in any normal sense of the word, while simultaneously mourning the death of the man you could have and should have been. The only difference is that you never recover, and can move on from neither the heart break nor the death because the pain is renewed each morning you wake up to realize that you’re still here, sentenced to life-without-parole. It’s a fresh day of utter despair, lived over and over for an entire lifetime.

Joseph Dole welcomes mail, and can be reached at K84446 Tamms CC, 8500 Supermax Rd., Tamms, IL 62988.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, due process, Illinois, life without parole, physical effects, prison health care, psychological effects, sentencing, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: ,
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