Solitary Watch

When he was five years old, Adam Hall tried to burn down his family home outside Utica in upstate New York. Afterwards, he drew a picture of his family having a happy reunion in heaven. Adam’s mother, Carole Hall, knew the incident was a cry for help–and possibly an early suicide attempt–but she had no money to get Adam decent treatment. Through the rest of his childhood, the boy would be in and out of psychiatric institutions and group homes. Carole Hall says he was molested in two of them, but never effectively treated for what would eventually be diagnosed as a panoply of mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder.

What happened next is all too typical of what happens to young people with untreated psychiatric disabilities in New York and throughout the United States, in an era when psychiatric hospitals have closed and jails and prisons have become the default inpatient facilities for the nation’s mentally ill. Adam Hall ended up in prison for a relatively minor felony, then in solitary confinement. Before long, he would have years added to his sentence for offenses committed in prison–offenses once again stemming from his mental illness. If the pattern continues, he could end up spending decades behind bars.

Hall’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior got him in trouble with the law while he was still a teenager. By the time he was 22, in 2009, he had been convicted of assault after stealing a car and resisting arrest. Sentenced to three years, he joined the estimated 5,000 or more prisoners in New York State’s prison who are suffering from mental illness.

According to correspondence with Adam Hall and interviews with his mother, he bounced around the prison system for a while. And like many people with mental illness, he quickly got in trouble for breaking prison rules and was disciplined by being placed in lockdown. A 2003 report by New York’s Correctional Association found that while inmates diagnosed with mental illness made up 11 percent of the state’s overall prison population, they constituted nearly a quarter of the inmates in isolated confinement in the state’s Special Housing Units (SHUs). Many of the SHU prisoners the CA interviewed for the report were “actively psychotic, manic, paranoid or seemingly overmedicated.”

Eventually Hall landed in the Residential Mental Health Unit (RMHU) at Marcy State Correctional Facility. The RMHU is considered an alternative to long-term solitary confinement for difficult to control prisoners with mental illness. In these units, inmates are locked down for much of the day, but receive they a greater measure of out-of-cell time and mental health treatment. Recent litigation and 2008’s so-called SHU Exclusion Law were designed to reduce the population of mentally ill inmates in solitary, in part by increasing the number of RMHU beds. And considering the alternatives, it was probably the best placement available to Adam Hall within the prison system.

But Adam Hall remained unstable and suicidal, and in 2011 he attempted to kill himself the same way he had when he was five: he set fire to his RMHU cell. Prison officials had the option to treat the incident as a symptom of Hall’s mental illness, and address it through internal disciplinary and classification processes. Instead, they chose to send Hall’s case to a grand jury in Utica, where he was indicted for arson. Facing up to 25 years, Hall let his public defender enter a guilty plea to third-degree arson, and was sentenced to three to six additional years in prison.

Hall was shipped to another RMHU, this one in Attica, where he remains today. The Department of Corrections has charged him for damages to his cell totaling more than $4,000, which he cannot pay. Because of his debts to the prison, his mother says, any money sent to him to buy food and sundries from the canteen is requisitioned by the state. Adam says he has to sell his prison food to get enough to buy postage stamps.

Adam’s situation–spelled out in a rap sheet he sent to Solitary Watch along with health records provided by his mother–appears to fly in the face of the intent of the state’s hard-won SHU exclusion law. The law is designed to protect and help mentally ill inmates who face prison disciplinary proceedings. But it leaves prison officials the option to deal with behavior problems as crimes rather than as mental health issues, and ship them out to the local DA. (Some laws, in fact, appear to have been passed for this express purpose. It is now a felony in New York, for example, to throw feces at a prison officer–and offense that is committed almost exclusively by mentally ill inmates in the SHU, as well as those driven mad by solitary.)

“The part that bothers me,’’ said one attorney with experience representing prisoners, “is: why did DOCCS refer this particular case to the DA for outside prosecution? We don’t have a lot of info, but it appears that if he did have a discipline hearing for this incident it was dismissed, and it may have been dismissed because of his mental health. That they would refer for outside prosecution a case that does not even warrant internal discipline is quite troubling. However, I know of no law that applies. As far as I know, DOCCS simply has discretion to refer cases to local DAs.”

Another attorney who defends prisoners’ rights confirmed that “many disciplinary tickets are written for incidents that could be charged as crimes. If the DOCCS determines to handle it through the prison system, then there is no criminal case. DOCCS does call in the DA for some incidents–this is a discretionary decision.” Under the SHU exclusion law, if the incident is dealt with inside the prison system, “New York State regulations “require that mental health is taken into consideration for the purpose of mitigation and possible dismissal of infractions under certain circumstances. Those regulations are pretty much going to be in effect for anyone who is in an RMHU–meaning that for all disciplinary hearings arising out of incidents in an RMHU, it is likely that the regulations require mental health testimony at the hearing and consideration of mental illness in the disposition.” But if the case is kicked to the local DA–no such protections apply.

She continues: “If the incident is related to his mental illness, the lack of adequate treatment for that illness, and his inability to conform to the prison environment due to his illness–isn’t charging him with a crime the ultimate criminalization of the status of his having mental illness? What purpose does the criminal case serve if these are the facts? It isn’t deterrence or rehabilitation–it appears to solely be retribution–is that a sufficient purpose?”

When we described this case to a veteran former New York State corrections officer, he said people like Hall were often doomed from the moment they arrived in prison, if not before. They tended to rack up small felony charges, one after the other, so that they effectively served a life sentence, shut away out of sight in some form of solitary confinement.

In a letter written on April 9, 2012, Hall said: “It’s hard in here for me. I feel like killing myself most of the time like I said but end up cutting myself to relieve the pain or just do things that help me relieve pain. Cutting myself seems the best way but one day I’m going to really cut myself and not tell no one so I can bleed out. That’s how I am feeling nowadays. My life’s gone down the drain.”

The Buffalo office of Prisoner Legal Services of New York, the small but tenacious nonprofit that acts on behalf of inmates in state prisons, sent a letter to Attica asking the mental health unit to look into the situation. Hall wrote both his mother and us that he was making deeper cuts in his arms, cutting into the muscle, building up to a final suicide slitting. On the advice of Prisoner Legal Services, Carole Hall phoned the head of the mental health unit at Attica and told him about the threats. He told Hall he knew nothing about the case but assured her he would look into it.

Whether Hall is alive or dead, whether he has gotten better treatment or simply had his possessions removed and been thrown nearly naked into a suicide cell, his mother doesn’t know.

In the run-up to Mother’s Day, the ACLU has unrolled a new feature on its website, called “Justice Mamas.” In it, a series of mothers talk honestly and movingly about what it is like to have a beloved son behind bars and in solitary confinement.

The sons themselves represent a cross-section of the kinds of prisoners who are in solitary confinement in American prisons and jails today: One is a juvenile who is in and out of solitary for minor offenses. Another suffers from mental illness and is routinely placed in isolation instead of receiving the treatment he needs. Another has been “validated” as a gang member, and is in his twelfth year of solitary confinement at Pelican Bay.

Together, they offer a sense of how solitary confinement–even more than other forms of incarceration–tears families apart and keeps prisoners separated from what is often one of the only positive forces in their lives–their mothers.

Check out the Justice Mamas page here, and the ACLU’s Stop Solitary project here.

A new report produced by researchers at the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs describes conditions faced by children who are “certified” for transfer to adult criminal justice system. Many of these juveniles are housed in adult jails in Texas while they await trial. The report finds that the majority of youth placed in adult jails are housed in solitary confinement, most with just one hour of out-of-cell time per day. While they are placed in isolation for their own protection, they live in conditions that mirror punitive segregation, and often remain there for months or even years.

“When making housing decisions,” the report states, ”jails are forced to choose between protecting the mental health or physical safety of a juvenile.” If they are placed among adult prisoners, they are at high risk of physical and sexual assault. If they are instead placed in solitary, it is their mental health that’s most at risk–and the damage may be permanent.

The report, titled Conditions for Certified Juveniles in Texas County Jails, surveyed 41 jails, which in the course of 2010 housed well over a hundred juveniles who had been accused of a crime, but not yet convicted. ”Given the broad range of physical risks to youth who are commingled with adult offenders,” the report found, ”the majority of jails surveyed chose to house juveniles in isolation cells. Although these jails are making efforts to protect the physical safety of the juveniles in their custody, this isolation has its own risks.”

It can have a detrimental impact on the juvenile’s mental health, aggravating existing mental illness and augmenting suicidal ideation. Segregation may hurt adolescents’ chance for proper socialization and damage their ability to develop a healthy adult identity. This reduction in socialization and impairment to identity formation may limit the possibility for future mental health recovery.

Even short periods of isolation can produce symptoms of paranoia, anxiety, and depression. In fact, “even a few days of solitary confinement will predictably shift the electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern toward an abnormal pattern characteristic of stupor and delirium.” The harm caused by isolation does not end at release; prolonged or permanent psychiatric disability may occur, including impairments that seriously reduce the inmate’s capacity to reintegrate into the broader community upon release from detention. Amnesty International has condemned the practice of placing youths in isolation, finding that it both violates international law and is particularly damaging to “children and adolescents, who are not yet fully developed physically and emotionally and are less equipped to tolerate the effects of isolation.”

 It is worth noting that certified youth in county jails have not been convicted of any crime, and are merely awaiting hearings or trials on their charges. They must be presumed innocent. Some of these youth will have their cases dismissed; some will be given probation; and others will be given time-served or short sentences. Despite the speed with which these youth may re-enter the community, the effects of detention may be severe. For example, the impact of prolonged isolation may have mental health consequences that will make it difficult for these youth to reintegrate, and may increase the likelihood that they will recidivate…

National research indicates that juveniles held in adult jails have by far the highest suicide rate of any age group in adult jails. Additionally, national data shows that juveniles in adult facilities are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than their counterparts in a juvenile detention facility. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that for every suicide committed by young adults (not specifically incarcerated youths) between the ages of 15 and 24, there were between 100- 200 attempts. This is significant, as the likelihood a youth will harm himself or herself in adult jail is exponentially increased from the already heightened suicide rates for juveniles in adult facilities. Given the significantly increased risk of suicide, self-harm, and aggravation of mental health issues, the choice to separate juveniles from adults only trades physical safety for mental health risks…

There is no good option for the jail administrators who are confronting this challenge. In contrast, juvenile detention centers do not have to make this choice between a youth’s physical safety and mental health, because they have the capacity to house youth with other youth.

For personal stories of children in solitary in adult jails in Texas, see the award winning article “For Their Own Good,” which appeared in the Houston Press in 2010.

Last week we wrote about a trial beginning in Federal District Court in Denver, in which Troy Anderson, a prisoner with mental illness, is challenging his twelve years of solitary confinement at the Colorado State Penitentiary. The lawsuit, filed by student lawyers at the University of Denver Law School’s Civil Right Clinic, could have broad significance because it argues that the long-term isolation of mentally ill prisoners as it is practiced at CSP violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as the Constitution’s guarantee of due process and its ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The always excellent Alan Prendergast, who writes for Denver’s Westword and has been following Troy Anderson and his lawsuit for years, is covering the trial, and yesterday provided a detailed report on what seems to shaping up as a promising case for the plaintiffs–and for all opponents of long-term solitary.

After nearly five days of testimony in a lawsuit brought by Troy Anderson, a prisoner who’s been in solitary confinement for twelve years, a Denver federal judge was strongly urging Colorado Department of Corrections officials to fix the harshest conditions at the state’s supermax prison — before he has to do it for them. “It shouldn’t take a federal judge to write an opinion and embarrass the department in the public eye to get this accomplished,” U.S. District Brooke Jackson said.

Jackson’s remarks, suggesting that there might have to be some drastic changes in the way the Colorado State Penitentiary operates, came midway through testimony in the case brought by Anderson, a state inmate serving what amounts to a life sentence for charges from two shootouts with police in the late 1990s. Anderson, who’s been diagnosed with mental illnesses ranging from ADHD to “intermittent explosive disorder,” has been confined at CSP since 2000 — deprived of direct sunlight or outdoor recreation, books (he’s allowed two a year), and, he claims, the medications that might actually help him control his behavior, reduce his sentence and get him placed back int the general prison population…

Anderson’s attorneys contend that the supermax fails to provide adequate treatment for mentally ill inmates — who, deprived of medication, exercise and socialization, deteriorate in solitary confinement. Inmates can also receive negative write-ups, or “chrons,” from guards that help keep them in segregation, even though they have no opportunity to contest the information.

The article–which needs to be read in full–reports on testimony by other CSP prisoners–delivered remotely by video–and by former CSP warden Susan Jones, who insisted that Anderson was where he belonged, .

Breaking into an unusual colloquy with Jones when she was on the stand, Jackson said he was troubled by the lack of meaningful administrative review and the absence of due process in the use of negative “chrons” to keep inmates in solitary for years. “It doesn’t seem fair to me,” he declared. And some of the other conditions described by inmates, if true, were clearly “inhumane” in his view.

The trial is expected to end next week, but it may be several weeks before the judge hands down his ruling. You can follow Alan Prendergast’s reporting here.

Today’s Advocate has an excellent article by Andrew Harmon, dissecting the abuses faced by transgender detainees in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. It begins with the story of a transgender woman who spent eight months in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail:

A few days after Christmas last year, Ruby Corado, a longtime transgender activist in Washington, D.C., received a telephone call while watching late-night TV. The number on her iPhone was from Rappahannock Regional Jail, about an hour’s drive south of the nation’s capital in Stafford, Va. Rappahannock is one of more than 200 facilities nationwide that contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house those awaiting a judge’s decision on whether they can remain in the United States or will be deported back to their home country. On any given day, about 32,000 people are held in detention, many for violating immigration law — a civil, not criminal, offense.

Weak and distraught, the transgender woman calling Corado at 11 p.m from Rappahannock was one of them. Her name was Kripcia, and she had been held for eight months in what ICE calls “administrative segregation” — solitary confinement, in non-bureaucratic terms. A native of El Salvador, she was arrested in early 2011 for failure to pay a cab.

Kripcia had spent a minimum 22 hours per day in a tiny cell with little access to recreation or other people. This was not because she had defied any jail rules: It was for her own good, for her safety, she was told by officers. Kripcia’s cell was located in a special unit of the jail usually reserved for male sex offenders. She was told that it would be easier for guards to watch over her in this smaller area…

Ruby, I just want to die. I’m going crazy, Kripcia told Corado on the phone that evening. But if I have to die, I want to go back to my country. I can’t die in here.

Promise me you’re not going to think those thoughts, Corado replied. Come on, work with me on this. Promise me. Just give it one more day.

“It’s hard, you know? What do I really tell these people in detention?” Corado said through tears during a recent conversation at Casa Ruby, her soon-to-open Latino LGBT community center near Howard University. “Segregation is inhuman. And how they’re treated, how they’re abused? It’s inexcusable. Even if they’ve done something wrong, you want the best for these people. But I’ve never seen a case of a transgender detainee who was actually treated like a human being.”

The article goes on to describe how transgender immigrants like Kripcia are among the worst victims of a ”turf war” going on between the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security (which includes ICE), under which DHS insists it is not bound by laws and regulations concerning the treatment of federal prisoners. Key among these laws is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which is meant to address the epidemic of sexual assaults in U.S. prisons. Prison rape, like solitary, disproportionately affects transgender inmates.

The article is well worth reading in full, and details the efforts of advocates–even the new Public Advocate within ICE–to keep solitary confinement from being the “default position” when it comes to dealing with transgender detainees. The piece ends with another story of isolation:

Rosalba Davis [of the group Immigration Equality]…worked with a transgender woman named Dulce from Guanajuato, Mexico, who originally fled to the U.S. in the 1990s following a sexual assault. Dulce has the effervescence of an Almodóvar film actress, yet is shy when speaking about her time in detention. She had been transferred to Rappahannock following an arrest for shoplifting shoes at a local K-Mart. Upon arrival, Dulce was put into an isolation cell (el hoyo, or “the hole”) for six days with nothing but a pair of sheets and a thin, wet mattress thrown onto the floor. “I remember asking a female sergeant, ‘Why did you put me here, in the hole? It’s the place for punishment. What did I do?’” Dulce recalled. “She told me they didn’t know where else they could put me.”

Dulce was transferred to the same area that Kripcia had been held, the one designated for male sex offenders. She waited four months before her first court appearance and eventually spent eight months at the facility. CAIR Coalition, a local immigrant advocacy group, found out about Dulce’s case, which was soon taken up by Davis. “When I found out that Dulce was being held with sex offenders, I was not sure what to do about it,” she said. “It all seemed so backwards to me.”

Dulce had little interaction with her fellow detainees, but some conversations she did have scared her, as she recounted to the court last year. “I have not felt safe here and several detainees have made harassing comments,” she wrote. “When New York State passed gay marriage in July [2011], we were watching the TV coverage and one of the detainees said that he wanted to be like Franco and make them all ‘disappear.’ He was telling me he wanted to kill all the gay people, including me. I try to ignore these comments and keep the peace but sometimes I feel unsafe and scared here.”

The officer handling Dulce’s case seemed perpetually confused about her particular circumstances, according to Davis. “Over the course of my representation, he had very little patience,” Davis said of the ICE officer and his handling of Dulce’s requests, which included hormone therapy and a chaplain visit after Dulce learned that her mother had died (both were denied). “He even hung up on me once when I challenged his decision to continue to detain her after the immigration court granted her relief.”…

Absent safe facilities for transgender individuals, advocates have called for alternatives to detention in appropriate cases. Research shows that putting trans detainees on ankle bracelet monitoring results in significant savings for the government — $14 per day compared to $100 or more a day for the cost of detention, according to Homeland Security’s own figures.

“Nobody should be subjected to these kinds of abuses, and people need to hear these stories,” said Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality. “I think there has been an increasing meanness in our country toward people who are undocumented. Unfortunately, that’s certainly had an effect on the progress we have and haven’t made in securing better treatment in detention.”

This week, the The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry released a policy statement condemning the use of solitary confinement for juveniles. There is no comprehensive data on how many teens and even younger children are in solitary confinement in the United States, but it is safe to say that the number run into the thousands. Juveniles in adult prison often end up in solitary confinement, and isolation is widely used in juvenile facilities as well.

On the ACLU “Blog of Rights” today, David Fathi, Director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, puts the statement in context:

As any parent knows, teenagers are different than adults. This common-sense observation is backed by hard scientific evidence; we know that an adolescent’s brain continues to grow and develop well into his or her twenties. The fact that teenagers’ brains are still developing makes them especially vulnerable to trauma of all kinds, including the trauma of social isolation and sensory deprivation.

That’s why the leading American child psychiatry association just approved a policy statement opposing the use of solitary confinement in correctional facilities for juveniles. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry represents over 7,500 child and adolescent psychiatrists and other interested physicians.

This groundbreaking policy statement from adolescent psychiatry experts comes not a moment too soon. While recent settlements in ACLU lawsuits in Montana and Mississippi include limits on solitary confinement for youth, the practice remains alarmingly widespread, with thousands of persons under 18 held in solitary on any given day, in juvenile facilities as well as in adult jails and prisons. I remember the first time I visited a 13-year-old boy in solitary in an adult prison – his voice hadn’t changed yet and he was too young to shave, but that didn’t save him from being locked alone in a cell for 23 hours a day.

Solitary confinement can be harmful for people of any age, but it’s especially damaging to youth. The 17-year-old plaintiff in the ACLU’s Montana case tried to kill himself several times while in solitary confinement in an adult prison. And while youth in solitary are a relatively small percentage of the total population of juvenile facilities, they account for more than half of the suicides.

Fortunately efforts are underway to end this inhumane and destructive practice. In California, Sen. Leland Yee introduced a bill to ban solitary confinement for juveniles except in the most exceptional circumstances. The bill attracted considerable support, but eventually failed to pass out of committee. And in West Virginia, the Division of Juvenile Services recently announced a state-wide ban on the practice.

Click here to read the rest, and to sign the ACLU’s petition against solitary confinement.

Prisoners in California’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) have offered their opinions of the recent reforms of the California prison system’s controversial gang validation policies. In correspondences with Solitary Watch, SHU inmates in Pelican Bay and Corcoran prisons have consistently been critical of the reforms, which among other things reform the gang validation point system and introduce a step-down program in which inmates can  transition out of the SHU. Last month a group of SHU inmates, all of whom are labeled as either members or leaders of prison gangs (Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, Black Guerilla Family), released a counter proposal in response.

The following are excerpts from letters written by prisoners currently in California’s SHUs.

From Kijana Askari (self-portrait above), who has been in the SHU since 1994 after being validated as a member of the Black Guerilla Family:

With regards to the revisions that were done to SHU management gang policies, well, that is exactly what has taken place—”revisions” (e.g. “reform”). Hence, more of the same in that, the revisions have only strengthened CDCR officials power and ability to label and validate every prisoner in CDCR as belonging to a Security Threat Group–e.g. “prison gang.”At the crux of the revisions is a lack of a definitive and “behavioral-based” criteria, as to what actually constitute as being gang activity. Meaning, any and everything can and will still be considered as gang activity, in spite of how innocuous the activity may be.

In addition to this, we still have untrained and unqualified CDCR officers/officials determining and assessing what is “gang activity.” And this point is critical for two very important reasons: 1) There are no qualitative oversight mechanisms in place, meaning there is absolutely nothing to prevent CDCR’s prison guards, gang unit, etc., from being vindictive, retaliatory, punitive, etc., via the application of these “revised” gang management policies; and 2) it has been proven that CDCR’s prison guards and their IGI gang unit staff do not properly investigate the evidence used in each prisoners gang validation–see Lira v. Cate.

And the new revisions do not do anything to correct this.

Kijana Tashiri Askari (Marcus Harrison) #H54077, Pelican Bay State Prison  D3 122 SHU, PO Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95531

From a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been in solitary confinement for five years and is currently appealing the gang validation that placed him there:

“We were recently afforded a copy of this proposal. Many of us are getting the chance now to read through and evaluate it. I read through it once and will go through it again. There are many aspects of the step down program that at face value seem to provide far better alternatives to the over 20 year long policy of implementing indeterminate SHU programs. Many of the program objectives and privileges outlined in the proposal at first glance look to be very good and beneficial to a lot of SHU prisoners. However, the gang validation/identification aspect of the proposal continues to present an ongoing issue and problem for many individuals who have been validated and will be validated. Under the criteria that is set forth, it continues to target and identify individuals for long-term SHU placement based on gang affiliation rather than actual gang activity or criminal/illegal conduct.”Which is, has been, and under this proposal will continue to be a significant hardship for many who the CDCR looks to place and keep locked away in the SHU for little to no reason.”

From a Corcoran SHU inmate who has been diagnosed with severe depression:

“We did have an opportunity to see and speak to a couple of representatives from Sacramento who are responsible for crafting language that will reflect the policy change. As we understand there are changes being made to the policy. And the CDCR is in the process of implementing the step down program here at Corcoran SHU. And it is anticipated, according to what we were told, that something would be in place within 60-90 days. At least that’s a target date or time frame.

There was a couple of areas of concern for us. We believe that four years is much too long to be in the step down program. It’s a four year step program, each step is one year. It’s basically an observation program in which you graduate to the next step if you have not been documented as having been involved in gang activity. Just what constitutes gang activity is still being determined.

A lot of guys in Pelican Bay and here have already been in isolation for the past 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years. Many have been disciplinary free and most were placed in isolation for non-disciplinary reasons. It does not make any sense for guys to have to remain in the SHU.

We believe that those guys that the CDCR (genuinely) intends on placing in general population or non-SHU setting should be placed directly into one.

In light of the struggle (and loss of life) it will be extremely difficult for the CDCR to justify not allowing guys to be released to general population. Or at least be provided some kind of meaningful program in a non-SHU setting.

I was diagnosed with severe depression several years ago.

I don’t know which is worse.

At some point you know that the isolation has affected you. Perhaps permanently. It involves so many different factors. Particularly the isolation itself.

Over the years you have seen other people snap. Human beings cutting themselves. Eating their own waste. Smearing themselves in it. And sometimes throwing it at you. Human beings not just talking out loud to themselves–but screaming at and cursing themselves out.

How could you not be affected by this kind of madness?!”

From a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been in solitary confinement since 1988, and participated in the 2011 hunger strikes:

“I fail to see how it is any different from my current SHU term…It did not address the fact that there are prisoners who have been in PBSP-SHU for over 20 years without any kind of serious rule infraction. It is written like every single short corridor prisoner is starting from scratch. In other words, no prisoner should even entertain the idea of leaving SHU for the next four or five years. It sounds like a poorly modified version of the six year inactive status program to me. And the IGI still has control of prisoners’ fate through what is decided through classification, telling them when and where to place us.

Nothing has been gained–they’ve put a different name on the same repressive/torturous measures that have been in effect since the state started locking us up for administrative convenience in extreme solitary confinement isolation. There is absolutely nothing about the step down program that allows a SHU prisoner to work their way out of SHU without the expressed approval of the IGI–the whole program as laid out at present is a bunch of clever words seemingly giving prisoners a way to work our way out of SHU. It’s not! I’ve already been in SHU since 1988, what do I need to work on? What exactly are they going to see in my attitude and actions during the four phases of the step-down program that they haven’t already seen in the past twenty plus years during my extreme isolated confinement for administrative convenience? It just does not make sense.

I feel like the CDCR is clowning us!”

The following is from a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been incarcerated for forty years, 35 of which have been spent in the SHU.

“Being a labeled outcast makes it easy to see us no more than a farm animal or dog. Which morally assuages the conscience and culpability of individuals’ roles in our vilification. We are living in the times of the Bogeyman syndrome. The power of fear and mistrust. Suspicion which clouds peoples judgment and common sense. Choosing to be ignorant, unable or unwilling to filter out irrelevant noises and views, they transform into parrots that merely mimic the latest tidbit of information.

I don’t have a positive opinion of the impending SHU policy changes. The basic framework, premise and argument is faulty because phantoms are still used as a justification to subject people to punitive action. I am in SHU for non-disciplinary reasons and have been subjected to punitive isolation based on presumption and fantastic takes sown from the chronicle of the Bogeyman. I have spent 35 years in SHU and I should be unconditionally released to the mainline, especially since I haven’t had any serious rule violation in even twenty-five years except for participation in a hunger strike.”

Our latest piece over at Mother Jones concerns an important trial beginning today in Federal District Court in Denver, in which a prisoner with mental illness is challenging more than a decade in solitary confinement in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Also included is background on the groundbreaking work of the University of Denver’s Civil Rights Clinic; on the use of solitary confinement to warehouse the mentally ill; and on recent challenges to solitary in the state of Colorado. What follows is the beginning of the article; you can read the full piece on MotherJones.com.

Troy Anderson lives in Cañon City, a high desert town in a dramatic setting at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. But for more than a decade he has neither seen those mountains nor felt the sun on his skin. He spends 23 hours out of each day confined to an 8 x 12 isolation cell at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP)—one of the state’s supermax prisons—and the remaining hour in a bare exercise room. Well over half of his 42 years have been spent behind bars, most of them in what prison authorities euphemistically call “administrative segregation.” In practice, this means Anderson will remain in solitary confinement until prison officials feel it’s time to let him out.

Anderson has been in and out of jail since he was a juvenile on account of his erratic and sometimes violent behavior. In 2000, he was sentenced to 75 years for myriad charges stemming from two incidents in which he shot at police, the second time in an attempt to escape custody. Offenses committed in prison have landed him in “ad seg” at CSP. (His last disciplinary infraction was in 2005, when he was written up for somehow managing to get envelopes to another prisoner.)

But there’s more to the story. Anderson, like hundreds of other prisoners confined in isolation in Colorado—and thousands held in solitary across the nation—is seriously mentally ill. His diagnoses include bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, cognitive disorders, and a seizure disorder. He has attempted suicide many times, starting at age 10. He is seen periodically by prison psychiatrists, all of whom seem to concur that he needs therapy and medication. At CSP, however, his treatment has consisted of a fiasco of intermittent and inappropriate meds and scant therapy, typically conducted through a slot in his solid steel cell door.

Yet unlike most of those other prisoners languishing in solitary, Anderson is about to get his day in federal court. Beginning today, in a trial that could have broad implications for how states handle inmates with mental illness, Anderson’s lawyers will argue before the District Court in Denver that their client’s predicament violates his civil rights, under both the Constitution and federal law.

It was his untreated mental illness that first landed him at CSP, Anderson contends, and now the same symptoms are keeping him there indefinitely. Without proper treatment, he is unable to convince corrections officials that he’s fit for the general prison population. This Catch-22, his lawyers say, condemns him to an effective life sentence under conditions that are increasingly being denounced as a form of torture—particularly when applied to mentally ill prisoners.

Read the rest here.

Incarcerated for over 17 years, “Mysterious Offender” (M.O.) has spent over 16 of those years in isolation units in Oregon, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Corresponding with Solitary Watch for nearly 4 months, he has recounted his 12-year incarceration in Oregon’s isolation units. He has said he suffers “significant impairment from isolation.” The following is a portion of a series of writings entitled “Exiled in Purgatory.” — Sal Rodriguez

Waking Nightmares

In 2009 I had been in prison for 15 years. My attorney hired a nationally well-known expert to examine me and determine how I had adjusted to incarceration. He gave me 34 tests, over three days, many of which can detect the  faking of mental health disorders. He concluded I suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He stated in his written report:

“Further witnessing several murders, suicides, and general mayhem before and after his incarceration likely exacerbated his pre-existing PTSD symptomatology. His PTSD appears to be chronic from the TSI data.” [SW note: The TSI is the Trauma Symptom Inventory.]

I’ve since learned, from other prison psychiatrists that PTSD is common in prisoners who have spent many years incarcerated. It is akin to serving several tours in a war zone. People become hypersensitive and you can literally feel the stress and tension on people. I’ve known it for years but didn’t know it was PTSD.

I startle easily. If a pen rolls off my desk and hits the floor…even that small sound can throw me into fear. If the officer knocks on the cell door or shuts the cuff port hard, a door slams, an odd sound…every one of them can throw me into fear. I can only describe the fear as being of of body. I have recurring nightmares.

Does the prison provide treatment? Aside from wanting to put you on medication, No. They tell me if I need treatment I have to tell them what I need…and chances are they don’t have it.

I have to wonder why the US continues down the path of failing prisons that they know makes people worse, then sends them back into the world none the better.

I constantly worry how I will function in general population, let alone the free world. The U.S. has more prisoners than any other nation on earth. Why is that? Why is the “land of the free” also the “land of prisoners”?

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.”

 

The following is a response by  California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC), an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the use of solitary confinement in California prisons, to the recent revision of gang validation policies. Gang validation is the primary means by which the over three thousand inmates in Security Housing Units (SHU) are placed in solitary confinement, most for years and many for decades. Pelican Bay SHU inmates responded to the reforms, which include the implementation of a step-down program and a transformation in the security point system, with a counter proposal three weeks ago.

LOS ANGELES (April 16, 2012) — We live in a state whose citizens are more morally outraged about the confinement of chickens and dogs than of human beings. We are the families of thousands of loved ones who have been incarcerated indefinitely—some for decades—in California’s “supermax” segregated and administrative housing units. Solitary confinement, even for short periods, has been known for centuries to cause irreparable physical and psychological damage: torture. Yet California continues to condone this practice in violation of both Constitutional and international law against the use of this and other inhuman and degrading treatment.

In March 2012 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) came out with its long-awaited proposal to overhaul its use of prolonged solitary confinement to manage gangs and violent prisoners. Families, lawyers, prisoners and activists had hoped that after two peaceful hunger strikes in 2011 engaging 12,000 prisoners protesting CDCR’s illegal practices, the Department would follow several other states that have successfully and significantly reduced their use of solitary confinement and instituted effective rehabilitation and re-entry programs—and at great savings to overstressed state budgets.

By definition “torture” is the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering by or with the consent of state authorities for a specific purpose: With CDCR, this purpose is to extract information about gang activities, real or fabricated. There is nothing in these new proposals that leads any of us to believe that a sincere reform of CDCR’s extremist policies is at hand; in fact, the language is more obscure, the policies more layered, and the prisoners’ demands for decency and rehabilitation virtually ignored. Amnesty International and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture among others issued immediate statements repudiating this document as not going far enough to address the inhumane conditions that have persisted in California prisons for decades. If anything, much of the new document appears even more Draconian. We are very concerned for our loved ones inside this prison within the prison.

Prisons are by nature closed systems, yet they are funded by taxpayers and are public institutions whose function is to oversee the deprivation of liberty, an extreme use of power against an individual. Our loved ones are human beings first and prisoners second. Too many have endured retaliation, arbitrary interpretations of CDCR’s regulations code, poor food, medical negligence, and an inability to program out of solitary unless they self-incriminate, snitch, or die. This is not to ignore crime and punishment, but we believe the public interest in law and order can best be served through standards of morality and human decency.

All California communities are stakeholders in what happens in our prisons because many of these inmates will eventually return to society. Even if our state’s citizens may not generally be sympathetic to prisoners, we must hold our public institutions to high ethical standards, including assuring that both prisons and communities are safe.

Gov. Jerry Brown and Secretary of Operations Matthew Cate recently applauded CDCR for removing the last “bad beds” in prison overcrowding—a move to eliminate degrading and inhuman conditions, creating a more effective penal regime that honors dignity and human rights. This thinking must now be transferred to prisoners in solitary. California’s version of supermax is extreme on every level, involving more prisoners for more of their sentences under worse conditions. Many states are revisiting their use of solitary confinement, but given California’s documented tendency to create torturous conditions under the justification of security, large-scale use of solitary confinement in this state should end.

Substantial, meaningful and ethical revision of the CDCR proposals will be a large step toward restoring basic justice in California, with no less concern for the real issue of public safety. We believe California’s faith communities have a considerable stake in this humanitarian reform and we ask your participation in our efforts to raise awareness and end torture in California prisons.

Contact information: California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC), 8018 E. Santa Ana Canyon Rd. Suite 100 #213, Anaheim, CA 92808-1102; 714.290.9077

The latest issue of The Nation includes an excellent article by Matt Stroud, about the common practice in Pennsylvania of placing  prisoners with serious mental illness in solitary confinement–where, unsurprisingly, they sometimes resort to suicide. The article begins:

By the time John McClellan Jr. was found dead inside Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Cresson last May, he had long been categorized as “special needs” for his history of addiction and mental instability. Yet prisoners and staff say the 42-year-old inmate was not living in one of the facility’s treatment units but in the Restricted Housing Unit, or RHU—otherwise known as solitary confinement.

Two months earlier, McClellan had written a letter to his father, a Philadelphia police officer, saying that five correctional officers had assaulted him, then filed false charges against him. John McClellan Sr. had already contacted an attorney; threats and abuse from guards were allegedly so frequent his son kept a makeshift calendar on legal-sized notebook paper to keep track. A former SCI Cresson prisoner, Tim Everard, who says he spent time in a neighboring RHU cell, recalls seeing guards kicking the younger McClellan’s cell door, calling him names and goading him to kill himself. When Everard told the manager of the ward that McClellan seemed suicidal, Everard says she brushed him off, saying of the impulse to commit suicide, “If he’s going to act on it, he’s going to act on it.”

On December 1 the Justice Department announced an investigation into SCI Cresson as well as SCI Pittsburgh in response to allegations of prisoner abuse. Since then, another inmate, who reportedly asked repeatedly for and was denied mental health treatment, has committed suicide inside SCI Cresson. An investigation by The Nation uncovered details of the claims at the center of the probe, through interviews with current and former Department of Corrections (DOC) employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. At least three sources with knowledge of the mental health procedures at SCI Cresson have provided corroborating evidence to the Justice Department, claiming that they were threatened with physical harm or false charges by prison authorities if they raised concerns.

Stroud goes on to detail the grim history of SCI Cresson and the allegations of abuse and suffering that have gone on there and throughout the Pennsylvania system, which “historically…been at the forefront of the use of solitary confinement, and…has continued to experiment with new forms of isolation.”

The article is particularly important in parsing the system’s attempts to deal with mentally ill inmates by placing them in various forms of solitary confinement. They have euphemistic names like the Secure Special Needs Unit (SSNU), but critics argue that with inadequate treatment and staff training, they in effect are just slightly less noxious torture chambers. And not all prisoners with mental illness even make it to the SSNU, instead remaining in regular solitary cells–which is where John McClellan Jr. killed himself.

Stroud points out that the current DOJ investigation “could have important implications beyond Pennsylvania.”

In addition to determining whether it “provided inadequate mental health care to prisoners who have mental illness [and] failed to adequately protect such prisoners from harm,” according to the DOJ’s official release, investigators will also consider the practice of subjecting mentally ill prisoners to “excessively prolonged periods of isolation, in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” with its ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Even if the particular abuse leveled at McClellan is found to be an aberration, holding mentally unstable prisoners in solitary confinement is a common practice in prisons and jails across the country. With major studies showing that prolonged isolation can aggravate—and even contribute to—mental illness and a small number of states moving to reduce their reliance on the practice, the DOJ investigation could be a significant step toward banning solitary confinement for mentally ill prisoners.

In addition, while the federal courts’ record on limiting solitary confinement has been pretty dismal, ”some civil rights advocates believe that now is the moment to take on solitary confinement in court.”

The DOJ probe could lead to such a case. Federal investigators have toured SCI Cresson and interviewed current and former SSNU prisoners. Although the DOC has said it will cooperate fully, it may object to a basic claim: solitary confinement, in the hairsplitting definition of one DOC press secretary, means “an individual has no contact with other individuals.” By that logic, none of the inmates at SCI Cresson qualify, given their regular contact (abusive or not) with guards.

A legal clash could be significant. Human Rights Watch has estimated that up to 19 percent of US prisoners “have psychiatric disorders…and another 15 to 20 percent require some form of psychiatric intervention” in prison. A 2010 HRW report gave similar estimates for those in solitary confinement.

It is often estimated that about 25,000 prisoners are living in solitary confinement, but Jean Casella and James Ridgeway, who run SolitaryWatch.com, have noted that this number counts supermax prisons without including the many different isolation units in state prisons, like the RHU and SSNU at SCI Cresson. They put the nationwide total closer to 80,000.

“The DOJ investigation has the potential to further expose the utter depravity…of the prison system,” says Bret Grote of the Human Rights Coalition. The use of punitive isolation at CSI Cresson, he says, fits “squarely within the norm for how solitary units are run throughout [Pennsylvania], where instances of cruelty and insanity are deliberately multiplied by government employees as a matter of policy.”

The full article is a must-read for anyone concerned with solitary confinement in general, and solitary confinement and mental illness in particular.

One of our very first posts, when we started the Solitary Watch blog, concerned a suicidal Montana teenager locked in solitary confinement because he was deemed a discipline problem after he damaged prison property. It’s a story so gut-wrenching that we still often tell it as an example of how isolation becomes torture for many people in prison. As the Helena Independent Record reported the story in December 2009:

A 17-year-old boy suffering from mental illnesses was so traumatized by his deplorable treatment in the Montana State Prison that he twice attempted to kill himself by biting through the skin on his wrist to puncture a vein, a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana alleges.

The lawsuit filed in Lewis and Clark County District Court claims that the boy, “Robert Doe,” has been treated illegally and inhumanely and has been detained for about 10 months in solitary confinement. Doe was Tasered as part of a “behavior modification plan,” pepper-sprayed and stripped naked in view of other inmates, the complaint states….

His available mental health treatment consists of a prison staff member knocking on his door once a week and asking if he has any concerns, according to documents, and then he must answer by yelling within earshot of other inmates.

Since March, he has been locked in a solitary cell all but five to six hours a week, and he is not allowed personal visits or telephone calls.

In 2010, the teenager–who was identified as Raistlen Katka once he turned 18–told a federal judge that he had tried to bite through his veins because he was so desperate to get out of solitary: “My thought process was if I don’t die, at least I’ll get out of my cell for 30 seconds,” Katka testified.

The case epitomized the plight of two groups of inmates–juveniles in adult prisons, and prisoners suffering from mental illness. Members of both these groups are disproportionately likely to end up in solitary confinement, even though they are even less equipped than other prisoners to tolerate the effects of long-term isolation.

This week, the American Civil Liberties of Montana has reached a settlement with the Montana State Prison over the case, Raistlen Katka v. State of Montana. According to a press release:

[The settlement] limits the amount of time juveniles can be placed in isolation and provides for better treatment of mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement, protecting our state’s most vulnerable prisoners.

“I am glad the prison is changing how it treats young offenders,” said plaintiff Raistlen Katka. “I brought this lawsuit so no one else would have to endure the torture I endured.”

“The effects of solitary confinement on any inmate are profound, but are even more pronounced for adolescents whose brains are still developing and for persons with mental illness,” said ACLU cooperating attorney Andree Larose. “On top of that, experience nationwide shows that solitary really does not work. This settlement is a step in the right direction toward making sure inmates are treated humanely and consistent with the Montana Constitution, and are incarcerated in conditions that promote successful reintegration when they are released.”…

“Once Raistlen was released from solitary confinement and given mental health treatment, he began doing far better than he did under the prison’s ‘behavior management plans,’” said attorney Jennifer Giuttari who filed the case on behalf of the ACLU of Montana, and has continued working on it at her new law firm, Montana Legal Justice, PLLC. “Raistlen’s story shows that prisoners can successfully re-enter into society when given proper treatment during their incarceration.”

The settlement mandates several new policies at the Montana State Prison. Juveniles cannot be placed in solitary or so-called behavior management programs for longer than 72 hours without the approval of the director of the Department of Corrections or warden. Classification of teen inmates “Will take into account their unique needs for education and mental and medical treatment and their lack of full maturity.” In addition, ”mentally ill prisoners cannot be placed into solitary confinement if it is determined it will harm their mental health, and those who are placed in solitary confinement must receive private treatment sessions with a mental health professional as often as necessary.” Finally, ”suicidal inmates cannot be placed in behavior management programs.”

Today marks 40 years in solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Our article on the Angola 3 appears today on MotherJones.com.

On the world stage, Guantanamo may well stand as the epitome of American human rights abuses. But when it comes to torture on US soil, that grim distinction is held by two aging African-American men. As of today, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have spent 40 years in near-continuous solitary confinement in the bowels of the Louisiana prison system. Most of those years were spent at the notorious Angola Prison, which is why the pair are still known as members of the Angola 3. The third man, Robert King, was released in 2001—his conviction was overturned after he’d spent 29 years in solitary.

Wallace and Woodfox were first thrown into the hole on April 17, 1972, following the killing of Brent Miller, a young prison guard. The men contend that they were targeted by prison authorities and convicted of murder not based on the actual evidence—which was dubious at best—but because they were members of the Black Panther Party’s prison chapter, which was organizing against horrendous conditions at Angola. This political affiliation, they say, also accounted for their seemingly permanent stay in solitary.

For four decades, the men have spent at least 23 hours a day in cells measuring 6 x 9 feet. These days, they are allowed out one hour a day to take a shower or a stroll along the cell block. Three days a week, they may use that hour to exercise alone in a fenced yard. Wallace is now 70; Woodfox is 65. Their lawyers argue that both have endured physical injury and “severe mental anguish and other psychological damage” from living most of their adult lives in lockdown. According to medical reports submitted to the court, the men suffer from arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. Even the psychologist brought in by the state confirmed these findings.

Read the rest of the article for updates on the Angola 3′s legal challenges to solitary confinement, as well as to their convictions. We also cover the latest from the two men who are determined to keep Wallace and Woodfox in prison and in solitary: Angola Warden Burl Cain, who says the two men are too “militant” to be in the general population, and Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, who has said he opposes releasing them “with every fiber of my being.”

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox in the 1970s, with Angola prison in the background. From the film "In the Land of the Free."

Premiering today at the Full Frame Documentary Festival in North Carolina is Herman’s House, a film ”that follows the unlikely friendship between a New York artist and one of America’s most famous inmates as they collaborate on an acclaimed art project.” The inmate is Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3, who on Tuesday will mark 40 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana prison system.

The following is an excerpt from the film’s press release:

In 1972, New Orleans native Herman Joshua Wallace (b. 1941) was serving a 25-year sentence for bank robbery when he was accused of murdering an Angola Prison guard and thrown into solitary confinement. Many believed him wrongfully convicted. Appeals were made but Herman remained in jail and—to increasingly widespread outrage—in solitary. Years passed with one day much like the next. Then in 2001 Herman received a perspectiveshifting letter from a Jackie Sumell, a young art student, who posed the provocative question:

“What kind of house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?”

Thus began an inspired creative dialogue, unfolding over hundreds of letters and phone calls and yielding a multi-faceted collaborative project that includes the exhibition “The House That Herman Built.” The revelatory art installation—featuring a full-scale wooden model of Herman’s cell and detailed plans of his dream home—has brought thousands of gallery visitors around the world face-to-face with the harsh realities of the American prison system.

But as Herman’s House reveals, the exhibition is just the first step.

Their journey takes a more unpredictable turn when Herman asks Jackie to make his dream a reality. As her own finances dwindle, Jackie begins to doubt if she can meet the challenge of finding land and building a real house. Meanwhile, Herman waits to find out if the Louisiana courts will hear his latest appeal.

Along the way we meet self-confessed “stick-up kid” Michael Musser, who credits Herman for helping him turn his life around while in solitary; Herman’s sister Vickie, a loyal and tireless supporter despite her own emotional burden; and former long-term solitary inmate and fellow Black Panther activist Robert King who, along with Herman and Albert Woodfox, was one of the so-called Angola 3 that became a cause celebre in the 2000s.

“I’m not a lawyer and I’m not rich and I’m not powerful, but I’m an artist,” Jackie says. “And I knew the only way I could get [Herman] out of prison was to get him to dream.”

There are 2.2 million people in jail in the U.S. More than 80,000 of those are in solitary confinement. Herman Wallace has been there longer than anyone.

With compassion and meaningful artistry, Herman’s House takes us inside the lives and imaginations of two unforgettable characters–forging a friendship and building a dream in the struggle to end the “cruel and unusual punishment” of long-term solitary confinement.

We had an opportunity to view Herman’s House before its release and to meet its director, Angad Singh Bhalla. The filmmakers were, of course, not permitted to shoot or record inside the prison where Herman Wallace resides. Yet his voice emerges from the depths, clear and strong, through letters and recorded phone calls. The house he imagines–and Jackie Sumell builds for him–is brought to life through creative use of animation. Through the moving story of their collaboration, the film makes a powerful statement about the cruelty of solitary confinement.

Readers of Solitary Watch will not want to miss seeing this film, so we will provide updates on Twitter and Facebook about any theatrical release and television screenings in the coming months. In the meantime, you can watch the trailer, below. (And for more on Herman Wallace’s case, see our earlier article on Mother Jones, “Southern Injustice.”)

Late yesterday, the Connecticut Assembly passed legislation to bring an end to the state’s future use of the death penalty. The governor has promised to sign the legislation, making Connecticut the 17th state to repeal capital punishment.

This is, of course, a significant victory for death penalty opponents. But the legislation has two troubling components. The first is the fact that it will not apply to the 11 men currently on death row. The second is an amendment added last week to the legislation in the Connecticut Senate, where it faced a steeper hurdle. As reported by the Connecticut website The Day:

The House bill is nearly identical to the Senate bill passed last week. It creates new imprisonment standards for future Class A felony murderers convicted of “murder with special circumstances,” what is currently known as a capital offense.

Under the bill, those convicted must be housed separately from other inmates, subjected to twice-weekly cell searches and must change their cells every three months. They would get no more than two hours a day outside their cells and would be allowed only “non-contact” visitation privileges.

The amendment–which can be read in full here–is meant to ensure that prisoners who might previously have received the death penalty will serve life without parole in 22-hour-a-day solitary confinement, in conditions that mimic death row. In pledging to sign the bill, Governor Dannel Malloy stated: “Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience…Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.”

Even for steadfast opponents of long-term solitary confinement, it would be difficult to argue that this is not the lesser of two evils. But it is an evil nonetheless, in that it replaces death penalty with a lifetime in conditions that are widely considered to constitute torture. It also risks spreading the use of life in solitary confinement beyond what would originally have been capital cases–which is effectively what happened with life without parole.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that Britain can extradite five men to the United States to face terrorism charges. In the likely event that they are convicted, they face life sentences in solitary confinment in the notorious ADX Florence, the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

The AP is calling the high-profile case “a European referendum on whether conditions at Colorado’s Supermax federal prison amounted to torture.” In agreeing to extradite the suspects, the court is saying that life in solitary at ADX would not 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.”

We will be writing more on this case in the coming days. In the meantime, readers are encouraged to consider two documents, and judge for themselves.

The first document consists of the evidence presented on behalf of the prisoners in question, as summarized by the court, which reads like a rudown of arguments against long-term solitary confinement in general, and ADX in particular.

The second is Susan Greene’s searing report on solitary confinement, “The Gray Box,” which focuses largely on ADX and includes the most powerful evidence of all–the testimony of the men who live there.

Check out our latest piece over at MotherJones.com, on a new lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates at New Orleans’ main jail. Here are some excerpts:

As hellholes go, there are few worse places in America than the Orleans Parish Prison.

New Orleans’ teeming city jail first hit the radar of most Americans following Hurricane Katrina, when thousands of inmates were abandoned for days in flooded cells without food, water, ventilation, or electricity—some of them “standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests,” according to the ACLU. But OPP’s problems did not begin with Katrina, nor end in the storm’s wake, when prisoners were shipped back to the jail’s surviving buildings.

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of OPP’s inmates. The 38-page complaint—which names as defendants Sheriff Marlin Gusman, along with the jail’s wardens and medical directors—describes a facility where prisoners “are at imminent risk of serious harm.” About 44 percent of the inmates are there awaiting trial, and haven’t been convicted of the crimes they were charged with. But pretrial detention at OPP, the suit contends, is in itself a brutal punishment that can expose people to physical and sexual abuse, and even death.

“Rapes, sexual assaults, and beatings are commonplace,” the lawsuit states. “Violence regularly occurs at the hands of sheriffs’ deputies, as well as other prisoners…People living with serious mental illnesses languish without treatment, left vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. These conditions have created a public safety crisis that affects the entire city.”

“It’s just complete lawlessness in there,” Katie Schwartzmann, the SPLC attorney representing the prisoners, told us in an interview. “The place is full of knives. There are tons of assaults, beatings.”

Stints at OPP are particularly horrendous for inmates with mental illness, whom the SPLC believes make up as much as two-thirds of the jail’s population—though their condition often goes undetected, since there’s no real classification system.

When inmates are booked into OPP, the lawsuit notes, prison officials suspend their medications for 30 days and sometimes longer: “Unsurprisingly, this practice causes some individuals to experience suicidal ideation.” When this happens, “suicidal prisoners with mental health needs are transferred to a direct observation cell, in which they are held almost naked for days.”

Schwartzmann cites one inmate, William Goetzee, who tried to snatch a security officer’s gun outside a courthouse, professing that he wanted to kill himself. “They bring him to OPP,” she says. “He attempted to hang himself. They cut him down and two days later he killed himself by eating toilet paper. He ate enough toilet paper that he asphyxiated. Tell me if that’s not deliberate indifference!”

Inmates deemed mentally ill but not suicidal “are transferred to the psychiatric tiers—where they are locked down in their cells for 23 hours a day and deprived of mental health interventions,” notes the complaint. “People living there are not allowed to go outside or visit with their families. Overhead lights are on 24 hours per day, and the tier contains actively psychotic people living on the ground in overcrowded cells. Deputies do not walk the tiers. Rape is rampant.”

Prisoners seeking mental health services, the suit continues, “are discouraged from seeking necessary care” not only by the strict lockdown but also because they are charged a copayment for submitting the request.

You can read the rest of the article here.

This month marks 40 years in solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two members of the Angola 3 who remain in prison–and in 23-hour lockdown–in Louisiana. They were placed in solitary confinement following the 1972 murder of a prison guard, for which they were convicted on highly dubious evidence. They believe that they were targeted because they were members of the Black Panther Party–and that they remain in solitary today for the same reasons. (You can read our stories about the case on MotherJones.com, here, here, and here.)

A new half-hour BBC radio program provides comprehensive and moving coverage of the case. It features Robert King–the third member of the Angola 3, who was released when his conviction was overturned after 29 years in solitary. It also includes interviews with lawyers, family members, activists–and Solitary Watch’s Jean Casella.

You can listen to the full program here, and read the accompanying article here.

You can also sign Amnesty International’s online petition demanding that Wallace and Woodfox be released from solitary confinement.

We’ll be writing more about the Angola 3 next week.

Herman Wallace's sketch of the dimensions of his prison cell

A report just released by Amnesty International documents and denounces conditons in Arizona’s state prisons, including their gross overuse of long-term solitary confinement. A cogent summary of the report’s findings appears this morning in the Arizona Republic, in an article by Bob Ortega (who has written before about Arizona’s brutal prisons and jails):

Arizona’s state prisons overuse solitary confinement in cruel, inhumane and  illegal ways, particularly for mentally ill prisoners and juveniles as young as  14, the human-rights group Amnesty International charges in a report to be  released today.

According to the report, which is to be delivered to the governor and state  lawmakers, Arizona prisons use solitary confinement as a punishment more than  most other states or the federal government.

The group found that some inmates are held in isolation for months and  sometimes years, and it called on the state to use the practice only as a last  resort and only for a short duration.

In addition, it asked that the practice not be used against children or  people who are mentally ill or have behavioral disabilities. The group also  called on state officials to improve conditions for prisoners in solitary  confinement and to act to reduce the high number of suicides in Arizona’s  prisons.

Arizona Department of Corrections officials said they had not read the report  Monday and were unable to comment.

According to the DOC, 3,130 inmates, or 8 percent of the state prison  population, were being held in the highest-security, maximum-custody units as of  Friday, and most were confined alone.

Although maximum-security inmates include those who are violent and may  represent a threat to other inmates or staff, Amnesty noted that Arizona’s own  figures show that 35 percent of inmates in maximum security were committed for  non-violent crimes.

Amnesty International’s report cited sources who said prisoners are regularly  assigned to maximum security for relatively minor rule violations or disruptive  behavior, often because they have mental-health or behavioral problems.

The report noted cases of Arizona inmates who have been in solitary  confinement continuously for 15 years. Amnesty said that various international  human-rights treaties and experts, including the United Nations’ Special  Rapporteur on Torture, have called on states to limit the use of solitary  confinement to exceptional circumstances, for short periods and to prohibit  solitary confinement of children 17 and younger.

Amnesty’s report found that 14 children 14 to 17 years old had been held in  maximum custody at the Rincon unit in the Tucson state prison, under conditions  similar to those of adults: 22 to 24 hours a day in their cells, limited exercise alone in a small cage and with no recreational activities.

Because children and adolescents are not fully developed physically and  emotionally, they are less equipped to tolerate the effects of isolation,  according to studies cited in the report.

Some charges in the Amnesty report echo those raised in a federal lawsuit  filed by the Americal Civil Liberties Union and the Prison Law Office last  month, alleging that Arizona’s Department of Corrections doesn’t provide  adequate mental-health and medical care.

The state has not responded to that suit, and the Corrections spokesman said  the department wouldn’t respond to any parts of the Amnesty report that related  to that litigation.

Last July, Corrections officials declined to meet with Amnesty  representatives from London who were visiting Arizona, nor allow them to visit  the Eyman state prison, which houses about 1,950 maximum-security inmates.

A spokesman said Corrections Director Charles Ryan had other commitments. In  a letter to Amnesty, Ryan cited security concerns in declining their visit  request. On that same tour, Texas and California correctional officials met with  Amnesty’s representatives, and California permitted them to visit  maximum-custody units…

Most Arizona maximum-security inmates are isolated in “special management  units,” windowless cells that, contrary to the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for  Treatment of Prisoners, have no direct access to sunlight or fresh air, and have  lighting that is dimmed at night but left on 24 hours a day, the Amnesty report  said.

Inmates in SMU units are not allowed to work. They typically receive two  daily meals in their cells, have no contact with other inmates and are allowed  out of their cell no more than three times a week for two hours for exercise and  showers, in many cases in a windowless room with nothing except tall walls and a  mesh over the roof.

Amnesty cited allegations that the cells are no longer steam-cleaned between  inmates, so that food, urine and feces are stuck on the walls and food  slots.

Both Amnesty International and inmates contacted by The Arizona  Republic expressed concern that the conditions in solitary may contribute to  Arizona’s high prison suicide rate, which was double the national average last  fiscal year. Seven of the 10 most recent suicides in state prisons were by  inmates being held in solitary in maximum-security cells, according to  Corrections death reports…

While many states, including California, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont,  Ohio, Mississippi and Wisconsin, bar placing seriously mentally ill inmates in  solitary because the social isolation and sensory deprivation can lead to  further psychological deterioration, Arizona does not.

Amnesty cited reports that serious mental illnesses often go undiagnosed in  Arizona prisons because of a lack of mental-health staff and inadequate  screening and monitoring.

Amnesty reported that mental-health staff don’t have weekly rounds, visiting  maximum-security inmates only when there’s a crisis, and consulting with them at  their cell door.

It noted the ACLU lawsuit, which alleges that prisoners in solitary wait an  average of six to eight months to see a psychologist, with some waiting more  than a year. One prisoner diagnosed with serious mental illness spent two years  in solitary without seeing a psychiatrist despite repeated requests and  referrals by staff, according to the suit.

Amnesty noted 43 suicides listed by Corrections from October 2005 to April  2011 and said that of the 37 cases in which it was able to collect information,  22 — or 60 percent — took place in maximum-custody solitary units. There have  been at least eight more suicides since April 2011 and 16 other deaths that the  department described only as “under investigation.”

In letters to The Republic, inmates have raised concerns similar to  those in the Amnesty report. “While on suicide watch here at SMU-1, the lights  stay on all night and make it impossible to sleep — all day, all night,” wrote  Dustin Brislan, an inmate with a serious mental illness in solitary confinement  at Eyman.

“Lack of contact, of seeing the outside, seeing any bit of sunlight, smelling  fresh air, all of that has increased my mental illness. I’m only allowed  recreation every other day, where I’m put in a windowless cell off area.”

The Eyman prison is the only one in Arizona not accredited by the National  Commission on Correctional Health Care, which requires that prisoners being held  in solitary confinement have at least weekly contact with mental-health  staff…

The Amnesty report also questioned why Arizona’s Corrections Department  requires all prisoners sentenced to life to spend at least their first two years  in solitary confinement, regardless of whether they pose a threat to other  inmates or guards.

“There appears to be no valid reason,” the report said. American Bar  Association standards call for prisoners to be kept in solitary more than a year  only if the prisoner poses a “continuing, serious threat.”…

Amnesty International said Arizona should:

Reduce the number of prisoners in isolation to only  those who are a serious and continuing threat.

Improve overall conditions, provide more out-of-cell  time, better exercise facilities, meaningful education and rehabilitation  programs.

Introduce measures to allow some group interactions and  association to benefit inmates’ mental health and provide incentives for better  behavior.

Remove all serious mentally ill prisoners from solitary  and prohibit them from being placed in solitary.

Improve mental-health monitoring; take steps to reduce  suicide, including more humane conditions in suicide watch cells; and prohibit  solitary confinement of prisoners under 18.