Archives for January 2014

NEWS: New York Lawmakers Introduce Sweeping Reforms to Use of Solitary Confinement in Prisons and Jails

January 31, 2014 by

Press release from the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. January 31, 10:30 am

New York — At a mid-morning press conference at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New York legislators will join advocates, survivors of solitary confinement, and their families to announce the introduction of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act (A08588 / S06466).

Introduced in both the Assembly and the Senate, the pioneering bill is being hailed by supporters as the most comprehensive and progressive legislative response to date to the nationwide problem of solitary confinement in prisons and jails. As written, it would virtually eliminate a practice that has been increasingly denounced as both dangerous and torturous, while protecting the safety of incarcerated individuals and corrections officers.

According to Assembly Member Jeffrion Aubry, who is sponsoring the bill in the Assembly, “New York State was a leader for the country in passing the 2008 SHU Exclusion Law, which keeps people with the most severe mental health needs out of solitary confinement. Now we must show the way forward again, ensuring that we provide safe, humane and effective alternatives to solitary for all people.”

“Solitary confinement makes people suffer without making our prisons safer. It is counter-productive as well as cruel,” said Senator Bill Perkins, the bill’s Senate sponsor. “Solitary harms not only those who endure it, but families, communities, and corrections staff as well.”

Currently, about 3,800 people are in Special Housing Units, or SHUs, with many more in other forms of isolated confinement in New York’s State prisons on any given day, held for 23 to 24 hours a day in cells smaller than the average parking space, alone or with one other person. More than 800 are in solitary confinement in New York City jails, along with hundreds more in local jails across the state.

New York isolates imprisoned people at levels well above the national average, and uses solitary to punish minor disciplinary violations. Five out of six sentences that result in placement in New York State’s SHUs are for non-violent conduct. Individuals are sent to the SHU on the word of prison staff, and may remain there for months, years, or even decades.

The HALT Solitary Confinement Act bans extreme isolation beyond 15 days–the limit advocated by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez, among others. It also bars vulnerable populations from being placed in solitary at all–including youth, the elderly, pregnant women, LGBTI individuals, and those with physical or mental disabilities.

“No person should be put in solitary confinement except when they are a risk to  someone else,” said New York City Council Member Daniel Dromm. “As a major opponent of the practice, I have introduced three pieces of legislation into the City Council. I applaud the proposed state legislation that sets parameters on who can and who cannot be placed in solitary confinement and limits the amount of time they are forced to stay there.”

For those who present a serious threat to prison safety and need to be separated from the general population for longer periods of time, the legislation creates new Residential Rehabilitation Units (RRUs)–high-security units with substantial out-of-cell time, and programs aimed at addressing the underlying causes of behavioral problems.

“Isolation does not promote positive change in people; it only damages them,” said Jennifer J. Parish of the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project. “By requiring treatment and programs for people who are separated from the prison population for serious misconduct, the legislation requires Corrections to emphasize rehabilitation over punishment and degradation.”

“The HALT Solitary Confinement Act recognizes that we need a fundamental transformation of how our public institutions address people’s needs and behaviors, both in our prisons and in our communities,” said Scott Paltrowitz of the Correctional Association of New York. “Rather than inhumane and ineffective punishment, deprivation, and isolation, HALT would provide people with greater support, programs, and treatment to help them thrive, and in turn make our prisons and our communities safer.”

Many of those represented at the press conference are members of the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC), which was instrumental in drafting the bill. CAIC unites advocates, concerned community members, lawyers, and individuals in the human rights, health, and faith communities throughout New York State with formerly incarcerated people and family members of currently incarcerated people.

“Solitary is torture on both sides of the prison walls,” said family member Donna Sorge-Ruiz, whose fiancé is currently in solitary. “Loved ones on the outside suffer right along with those in prison, every day that they endure this pain. It must stop!”

The widespread use of long-term solitary confinement has been under fire in recent years, in the face of increasing evidence that sensory deprivation, lack of normal human interaction, and extreme idleness can lead to severe psychological damage. Supporters of the bill also say that isolated confinement fails to address the underlying causes of problematic behavior, and often exacerbates that behavior as people deteriorate psychologically, physically, and socially.

In New York each year, nearly 2,000 people are released directly from extreme isolation to the streets, a practice that has been shown to increase recidivism rates.

“The damage done by solitary confinement is deep and permanent,” said solitary survivor Five Mualimm-ak. An activist with CAIC and the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow, Mualimm-ak spent five years in isolated confinement despite never having committed a violent act in prison. “Having humane alternatives will spare thousands of people the pain and suffering that extreme isolation causes–and the scars that they carry with them back into our communities.”

Several state prisons systems, including Maine, Mississippi, and Colorado, have significantly reduced the number of people they hold in solitary confinement, and have seen prison violence decrease as well. HALT takes reform a step further by also providing alternatives for the relatively small number of individuals who need to be separated from the general population for more than a few weeks. Advocates see the bill not only as a major step toward humane and evidence-based prison policies, but also as a model for change across the country.

“Article 5 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, states that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,’” said Laura Markle Downton of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “As people of faith, we recognize the use of solitary confinement in a prisons, jails and detention centers fundamentally violates this prohibition against torture. Now is the time for New York to lead the way in bringing an end to this human rights abuse plaguing our justice system nationally.”

“The HALT Solitary Confinement Act implements rational humane alternatives to the costly, ineffective, and abusive use of long-term solitary confinement in New York prisons and jails,” said Sarah Kerr of the Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project. “The need for reform is well-documented and the time for change is now.”

PRESS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

 

Date/Time/ Location: Friday, January 31, 10:30 am

Judson Memorial Church, Meeting Room Balcony

55 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Sullivan Streets)

Speakers:

Assembly Member Jeffrion L. Aubry (D, 35th District, Queens), Assembly sponsor

Senator Bill Perkins (D, 30th District, Harlem), Senate sponsor

City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D, 25th District, Queens)

Five Mualimm-ak, survivor of solitary confinement in New York prisons and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

Jessica Casanova, aunt of individual currently in solitary and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

Scott Paltrowitz, Correctional Association of New York and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

Claire Deroche, National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

 

PRESS KIT INCLUDES:

Press Release

Fact Sheet on Solitary Confinement in New York State

Summary of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act

Full Text of HALT Act (A08588 / S06466)

New York Voices from Solitary Confinement

“Solitary Confinement’s Invisible Scars,” op-ed by Five Mualimm-ak

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Scott Paltrowitz, 212-254-5700, spaltrowitz@correctionalassociation.org

Sarah Kerr, 212-577-3530, SKerr@legal-aid.org

Five Mualimm-ak, 646-294-8331, endthenewjimcrow@gmail.com

www.nycaic.org

#  #  #

Filed Under: All Posts, Events, News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

EVENTS: Lawmakers, Advocates, and Solitary Survivors Join to Announce Legislation to Limit Solitary Confinement in New York’s Prisons and Jails

January 30, 2014 by

MEDIA ADVISORY: PRESS CONFERENCE

 WHEN: Friday, January 31, 10:30 am

WHERE: Judson Memorial Church, Meeting Room Balcony

55 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Sullivan Streets)

 WHO:

Assembly Member Jeffrion L. Aubry (D, 35th District, Queens), Assembly sponsor

Senator Bill Perkins (D, 30th District, Harlem), Senate sponsor

City Council Member Daniel Dromm (D, 25th District, Queens)

Five Mualimm-ak, survivor of solitary confinement in New York prisons

Jessica Casanova, aunt of man in solitary confinement

Scott Paltrowitz, Correctional Association of New York and Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

Claire Deroche, National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Campaign for Alternatives to Solitary Confinement

WHAT:

The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act.

Just introduced in the New York State Assembly (A08588) and Senate (S06466), this pioneering bill is being hailed by supporters as the most comprehensive and progressive legislative response to date to the nationwide problem of solitary confinement in prisons and jails. As written, it would virtually eliminate a practice that has been increasingly denounced as both dangerous and torturous, while protecting the safety of incarcerated individuals and corrections staff. More than 5,000 people are currently being held in solitary and other forms of isolated confinement in New York’s state prisons and local jails.

 On hand and available for interview will be the bill’s Assembly and Senate sponsors and other legislators, along with individuals who have personally experienced solitary confinement, family members of those currently in solitary, and advocates from the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, which was instrumental in drafting the bill.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Scott Paltrowitz, 212-254-5700, spaltrowitz@correctionalassociation.org

Sarah Kerr, 212-577-3530, SKerr@legal-aid.org

Five Mualimm-ak, 646-294-8331, endthenewjimcrow@gmail.com

Filed Under: All Posts, Events Tagged With: , , ,

NEWS: As New York City Jails Amend Their Solitary Confinement Practices, Abuses on Rikers Island Continue

January 16, 2014 by

rikers demo 1By Aviva Stahl. Reprinted from Solitary Watch.

In early January the Wall Street Journal reported that the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) had ceased using solitary confinement as a form of punishment for people with mental illness. The last of the Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates (MHAUII) units was shuttered on December 31, replaced by a two-tiered system said to improve treatment. The step was hailed a significant achievement for outgoing DOC City Commissioner Dora Schriro, whose department came under fire this past fall after two reports lambasted the DOC for violating its own standards in its treatment of the mentally ill.

However, a meeting on Tuesday morning of the Board of Correction (BOC), an independent body that monitors the City’s jail system, presented a far different picture of conditions for individuals with mental illness on Rikers Island – as well as a different version of how changes in the DOC’s solitary confinement policies have come about.

Just after 8 am on Tuesday, in the chilly morning rain, activists from the advocacy group Jails Action Coalition (JAC) stood on the sidewalk outside the municipal office building on Worth Street where the BOC was scheduled to meet. They were holding a vigil for the four individuals who have died in City jails in the past three months, carrying tombstone-shaped posters reading “RIKERS=DEATH” beside a makeshift alter with four candles, and singing and chanting to the people passing by.

Leah, a longtime JAC activist, explained that she had braved the weather for the sake of her godson, who has a psychiatric disability and is currently incarcerated on Rikers Island. She was waiting to see whether the recent changes made by the DOC would actually have an impact on the people inside. As she explained, sometimes the DOC enacts new policies to appease the citizenry “but really, it’s the same old thing.”

At just past nine o’clock the vigil participants passed through security and joined the BOC meeting on the third floor. The bulk of time was dedicated to discussing the quality of care at the recently developed Restrictive Housing Units (RHU) and Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation (CAPS) program, the facilities meant to replace MHAUII. According to DOC protocol, individuals who violate prison rules will now be sent to one of the two units: the RHU for those who are deemed less severely ill, who will still spend time in solitary but have access to therapeutic services; and the CAPS unit, modeled after a psychiatric hospital, for those with more serious illnesses.

According to the WSJ article, prison advocates were somewhat critical of the proposed changes after they were announced, calling the RHU model “far too punitive” and expressing concerns that individuals with mental illness might be placed in CAPS regardless of whether they broke the rules. The Board’s initial discussion seemed to support many of their concerns.

BOC members shared the details of their first site visit, on December 5, to the newly opened RHU at Rose M Singer Center (RMSC), the main women’s jail on Rikers. According to the Honorable Bryanne Hamill, a former New York Family Court judge,  Board staff asked for assistance from a nearby corrections officer when one woman – who had smeared feces on the window of her cell – failed to respond to their knocks. The CO opened the food slot in the cell’s solid steel door and shined light inside, but was still unable to ascertain if the occupant was conscious.

At the prodding of BOC members, the CO summoned four captains – but it was not until the Board notified Commissioner Schriro that the door was eventually unlocked. The woman was found unresponsive on the floor under the bed with a ligature wrapped around her neck. By the time the woman was taken out of her cell by medical staff, nearly an hour had passed since the visitors had first arrived at her door. Judge Hamill added that she spoke to another prisoner who told her that the unresponsive woman had been threatening suicide; Hamill reassured her that the woman had been found alive.

BOC member Dr Robert L. Cohen, a key player in efforts to reform solitary on Rikers, also participated in site visits. Cohen stressed that neither the COs nor the leadership in NYC’s prisons seemed prepared for the task at hand.  Although the RHU program at Otis Bantum Correctional Center (OBCC) technically opened on December 19th, Cohen reported that the jail’s warden was “not aware that there was an RHU at OBCC” when Cohen spoke to her on January 3. Cohen also emphasized his concern that the DOC has no plan to identify and train officers and captain staff who are willing to work in the units on a regular basis.

Both Dr. Cohen and Judge Hamill expressed disappointment that access to therapeutic programming in the RHU had so far been almost non-existent. They did, however, have some praise for the new mental health programs established at the DOC, noting that they were greatly impressed with the ongoing quality of care in the CAPS units.

At the end of the meeting, Jennifer Parish, the director of criminal justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project and a member of JAC, spoke about her own visit to the RHU at RMSC, which occurred just days after the BOC’s.  One woman held in the unit relayed to Parish what had happened after she told the BOC member (presumably Judge Hamill) that the woman found unconscious had been threatening suicide. After the Board members left the prison, she said, a CO approached her cell to tell her, “there won’t be any food for you.” Parish expressed frustration that this kind of retaliation of could go on even when BOC was involved.

Commissioner Schriro’s voice cracked with emotion as the meeting came to a close. Schriro, who is leaving the DOC to take a job in Connecticut, has been broadly praised for the recent changes in DOC policy, and commented to the press that her department was “proud to have met this significant milestone.”  In truth, however, solitary confinement increased significantly under Schriro’s tenure. In 2011 alone the number of punitive segregation cells at Rikers grew by 45 percent,  and by the time the  BOC-commissioned reports were released this past fall, New York City had one of the highest rates of solitary confinement in the country.

The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA) pressed particularly hard for the increase in punitive bed space, attributing a spike in attacks on COs to the backlog of prisoners waiting to serve time in “the Bing,” as solitary confinement on Rikers is called. At a November 2011 City Council meeting, Schriro was grilled by City Council member Elizabeth Crowley about the problem.  Schriro reassured her that capacity was being expanded as quickly as possible: ” Every bed that can be converted is being converted.”

Community groups maintain that the DOC only considered adopting new policies as a result of the press fall-out from the BOC-commissioned reports – and that the reports were, in turn, ordered as a result of the campaigning of JAC and other advocates. Those same factors, along with pressure from a few BOC members, led the Board in September to vote to commence “rule-making” to eventually set new policies limiting the use of solitary in City jails.

Tuesday’s meeting was the last for Commissioner Schriro, but her legacy is not the only thing in flux. Mayor Bill DeBlasio has yet announce to his appointment to the post of DOC commissioner, and there are mixed signals as to whether he will live up to the progressive image he cultivated during his campaign.

Last Friday at Brooklyn College, DeBlasio emceed the graduation for the DOC’s newest recruits, telling them: “You’re protecting all of us….You’re protecting each other. You have each other’s backs. And you’re also protecting some people who have made mistakes.” He continued, “We’re not happy with some of the choices those individuals made, but they’re still our fellow citizens, and we’re hopefully in the process of helping them back to a better path.”

Yet there are some red flags to suggest substantial prison reform isn’t on DeBlasio’s agenda. Bill Bratton, the mayor’s appointment for police commissioner, has pursued racially discriminatory policing policies in the past.  Moreover, during his campaign DeBlasio was endorsed by COBA – a worrying sign for advocates, given that the role the union played in increasing the use of solitary and their resistance to adopting alternative solutions.

For Sarah Kerr, a staff attorney in the Prisoners’ Rights Project of The Legal Aid Society, the BOC’s experiences on the tour reveal the deeply protracted nature of the problems within the DOC.  She wondered aloud what it means that it took an hour for the woman’s cell door to be opened, even when BOC members were present.  She added that challenging this institutional culture will be an “incredibly hard” task for the DOC, but that doing so is absolutely necessary if things are to change.

For Daisy Rodriguez, another member of JAC, these changes cannot come quickly enough. Her 21-year-old son has been in solitary confinement in New York’s jails for the past 18 months.  She told the audience at the meeting, “We want our families to obtain the services they need rather than be treated like animals.”

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , , , ,

NEWS: Roundup of National News on Isolated Confinement, November/December 2013

January 14, 2014 by

Compiled by Fran Geteles-Shapiro

December 31, 2013
A teenager accused of masterminding a series of firebombs that went off in four New Jersey synagogues has spent the past two years in solitary confinement, holed up in a tiny, windowless cell waiting for trial, which is scheduled to begin in January. The boy and his family say he is not guilty.
http://www.indoamerican-news.com/?p=22472

December 30, 2013
An investigative team has found that more than three dozen men and women who were mentally ill and drug and alcohol-impaired have died in restraint chairs in county jails from Washington state to Florida.  They attribute this to the shift from hospital and clinic settings to county jails.
http://ht.ly/sabAa

December 29
The new Executive Director of Colorado’s Dept. of Corrections promises changes and transparency, including: dramatic reduction in the numbers of people in AdSeg; reducing number of people released directly from AdSeg into the community; revised criteria for sending individuals to segregation; new approached to how staff respond to disruptive behavior; improved staff accountability; etc.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/call7-investigators/department-of-corrections/new-department-of-corrections-executive-director-rick-raemisch-pledges-changes-transparency

December 24
A 2012 U.S. District Court decision had ruled that the Colorado State Penitentiary violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment by not providing outdoor recreation. Now, a second lawsuit has been filed, seeking class-action status to assure that that decision applies to all the imprisoned people not just the one original plaintiff.  Authorities say several options are under consideration to solve the recreation problem.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24789587/colorado-prisons-could-be-running-out-room-most

December 23
Democracy Now hosted a discussion about the growing number of aging people in prison in the United States who were convicted in the 1960s and 1970s because of their political actions.  Many are seeking compassionate release, clemency or a pardon, due to suffering from illness and/or decades in Solitary Confinement.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/23/time_for_compassion_aging_political_prisoners

December 19
A federal judge will hear closing arguments over whether prolonged solitary confinement violates the rights of the mentally ill.  The same judge had previously decided that mentally ill individuals on death row lack proper care and that the Department of State Hospitals provides them with substandard treatment.
http://www.capradio.org/articles/2013/12/19/judge-considers-solitary-confinement-for-mentally-ill-prisoners/-allows-torture-abuse/

A judge has ruled that people on death row who are being incarcerated in unventilated cells and without access to cool water at Angola Prison are being subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” and that this violates their 8th Amendment Rights. He ordered prison officials to draw up an action plan to “reduce and maintain the heat index in the Angola death row teirs at or below 88 degrees.” Defendants have argued that this will be a financial hardship, but the judge responded that there “can never be an adequate justification for depriving any person of his constitutional rights.”
http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2013/12/angola_prison_heat_death_row_r.html

Organizers announced the launch of a new campaign that “aims to shed light on and end a pattern of human rights and civil liberties abuses in ‘War on Terror’ cases in the criminal justice system” including the extensive use of pre-trial and post-conviction solitary confinement. The campaign, called No Separate Justice, will be marked by an event on January 7 in New York City.
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/22/seven-days-solitary-122213/

December 14
The U.S. Justice Department’s Inspector General (OIG) has issued its year-end report which for the first time includes the issue of prisons, and describes a “Growing Crisis in the Federal Prison System.” Among the issues raised are: failure to effectively address the “increasing number of elderly inmates” within the system; mismanagement of the “compassionate release” program; the need to address the mental health of the people it incarcerates and the impact of solitary confinement on those people.  Although the report does not give policy recommendations, the OIG does plan to monitor the effects of a GAO assessment of the use of solitary confinement.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/government-watchdog-we-have-a-growing-federal-prison-crisis/282341/
http://www.justice.gov/oig/challenges/2013.htm

December 13
Colorado Department of Corrections is now instructing staff that incarcerated people who are determined to have a major mental illness must be sent to a residential treatment program not to administrative segregation.  While praising this effort the ACLU points out that the definition of major mental illness adopted by CDOC is too narrow, with the result that “prisoners with moderate to severe psychiatric needs now constitute a majority of those in administrative segregation.”
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2013/12/mentally_ill_prisoners_solitary.php

December 12
The ACLU released a memo from the Colorado DOC announcing a new policy of excluding seriously mentally ill individuals from ad seg. Reforms had begun in January and had included the opening of a residential treatment program at Centennial Correctional Facility in Cañon City and the shut down of a prior program that treated mentally ill incarcerated people while they were held in solitary confinement. While praising this latest step, the ACLU continues to express concern about definitions of mental illness that are too narrow and the understaffing of the treatment program.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24712664/colorado-wont-put-mentally-ill-prisoners-solitary-confinement#ixzz2naHHe3z3

December 11-12
Prison policy prohibits sexual contact between staff and the people whom they guard, yet  in many women’s prisons, those who report rape and other forms of sexual assault by prison personnel are often sent to solitary confinement, as well as being harassed and physically abused or tortured, or being threatened with additional prison time.  The sexual predators are almost never punished.  Solitary Watch also reports increased numbers of women in solitary in some states and that it is a particular issue for women with mental who perform acts of self mutilation.
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/12/women-solitary-confinement-sent-solitary-reporting-sexual-assault/
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/11/women-solitary-confinement-isolation-degenerates-us-madness/

December 11
Federal judges considering California’s request for more time to reduce prison crowding asked the state in turn to limit how long some mentally ill incarcerated people spend in solitary confinement.  The state offered to limit the time severely mentally ill individuals who have committed no rules violations can be held in isolation to 30 days. When that offer was accepted by the judge in the lawsuit on crowding, the extension was granted.
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ff-judge-solitary-confinement-prison-crowding-negotiations-20131211,0,3111292.story#ixzz2nZjJB7km

In a sign-on letter, the Ohio ACLU notes that Ohio’s Juvenile Detention facilities haveone of the highest rates of sexual assault in the nation and  that the children inside are also being kept in solitary confinement for extended periods of time. They are asking the Department of Youth Services (DYS) to: formally declare that juveniles have a right to be free from sexual victimization while inside their detention facilities; and to ban the extended seclusion/isolation of juveniles beyond 24 consecutive hours.
http://www.acluohio.org/issue-information/protect-children-from-sexual-abuse-and-extended-solitary-confinement-in-ohio-detention-facilities

December 10
Federal prison officials have begun transferring mentally ill individuals from the Supermax prison in Florence to a prison in Atlanta following a lawsuit that accuses guards of ignoring severe symptoms, denying their existence, or simply making fun of self-destructive symptomatic behaviors.  The attorney handling the lawsuit says the transfer improves the situation, but points out that there are prisons in Missouri and Arizona that are better equipped to handle the needs of the mentally ill.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24688123/feds-moving-mentally-ill-inmates-#ixzz2nZdfQdzs

December 9
A group of men from Pennsylvania, who were held at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Dallas are due in court on charges that they sparked a riot in their unit in 2010 after they barricaded their cell doors and windows with bedding, forcing guards to forcibly remove them.  The men and their advocates claim they were simply staging a peaceful protest designed to draw attention to rampant abuses and deplorable conditions in the security housing unit — from food deprivation to medical neglect – and that the prison guards responded to the protest with horrific violence.  Advocates say the trial could become a crucible in the wider debate over solitary confinement.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/09/21793945-pennsylvania-solitary-confinement-inmates-charged-with-rioting-due-in-court

A judge has awarded $1,200 to an imprisoned man for the excessive time he spent in solitary confinement at Marcy Correctional Facility. In his statement, the judge said that the state is “absolutely immune” from liability over prison disciplinary actions, but only if all rules and procedures are followed. In this case the hearing officer had improperly denied the man’s request to call a witness.  http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/12/judge_awards_prisoner_nearly_1200_for_excessive_time_in_solitary_confinement.html

December 2013
Two British nationals pled guilty to supporting terrorists in Afghanistan through websites that sought to raise cash, recruit fighters and solicit items such as gas masks. The men had fought extradition to the US because of the treatment they would likely receive in prisons here — treatment which is illegal in Britain and the European Union.  But they lost that fight. Since extradition, they have been held in extreme isolation in a supermax prison in Connecticut, and after the guilty plea, will likely face more solitary confinement in the future.  One of the men has Asperger Syndrome; the other reported symptoms of PTSD after he had spent six years in high security prisons in the UK.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/2-uk-men-plead-guilty-in-conn-to-supporting-terror
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/02/impossible-injustice-talha-ahsans-extradition-and-detention

December 5
A 73-year-old grandmother suffering from thyroid cancer, heart problems and bi-polar disorder, who was kept in solitary confinement for 34 days in a New Mexico prison run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is suing both the private prison company and Corizon, Inc, the privately run prison healthcare provider. Thelawsuit alleges that prison officials deliberately put her in solitary confinement because she complained that she and other women in the CCA facility were being denied necessary medical care.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/grandmother-cancer-prison-solitary-confinement
http://www.abqjournal.com/316506/opinion/putting-grandma-in-the-hole-doesnt-fit-crime.html

December 4
An article in The Nation magazine reports that “hunger strikes are erupting around the world” especially among imprisoned people who fast to protest abuse, unjust imprisonment and inhumane conditions.  It notes that solitary confinement is often a critical issue, referring to hunger strikes in Israel, California and Guantanamo.  One horrible reaction to such strikes has been force feeding – implemented in Guantanamo and approved by judges in California.  On the other hand, some small gains are noted: release of some Palestinian hunger strikers in Israel; legislators promise to investigate conditions in CA prisons; and President Obama being forced to re-open the question of closing Guantanamo.
http://www.thenation.com/article/177464/starving-justice?page=0,1

An article in The Nation magazine reports that “hunger strikes are erupting around the world” especially among imprisoned people who fast to protest abuse, unjust imprisonment and inhumane conditions.  It notes that solitary confinement is often a critical issue, referring to hunger strikes in Israel, California and Guantanamo.  One horrible reaction to such strikes has been force feeding – implemented in Guantanamo and approved by judges in California.  On the other hand, some small gains are noted: release of some Palestinian hunger strikers in Israel; legislators promise to investigate conditions in CA prisons; and President Obama being forced to re-open the question of closing Guantanamo.
http://www.thenation.com/article/177464/starving-justice?page=0,1

November 20
The ACLU is offering a new tool produced by the Stop Solitary campaign, “Alone & Afraid” which is a briefer on the use of solitary confinement in youth facilities. It covers the law, standards, and science that you can use to argue against the practice. Also noted is their toolkit that covers solitary for kids in the adult system.
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/Alone%20and%20Afraid%20COMPLETE%20FINAL.pdf
https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform-prisoners-rights/no-child-left-alone-resources
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/toolkit_juvenile_solitary_briefing_paper_final.pdf

November 19
A powerful new report from Detention Watch Network, “Expose and Close One Year Later: The Absence of Accountability in Immigration Detention” reports that in 2012, 300 people on average were held in solitary confinement per day, 11 percent of whom had mental health issues.  New ICE guidelines are not in line with UN guidance or the standards in the proposed Senate immigration bill: they do not prohibit the use of solitary for individuals with mental illnesses; they do not set specific time limits for solitary; they continue to permit the use of solitary as a kind of “protective custody”; and do not provide for effective action against facilities that violate them.http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/detentionwatchnetwork.org/files/expose_and_close_one_year_later.pdf

In 1995, after a trial which exposed the appalling conditions at Pelican Bay, a federal court ordered all mentally ill individuals out of that prison’s security housing unit (SHU). But the decision did not apply to CA’s other prisons. Hearings have begun in a new case, Coleman v. Brown, aimed at getting all mentally ill people in California out of solitary confinement.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/confronting-californias-abuse-solitary

November 15
In many if not most states, individuals who have been sentenced to death are automatically placed in solitary confinement. However, a recent Virginia federal court decision holds that automatic and indefinite placement of a death-sentenced person in solitary is a deprivation of liberty without due process of law, and such individuals are entitled to a classification process similar to that used for non-capital incarcerated people.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights-capital-punishment/death-row-not-constitution-free-zone

November 6
Moazzam Begg, who spent 20 months in solitary confinement in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and was released without charge in Jan. 2005, describes his time in solitary: “I think I am a very sane, strong person but twice I lost control of my senses … I screamed and shouted and punched and kicked the walls and swore and cried.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10261853/What-its-like-to-be-detained-in-Guantanamo-Bay.html

November 5
A report, entitled Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the “War on Terror,” written for The Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF), by a task force of medical professionals, ethicists and legal experts, calls on President Obama to issue an executive order outlawing torture and other abusive techniques currently in use in the military’s Army Field Manual on interrogations and calls on the Department of Defense to rewrite the Army Field Manual in accordance with such an executive order.  Although the 2006 manual was touted as reforming “extreme interrogation” techniques and eliminating torture, it continues to permit the use of extreme isolation or “segregation,” for interrogation purposes, as part of its Fear Up and Ego Down techniques, aimed at producing both debility and dependency.
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/11/05/blue-ribbon-task-force-says-army-field-manual-on-interrogation-allows-torture-abuse/

Filed Under: All Posts, News Tagged With: , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers: