VOICES: End the Torture of Solitary Confinement with the HALT Act

April 29, 2015 by

By Five Mualimm-ak. Reprinted from the Albany Times-Union.

I am a survivor of 2,054 days of torture. And like many people who have endured such abuse, I suffer lasting psychological effects.

I often experience memory loss and flashbacks. It’s sometimes hard for me to focus. I get upset and angry easily, and have abnormal reactions to ordinary things. I find it difficult to sleep. I do not like being touched, and have difficulty connecting to people. I suffer from depression.

The torture I endured did not take place in some foreign land, or at the hands of a vicious psychopath. It happened right here in New York state, amidst communities of decent, law-abiding people. My torture consisted of five years in solitary confinement in New York’s prisons.

southport bigOn any given day in the United States, more than 80,000 men, women, and children are in some form of extreme isolation in our nation’s prisons. In New York, the number is about 4,500. These individuals spend 23 to 24 hours a day alone in bare, sometimes windowless cells, without human contact, work, treatment, or programming. They are fed through a slot in the door, and given at most one hour a day to exercise by themselves in a fenced or walled dog run.

Most of the people in solitary confinement in New York are there for nonviolent misbehavior. Disobeying an order or speaking back to a correction officer, testing positive for marijuana use, or having too many postage stamps — all of these rule violations can land a person in “the box” for months, and the months can add up to years. For me, the infractions included having too many pencils, refusing to eat an apple, and failing to sleep in a broken bunk.

Even when it is meted out in response to more serious behavior, solitary confinement is not the answer. A recent study in Texas confirms that solitary does not reduce violence in prisons. An earlier study in Washington state showed that being released directly from solitary to the streets — as 2,000 people are in New York every year — increases the likelihood that people will land back in prison.

Today, there is a growing consensus that solitary confinement is both inhumane and counterproductive. But prison systems are slow to change. Recent reforms have reduced the number of people with mental illness held in solitary in New York, and limited the use of isolation on children under 18, pregnant women, and people with developmental disabilities. But the numbers of people removed from solitary confinement are small, and thousands still remain.

For the people who still endure this torture on a daily basis in New York, the best hope lies in legislation introduced last year in both the Assembly and Senate. The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (A. 4401/S. 2659). This legislation would ban the use of solitary confinement beyond 15 days, which is the limit recommended by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, and ban solitary altogether for the most vulnerable groups. It would also replace long-term isolation with intensive treatment and programming in special secure rehabilitation units. And it would provide corrections officers and other prison staff the tools and training they need to do their jobs safely.

For me and other survivors of long-term solitary, it may be too late to avoid the permanent scars of psychological torture. But for thousands of other people in prison — people for whom we, as New Yorkers, are responsible — the time for change is now. The HALT Solitary Confinement Act is gaining momentum in the Legislature, and last week more than 100 people converged from around the state to lobby for the bill. HALT provides New York’s legislators, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the opportunity to make our state a leader in banning solitary confinement and saying no to torture in our own backyards.

Five Mualimm-ak spent 12 years in New York state prisons for illegal weapons possession. He is founder of the Incarcerated Nation Campaign and an active member of the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement.

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NEWS: New York Advocates Offer Testimony to Assembly Hearings on Mental Health in Prisons and Jails

November 16, 2014 by

Several key supporters of CAIC presented or submitted testimony to the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on Corrections and Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health, which held a joint hearing on “Public Hearing on Mental Illness in Correctional Settings” in Albany on November 13, 2014. A collection of testimony appears below, and will be permanently archived on the Resources page.

Correctional Association of New York

Disability Rights New York

Incarcerated Nation Corp.

Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement

NAMI – NYS

New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement

New York City Jails Action Coalition

Urban Justice Center

For more on the hearing, see the following news accounts:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ny-lawmakers-probe-care-mentally-ill-inmates-26878665

http://m.timesunion.com/local/article/Learning-to-treat-prisoners-with-signs-of-mental-5891924.php

 

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NEWS: New York Lawmakers Probe Care for Mentally Ill in Prison

November 16, 2014 by

By Michael Virtanen. Reprinted from the Associated Press. 

hearingThe head of the troubled New York City jail system said Thursday it’s critical to send mentally ill inmates to treatment programs instead of a lockup.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte told state lawmakers that Rikers Island is poorly equipped to be a mental health treatment center. The primary goal, one he shares with the medical staff, is to keep staff and inmates safe, he said.

“Violence at Rikers Island the past five or six years has gone through the roof,” Ponte said, adding that assaults on his medical staff have tripled.

Dr. Homer Venters, head of the jail’s health services, testified alongside Ponte. He said admission medical screenings done on every incoming inmate show about 25 percent have mental illnesses, though that diagnosis applies to about 38 percent of the daily population of about 11,500. Those inmates tend to stay twice as long.

Ponte said they’ve taken steps, like limiting solitary confinement, to improve treatment at Rikers, but acknowledged many issues remain. The city also has recently established some courts, including one in Manhattan, focused on handling cases involving the mentally ill.

“We’ve become the de facto mental hospitals,” Ponte said of the jails. “Diversion is critical.”

New York City jails have come under increasing scrutiny since The Associated Press earlier this year first exposed the deaths of two seriously mentally ill inmates — an ex-Marine imprisoned in Rikers who an official said “basically baked to death” in a 101-degree cell and a diabetic inmate who sexually mutilated himself while locked alone for seven days inside a cell last fall.

Lawmakers called the joint hearing of Assembly committees on correction and mental health following these and other reports of afflicted prisoners getting inadequate care.

The hearing also examined other local jails, where suspects go while awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences, as well as the state’s prisons that house about 52,250 inmates with longer sentences.

About 9,300 state inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness, with 2,300 considered seriously mentally ill, said Donna Hall, director of forensic services at the state Office of Mental Health, which provides treatment. She said the clinicians seldom, if ever, remove or lower those designations.

Jack Beck of the Correctional Association of New York testified that most remain in the general prison population and get limited services. Fewer illnesses now are judged serious, which would give those inmates more care and keep them from the “torture” of solitary confinement, he said.

Alicia Barazza tearfully told legislators that her 21-year-old son suffered from severe mental illness and committed suicide two weeks ago in solitary confinement at Fishkill state prison. He’d gone off his psychotropic medications and had been in crisis, she said. He was sent to prison from Albany County at 17 for third-degree arson. His mother said he’d been abused by another inmate in prison.

Corrections officials declined to comment, citing the potential of a lawsuit.

Advocates said one recurring problem is defendants not allowed by police to take their medications after they’re arrested.

Glenn Leibman of the Mental Health Association called for presumptively enrolling inmates in Medicaid so they can get needed prescriptions when they leave.

Damian DePauw, 35, said he went to Washington County Jail on an assault charge after a violent psychiatric episode. In jail, when he felt symptoms worsening, he said he told a guard he needed medicine and was told to wait for the nurse that night, who said she’d need a prescription from the jail psychiatrist three days later. Over the weekend, he became more delusional, assaulted another prisoner who had threatened him, was stripped and put into a solitary cell, where he rammed his head into the metal door repeatedly, in an effort to knock himself out, until he split open his scalp and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, he said.

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VOICES: A Mouse and a Murderer

October 16, 2014 by

By William Blake. Reprinted from Solitary Watch.

mouseWilliam Blake is in solitary confinement at Elmira Correctional Facility in upstate New York. In 1987, while in county court on a drug charge, Blake, then 23, grabbed a gun from a sheriff’s deputy and, in a failed escape attempt, murdered one deputy and wounded another. He is now 50 years old, and is serving a sentence of 77 years to life. Blake is one of the few people in New York to be held in “administrative” rather than “disciplinary” segregation—meaning he’s considered a risk to prison safety and is in isolation more or less indefinitely, despite periodic pro forma reviews of his status. He is now in his 27th year of solitary confinement.

Billy Blake is a prolific reader and a gifted writer who has written for Solitary Watch before, notably a piece that went viral worldwide called “A Sentence Worse Than Death.” Here, he describes what happens when he bonds with another creature in his solitary cell. He welcomes mail at the following address: William Blake 87-A-5771, Elmira C.F., P.O. Box 500, Elmira, NY 14902-0500. –Savannah Crowley

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“Pop! Pop-pop-pop! Pop-pop!” I heard the loud noise echoing through the solitary confinement unit at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in the spring of 1988. It sounded like somebody was slapping a sneaker onto the concrete floor of their cell.

I put down the book I was reading and went to my cell gate to call my neighbor, as it sounded like the noise might be coming from his cell. “Willie, is that you making all the racket?”

“Yeah. There’s a mouse in my cell, and he picked the wrong cell to try to steal some food from. I’m gonna kill his ass now,” the man locking next to me said. Willie had been my neighbor since I had arrived at Shawangunk’s Special Housing Unit (SHU) in July of the year before.

“Don’t kill him, bro, just chase him out of your house. He’s just trying to live like everyone else is,” I pleaded for the little rodent’s life.

“Fuck that! I’m gonna kill this sucker so he can’t come in here again. They ain’t feeding us good enough to be giving anything up to a damn mouse,” Willie said.

I heard a few more pops as Willie chased the tiny creature around his cell, swatting at it with his sneaker. All the sudden, as I stood at the bars looking toward Willie’s cell, I saw the mouse fly onto the company and stop a few from the wall opposite the cell fronts.

“Yeah! I got that motherfucker,” Willie loudly said, sounding happy about ridding the unit of one mouse. It would not make his food any safer, though, the little he would save from his trays during the day to eat come nighttime. Shawagunk’s box was loaded with mice, roaches too. I have never seen a prison that isn’t, and I’ve been in many. Killing one would make no difference.

The mouse didn’t move for several minutes as I watched it, so I at first thought it was dead. But then it moved and began to head down the company, right toward my cell. It was moving very slowly, though, nothing like a mouse usually does, furry little rockets on four feet that they normally are, shooting across open areas to move about along the walls. As it got closer and I could see it better in the dim light shining on the company, I saw that the mouse was dragging itself by its front legs only. Its back legs were stretched out behind it, looking useless and not moving at all.

The angle the mouse was taking would have put it just past my cell gate, so it probably was trying to make it to the door of the pipechase between my cell and my neighbor’s to the left–Willie’s cell was to my right. Mice run under the solid-steel doors of the pipechases all the time, and once in there are safe from any traffic there might be when guards are taking inmates out of their cells to shower, for recreation in the empty SHU yards, or to visits or call-outs to the prison hospital or elsewhere. That is probably where they make their homes, as those pipe chases are dark and are rarely opened. They could hide safely during the daytime and come out at night to search for food, as mice like to do, nocturnal things that they are. It looked to me like the injured mouse was heading to the safest place it knew, heading home to the pipechase.

Willie may have been happy because he thought the mouse dead and still lying out near the wall, but to me it was a terribly sad sight to see that tiny mammal struggle down the company dragging its useless back legs behind it. I have always loved animals, totally innocent and completely without malice as they are. It is with people that I have had my problems. People often operate with malicious motivations and ill intent, while animals never do.

My heart went out to that injured mouse as I watched him bravely make his way down the company, and I wanted to help him.

A “missile” is mandatory cell equipment for inmates doing time in SHU. It is a short pole made of rolled-up newspaper or other paper. After pulling thread from a bed sheet, or from anything else with thread in it, we make a long string (called a “dragline” in prison parlance) and attach it to the missile. By firing the missile through the cell bars and down the company, inmates cross draglines, and the inmate whose line is on top of the other’s pulls the line in. Magazines and newspapers go through many hands before they are discarded, and guys make deals to swap food all the time. A man might need a stamp to mail a letter or any number of other things, and because nobody can get their hand through the cell bars, there is only one way to pass something. The cell bars are in a plain-weave pattern of about two-inch squares, and feed-up hatches in gates and back doors stay locked, so no hand or arm is getting out of the cell to pass anything. If an inmate wants to send or get something from another prisoner, he must go “fishing.” To do that he has to have a dragline and missile

Fishing is against the rules, possessing a dragline or missile is not allowed, and the prison authorities have tried many things to stop inmates from passing items from cell to cell in SHU. But none of this has stopped the show. Almost every inmate in the box (SHU) keeps a dragline, and when the guards take it and its missile the inmate will simply rip another sheet for thread and roll up some more paper, usually before the day is done. Nearly every inmate will at one time want to pass something to or get something from a neighbor, so he will need the equipment to do it. Fishing goes on every single day in SHU. All the threats to write tickets that officers make, or actually writing them, and their many attempts to stop it in different ways, has never done a thing to keep inmates from fishing daily. And it never will short of sealing the cells up tight.

When my cell bars had been sealed off by a plexiglass shield that had been placed on them, I have fished under the gate with only a half-inch space to work with, tooth-paste squirted into folded paper and put into an envelope being my “car” or “whip” to attach a dragline to, to get it down the company. I have pulled crushed bread rolled up in a sheet of writing paper through a hole in my cell wall no bigger around than a number two pencil. I loosened the bolts beneath the steel bedframe, which ran through the wall to my neighbor’s bed, by jumping up and down on my bed like a kid on a trampoline till sweat poured out of me. Once I had gotten a bolt loose enough to turn, I unscrewed it and pulled it out. A small hole ran through the wall, and when I looked through it I saw my friend’s brown eye looking back at me. I smiled and knew he was too, though all I could see was his eye. Then I heard him say, “It’s chow time now, Billy!” The guards hadn’t fed me in more than two days, and they had put garbage cans and pillows on the narrow company to block it off and make it impossible to fish under my plexiglass-covered gate. I could eat at last, though, pulling bread that my buddy rolled up in paper through that tiny hole in the wall.

Leave just a crack or small hole anywhere in a cell and the men and women locked in solitary will find a way to reach through it to the world outside their steel and concrete cage.

I used a missile to reach under my gate to gently guide that injured mouse into my cell. He needed help, and I wanted to see if I could give him some.

I am no veterinarian or doctor of any kind, but after watching how the mouse’s hind legs were dragging uselessly behind it, it did not take a medical degree to figure that its back may be broken. I was worried about causing the little animal more pain than it was already likely in, or doing more damage, so I slid a sheet of writing paper under it to pick it up rather than use my hand, which would squeeze it no matter how gentle I tried to be. When I got the mouse onto the paper, I took it to my bed and set it down there. I wanted to check it out thoroughly.

The mouse was clearly a baby. I didn’t have a clue at the time as to how fast mice grow or how long they live, but since the mouse’s body, sans the tail, was no longer than the tip of my pinky to the first joint, I knew it had to be very young, just a baby. I could see a bump on the lower part of its spine that didn’t look like it belonged there, and it grew bigger before long. This made me feel certain that its back was broken.

What could I do? I thought to myself. I expected that it would probably die before the night was done, so I decided to just try to make the tiny creature comfortable till it did. If I let it go it was not likely to find any food or do very well in the condition it was in, so I set it in my dry sink to keep it from wandering off while I made a box for it.

In the early part of 1988 I was allowed the same property in my cell as population inmates, though I was housed in SHU. I was in the box then, as I still remain twenty-six years later, because the prison authorities had deemed me a security threat too risky to be allowed in general population. I was in the county jail charged with armed robbery and possession of cocaine when I shot two police officers during a failed escape attempt in 1987, killing one. It was for this crime that corrections officials deemed me a security threat and placed me in SHU upon my arrival to the state prison system. Later in 1988 New York State would enact more draconian laws for its administrative segregation status inmates, which I was, so they would be allowed no more privileges or property than inmates serving SHU disciplinary sentences for serious violations of prison rules.

I had all the privileges and property that a general population inmate would have when I tried to help the paralyzed mouse, I was just segregated and kept locked in a SHU cell all day apart from population. I had no disciplinary sanctions and had violated no rules or regulations but would soon be living under the exact same barren conditions as the SHU disciplinary status inmates around me, when the Department of Corrections changed its regulations regarding how it treats its inmates who have violated no prison rules but whom they have labeled a threat to prison security for one reason or another–or for no good or real reason at all, as is my situation today. My crime is nearly three decades old, and I am a world away from the young fool I was when I committed it. But in ad seg I have remained for all these years.

So I had tape when the paralyzed mouse happened along, though I would soon be banned from possessing it and most of the other property in my cell. I used it to tape the cardboard backs of five writing tablets together to make a box for the mouse. When I finished putting it together I put the mouse in it, keeping the sheet of paper underneath him lest he be jostled about while I was trying to slide it out.

When I was a kid growing up on the south side of Syracuse, New York, the city’s worst neighborhood, we had plenty of mice in every house we lived in, all of which were multi-family homes. My father, with whom I lived with a younger brother, fought a never-ending battle against the rodents and roaches that he never gave up on despite the futility. I remembered him mentioning that mice love peanut butter and jelly on bread better than any cheese; and since he was always catching plenty in the traps he would set around the house, I figured he must know what he’s talking about. I didn’t have any cheese on hand anyway, so I could not have tested the theory had I wanted to.

I did have plenty of peanut butter and jelly, though, so I dabbed a bit on a small piece of bread and put it in the box with the mouse, right in front of him so he wouldn’t have to crawl at all to get to it. To wash it down the tiny fellow would need some water, so I put a little in the lid of a Styrofoam cup and put it within easy reach for him.

Back in 1978, ten years before the handicapped mouse and what today seems to me like forever ago, I was a 14-year-old doing time in a juvenile facility called South Lansing Center, not far from Ithaca, New York. I took a first aid class there that, as it would happen, helped me save the life of a friend who had cut his wrist wide open with a butcher knife and severed veins. Among other things, I learned how to treat shock in that class. I thought that with a broken back the mouse might be in shock, since I recalled that severe physical trauma could cause it. I could not elevate the mouse’s feet above the level of its head as I was taught to do in the case of a person in shock, but I had the thought that the mouse’s physiology didn’t require it to help the flow of blood to the brain. His head was down and resting on the paper he lay on, I saw and looked to be as low to the ground as any part of him. It was early spring, though, and pretty chilly on the unit. So I knew what he needed.

I got my small blunt-tipped scissors out and cut a little square from my blanket. I then laid it over the mouse’s back, taking care not to cover his head so as not to interfere with his breathing. That was about everything I could do after doing that, little though it seemed to me to be.

A prayer isn’t something that I have ever been convinced guarantees anything, or even has a chance to work well for anything but the peace of mind of the one making it, but I was at the time–as I still am–talking to God daily on the off chance that He may be listening. So I said a prayer for that baby mouse, asking God to ease the pain that I knew it must be in. I did not ask God to save the tiny creature. What could a paralyzed rodent living in a solitary confinement unit do to stay alive? I had thought. Likely nothing. But I was not going to pray for the poor animal’s death either.

So I prayed that its pain would be relieved, and I hoped in my heart that it would be. Whether the mouse lived or died was in God’s hands, or fate’s, or whoever it is that has dominion over such matters–and I am not going to pretend to know.

I never told Willie, or anyone else, that I had the injured mouse in my cell that night. So no one on the unit knew.

The next morning, soon as I got out of bed, before I even went to the commode to take my morning leak, I checked on the mouse. He was still alive, and he had moved. He had also eaten all the bread with peanut butter and jelly on it. I put my finger in front of his nose to see if he had made some kind of miraculous recovery and would try to run, but he didn’t move at all, just stood there frozen, eyes wide open so I knew he was not sleeping. I could see rapid movements on his body signaling fast breathing and the speedy heartbeat of a small animal, so he wasn’t dead with his eyes stuck in the open position. I could also see the bump on his spine far down his back; it looked bigger than ever.

When I touched him with my finger he moved then. He was still dragging his hind legs.

I didn’t know if the mouse was a he or a she, and I knew not a thing about their anatomy that would allow me to have a look and see what it was. When I was talking to him as I did what I could to make him comfortable that first night, though, I had referred to him as a male. So he was always a he to me, even if he was in actuality a she.

Since he had lived through the night I became hopeful that he would make it for the long haul, and I really wanted him to. As I watched him still dragging his back legs uselessly behind, I was convinced that the bump on his spine was indeed a break that meant he would never run like a normal mouse again. But I was loving that tiny animal before he had twenty-four hours in my cell, and I wanted him to live. He could not be set free in the condition he was in because he would either starve or be easily caught dragging himself slowly about by an inmate like Willie, and I knew this. But I would take care of him and hope the guards would leave him alone when they were in my cell searching it, as they did several times a month when I was at rec.

Days passed and the mouse lived and got more and more active along the way. I stopped keeping him in the box except when I was out of my cell. When I was in the cell I would block the front gate and back door off so he couldn’t slip under them and get away. This allowed him to roam freely around the cell, and I thought it good for his rehabilitation. He needed the exercise.

After the first few days, when I was convinced that he would live, I officially gave my new pet a name. I called him Mouse. I did not want to give him a female name and have him turn out to be male–and you know he would never forgive me for that. Likewise, if I gave her a male name when she was in fact female, that would not be cool. So I gave it the genderless appellation Mouse, figuring that there could be no name more aptly suited to a mouse. That was what I had been calling him since the first day anyway.

One day, as I was watching him drag himself across the floor, I had a flashback to something I had seen on TV awhile before. I couldn’t recall what show I had been watching at the time, but while watching television one day years before I had seen paralyzed dogs in these contraptions with two wheels that looked a bit like the buggies that jockeys ride in as they race harness horses, the trotters and pacers that I had watched run countless times at the track my father would bring me to when I was a kid. The dogs had broken backs just like Mouse did, and the two-wheeled buggies allowed the animals to run around by using only their front legs, bodies resting on and held aloft by the buggy, its wheels acting as substitutes for the animals’ useless hind legs. Could I make a buggy like that for Mouse? Would he even move around in it if I did? I was going to find out.

I used Styrofoam feed-up trays that I was served my meals in to make most of the buggy, with a paper clip as an axle for the two tiny wheels I had fashioned to spin on it. I cut a harness out of one of my green prison shirts and sewed it right to the platform of the buggy that Mouse’s body would rest upon. In a couple of hours, after a little trial and error, I had the buggy done. Now to see if Mouse would like it.

A couple months had passed since Mouse’s back had been broken and he had grown bigger quickly, had even gotten a bit fat. I spoiled him with Carnation Instant Milk, which he loved, and any food he cared to have that I would get in my meal trays or in packages and commissary (both of which were privileges I would lose when the ad seg regulation changed). Though he remained paralyzed he seemed to otherwise heal well, and I could pick him up with no apparent distress. I even discovered that he was far smarter than I ever thought a mouse could be.

I was wondering if Mouse was in any manner trainable, so I decided to put him to the test. Before I fed him I would tap a plastic pen loudly on the cell’s concrete floor and do it in a distinctive pattern that I would never alter, sort of like spelling the same message out each time in Morse code. Then I would go get him–usually from under the bed where he liked to hang out–and feed him. So he only ate after hearing the same distinctive tapping sound being made on the floor. For a few weeks I’d tap and wait before I went to get him, and eventually he did exactly what I had been wondering if he would ever do: he came out from under the bed on his own, to where I was tapping and had his much-loved PB and J on Keebler Townhouse Crackers with Carnation Instant Milk, looking to eat. He was tentative at first but before too long would come quickly whenever I would tap. Mouse was trainable after all, a veritable genius among mice, I was certain.

I maneuvered Mouse into his harness, wrapped the little strap around his back that secured him snugly, locked the strap in place with its clasp made of a staple, and put him on the floor in his new buggy. He took off immediately just a short distance at first, like he was surprised that he could move so easily and quickly, but then he was gone, zooming all over the cell like a joy-filled man who had just been healed at a Christian revival after spending half his life in a wheelchair. Just like the paralyzed dogs I had seen on TV. Mouse could now run fast and well, with wheels for hind legs.

I learned a lot about mice from Mouse during those first couple of months that I had him, and one of those things was that mice will play just like a young kitten and puppy will do. At least young mice like Mouse was will. When I would put my finger on the floor and slide it back and forth very quickly in front of him, he would watch it intently just like a kitten does, head snapping from side to side to follow and looking like he is ready to pounce. When I’d shoot the finger toward him real quick Mouse would jump as much as having only two good legs would allow, take off running in his buggy, make a quick circuit of the cell and come right back to play some more. Sometimes he wouldn’t come right back, though. But a tap of the pen on the floor would bring him to me fast.

Mouse was not so little anymore–once even requiring me to rebuild his buggy and make a new harness–when I went to the yard one fateful day, as I did almost every day back then. I always put him in his box when I would leave my cell and I did likewise this day, like I had done for all of the seven or eight months I had him. When I returned to my cell, after putting the newspaper barrier back in front of the gate to block it off, I went right to the box to set Mouse free. I kept him in his buggy most of the time so he could move around the cell easily as he pleased, taking him out for his thrice weekly baths, that I suspected he never cared for, and not much otherwise. He was still in his buggy when I looked into his box, but the buggy was crushed. Mouse had a black Papermate pen stuck through his back, the same kind of pen that I used to call him to me, only this was one that a C.O. had owned, as many did since the prison gave them out free to officers and inmates alike. There was blood all over the cardboard box.

A C.O. had come into my cell when I was at rec and murdered Mouse. My best friend in that prison was dead and I was on fire inside.

I had three dogs that I loved when I as growing up, and I loved Mouse every bit as much as I had loved them. For the months he was with me he had been good company in a place that can be a lonely world, and I would miss him dearly.

No inmate could tell me who had gone into my cell and killed Mouse because none had seen. The inmates in the area of my cell were at rec in the SHU yards just as I was, or in the dayroom if they were protective custody inmates. Any C.O. could have come out of the SHU control “bubble” (console) and gone into my cell unobserved by any prisoner. But I knew who had done the dirty deed.

All the guards knew I had the paralyzed mouse and none had bothered him for the months that Mouse was with me, though they regularly came into my cell to search it when I was at rec or on visits. There is no such thing as privacy in prison and nothing that you might think is yours is truly your own. The police will come into your cell whenever they please, take what they please, break and destroy what they please, and few have any regard for the law or prison rules or regulations themselves, not the regulations regarding cell searches or property confiscation or any other regulations. To them, the law and rules and regulations are for the inmates alone. We have no rights but what the whim and fancy of our keepers deign to grant us at a given moment. These are facts that no corrections official would ever publicly admit, but that every prisoner knows only too well.

I had written a complaint against a SHU officer (for all the no good it would do) days before Mouse was killed, and in the days that followed he would let me know that it was he who had done the deed. I had known it immediately anyway, before he began taunting me about my friend’s bloody death.

On top of the sadness I felt over the loss of my buddy, I was angry in a monumental way, the Irish in me working its curse through a fiery temperament. I thought about making a counterattack on the man in blue who had murdered Mouse to punish me for writing what was a totally truthful complaint, but in the end I chose to handle the blow without riposte rather than get myself in serious trouble by serving the cop the comeuppance that he rightly deserved. Back then, in my younger and more foolish days, I did not always make this sort of smart choice: I did not always let an injustice or misdeed be served up to me without seeking to make the one who had served it wish to God that he had not, no matter what the consequences of the payback might be.

But we live and learn, and if we are smart we gain some wisdom along the way. I like to think that I have.

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NEWS: New York City Officials and Advocates Push for Change to the “Culture of Brutality” on Rikers Island

August 26, 2014 by

By Savannah Crowley. Excerpted from Solitary Watch.

Update, 8/22/14:  On Thursday, August 21, the New York City Council passed legislation introduced by Councilman Danny Dromm of Queens that would require corrections officials to release quarterly reports documenting information about inmates being held in solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail. Presenting this information to the New York City Board of Corrections would create increased transparency and oversight concerning the jail’s use of punitive segregation. The legislation is now awaiting the signature of Mayor de Blasio, who has said he supports the bill.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

New York City advocates and public officials gathered on the steps of City Hall on Monday to demand an end to the “culture of brutality” emerging from New York City’s Rikers Island, the second biggest jail in the country. The demand followed recent reports released by the United States Department of Justice and the New York City Board of Corrections, as well as months of investigative reporting by the New York Times, exposing brutality, violence, and excessive use of solitary confinement by officers specifically against mentally ill and teenage inmates. One previously incarcerated advocate that spoke at the event described Rikers as “worse than Dante’s Inferno.”

At the press conference, organized by the New York City Jails Action Coalition, speakers expressed support for legislation introduced by Councilman Daniel Dromm of Queens that would bring about much needed transparency and oversight to Rikers. The bill will be voted on this Thursday in the City Council. Speaking at the event, Dromm recounted his tour of Rikers saying, “I saw the horrible conditions inside of solitary people have to endure—a very small cell, the smell of urine, graffiti, a bed that was rusted, a mattress that had mildew on it, a blower of heat directly on top of the bed blowing down.” Strong criticism of Rikers Island has surfaced most recently after a series of exposes in the New York Times covering the staggering rise in violence at Rikers since 2009.

The Times managed to uncover an internal report conducted by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that documented, during an 11 month period, 129 cases of violence by corrections officers towards prisoners yielding injuries so serious they could not be treated at the jail’s clinic. Individuals incarcerated at Rikers suffered fractured jaws and eye sockets, wounds needing stitches, and severe back and head trauma. The report found that 77 percent of those seriously injured had a diagnosis of mental illness. Yet in not one of the 129 cases was a corrections officer prosecuted.  Over half of the 80 prisoners interviewed by health department staff admitted to being intimidated by officers during their treatment, making it easier for staff to cover up the violent episodes.

According to the same article, about 4,000 out of 11,000 people held at Rikers have a mental illness. This number is about 40 percent of the jail population, a 20 percent increase from eight years ago. Few corrections officers have received any in-depth training on how to deal with individuals with mental illness.

Criticism of policies at Rikers Island continued to rise after August 4, when the United States Department of Justice unveiled a secret three-year investigation of Rikers conducted from 2011 to 2013. The investigation concluded that there is a “deep seated culture of violence” at the jail and that the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) has violated the civil rights of adolescent males ages 16 to 18, by subjecting them to and not protecting them from excessive force and violence. For example, the report said, “In FY [Fiscal Year] 2013, there were 565 reported staff use of force incidents involving adolescents… (resulting in 1,057 injuries).”Teenagers at Rikers suffered extreme violence by officers including “…broken jaws, broken orbital bones, broken noses, long bone fractures, and lacerations requiring sutures.”

Read more here.

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NEWS: Rikers: Where Mental Illness Meets Brutality in Jail

July 24, 2014 by

By Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz. Excerpted from the New York Times.

After being arrested on a misdemeanor charge following a family dispute last year, Jose Bautista was unable to post $250 bail and ended up in a jail cell on Rikers Island.

A few days later, he tore his underwear, looped it around his neck and tried to hang himself from the cell’s highest bar. Four correction officers rushed in and cut him down. But instead of notifying medical personnel, they handcuffed Mr. Bautista, forced him to lie face down on the cell floor and began punching him with such force, according to New York City investigators, that he suffered a perforated bowel and needed emergency surgery.

Just a few weeks earlier, Andre Lane was locked in solitary confinement in a Rikers cellblock reserved for inmates with mental illnesses when he became angry at the guards for not giving him his dinner and splashed them with either water or urine. Correction officers handcuffed him to a gurney and transported him to a clinic examination room beyond the range of video cameras where, witnesses say, several guards beat him as members of the medical staff begged for them to stop. The next morning, the walls and cabinets of the examination room were still stained with Mr. Lane’s blood.

The assaults on Mr. Bautista and Mr. Lane were not isolated episodes. Brutal attacks by correction officers on inmates — particularly those with mental health issues — are common occurrences inside Rikers, the country’s second-largest jail, a four-month investigation by The New York Times found.

Reports of such abuses have seldom reached the outside world, even as alarm has grown this year over conditions at the sprawling jail complex. A dearth of whistle-blowers, coupled with the reluctance of the city’s Department of Correction to acknowledge the problem and the fact that guards are rarely punished, has kept the full extent of the violence hidden from public view.

But The Times uncovered details on scores of assaults through interviews with current and former inmates, correction officers and mental health clinicians at the jail, and by reviewing hundreds of pages of legal, investigative and jail records. Among the documents obtained by The Times was a secret internal study completed this year by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which handles medical care at Rikers, on violence by officers. The report helps lay bare the culture of brutality on the island and makes clear that it is inmates with mental illnesses who absorb the overwhelming brunt of the violence…

Read the rest here.

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NEWS: Roundup of National News on Solitary Confinement, June 2014

June 24, 2014 by

June 23, 2014

A judge denied bail to a friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect who is being held in solitary confinement in a Plymouth county jail while he awaits trial on charges of impeding the investigation into the deadly attack.  He is not charged with participating in the bombings or knowing about them in advance.  But judge says he is still a flight risk. http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20140623/NEWS/306249983/1994/NEWS

June 19, 2014

A new report says the percentage of incarcerated individuals in Ohio who are members of recognized gangs remains steady at about 16 percent of the overall prison population.  The highest percentage are at the state’s supermax prison in Youngstown. http://www.wfmj.com/story/25821431/youngstown-supermax-prison-has-largest-percentage-of-gang-members

The keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Chicano Mexicano Prison Project spoke “passionately” about what solitary confinement does physically and psychologically to incarcerated people. http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/06/19/chicano-mexicano-prison-project-holds-annual-conference/

June 18, 2014

A man who is serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Florence for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania has won a federal appeal, giving him the right to visit and correspond with a larger circle of friends and relatives.  He had claimed that restrictions known as special administration measures, or SAMs, that are aimed at preventing communication with terrorists are preventing him from talking with family and friends. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25986725/terrorist-at-supermax-wins-federal-appeal-against-u

In most episodes of the second season of Orange Is the New Black, solitary confinement looms large.  But will people come to think of it as the new normal? https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/vee-isnt-scariest-villain-orange-new-black   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessicalee/-oitnb-season-2-those-day_b_5522884.html

The Box, a new graphic novel tells the story of a man who, as a teen, spent time in solitary confinement in New York City’s Riker’s Island jail. http://cironline.org/reports/graphic-novel-box-6300

West Virginia is beginning a study of its juvenile justice system to find better ways to keep youthful offenders out of detention centers. This was spurred by a lawsuit filed by Mountain State Justice which alleged that the young people at the former Industrial Home for Youth were illegally strip searched, placed in solitary confinement, and denied adequate access to exercise and educational materials. A judge had ordered the home closed.  In his announcement of the study, the governor cited successes in the state Justice Reinvestment Act, which focuses on community-based supervision, risk assessments, investment in drug courts and other community-based treatment options for substance abuse. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/West-Virginia-to-study-juvenile-justice-system-5561368.php

A lawsuit has been filed in Missouri in connection with the death of 36-year-old man, who was being held for trial at the Daviess-Dekalb County Regional Jail.  The suit claims that he was beaten severely and shot with a taser gun on multiple occasions and that he was kept in solitary confinement for 12 days in a cell without a toilet, sink or running water so that he was forced to sit in the cell in his feces and urine. http://www.stjoechannel.com/story/d/story/lawsuit-filed-after-inmate-death-at-daviess-dekalb/11990/I-aWL7OYL0KlrLCmrmq3Hg

June 17, 2014

In South Africa, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services is being sued for torture-related damages.  Solitary confinement and other torture methods continue despite progressive laws. http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-06-17-st-albans-tales-of-torture-and-intimidation-continue/#.U6bvIkAcjQw

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is planning to implement new censorship regulations they say are designed to improve clarity about what materials should be considered contraband and which constitute threats to prison security. The rules include censorship of any material deemed “oppositional to authority and society.”  Prisoners’ rights groups say the rules are overly broad and meant as retribution for political organizing as they would most likely be used to target the letters of activists, as well as publications that regularly cover prisoners’ rights.  http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/state-prisons-institute-new-censorship-rules/Content?oid=3966223   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/21/censored-and-obscene-in-solitary.html

In a Maryland jail, teens charged as adults face isolation and neglect.  Young people, thought to number in the thousands across the country, are trapped in a kind of purgatory–facing charges in adult court and held in adult facilities, but kept in involuntary lockdown for “their own protection” from the adult prisoners who surround them. http://solitarywatch.com/2014/06/17/maryland-jail-teens-charged-adults-face-isolation-neglect/

June 16, 2014

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) is pushing the American Institute of Architects to prohibit the design of spaces that inherently violate human rights in their code of ethics.  The organization is collecting, from formerly and currently incarcerated people, drawings of the spaces in which they experienced solitary confinemen. These will be displayed in UC Berkley’s Wurster Hall Gallery in the fall. The architect behind this effort, says he is not advocating that we put the firms that do prisons out of business but would like it if they would foreground human rights in their work. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/meet-the-architect-who-wants-to-build-a-more-humane-prison

June 14, 2014

Man exonerated thanks to DNA evidence after 32 years in Supermax Prison now accused of murder in gambling dispute. http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/17381-man-exonerated-thanks-to-dna-evidence-after-32-years-in-prison-now-accused-of-murder-in-gambling-dispute

June 13, 2014

A new study, Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution details our government’s post-9/11 strategy in domestic terrorism cases, finding that most were unfairly prosecuted. Included in the discussion of the tactical patterns of preemptive prosecutions, is the pre-trial use of solitary confinement and special administrative measures (SAMS). http://www.projectsalam.org/Inventing-Terrorists-study.pdf

June 12, 2014

NYCLU testimony before the New York City Council on the use of solitary confinement in city jails supports the council’s efforts to provide oversight to the practice of punitive segregation and expresses the hope that this will be the first step toward comprehensive reform of the harmful conditions and practices that persist in New York City jails.  It recommends complete abolition of the practice of subjecting human beings to extreme forms of isolation and deprivation.  http://www.nyclu.org/content/testimony-new-york-city-council-use-of-solitary-confinement-city-jails

A federal court has ruled that the Indiana Department of Correction was wrong to put a man in solitary confinement for using a computer at the request of prison officials.  He had been asked to download materials at the request of prison librarians. http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/ffa740a720ee4c6995fb5dff6ec74a2d/IN–Inmate-Computer

June 11, 2014

A man with mental illness and a low IQ who was held in solitary cell in the Durango, Colorado city jail claims his psychological condition was worsened and he became suicidal.  Prison officials argue he was in “protective custody” and it was not solitary confinement because he could talk to other men in the cell block through the door.  Advocates point out that individuals who need protection should still be able to participate in programs.  http://durangoherald.com/article/20140610/NEWS01/140619937/-1/s/Criminalizing-the-sick-

June 9, 2014

The secretary of the Department of Corrections of New Mexico went undercover to experience solitary confinement.  He notes that the most dangerous individuals must be kept in segregation, but other methods, like taking away privileges should be used when punishing those who are less dangerous.  He says that as a result of his time behind bars, the system is already seeing changes.  http://www.koat.com/news/prison-official-goes-undercover-to-experience-solitary-confinement/26422416#ixzz34Y4Y4koM

The ACLU has issued a new report, Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System, which documents the ACLU’s multi-year investigation into the five CAR facilities (Criminal Alien Requirement contracts) in Texas.  The issues raised include: evidence of shocking abuse and mistreatment, families torn apart, and the excessive use of solitary confinement.  https://www.aclu.org/warehoused-and-forgotten-immigrants-trapped-our-shadow-private-prison-system   https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/060614-aclu-car-reportonline.pdf

June 8, 2014

The Daily News says that only a very few of the people at the Rikers jail who are mentally ill are in the special mental health unit and receiving needed services.  Efforts to eliminate the use of solitary confinements have led to others being in the general population where there is now more violence.  They argue that “Corrections must give up the illusion that it’s ending solitary until the department actually has the means to manage its … population without it.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/retake-rikers-article-1.1820493#ixzz34XxPoy8y   http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/exclusive-rikers-island-violence-increases-article-1.1828360

According to U.S. military officials, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl suffered harsh treatment at the hands of his Taliban captors, including long periods of solitary confinement. They kept him in a metal cage in the dark for weeks after he tried to escape. He is reported to be struggling with emotional issues.  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/08/us-usa-afghanistan-bergdahl-idUSKBN0EJ0HL20140608

A NY Times editorial praises the recent settlement between the DOJ and Ohio re: juveniles in solitary, supporting treatment as the best alternative.  But a letter to the editor from the Executive Director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance adds the view that the single most effective way to end the practice of solitary confinement for children is keep them out of adult jails and prisons.  Many are tried as adults, sent to adult jails and prisons and put in solitary for their own protection. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/opinion/a-model-for-juvenile-detention-reform.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C[%22RI%3A7%22%2C%22RI%3A16%22  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/opinion/keeping-troubled-youths-out-of-solitary.html

June 7, 2014

The solitary confinement units in East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, Mississippi, privately run by Management and Training Corporation, are described by civil rights lawyers and medical and mental health experts, noting that: the people held in those units spend months in near-total darkness; illnesses go untreated or inappropriately treated; dirt, feces and, occasionally, blood are caked on the walls of cells; and, many individuals were forcibly injected with an  antipsychotic drug, even though they were not acutely psychotic. A lawsuit against the corporation and DOC officials also notes corruption amongst officers and failure to stop violence.  Later this year, a judge will consider whether to grant the plaintiffs class-action status.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/us/seeing-squalor-and-unconcern-in-southern-jail.html?_r=0

June 6, 2014

A report on some of the real stats related to women in prison shows: more than 600% increase since 1980; most of the women are there for non-violent drug related offenses; many are pregnant when admitted to prison; Black and Latina women are most effected; and the women are more likely than men to be the victims of staff sexual abuse. http://fusion.net/justice/story/real-life-stats-women-prison-orange-black-748144

An article in the Atlantic praises Colorado’s rule restricting solitary confinement for the mentally ill, but warns about the abuse of classifications. The article also discusses the federal standards and the discretion they give to prison officials.  http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/colorado-will-no-longer-send-the-major-mentally-ill-to-solitary-confinement/282366/

Jails are not part of the solitary confinement bill passed in Colorado.  The ACLU-Colorado now intends to turn its attention to the isolation of mentally ill people in county jails, but acknowledges that a policy change there may be more difficult because practices there are “a hodgepodge of different activities not very well regulated by the state,” and because a shortage of psychiatric beds and a lack of funding for alternative mental-health treatment may put a huge burden on the jails.  The point is made that, “Communities have to find the resources.” http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/local/2014/06/06/colo-solitary-confinement-bill-extend-jails/10087867/

The Colorado governor signed a bill banning the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill people. http://durangoherald.com/article/20140606/NEWS01/140609647/0/NEWS01/State-revises-confinement-regulations-

June 5, 2014

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison Law Office can move forward with a lawsuit against the state of Arizona as a class action. The attorneys had argued that the state had long ignored the mandate to provide adequate health care and that individuals in the prisons have suffered unnecessarily and even died while waiting for basic care.  In addition to seeking adequate medical, mental health, and dental care for Arizona’s prisoners, the lawsuit challenges the state prisons’ use of solitary confinement because of the harm it creates.  https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/33000-arizona-prisoners-now-can-sue-state-over-health-care-solitary-confinement  http://www.jewishaz.com/opinion/commentary/state-s-criminal-justice-system-needs-reform/article_0bbc9b4c-f0f7-11e3-8bef-0017a43b2370.html

Counterpunch features an article on how the US is spreading mass incarceration around the world, exporting systems of abuse in programs that are reflections and extensions of our own internal situation.  Reports of physical and psychological torture, include isolated confinement.  Although the reported reason for this effort is the war on drugs, the reports sees social and political control as  the real reason as many of the people held in these US funded facilities are political prisoners, striking farmers, indigenous leaders, union leaders and human rights advocates. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/05/empire-of-prisons/

June 4, 2014

Attorneys for a man accused of kidnapping and murder but not yet tried asked the court to have him removed from solitary confinement.  The judge ruled that he should not be treated differently in jail.  http://www.wbbjtv.com/news/local/Zach-Adams-to-appear-in-court-for-status-hearing-261854551.html

June 3, 2014

The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) will issue new standards which prohibit the use of room confinement for discipline, punishment, administrative convenience, retaliation, staffing shortages, or reasons other than as a temporary response to behavior that threatens immediate harm to a youth or others.  The change is expected to have national impact. The revised detention standards also call on JDAI sites to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), to protect the rights of youths with disabilities, and to accommodate those with limited English skills.  JDAI also pledges a reinvestment in juvenile justice into early intervention and better prevention efforts.   http://jjie.org/revised-jdai-standards-call-for-end-to-unnecessary-solitary-confinement/

In Florida, trial is to begin for mentally ill Muslim man.  Advocates say there are government videos showing FBI informants teaching and pushing the man into committing acts of terrorism.  He was held in solitary confinement for two years before his trial, but is now in the medical area of the Pinellas County jail under suicide watch. http://www.fightbacknews.org/2014/6/3/us-government-lies-sami-osmakac-trial-begins

June 2, 2014

A federal judge allowed hundreds of California incarcerated individuals to join a lawsuit (Ashker v. Brown) challenging prolonged solitary confinement in California prisons.  The court also denied the California Correctional Peace Officers Association’s (CCPOA) motion to intervene in the case.  The lawsuit applies only to individuals in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay; people held in isolation at the state’s three other security housing units are not included.  Several articles question if this will bring the end of solitary confinement. http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/hundreds-of-california-prisoners-isolation-join-class-action-lawsuit   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/us/judges-decision-to-hear-inmates-case-threatens-practice-of-solitary-confinement.html?_r=0  http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/approaching-end-solitary-confinement-84101/

May 30, 2014

A federal court official says that treatment of California’s most severely mentally ill prisoners is haphazard and often inadequate, delivered by a fractured, understaffed system in which doctors discharge patients back to prison because they are afraid not to.  The investigation of conditions at two state psychiatric hospitals and the psychiatric hospitals run within four state prisons was ordered by a judge after he rejected California’s bid to end federal oversight of prison psychiatric care.  http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-pol-ff-prisons-20140531-story.html

In Massachusetts, two men who had been tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison when they were still youth are going before the parole board to ask for their freedom, under a controversial 2013 state Supreme Judicial Court ruling granting dozens of teenagers convicted of murder eligibility for parole.  One of the men had spent 7 of his 20 years in prison in solitary confinement. http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/05/two_teen_killers_beg_for_release_in_first_shot_at_parole

May 29, 2014

A bill that would change policies regarding solitary confinement has been passed by the CA state senate.  The bill’s author says it will lead to safer prisons.  But, while it may have some desirable provisions, both people in prison and advocates for their rights oppose this bill because for the first time in history it would put into state law authority for CDCR to place individuals in solitary confinement for mere alleged gang membership without any accompanying serious misconduct.  They would also want it to incorporate a provision that would prohibit CDCR from using the testimony of an informant to place someone in a SHU unless that person’s testimony was corroborated by independent third party evidence.   http://www.kfbk.com/articles/kfbk-news-461777/bill-to-change-solitary-confinement-policies-12406556/#ixzz344GV94Bk  http://sfbayview.com/2014/prisoners-and-advocacy-groups-oppose-sen-loni-hancocks-prison-reform-bill-sb-892/

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NEWS: New York City Council Hearing Probes Jail Violence, Mental Health Care

June 23, 2014 by

By Jake Pearson, Associated Press. Reprinted from ABC News.

New York City lawmakers peppered correction and health officials with questions about how to reduce violence and better care for a growing mentally ill inmate population in the nation’s second-largest jail system during a specially called oversight hearing Thursday.

In three hours of testimony, the commissioners for the departments of correction and health and mental hygiene detailed both the bureaucratic inner-workings of how their two agencies, tasked respectively with both the custody and health care of roughly 11,000 daily inmates, interact now — and what they can do better to reform a jail system advocates, lawmakers and even the department of correction commissioner himself have called troubled.

“These long-term trends, years in the making, are clearly unacceptable, and reversing them is my top priority,” Department of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte, who started running the $1 billion agency in April, said of the violence. “But as a correction professional with 40 years’ experience, I must assure you that the process will not be quick. And it will not be easy.”

Their testimony comes following reports by The Associated Press detailing two grisly deaths of inmates with psychological problems on Rikers Island.

DOC statistics show that between 2010 and 2013, use-of-force incidents have increased by 59 percent, from 1,871 to 2,977; slashing and stabbing incidents doubled, from 34 to 58; and assaults on staff jumped by 30 percent, from 500 to 646.

At the same time, the number of inmates with a mental health diagnoses has soared as the jail population has declined, accounting for about 24 percent of the nearly 14,000 inmates in 2007 to about 40 percent of mentally ill inmates today, according to the statistics. Officials estimate that about a third of those inmates suffer from serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Mayor Bill de Blasio last week appointed a task force charged with rethinking how the criminal justice system treats the mentally ill.

Lawmakers argued Thursday the challenges facing reform at Rikers are vast, and include not just safety and mental health measures, but also new facilities, more security staff and bail reform.

Mary Bassett, the department of health and mental hygiene’s commissioner, told lawmakers that mental health and violence in the jails are intertwined. She said correction officers and mental health workers have already begun to discuss certain inmates’ behavior at the end of every tour, being mindful of medical privacy laws, so as to better recognize potential problems before it’s too late.

Officials have started to reform 19 so-called mental observation units, where the recent deaths of two inmates with psychological problems occurred, she said.

Those deaths, reported by The Associated Press, called for top-down change, said City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley.

The AP was first to report on suspicions of a mentally ill former Marine’s February death inside a 101-degree cell. A city official speaking on the condition of anonymity told the AP then that Jerome Murdough “basically baked to death.” His family, who said the veteran suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, plans to file a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit.

Last month, the AP detailed the September 2013 death of 39-year-old inmate Bradley Ballard, whose family said was diagnosed with schizophrenia who died after sexually mutilating himself while locked up alone for seven days. His death was recently ruled a homicide.

Prosecutors are investigating both deaths.

New York University psychiatrist Dr. James Gilligan, who authored a report last year that was critical of the department’s then approach to using solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates, said Thursday the hearing was an encouraging sign that the city was taking the issue seriously.

“I think this is a move toward greater transparency in what’s going on at Rikers Island both with the problems and with the reforms,” he said.

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NEWS: Death of Schizophrenic Rikers Inmate Left in Cell Ruled a Homicide

June 23, 2014 by

By the Associated Press. Reprinted from SILive.com.

NEW YORK — The death of a seriously mentally ill and diabetic inmate who sexually mutilated himself after seven days in a New York City jail cell has been ruled a homicide, the city medical examiner’s office said Monday.

Spokeswoman Julie Bolcer said the cause of 39-year-old Bradley Ballard’s September 2013 death on Rikers Island was diabetic ketoacidosis with a contributing factor of genital ischemia. Diabetic ketoacidosis occurs when people don’t have enough insulin and the liver breaks down fat instead, which can be fatal. Ischemia occurs when tissues don’t get enough oxygen and die.

Ballard, who family members said had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, was discovered lying in his own feces in a cell with a rubber band tied around his scrotum. He had been confined to his cell in a mental observation unit at Rikers for seven days for making a lewd gesture at a female guard, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Documents obtained by the AP show Ballard was not given his medication for much of the time he spent locked in his cell in a mental observation unit. The documents show he was checked on dozens of times by correction officers but never taken out of his cell until he was found unresponsive.

The Department of Correction, citing a pending and ongoing investigation, declined to comment. The Bronx District Attorney’s Office didn’t immediately comment.

Curtis Griffin, Ballard’s stepfather, said, “It’s hard to believe that things got this bad. You can’t cover these things up. Bradley is not the only one. If they don’t know what their job is they shouldn’t be there.”

Ballard’s death and the death of another inmate who died in an overheated cell have prompted a city lawmaker to schedule an oversight hearing. On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new task force that would overhaul how the corrections system treats the mentally ill.

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NEWS: Roundup of National News on Solitary Confinement, May 2014

June 5, 2014 by

May 28, 2014
Attorneys for a man who admitted helping to kill a correctional officer at U.S. Penitentiary Atwater in California’s San Joaquin Valley are trying to keep him out of the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. because he has serious mental health problems, including bipolar disorder and an intellectual disability.  The Justice Dept. is arguing that prison assignments are up to the Bureau of Prisons and the judge in the case has no say in the matter.
http://www.kansascity.com/2014/05/28/5051313/too-nuts-for-supermax-lawyers.html#storylink=cpysoners

May 27, 2014
Decades of solitary confinement will continue for a Thoman Silverstein who killed a guard and three other incarcerated men while in prison. The ruling of the 10th Circuit found him too dangerous to release into the general prison population. The man had claimed that his 30 years in solitary has caused him psychological harm so he was seeking a “step-down” to less restrictive conditions of confinement.  He cited his age, the fact that he has committed no disciplinary infraction since 1988, and the fact that staff psychologists gave him a low risk of violence rating. But, deferring to the Bureau of Prisons, the court denied his request, citing his old gang affiliation and the possibility it could be re-activated or the need for protection from the gang is he refuses to rejoin.  The man’s description of his time in solitary is included in the link below.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/05/27/68218.htm
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2014/05/thomas_silverstein_solitary_cruel_unusual_ruling.php
http://solitarywatch.com/2011/05/05/americas-most-isolatd-federal-prisoner-describes-10220-days-in-extreme-solitary-confinement/#comment-29687

A woman held on drug charges in the Wichita County Jail in 2012 filed a suit against Wichita County and other entities for allowing her to deliver her baby in solitary confinement without help, resulting in the infant’s death.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2014/may/27/texas-woman-says-solitary-confinment-led-babys-dea/

May 26, 2014
Report on women in solitary discusses special ways they are affected: it damages relations with their children; it damages the child by not permitting contact or demonstrations of affection; children may be put in foster care; women in solitary are barred from programs that might aid them in preventing children from being taken away permanently; many are rape survivors who continue to be abused; and the possibility of re-traumatization may intensify feelings of anger, depression, anxiety, fear and paranoia.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/26/how-solitary-confinement-destroys-women.html

A man in Northern State Prison in Newark, NJ is suing the state on the grounds that he has been kept in solitary confinement for 8 years, without due process and in violation of his rights against cruel and unusual punishment. He was accused of plotting uprisings in 4 prisons and the assassination of then Newark Mayor Booker, but no changes were ever brought and no evidence present. The trial is scheduled for July.
http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2014/05/post_29.html

May 25, 2014
Boy of 15 was put in solitary confinement in a maximum security cell at the Utah State Prison after he pled guilty to participating in an armed robbery and was given two concurrent sentences of 1-15 years.  He pled guilty after what his father says was bad legal advice that he would probably get a light sentence.  His father is concerned that he will be destroyed by the isolation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639298/Boy-16-pleads-guilty-role-armed-robbery-sentenced-solitary-confinement-maximum-security-unit-despite-time-offender.html

May 24, 2014
Immigrants in detention facilities across the country are often coerced into working for $1 a day or less.  Some report that they have been threatened with solitary confinement if they did not work, even when they were ill.  And, at least one woman said she was put in solitary for no reason, but the work gave her a tiny bit of freedom and the opportunity for contact with others.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/us/using-jailed-migrants-as-a-pool-of-cheap-labor.html?hpw&rref=us&_r=0&referrer=

An article on the relationship between decreased funding for programs for the mentally ill in Colorado and the increases in the percentage of mentally ill people in the prisons, also notes that, once they’re in, people with behavioral-health problems have more trouble getting out.  A study showed they stayed an average of five times longer than other individuals in the prisons.  And, despite the pledges to remove mentally-ill people from isolation because of concerns that it is counterproductive and inhumane, jailers say solitary confinement is still used routinely.
http://durangoherald.com/article/20140524/NEWS01/140529696/In-jails-steep-costs-for-caring-for-those-with-mental-illnesses-

May 21, 2014
The Justice Department has settled its lawsuit against the State of Ohio to end unlawful seclusion of youth in juvenile correctional facilities.  The State Department of Youth Services (DYS) will also ensure that young people in its juvenile facilities receive individualized mental health treatment to prevent and address the conditions and behaviors that led to seclusion.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/May/14-crt-541.html

NY Times article reports that “attacks on health care workers and other civilian staff members at Rikers Island have spiked over the last year, as officials have scaled back their use of punitive measures and expanded treatment for the swelling ranks of mentally ill [people] at the … jail complex.”  They report that violent incidents are up since July 2013 and all but 3 of the 39 incidents involved incarcerated individuals with a mental health diagnosis.  The problems are said to be slowing down reform efforts.  But Mayor De Blasio has vowed to implement reforms including providing more intensive clinical attention to mentally ill people in the jail instead of solitary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/nyregion/rising-hazard-for-civilian-staff-at-rikers-attacks-by-mentally-ill-inmates.html?_r=0
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-inmate-died-after-7-days-nyc-cell

After roughly 10,000 gallons of chemicals leaked into a West Virginia watershed, officials at Charleston’s South Central Jail claimed that the people incarcerated there were given plenty of clean water to drink. But people who were incarcerated there say they were sometimes given too little clean water so they resorted to using contaminated tap water. Many say they suffered a myriad of health problems after exposure to the chemicals in the water supply, but if they asked to see a nurse too many times they could be sent to solitary confinement.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/21/3439864/the-untold-story-of-what-happened-at-an-overcrowded-west-virigina-jail-after-the-chemical-spill/

May 20, 2014
Marty Horn, the Former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction and former Secretary of Corrections of Pennsylvania argues that holding Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing in solitary confinement is unjustified because: he has not yet been tried and found guilty; and, the standard for such separation should always be behavior—not affiliation, crime or beliefs. He further argues that means must be found by his jailers to reduce the extreme social isolation he is experiencing to avoid psychological deterioration. http://www.thecrimereport.org/viewpoints/2014-05-tsarnaev-case-does-us-security-require-torture#.U3t8kuNCbFE.email

New Mexico’s Department of Corrections Cabinet Secretary Gregg Marcantel, spent 2 days in solitary.  He is now making changes in policy – i.e releasing people who are not dangerous. (60-80 so far.) http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3444107.shtml?cat=516#.U4ZYdih3Gid

An Egyptian-born imam (known as Abu Hamza)was convicted of terrorism charges in New York and faces a life sentence. He was extradited to the US in 2014 with four other terrorism suspects after a long battle in UK and European courts, in which the defendants argued that the long-term solitary confinement they would likely face if convicted amounted to torture. Apparently, the US government, as a concession to the British government, promised not to hold him in solitary confinement at ADX Florence if he were convicted. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/05/uk-preacher-abu-hamza-found-guilty-us-2014519185721823343.html

May 16, 2014
An Omaha man who went on a killing spree last year shortly after he left prison had been in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day during his final years in custody and was then released with no attempts to help him ease back into society.  According to a state Ombudsman, the isolation might have worsened the man’s already severe mental health problems since in isolation he did not have the same access to mental health services as other people in the prison.  Lawmakers have begun an investigation into the case and whether it reflects larger problems in the state corrections system. http://www.theindependent.com/news/state/jenkins-case-prompts-review-of-nebraska-prisons/article_6e230cdf-978f-5c24-94f2-a4b28ad23eed.html

A Portland, Maine lawyer said he can cite at least four cases in the last two months where mentally ill people are being arrested and held in solitary confinement for misdemeanors.  In one case, his client called 911 repeatedly, asking to be taken to the hospital because he didn’t have medicine for his schizophrenia. The client was arrested for misuse of the 911 system and violation of conditions of release, both misdemeanors. The client was kept in solitary confinement for 10 days.  According to the State’s Atty. Gen., although there is a statewide procedure on how to deal with maximum security or solitary confinement, when it comes to county jails, it’s up to each of their discretion. http://www.wmtw.com/news/lawyer-concerned-about-treatment-of-mentally-ill-clients-in-jail/26019558 – ixzz3264dQwaD

May 14, 2014
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, Jr. spoke out against what he described as the unnecessary use of solitary confinement for imprisoned juveniles who suffer from mental illness.  He noted that “solitary confinement can be dangerous, and a serious impediment to the ability of juveniles to succeed once released … [and that] … this practice is particularly detrimental to young people with disabilities – who are at increased risk under these circumstances of negative effects including self-harm and even suicide.”  He promised his department will continue to work to end excessive seclusion of youths with disabilities. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/May/14-ag-509.html
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-holder-criticizes-solitary-confinement-20140514-story.html

Lawyers for a transgender Georgia woman say that she has served most of her sentence in solitary to keep her “safe” from physical and sexual violence in the prison after she was raped. And, being placed in isolation has prevented her from receiving life and employment counseling as well as recreation time. The director of the Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project, sees putting rape victims in solitary as a longer-standing women’s rights issue: the phenomenon of blaming the victim. She is put in lock-up but not the person who perpetrated the act, who still gets to be with his friends. The view is that the victimized individual should at least have a choice about this “protection.” http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/14/transgender-chelseageorgia.htmlhttp://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/14/transgender-chelseageorgia.html

A man is suing several New Orleans ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials for First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations, claiming that they held him in in solitary confinement for five months after beating him and denying him medical treatment for his injuries. He had been arrested for a traffic violation, but then asked to see a lawyer when they demanded that he sign deportation papers. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/beaten-and-held-solitary-confinement-5-months-traffic-ticket

May 9, 2014
The host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman, penned an op-ed voicing her opposition to solitary confinement, which was published in several outlets across the country – in Idaho, Illinois and Wisconsin.  She mentions the position of the Texas Correctional Employees calling for reductions in the use of solitary confinement.  And she mentions the work of CAIC on the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/may/09/amy-goodman-solitary-confinement-is-torture/

People in prison and advocacy groups in California who were involved recent hunger strikes have expressed a position on two bills currently moving through the California state legislature. They support Assembly Bill 1652, which would prohibit the state from placing individuals in solitary confinement simply on the suspicion that they belong to a gang (“gang validation”); they oppose Senate Bill 892, which was designed to achieve more comprehensive reforms, because it neither explicitly prohibits “gang validation” nor indeterminate terms in solitary confinement units. http://sfbayview.com/2014/prisoners-and-advocacy-groups-oppose-sen-loni-hancocks-prison-reform-bill-sb-892/
http://sfbayview.com/2014/sb-892-and-ab-1652-pelican-bay-prisoner-representatives-speak-to-the-california-assembly-and-senate/

May 8, 2014
Rep. Cedric Richmond (LA) introduced The Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014 to begin the development and implementation of national standards for the use of solitary confinement, which will ensure that it is used infrequently and only under extreme circumstances. http://richmond.house.gov/press-release/rep-richmond-introduces-bill-reform-solitary-confinement

May 6, 2014
Amnesty International USA is calling for another investigation into the deaths of two men in South Jersey’s Burlington County. County prosecutors concluded both men died of “natural causes,” but the Amnesty group claims that conclusion ignores evidence of medical neglect. http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/new-jersey/67671-amnesty-international-wants-another-look-into-deaths-of-2-nj-inmates

May 5, 2014
The Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope and WISDOM, which is lobbying to cut in half the prison rolls in Wisconsin invited legislators to a church event to discuss the practices of the Department of Corrections of holding incarcerated people unnecessarily past their eligible parole dates, and subjecting them to solitary confinement under conditions described as “torture.”  They pointed out that several individuals had fulfilled their requirements for parole and were denied release, while others weren’t provided the programs needed to meet the requirements.  Several legislators promised to investigate. http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/inmate-advocates-decry-prison-conditions-overly-long-terms-b99263411z1-258054191.html
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/rev-kate-edwards-dead-man-walking-vs-living-men-tortured/article_3e3929a7-2f38-5412-803a-7aae9cc9a4a1.html

May 3, 2014
Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), an organization of health professionals dedicated to human rights advocacy  and outspoken in opposing the use of U.S. medical professionals in interrogations have released a letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel urge them to eliminate all existing procedures allowing for torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees.  They note that the Army Field Manual (especially Appendix M) still includes abusive techniques such as isolation, sleep deprivation, exploitation of fear, attacks against ego or self-esteem, and the creation of feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/05/03/psychologists-call-for-end-to-abusive-interrogation-techniques-in-army-field-manual/

A man who had been kept in solitary confinement 23 hours and 20 minutes a day for more than two years has lost a federal lost his appeal in a lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Corrections.  The court found that his due process rights were violated because prison officials did not review his housing classification status, but also held that the Department of Corrections and 11 named officials were entitled to qualified immunity. http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/05/oregon_prisoner_locked_in_soli.html?utm_content=buffer70622&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

May 2014
An account by a retired CIA officer on the torture and imprisonment of a Vietnamese freedom fighter and the failure by the CIA and the South Vietnamese to break him through years of torture and isolation. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no1/article06.html

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