A community resource for monitoring, navigating, surviving, and dismantling the prison industrial complex in Arizona.
Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...
This site was originally started in July 2009 as an independent endeavor to monitor conditions in Arizona's criminal justice system, as well as offer some critical analysis of the prison industrial complex from a prison abolitionist/anarchist's perspective. It was begun in the aftermath of the death of Marcia Powell, a 48 year old AZ state prisoner who was left in an outdoor cage in the desert sun for over four hours while on a 10-minute suicide watch. That was at ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear, AZ, in May 2009.
Marcia, a seriously mentally ill woman with a meth habit sentenced to the minimum mandatory 27 months in prison for prostitution was already deemed by society as disposable. She was therefore easily ignored by numerous prison officers as she pleaded for water and relief from the sun for four hours. She was ultimately found collapsed in her own feces, with second degree burns on her body, her organs failing, and her body exceeding the 108 degrees the thermometer would record. 16 officers and staff were disciplined for her death, but no one was ever prosecuted for her homicide. Her story is here.
Marcia's death and this blog compelled me to work for the next 5 1/2 years to document and challenge the prison industrial complex in AZ, most specifically as manifested in the Arizona Department of Corrections. I corresponded with over 1,000 prisoners in that time, as well as many of their loved ones, offering all what resources I could find for fighting the AZ DOC themselves - most regarding their health or matters of personal safety.
I also began to work with the survivors of prison violence, as I often heard from the loved ones of the dead, and learned their stories. During that time I memorialized the Ghosts of Jan Brewer - state prisoners under her regime who were lost to neglect, suicide or violence - across the city's sidewalks in large chalk murals. Some of that art is here.
In November 2014 I left Phoenix abruptly to care for my family. By early 2015 I was no longer keeping up this blog site, save occasional posts about a young prisoner in solitary confinement in Arpaio's jail. I'm deeply grateful to the prisoners who educated, confided in, and encouraged me throughout the years I did this work. My life has been made all the more rich and meaningful by their engagement.
I've linked to some posts about advocating for state prisoner health and safety to the right, as well as other resources for families and friends.
PHOENIX
-- The company that provides health care to Arizona inmates is Corizon.
Its website states, in part, the company provides "high quality
healthcare (sic)... that will improve the health and safety of our
patients. Our people, practices and commitment to success through
evidence-based medicine enable us to consistently meet and exceed client
expectations."
But several nurses who currently work for Corizon Health tell 3TV that's not true.
What's more, one family says their father died because Corizon failed to live up to its promise.
"He
was always in great shape," Mark Dehe said of his father, Manfred. "He
walked all the time. He actually walked quite quickly."
Dehe said
he spent as much time as he could with his father, but that changed
when Manfred was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Dehe knew his dad
would serve time but would eventually be released. The family would be
reunited.
Dehe had no idea what three years inside an Arizona prison would do to his father.
"Infuriating," he said. "Infuriating."
Soon after Manfred went to prison, he complained to his family that he was in severe pain.
Dehe ignored him at first.
"I
thought he was overreacting," Dehe explained. "I told him, 'Dad, this
isn't the Ritz.' I told him it's prison you might just have to wait a
little bit longer."
Medical records show that a prison doctor
recommended surgery for a hernia on Feb. 21, 2012. It was categorized as
an urgent priority.
On March 13, another medical professional
recommended Manfred be seen by a doctor outside the prison, again for
hernia-related issues.
One week later, medical staff again recommended outside treatment. It was again listed as "priority urgent."
I sat down with Dehe to talk about his claims that Corizon failed to provide proper care for his father.
Health care for violent criminal offenders is not at the top of most people's minds.
"I'm
a little embarrassed to say I understand," Dehe confessed. "Prior to my
father going to prison ... I didn't give it much thought. [M]y thoughts
were 'Well if they didn't do anything wrong, then they wouldn't be in
that position to begin with.
"But I also assumed that they were
receiving and given adequate health care," he continued. "It may not
have been the best. You may have had to wait a little bit, but I thought
it met their needs. I was very ignorant."
3TV obtained hand-written notes from Manfred to prison staff. He seemed to be begging for help.
"I'm 77 years old. I don't feel right. I'd like to have a doctor fully examine me."
"To urinate is extremely painful. My hernias are also hurting."
"I'm not receiving any more meds for my urinary tract infection."
When Manfred was finally seen by doctors outside of the prison, lab tests came back with devastating results.
His
family says he was supposed to receive monthly injections to slow the
cancer. Medical records show that injections were sometimes missed
because the medicine was not available, according to one doctor's notes.
Manfred
continued to cry out for help. He wrote letters to management, saying,
"I FEEL LIKE I AM BEING NEGLECTED. I NEED TO SEE A QUALIFIED DOCTOR AND
GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!!!"
"From that time until he was finally
seen for an exam, August 2013, 15 months had passed," Dehe said. "By
that time, it was too late. He never left the bed. He never saw outside.
He was never moved from one side to another and after two weeks he had
severe bedsores. They would eventually get so bad you could see through
to the bone."
Manfred's story is not unique. The state of Arizona
has a contract with a private health care company, Corizon, to provide
care for inmates. A report by medical experts hired by the ACLU to
inspect and review the conditions at Arizona prisons found "almost half
of the people who died natural deaths received grossly deficient medical
care. And that the poor care clearly caused or hastened their death."
We even spoke to a current prison nurse who confirmed that inmates are dying because of poor care.
The prison nurse we talked with spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"People
with ongoing diagnosis like leukemia, diabetes, or complications to
some serious illnesses are being delayed care. Absolutely."
Nurses and doctors caring for Manfred tried to get him proper care.
"It is my medical judgement that this patient requires hospitalization," one doctor who saw him wrote to prison management.
One
nurse even wrote a note that reads, "Department of Corrections short
staffed and unable to provide security for ambulance transport. Consult
Cancelled."
Dehe believes his father was sentenced to death because of poor health care.
"He
was ridiculed by the staff," he said. "They didn't want to bathe him
because quite frankly he smelled. One of the people even joked and said,
'Why don't you throw a sheet over him,' insinuating he smells like he's
dead. He must be dead so cover him up."
Corizon recently settled
a major class action lawsuit, promising it will make changes to provide
better care to inmates. The case settled on Oct. 14, the same day
Manfred lost his battle with cancer.
Manfred walked into prison at age 75. Three years later, he was dead.
"Do
I think anything is going to change? Not a bit. Not a bit," Dehe said.
"I have to assume that they act on the fact that there is no oversight,
and therefore they can do whatever they want. If there's nobody watching
me, I can do whatever I want. Who's going to complain? The inmate?
Who's going to believe the inmate?"
Corizon declined an on-camera interview for this story. A spokesman did, however, respond with a statement.
"The
oncological care provided Inmate Dehe from the time Corizon Health
began serving the Arizona prison system met the standard of care and was
appropriate to his condition. Federal and state privacy laws prohibit
public discussion of details of patient conditions or courses of
treatment."
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Corizon and the
Arizona Department of Corrections have three years to make changes that
will improve the health care provided to inmates.
Craig Harris, The Republic | azcentral.com 9:55 a.m. MST February 19, 2015
A
federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement that will provide
improved health-care coverage for about 34,000 Arizona inmates in
state-run facilities at a cost to taxpayers of at least $8 million a
year.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona and
the Prison Law Office, a prisoner-advocacy group, reached a settlement
with the Arizona Department of Corrections last October, days before a
trial was to start.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of state-prison
inmates, alleged that Arizona's inmate health-care system was so flawed
that it caused deaths and preventable injuries. It also accused the
state of keeping inmates in solitary confinement for long periods of
time.
The state denied the allegations, and admitted no wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement.
"This
is a small glimpse of justice," said Patti Jones, whose nephew, Tony
Lester, killed himself in a state prison. "I think this is a just
settlement."
Jones was one of seven people to address U.S.
Magistrate Judge David K. Duncan, who approved the settlement. Duncan
also authorized $4.9 million in fees for the attorneys who represented
the inmates.
The fees must be paid by the state. Duncan noted the
amount for plaintiffs' attorneys nearly mirrored the amount the state
spent in legal bills defending itself, bringing the state's total legal
tab to about $10 million.
Gov. Doug Ducey is asking lawmakers for
$8 million in his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year so the
state's contracted inmate health-care provider, Corizon Health, can hire
91 additional health-care workers to comply with the settlement
requirements.
The settlement requires DOC to:
• Meet more
than 100 health-care performance measures, covering issues such as
monitoring prisoners with diabetes, hypertension and other chronic
conditions.
• Offer all inmates annual influenza vaccinations. Those with chronic diseases will be offered required immunizations.
• Offer inmates aged 50 to 75 annual colorectal cancer screening.
• Offer female inmates aged 50 and older mammogram screenings.
• Provide no less than 6 hours per week of out-of-cell exercise time for maximum-custody inmates.
• Provide maximum-custody inmates with serious mental illness an additional 10 hours of unstructured out-of-cell time per week.
• Only use pepper spray or other chemical agents during an imminent threat.
The
settlement also allows attorneys for inmates and their experts to
conduct up to 20 daily tours of state prison complexes annually to make
sure the agreement is being enforced.
Donna Hamm, executive
director of Middle Ground Prison Reform, said she liked the settlement
but is unhappy that the state will have up to two weeks' advance notice
prior to a tour.
"Some of the visits should be spontaneous and
not announced," said Hamm, an outspoken critic of the Arizona prison
system. "But overall, this is an improvement."
Daniel Struck, a
private attorney representing the state, said DOC already has started to
implement changes called for in the settlement.
David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, called the settlement "real improvement" in the care of inmates.
The settlement does not apply to the roughly 7,000 inmates in six private prisons across Arizona.
ON THE BEAT
Craig
Harris covers the Arizona Department of Corrections and other state and
federal agencies, with an emphasis on government accountability and
public money.
So, for those of you who missed it, there's no longer such a thing as a "contact visit" at the Maricopa County Jails. Prisoners are also now only allowed one "free" visit a week, which must be conducted via videophone from 4th Ave Jail or the Lower Buckeye Jail. All video visits from off-site are unlimited, however - so long as you are able to access a computer with a camera and the internet, and can afford the $12.95 every 20 minute visit will cost you.
As for the "inmate Services" fund this extra money is supposed to be going to: he should just refund it straight to the families, since the last time he had a chunk of change in the "Inmate Services" fund (where MCSO profits from the canteen sales presumably go, as well) he "misappropriated" it. Remember that $99 million he lost - almost $15 million of which came from this "Inmate Services" fundhe likes to force prisoners and their loved ones to contribute to?
There never was actual contact allowed that could have facilitated smuggling at "contact" visits when they had them anyway - not at Estrella, at least - the women were always chained to the tables when visitors sat across from them. Mothers weren't even allowed to hug their kids.MOre access to prisoners from family the world is great - but should be affordable and not result in fewer visitation privileges for those who can't afford it.
This
is just more of the same: extortion and exploitation of what is largely
a population of individuals who haven't yet even been convicted of a
crime. Arpaio needs to rein in his departmentalcorruption, really, if he wants to get that contraband issue under control, as far as I can see.
Anyway, this is what you should really be checking out - we got taken for a ride, people!
Face-to-face visitation has a new meaning for inmates at Maricopa
County jails now that in-person visits have been swapped for Skype-like
video chats.
On Thursday, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
launched a Web-based video-visitation platform that eliminates in-person
visitations and expands visitation hours.
The system, developed
by Texas-based Securus Technologies, allows people from all over the
world to talk to any of the 8,500 inmates in the county's six jails via
video, as long as they have a high-speed Internet connection and a
webcam.
The Sheriff's Office is offering a promotional price of $5
for a 20-minute conversation, but that price will increase to $12.95
for 20 minutes after Jan. 1.
Securus is paying $2.3million to
provide 600 video stations to the six jails at no expense to the
taxpayers, according to Securus CEO Rick Smith.
The system, which
Securus says is the largest in the country, is expected to generate
thousands of dollars for the Sheriff's Office while increasing jail
security by eliminating the potential for contraband smuggling, an issue
during the more than 20,000 in-person visitations each month, according
to sheriff's officials.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will also
allow friends and family members to schedule visits without having to
miss work or drive down to a facility.
"It's a win for everyone involved," Arpaio said.
Remote visitations can be scheduled seven days a week between 7 a.m. and 9:30 p.m at visitfromhome.net/maricopa. Visits must be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance.
Inmates
can receive one free on-site visit per week, but they will be held
through the video platform at either the Fourth Avenue or Lower Buckeye
jails.
On-site visitation hours at those jails have expanded to
seven days a week between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., up from a single visit on
Sunday or Monday.
Sheriff's officials say on-site visits will no
longer be conducted at the Durango, Estrella, Tent City or Towers jails,
but inmates there have access to video chats.
Securus will
receive 100 percent of the revenue until the number of calls reaches
8,000 per month. Ten percent of the excess revenue will then go to MCSO,
and that will increase to 20 percent once the company's initial
investment is recovered.
Money generated from the system will go toward the Sheriff's Office Inmate Services Fund for education.
The Sheriff's Office will store video calls for 60 days and will monitor calls for criminal or sexual activity.
ACTION: This week in Phoenix, at the State Capitol on Friday, MAY 23 at 5pm, Mothers Against Solitary Confinement will be rallying - please join them if you can. The action is also supported by Puente, Prisoners Are People, Arizona Prison Watch, and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC-Tucson).
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As some folks are aware, the US Attorney General came out publicly last week condemning the abuse of solitary confinement to manage mentally ill juvenile prisoners in particular, and calling for an end to it. His remarks couldn't have been more timely, as I find myself increasingly involved with two mentally ill teens currently being charged as adults for serious crimes, being held in isolation/protective custody in the MCSO jails. Thus, my own focus on juvenile justice of late has been addressing the abuse of solitary confinement of youth in jails, prisons and detention centers.
The following article is one of the more useful I've come across in terms of compiling the most current and relevant links to documents dealing with solitary and youth. Then there's the cool video at the end - check it out and share it, please.
As a 17-year-old, Michael Kemp says, he felt like a caged animal.
For six months, his world was reduced to the size of a Washington, D.C., jail cell measuring maybe 8 feet by 10 feet.
During much of his time in solitary confinement, he spent 23 hours a day alone in the cell.
“You just like, ‘Man, I feel like an animal in here. I
don’t even feel real … where I’m not even a human being,’" Kemp told
JJIE. "You don’t feel like a human being."
Kemp, now 24, who was convicted of armed robbery and says
he ended up in solitary because he was caught with a makeshift knife,
slept on a mat atop a steel bed in the cinder block cell and had little
contact with others except by yelling through a crisscross of bars to
other inmates.
“In
there by yourself, you can go stir crazy because you ain’t got that
interaction,” Kemp said. “You supposed to be growing as an individual,
but you ain’t growing. You have no human connection with nobody else.
You just in a room by yourself.”
Even now, seven years after his stint in solitary as
a juvenile, Kemp says psychic scars remain, and he still tends to
isolate himself in his home.
“I might go in the bathroom or be sitting in the living
room and I be in there for hours, man, just looking in the mirror or
just in a room, just like I don’t know why I won’t be active. I just
find myself always isolating myself for some reason, man,” said Kemp, a
boyish-looking, slim young man who wears his hair in long braids.
“It’s like if you put a grasshopper in a cup and then you
place a top on it and it keeps on jumping and it keeps on jumping and it
keep on hitting the top, keep on hitting the top, so when you take the
top off, the grasshopper not going to jump out the top of the cup
because it’s going to be so used to hitting the top of the cup, and it’s
like that’s how it is. Sometimes it feels like I’m in jail when I’m not
in jail.”
When you think of solitary confinement, perhaps you think
of North Vietnamese POW camps like the one where John McCain spent more
than five years in captivity or Alcatraz, where the “Birdman” Robert
Stroud made solitary famous, or today’s Supermax prisons that house
hardened adult criminals.
But in fact, thousands of juveniles also endure solitary
confinement each year in the United States, often in tiny cells for 22
to 24 hours a day with little human contact, even though a growing
number of experts say the practice causes irreparable psychological and
developmental harm to youths.
Consider:
In April 2012, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry issued a statement
concluding that solitary confinement of juveniles could lead to
depression, anxiety and even psychosis and called for an end to the
practice. “Due to their developmental vulnerability, juvenile offenders
are at particular risk of such adverse reactions,” the AACAP statement
said. “Furthermore, the majority of suicides in juvenile correctional
facilities occur when the individual is isolated or in solitary
confinement.”
The National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, commissioned by U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., concluded in its final report
in December 2012, “Nowhere is the damaging impact of incarceration on
vulnerable children more obvious than when it involves solitary
confinement.” The task force recommended the practice be forbidden. (The
task force was co-chaired by Robert L. Listenbee Jr., who is now the
administrator of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention. Listenbee did not respond to requests for comment.)
In his role as OJJDP administrator, Listenbee stated in a July 5, 2013, letter to an American Civil Liberties Union
official that “isolation of children is dangerous and inconsistent with
best practices and that excessive isolation can constitute cruel and
unusual punishment,” which is banned under the Eighth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution.
Experts say adolescents are particularly vulnerable to
psychological harm caused by solitary – sometimes known as room
restriction, restricted engagement, segregation, isolation, lockdown or
seclusion – because their brains are still developing.
Laura Markle Downton, director of the U.S. prisons policy and program for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture,
which represents 320 religious organizations, said the campaign opposes
solitary confinement of juveniles and views it as a form of torture.
“It’s really a moral question first and foremost,” Downton
told JJIE. “When you think about if a parent were to lock a child in a
closet, let’s say, for an extended amount of time, we would call that
child abuse. And yet that’s essentially what we’re doing within our
justice system.
“What we know is that isolation does not lead to
rehabilitation. It leads to destruction and annihilation, and we believe
very firmly as people of faith that this is immoral and that it’s
wrong.”
Critics note that solitary – which youths have been
subjected to in U.S. juvenile facilities for more than a century – often
denies children access to education, mental health treatment, physical
activity, and reading and writing material.
Despite widespread concerns about juvenile isolation,
however, some correctional officers’ unions and corrections
administrators call the practice a necessary option to maintain
discipline and ensure the safety and security of facilities.
A November ACLU report
calling for a ban on solitary confinement in juvenile detention
facilities cited four reasons generally given to justify it: to punish
children when they break facility rules; to protect a child from other
children; to deal with children deemed too disruptive or out of control;
and to isolate a child for medical reasons, including having a
contagious disease or having expressed a desire to commit suicide.
Speaking of solitary confinement, Craig Brown, chief lobbyist for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association,
which represents correctional officers in the state system, said: “Our
feeling was, why ever deprive yourself of a tool? … Corrections is about
tradeoffs, and one of the tradeoffs is if you don’t use a tool like
this, you disrupt the program for everybody else.”
If the system did not rely on solitary, Brown said: “If you
have somebody who is messing things up so other wards who are trying to
participate and deal with their issues can’t do it, then what you’ve
done is you’ve said, ‘Well, we’re not going to isolate this ward. In
exchange we’re going to let him mess up the program for 10 or 15 other
guys.’”
Referring to solitary, Brown said, “It’s necessary for
programming, it’s necessary for staff safety, it’s for the safety of the
other wards – at times.”
California state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, a child psychologist, expresses a decidedly different view.
Yee has proposed a bill that would sharply restrict
solitary confinement of youths in state and county juvenile correctional
facilities.
Yee, who has treated youngsters in prisons, jails and
health systems, told JJIE solitary makes youths more dangerous, more
antisocial, more likely to reoffend, more likely to commit suicide and
more likely to suffer a lifetime mental illness.
In solitary, Yee said: “Kids become depressed, they become
disassociated, they begin to sometimes decompose psychologically. So
there’s nothing good that comes out of solitary confinement for the
youngster. It’s all bad, and it seems to me that if the [state
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] would just simply pick up a
book on psychology and read it, they would understand that this is not a
good thing for youngsters and not good for our society in general….
Torture doesn’t help anybody at all.”
Under Yee’s bill, solitary confinement could be used only
when a juvenile posed an “immediate and substantial risk of harm to
others or to the security of the facility, and all other
less-restrictive options have been exhausted.” The bill also specifies
that a juvenile be held in solitary only for the minimum time necessary
to reduce the risk.
Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation,
which oversees the Division of Juvenile Justice, said state law allows
youths to be held up to 23 hours a day in a room in a “behavior
treatment unit.” But Sessa said youths have been allowed to leave the
rooms an average of six hours a day most of the past year and that
youths held in the rooms receive education and counseling.
Of Yee’s measure, Sessa said, “This bill is a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Yee said the department opposed a bill that failed last
year that would have restricted solitary confinement of youths in
juvenile facilities.
“If [corrections officials] had their way, they’d probably still have torture chambers in the state of California,” Yee said.
New Jersey also has become a focal point in the debate over solitary confinement of juveniles.
The New Jersey ACLU and other organizations petitioned the state Juvenile Justice Commission, in July to ban punitive solitary confinement of youths in juvenile facilities.
In a letter to Kevin Brown, the executive director of the
JJC, the petitioners stated, “Solitary confinement is an extreme and
inhumane form of punishment that is not evidenced-based, wastes taxpayer
money, and jeopardizes public safety; this is especially so when the
people being subjected to the punishment are children.”
The JJC, the state agency that oversees juvenile justice in
New Jersey, rejected the petition to ban punitive solitary confinement
of youths in mid-February.
Sharon Lauchaire, the public information officer for the
commission, part of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, said the
JJC would continue discussions with the ACLU about what is known in the
state as “room restriction.”
“We have reviewed our use of room restriction in the past
and will continue to do so,” Lauchaire told JJIE. “We will be soliciting
feedback from the ACLU and other parties on room restriction.”
The denial of the petition came after a $400,000 settlement
in a lawsuit over two boys who had been held in solitary in New Jersey
for extended periods – one of them, for about six months.
Policies on solitary confinement of juveniles vary widely across the country.
Even critics of juvenile solitary acknowledge youths who
are out of control or a threat to themselves or others may need some
time alone but say this should be for minutes or hours, not days – and
with close adult supervision.
Some states – including Alaska, Connecticut, Maine,
Oklahoma and West Virginia – have banned or restricted punitive solitary
confinement of juveniles. And New York State just banned solitary
confinement of juveniles held in state adult facilities.
It’s impossible to say how often U.S. juvenile detention
facilities use solitary confinement, as neither states nor the federal
government publishes such data and almost no detention facilities make
the data available to the public.
Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel with the ACLU's National Prison Project,
estimated that about 70,000 young people are being held at any given
time in juvenile facilities nationwide and that in many facilities
solitary confinement is “routine.”
In an October letter,
the ACLU and numerous other organizations urged Attorney General Holder
and OJJDP’s Listenbee to prohibit solitary confinement of youths in
federal custody. In addition, more than 40,000 people have signed a
petition calling on Holder to ban solitary confinement of juveniles in
federal custody.
And on Feb. 28, U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas, D-California, proposed a measure that would ban solitary confinement of youth in federal juvenile facilities.
“Solitary confinement is something that is purely punitive, and it has nothing to do with rehabilitation,” Cárdenas told JJIE.
But despite concerns about the dangers of juvenile solitary
expressed by the National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence
and by Listenbee, the U.S. government still has not banned the practice
in federal detention facilities.
“There’s no prohibition,” Fettig told JJIE. “It’s sort of like, ‘Put your money where your mouth is.’”
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin,
an Illinois Democrat who chaired a Feb. 25 Senate Judiciary
subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement, called on all state and
federal facilities to end solitary confinement of juveniles, pregnant
women and people with “serious and persistent” mental illness “except
under the rarest circumstances.” (Durbin’s office did not respond to
requests to clarify what would constitute those “rarest circumstances.”)
“When it comes to solitary confinement, we know children
are particularly vulnerable,” Durbin said. “The mental health effects of
even short periods of isolation, including depression and risk of
suicide, are heightened among youths.”
Supporters of a ban on solitary in juvenile facilities
point out that many youths enter the facilities with mental illness and
that solitary aggravates it.
“When you subject [juveniles] to extreme isolation and then
you expect their behavior to change, well, that’s living in a fantasy
world because you’re actually exacerbating whatever pre-existing problem
that kid had,” Fettig said. “Subjecting them to solitary confinement
isn’t going to turn them into well-socialized adults. It’s going to
inflict more harm on them. So it’s actually completely counterproductive
to what the system should be doing, and child abuse should not be
mandated by the state.
“You literally are locking a child down with nothing to do,
with no interaction, for 23, 22, 24 hours a day. In some ways, it’s
common sense to look at the denial of education, the denial of drug
treatment, the denial of adequate mental health care that exists in
solitary confinement, and think to yourself, ‘Well, what’s going be the
result for that kid? How could anything positive ever come from such
treatment?’ And the answer is, it doesn’t.”
Bart Lubow, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, said solitary flies in the face of the rehabilitative goal of the juvenile justice system.
“All the evidence about the effects of isolation are that
it is counterproductive to the goals of rehabilitation,” Lubow said, “so
I don’t know how you can be doing rehabilitation based on that kind of
extreme punishment.”
Fettig points out that the U.S. Supreme Court
has cited research on adolescent brain development in ruling against
extreme punishment for juveniles, including the death penalty and
mandatory sentences of life without parole. The high court has based
these rulings in part on research showing that juveniles’ brains are
not fully developed, and youths are more susceptible than adults to peer
pressure, more impulsive, more likely to take risks, less likely to
consider long-term consequences and more amenable to rehabilitation.
The Supreme Court should also ban solitary confinement of juveniles as “extreme punishment,” Fettig suggested.
“That mission in juvenile justice, which is rehabilitation,
becomes even more critical in light of the science as well as in light
of the top law, the Supreme Court jurisprudence in this country, that
has looked at the science and looked at the law and our Constitution,”
she said.
“We believe that those theories, that same science and
judicial ruling can easily be applied to the most extreme forms of
punishment that we see in the juvenile justice system … and that is the
use of solitary confinement.”
A ban on solitary is long overdue, in the view of Tanisha Denard.
As a 17-year-old, she spent 2 ½ weeks in solitary at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall outside Los Angeles.
Denard, now 19, told JJIE she ended up at Los Padrinos for a
month because she failed to appear for court dates for truancy tickets
she received for being late for school and was put in solitary after
refusing to socialize or eat. (She graduated from high school in 2011
and now works as a youth organizer for the Youth Justice Coalition, which fights race, gender and class inequality in Los Angeles County’s and California’s juvenile justice systems.)
While in solitary, Denard came out of her cell only to use
the bathroom and to shower and had little contact with others and no
reading or writing materials.
If she weren’t in solitary, Denard said, she could have
been doing homework or something productive that would have helped
rehabilitate her instead of languishing in her cell.
Of solitary, Denard said: “It was dehumanizing. It felt
like I wasn’t even a person in society. Nobody could see me. I couldn’t
see nobody. So it feels like you not even there.”
Thus, like thousands of other children in the United States
each year, Tanisha Denard became all but invisible – in the largely
hidden world of juvenile solitary confinement.
Below is just one more example of Corizon's deliberate indifference to the pain and suffering of patients in the AZ Department of Corrections. They are paid handsomely to perpetrate their neglect on state prisoners at great cost to all of us, thanks to legislators like John Kavanagh who insisted that privatizing medical care in the prisons would save taxpayers money - seems to me that so far all they've done has been to steal from us, instead. As for this kid doing 5 years for possession - shame on all you judges locking addicts away thinking they will
get any treatment or assistance with their addiction whatsoever in
prison. As you can see, they can hardly get the basic medical care they
need - only 4% a year get any kind of substance abuse treatment, period.
Most will just be bringing home Hep C and a new heroin addiction to show for their time away. This kid is lucky to be making it home at all... Thanks to News 4 Tucson for digging into this.Stay tuned for more exposes in the weeks to come, as more and more of
Corizon employees refuse to participate in their profit-driven machine
at the expense of their patients, like Michael Levy.
The following photo is from the Veterans Day parade in Phoenix, where
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio rolled out his biggest toy to honor
our dead soldiers. I stopped to leave him a message for one dead Army
veteran he should be especially mindful of: Marty Atencio. That man
should be held criminally liable for the death of his prisoners given
the dehumanizing treatment he encourages and the culture of contempt
he's cultivated among his officers.
Thanks to Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times for this series
about Marty's brutal killing by Phoenix Police and Joe Arpaio's deputies
at the 4th Avenue Jail last year...
By Stephen Lemons Published Tue., Oct. 23 2012 at 12:24 PM
The family of U.S. Army veteran Marty Atencio is filing suit today in
Maricopa County Superior Court over his brutal death late last year in
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Fourth Avenue Jail.
Atencio, who suffered from mental illness, was off his meds and
wandering the streets in a daze on December 15, when he was picked up by
Phoenix cops, allegedly because he had frightened a woman with his
bizarre behavior.
Though Atencio was processed first without incident at the Phoenix
Police Department's southern command station, his experience later in
Fourth Avenue would be brief, humiliating and fatal.
There, Atencio was taunted and made fun of by MCSO detention officers, as is recounted in the suit:
After going through the medical screening, Marty was taken to have his mug shot
taken. While Marty was having his mug shot taken, the D.O.s were
taunting him, asking him to "clown" for them, telling him to "turn
left," "turn right," and making fun of Marty's
inability to follow instructions.
As the guards made fun of Marty, they told him to make funny
faces and the photographer, and a female Detention Officer, kept saying
"let's make this one the Mug Shot of the week." After they took a
particularly humiliating mug shot, the D.O.s had finished their fun with
Marty and took him back to the holding tank.
Along the way, Atencio was escorted by Phoenix Police Officer Patrick
Hanlon, who, according to the complaint, led Atencio "with his hands
and arms bent in a position which caused Marty pain."
The complaint continues, stating that, "While Officer Hanlon was
escorting Marty to the Linescan Room, Marty said `you're making Tony
angry, you're making Tony angry.' Marty was telling Officer Hanlon that
the officer was hurting him."
Atencio crossed his arms in front of him, in a non-violent stance.
And that's when they pounced, piling onto Atencio, wailing on him and
Tasing him, in what the suit refers to as a "jailers riot."
The complaint relates how these goons then dragged Atencio to a
so-called "safe cell," where, as Atencio was held down, he allegedly was
kneed more than once by MCSO detention officer Anthony Hatton.
Atencio was stripped of his clothes, and left to die. The jail's
video system captured a naked Atencio breathing what looked like his
dying breath on camera.
Outside the cell, as I've previously reported, Phoenix cops and MCSO detention officers partied like it was 1999.
"After this event," reads the complaint, "the jail's surveillance
video outside `Safe Cell 4' shows D.O. Hatton, with a smile on his face,
talking to other Officers, while two MCSO women danced and bumped their
buttocks together."
Later, Atencio's brain-dead body was revived by officers and rushed
by paramedics to a local hospital, where his family ultimately decided
to remove him from life support.
The Atencios lawyer, tort titan Mike Manning, who just won a $3.2 million settlement for the family of diabetic mom and Arpaio jail victim Deborah Braillard,
observes in the suit that Atencio's death is the direct result of the
"culture of cruelty" in Arpaio's vast incarceration complex.
Also, the complaint makes clear, the MCSO is in direct violation of federal court orders instructing Arpaio and the county to provide proper medical screenings of prisoners for mental and physical illness.
Because the MCSO is not in compliance with these orders, Atencio was
not properly screened on arrival at Fourth Avenue, where the health care
"professional" who examined him noted signs of psychosis, yet did not
provide Atencio with the medical help he needed.
Unfortunately, all the court orders, lawsuits and multi-million
dollar payouts seem to do nothing to change the reality of Arpaio's
disastrously-run jails.
The only real change will come if the voters wake up, and retire Arpaio on November 6 by voting for his Democratic rival Paul Penzone.
Otherwise there will be more victims, more Marty Atencios, and a lot more lawsuits.
My friend Christy, a prisoner out at Perryville / Santa Cruz, dropped me a letter late last week that just came in yesterday. It was dated 9/14/12. Here's the update: "I was called up to the Deputy Warden's office to talk about my kites. Here is what has been done: Water was turned down (hot water off) Coolers were purchased but they ran out of money to install them so that is still a problem I was given tape to tape my vent for roaches the exterminator is supposed to come out & spray inside and out the back window is still broken does not close (we have a bag with tape covering it) they power-washed the showers we still only have 2 showers working - the lady who was fixing them was out here on 9/11... the doors are still having to be keyed for a total of 48 rooms - that is a fire hazard!" All that happened in response to earlier complaints filed by her and a few of the other women prisoners, and while I brought some things to the DOC's attention a couple of weeks ago, this happened before I made the following post which had new information, so I can't really claim the credit for getting them to clean things up there. Christy and these women who protested their conditions of confinement have my respect for their courage and persistence.
I plan to organize a prison watching group for Perryville, soon, so stay tuned.
Peggy Plews
----------Original post (9/16/12)----------
I received this anonymous letter this past week from ASPC-Perryville/Santa Cruz yard, and have since challenged Richard Pratt, the Director of Health Services for the AZ DOC, to take the lead in cleaning up the place since so many chronically and critically ill women are trying to survive more than just their sentences under these conditions. I also asked him to set me up with a tour - suggesting we go together unannounced, if things are really as hunky dory at Perryville as they want me to believe. We'll see what he says once he gets a chance to respond. I'm probably now considered an external Security Threat Group leader, so my chances of getting in - sans the orange jumpsuit and chains the DOC would no doubt like to see me in - may not be too good.
In addition to the letter below from Santa Cruz last week, I received another one the week before from the same yard stating that there's a huge roach infestation problem that wasn't mentioned below, as creatures can easily enter through the cracks in the walls and window sills.
Furthermore, I've been told by several sources that many women haven't been getting their medications for most of the time that Wexford has been in charge of medical services - that's been since the beginning of July. Hopefully, Wexford's brilliant administrators have finally figured out how to get their drugs to Arizona from Pennsylvania (or Columbia, or China, or wherever they're really importing their prescriptions from).
Also not articulated in the letter below is my concern about the high rate of suicide and deaths from sheer neglect at ASPC-Perryville. Most of those have occurred on Lumley yard, though, not Santa Cruz. Lumley is the maximum security yard where female prisoners who are seriously mentally ill, defiant, assaultive, or on death row are typically held in isolation cells. The ACLU's lawsuit Parsons v Ryan enumerates many of the additional concerns I have about the conditions of confinement and medical/mental health care for the women across the prison complex. Lumley is where Marcia Powell was killed by the desert sun after being left in an outdoor cage for four hours - theoretically while on a suicide watch. I'm planning to set up a "Perryville Prison Watch 101" meeting this fall for community members who are interested in bettering the chances these women have of surviving prison and coming out able to lead lives as "responsible citizens" again; we aren't going to change any of this without help from more of the ordinary People out here who believe this kind of abuse and neglect - in our names, with our money - is unacceptable. And for Women's History Month in March 2013 we'll be celebrating the history of women's resistance in prison. Stay tuned for more on all that.
Remembering some of the women who have died out at Perryville, the following photos were taken from a mural laid out by community members in front of the Phoenix Art Museum for Prisoners' Justice Day in August of this year. Some things
at Perryville can be fixed with caulk and elbow grease that the women would put into it themselves, given the right resources, but the culture of contempt
for prisoners that fosters this kind of neglect is going to take a lot
more to change.
Brenda Todd, 44. Victim of institutional indifference. (January 21, 2011)
unconstitutional practices, and cruel and abusive guards.
(May 19, 2009)
-----------------received 9/13/2012--------------
"In the winter months, the heat is turned on by date rather than temperature. The heat runs full blast and the rooms get to be unbearably hot. The officers do not have the authority to turn the heat off, even if it is an unseasonably warm day. On a "warm" winter day, the room temperatures can reach the 90+ degree mark. The window cranks in most of the rooms are broken and do not open so there is no way to get any relief. This is absolutely cruel and unusual punishment. In the summer months, the evaporative coolers or air conditioners are turned on by date rather than temperature. Some rooms have coolers, others have AC. In the early spring, the rooms are very cold. In the heat of the summer, when the humidity rises, the coolers do not work well. Once again the temperatures inside the rooms can reach the 90+ degree mark, with no way to get any relief. When the AC works, the rooms that have it are comfortable in the summer. The challenge is that they are often broken. As of this writing, the temperature outside is 113. The AC In my room and the 7 other attached rooms is not functioning at all. It has been out of service for the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I do not perspire very much. Extreme heat causes my muscles to cramp. I get very light headed and dizzy and ultimately vomit. I do not know if there is a medication of any kind of solution since I cannot seem to get to medical. Often we live in exceedingly hot, or exceedingly cold rooms with windows that do not open. Just another example of cruel and unusual punishment. The Arizona sun can be punishing,. especially for those of us that have little or no tolerance for heat exposure. Lines for medical appointments, property pick up, state issue, and the store are often long. In the medical waiting area, shade and water are provided. Not much can be done to reduce the heat since the waiting area is outside. The wait can be several hours. The lines for property, state issue, and store are not in shaded areas. The wait is usually a couple of hours at best. The mattresses in most of the cells are worn out. They are leaking black material of some kind. The coverings are cracked. The mattresses are thin and do not provide any kind of support or much protection from the metal bunks. Many of the cells have cracks in the walls that leak rain water. In my cell, water seeps in only one corner so I am lucky that mine is not one of those that floods. However, in that corner mold is growing. In one of the rooms next to a shower, the mold is so bad that it is growing down the outside walls as well as the inside. The showers leak gallons of water daily. Some of them have been leaking for years. The erosion of both the concrete and the metal support beams is clearly visible. I am not a building inspector, but I can clearly see that the iron railings and support beams are rusted clear through. Hot water for showers is not always available. Sometimes we have no hot water for days at a time. When this happens, there is no hot water for washing the trays or kitchen utensils either. This has been an on-going challenge since I have been here (1997). Budgets were not restricted for the majority of those years so I find it difficult to understand the situation. The trays, sporks, and cups in the kitchen are frequently dirty. Dirt is actually embedded in the trays and sporks where the plastic coating has been worn away. On 16 yard, dinner "sacks" are passed out at 5pm Monday-Friday. Breakfast starts being served at 8 or 8:30 on Saturday mornings. 15+ hours between meals. ON weekends, we are provided with breakfast and hot dinner, just two meals. The ladies from 14 yard walk to our kitchen and eat breakfast around 7am. The kitchen on 14 yard has been closed and the building has been condemned. At 5pm the ladies from 14 yard come to our kitchen once again for dinner. Our yard has dinner after all of them have left the yard. That is usually around 6:30 or so. For those that do not have money to purchase food from the store, it is a very long time between breakfast and dinner. Adequate clothing is no longer provided. I waited over 6 months to have 2 pairs of panties that were lost in the laundry replaced. per policy, we are allowed to exchange clothing or linens once every 90 days. The challenge is that most of the time, state issue does not have the size or the items that are needed. On this unit we have been out of medium panties, small pants and medium t-shirts for months. When I tried to exchange clothing I was told sizes 3x were the only one available. I weigh 120 pounds! Incoming inmates are not provided with the policy-stated issue. Each inmate is provided with 1 roll of toilet paper for the week and 12 sanitary napkins for the month. Further discussion of this is probably unnecessary."
Dominic Culpepper has been sentenced to imprisonment until death in Florida for a crime committed at age 14. View Slideshow
In the United States, dozens of 13- and 14-year-old children have
been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole after
being prosecuted as adults. While the United States Supreme Court
recently declared that death by execution is unconstitutional for
juveniles, young children continue to be sentenced to die in prison with
very little scrutiny or review. EJI has documented 73 cases where
children 14 years of age or younger have been condemned to death in
prison. Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation
and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their
extreme sentences has never been reviewed.
Most of the sentences imposed on these children were mandatory: the
court could not give any consideration to the child’s age or life
history. Some of the crimes charged against these children do not
involve homicide or even injury. Many of these children were convicted
for offenses where older teenagers or adults were involved and primarily
responsible for the crime. Nearly two-thirds of these adolescents are
children of color.
EJI has launched a litigation campaign to challenge death in prison
sentences imposed on young children. We are also working to increase
public awareness in order to reform policies that reflect a lack of
perspective and hope for young children.
In People v. Caballero, the California Supreme Court
unanimously struck down the 110-years-to-life sentence imposed on
Rodrigo Caballero for nonhomicide offenses when he was 16 years old.
The court concluded that the sentence, which required Caballero to serve
more than 100 years before being eligible for parole, denied him the
opportunity to “demonstrate growth and maturity” to try to secure his
release, in contravention of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Graham v. Florida.
Editorials across the country have expressed support for last Monday's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger convicted of homicide are unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court today issued an historic ruling in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs
holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children
17 or younger convicted of homicide are unconstitutional. Kuntrell
Jackson and Evan Miller, sentenced to life in prison without parole at
14, are now entitled to new sentencing hearings. Today’s ruling will
affect hundreds of individuals whose sentences did not take their age or
other mitigating factors into account.
Caril Ann Fugate following her arrest in 1958 at age 14. Register file photo.
The Des Moines Register this week detailed the story of Caril
Ann Fugate, a 14-year-old girl whose 18-year-old boyfriend involved her
in a sensationalized series of crimes in Nebraska in 1958. Despite
being sentenced to life in prison, Caril became a model prisoner and her
sentence was commuted. She was released after serving 18 years, worked
as a medical aide, has never run afoul of the law, and is now a married
retiree.
In 1977, a 14-year-old mentally disabled girl was charged with
second-degree murder after setting a fire that tragically killed two
people in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was tried in adult court and
sentenced to die in prison. EJI is now challenging her sentence and
seeking relief for Trina Garnett, whose story is profiled in this
month's issue of The Nation.
Part III of an excellent series on why we should abolish these
kinds of prisons in particular...don't think this doesn't go down in
Arizona, either. The abuse of the mentally ill and the conditions in
solitary confinement are why the ACLU has a class action lawsuit, Parsons v Ryan, in the works against the AZ Department of Corrections right now. Support the campaign to stop the building of more supermax beds in our state here:
Supermax: The Constitution and Mentally Ill Prisoners
The Atlantic: June 20, 2012
By Andrew Cohen
The Eighth Amendment prohibits the "cruel and unusual punishment"
of inmates. So how will the Bureau of Prisons defend itself at
Supermax? Reuters
The first two parts of this series begin to tell the tale of the way
a handful of mentally ill prisoners allege they are being treated at
ADX-Florence, widely known as "Supermax" and commonly perceived as the
most secure federal prison facility in America. So far, officially, the
story is just a series of dramatic prisoner allegations of abuse,
cruelty, and torture against prison officials and medical personnel.
Soon, the Justice Department, on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons, will
answer the long complaint filed Monday by five inmates at the southern Colorado prison.
Allegations are not evidence. But in this case, they raise
profound questions about how the famous facility is run and whether it
is wise as a matter of law and policy to have ceded so much power to the
Bureau of Prisons, which controls, in near absolute terms, the
treatment of the nation's federal prisoners. The lawsuit seeks no money
damages but instead aims to require federal officials to treat mentally
ill inmates in accordance with existing law. The case demands a measure
of accountability from a sprawling bureaucracy that seems to answer to
no one.
The plaintiffs and others named in the lawsuit -- there are 11
men in all and more will likely be added -- live in a world recognizable
more from the work of Kafka and Dostoevsky
than from modern American life. In the name of prison safety, or in the
name of nothing at all, they are often treated like animals and, when
they complain, they are punished. The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel
and unusual punishment," and it's hard to imagine anything more cruel
than punishing a mentally ill person for the manifestations of his
illness. Yet this allegedly occurs regularly at the ADX/Supermax
facility.
Indeed, one of the fundamental concepts in American law is
that we generally do not criminalize conduct by people whose minds do
not have the requisite "criminal intent" at the time of the commission
of the crime. This is why we don't prosecute people who are adjudged to
be mentally incompetent -- think Jared Loughner,
the Tucson shooter -- and why "legal insanity" has for centuries been
an affirmative defense to criminal conduct. A significantly mentally ill
person, almost per se, cannot have the requisite intent to be culpable in any justifiable legal or moral sense.
The lawsuit is worthy of particular notice in part because it was spearheaded by serious attorneys like Ed Aro -- a partner at a law firm, Arnold & Porter, that has a long and admirable tradition of pro bono
work on behalf of the voiceless. Also filing the pleading was Deb
Golden and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban
Affairs, another organization with a long history
of groundbreaking reform litigation. Dozens of other earnest,
well-meaning women and men have devoted a great deal of time and effort
to serve as a tribune for the Supermax prisoners.
Nor should the timing of the case be underestimated. It comes at a
time when more participants in the criminal justice system, and
especially the nation's penal systems, are questioning the wisdom of
America's current obsession with the concept of "solitary confinement"
and other harsh punitive measures. Yesterday, for example,
Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) held an important Senate Judiciary
Committee subcommittee hearing on the topic. Here's how the senator's
office framed the issue in a press release before the event:
The hearing will focus on the human rights, fiscal
and public safety consequences of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons,
jails, and detention centers. During the last several decades, the
United States has witnessed an explosion in the use of solitary
confinement for federal, state, and local prisoners and detainees. The
hearing will explore the psychological and psychiatric impact on inmates
during and after their imprisonment, fiscal savings associated with
reduced use of solitary housing units, the human rights issues
surrounding the use of isolation, and successful state reforms in this
area.
Good questions, indeed. Our prison policies have evolved from
generation to generation, but the law (and legal protections) don't
appear to have caught up. Here is a link from the Innocence Project
detailing the Capitol Hill testimony of six people who were wrongly
convicted and spent time in solitary confinement. And here is how
Charlie Samuels, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, opened his
remarks to the subcommittee:
Inmate safety and well being is of the utmost importance
to the bureau, as is the safety of our staff and the community at large.
As such, we do all that we can to ensure that we provide outstanding
care, treatment and programming to federal inmates, giving them the best
opportunity for successful reentry to their communities...
When inmates are placed in restrictive housing there are varieties of
significant safeguards in place to ensure inmates' due process rights
are protected. Additionally, inmates' mental health is always a factor
in decisions regarding segregated housing. Bureau psychologists are
integrally involved in the restrictive housing placement process, and
all staff who work in these units receive training and input from
psychology services above and beyond our general staff training.
Samuels still has to answer for Supermax. And Senator Durbin need
look no further than to the Florence, Colorado, federal prison for some
of the answers to his questions. The Supermax lawsuit, styled Bacote v. Federal Bureau of Prisons,
suggests that America is failing to adequately treat its mentally ill
prisoners and, worse, that the punitive prison methods employed at
ADX/Supermax are actually making previously sane inmates mentally ill. Part I
of this series focused upon just such a story, about Jack Powers, whom
the Bureau of Prisons essentially turned mad and now won't treat.
THE BUREAU OF PRISONS
Go to the Bureau of Prisons' website
and it tells you immediately that the goal of the massive federal
bureaucracy is "Protecting Society and Reducing Crime." Yet, as the
lawsuit suggests, Supermax practices do neither. "Society" is left
unprotected because the prison doesn't adequately treat even those
mentally ill prisoners who soon will be released back into the public.
One of the named plaintiffs, John Narducci, is scheduled to be released
in 2015, and another, Ernest Norman Shaifer in 2014.
From the website, here is how the Bureau of Prisons wants the world to perceive the core of its work:
The Federal Bureau of Prisons was established in 1930 to provide more progressive and humane care for Federal inmates, to professionalize the prison service, and to ensure consistent and centralized administration of the 11 Federal prisons in operation at the time.
Today, the Bureau consists of 117 institutions, 6 regional offices, a
Central Office (headquarters), 2 staff training centers, and 22
community corrections offices. The regional offices and Central Office
provide administrative oversight and support to Bureau facilities and
community corrections offices. In turn, community corrections offices
oversee residential reentry centers and home confinement programs.
The Bureau is responsible for the custody and care of approximately
217,000 Federal offenders. Approximately 82 percent of these inmates are
confined in Bureau-operated facilities, while the balance is confined
in secure privately managed or community-based facilities and local
jails.
The Bureau protects public safety by ensuring that Federal offenders
serve their sentences of imprisonment in facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure. The Bureau helps reduce the potential for future criminal activity by encouraging inmates to participate in a range of programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism. Approximately 38,000 BOP employees ensure the security of Federal prisons, provide inmates with needed programs and services, and model mainstream values.
I added the italics to illustrate how vast the gulf is between
rhetoric and reality when it comes to Supermax's mentally ill prisoners.
The Bureau isn't candidly telling Americans that it often treats some
of its mentally ill prisoners like animals. Instead, even as prison
officials "four point"
such prisoners in their cells or deprive them of needed medicine or
treatment, the Bureau is telling us that it is treating the men with
"humane care." This is not a new hypocrisy but rather an eternal truth
of civilized life on this planet; prisons are always worse than the
officials who run them say they are.
But websites are for marketers, not lawmakers, so we need to
look further to identify relevant Bureau of Prisons policies with
respect to mentally ill prisoners. In the Bacote complaint, the plaintiffs cite, among other Bureau regulations, BOP Program Statement 5100.08
(chapter 7, page 18). It states that prisoners within the federal
system "currently diagnosed as suffering from serious psychiatric
illnesses should not be referred to placement at ... [ADX/Supermax]."
There are also federal rules that more broadly govern the
responsibility prison officials have to treat the mentally ill prisoners
in their care. There are rules that require prison officials to give
medicine to prisoners in their care -- yet the ADX prisoners claim they
often are not given their medicine or are given the wrong medicine.
There are rules for the formal way prison officials are supposed to
evaluate the mental health status of incoming prisoners -- the Supermax
prisoners allege these evaluations are a joke.
Moreover, many of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, as well as
the likely future plaintiffs, reside in Supermax's "Control Unit," its
most secure unit. This is partially because of the dangerous, violent
conduct the prisoners have exhibited in other prisons, or in other wings
of Supermax, as a result of their mental illnesses. But the Code of
Federal Regulation governing "institutional referrals" to federal prison
"Control Units" appears to directly prohibit this.
The "Judicial Administration" section of the Code of Federal Regulations states
that the "warden may not refer an inmate for placement in a control
unit ... if the inmate shows evidence of significant mental disorder or
major physical disabilities as documented in a mental health evaluation
or a physical examination." Is schizophrenia a "significant mental
disorder"? How about "delusional ideation" or post-traumatic stress
disorder? Is it "significant" when a prisoner mutilates himself or tries
to commit suicide?
THE CONSTITUTION
Dostoevsky was right: How we treat our prisoners says more about us than it does about them
The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the
government from inflicting "cruel and unusual punishment" upon its
citizens, even its convicted ones, and especially its mentally ill ones.
Over the decades, vast groves of trees have been sacrificed papering
prison-related litigation over the meaning of the phrase in the context
of medical and mental health care. Some of the lawsuits, filed by
inmates and others, has been frivolous. Many, however, have not. None
like the one filed Monday has reached a point in litigation where a
federal judge has issued a substantive ruling on its merits.
Much of this litigation has involved the conditions and lack of mental health care at state prisons. In Brown v. Plata, for example, decided just last May,
the United States Supreme Court narrowly affirmed a lower court order
that required California to release thousands of non-violent state
prisoners to reduce unconstitutional overcrowding in the Golden State's
prison system. The lawsuit was based upon the inability of state prison
officials to provide their prisoners with adequate medical and mental
health care and treatment.
In his 5-4 majority opinion, which infuriated his conservative
colleagues, here is how Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Reagan appointee,
described the case's mental health component:
Prisoners in California with serious mental illness
do not receive minimal, adequate care. Because of a shortage of
treatment beds, suicidal inmates may be held for prolonged periods in
telephone-booth sized cages without toilets. A psychiatric expert
reported observing an inmate who had been held in such a cage for nearly
24 hours, standing in a pool of his own urine, unresponsive and nearly
catatonic. Prison officials explained they had " 'no place to put him.' "
Other inmates awaiting care may be held for months in administrative
segregation, where they endure harsh and isolated conditions and receive
only limited mental health services. Wait times for mental health care
range as high as 12 months. In 2006, the suicide rate in California's
prisons was nearly 80% higher than the national average for prison
populations; and a court-appointed Special Master found that 72.1%
suicides involved "some measure of inadequate assessment, treatment, or
intervention, and were therefore most probably foreseeable and/or
preventable." (citations omitted by me).
From the high suicide rate to the inadequate "assessment, treatment,
or intervention," there are many similarities between the proven facts
that compelled Justice Kennedy to side with California's prisoners and
the facts alleged in the new complaint against ADX/Supermax. But still
we need to look a little further. The leading case in the area, the one
closer on point, perhaps, than even the Brown v. Plata case, comes from litigation nearly two decades ago over California's Pelican Bay State Prison.
The case, styled Madrid v. Gomez, represents what many consider to be the most comprehensive of all modern prison mental health care rulings. In it, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson
(the first black judge to serve in the Justice Department's Civil
Rights Division) displayed another copious amount of courage for
skewering prison officials for the way in which they were treating
California prisoners. The gravamen of his order was that prison
officials are required by law to provide reasonably adequate mental
health care for inmates.
Perhaps the most efficient way to illustrate Judge Henderson's
meticulous analysis of the mental health care in those prisons is to
look merely at the outline of this section of his long ruling. Even in
just the titles and subtitles, you can see many of the same themes and
issues raised by the new Supermax lawsuit. The decision is laden with
the acknowledgement that prison officials simply fail or, worse, refuse
to treat mentally ill prisons in a way demanded by the Eighth Amendment.
C. Mental Health Care
1. The Need for Mental Health Services At Pelican Bay
2. Systemic Deficiencies In the Delivery of Mental Health Care a. Staffing Levels
b. Screening and Referrals
c. Psychiatric Records
d. Delays in Transfers for Inpatient and Outpatient Care
e. Lack of Procedures for Necessary Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment
f. Failure to Involve Mental Health Staff in Housing Decisions
g. Suicide Prevention
h. Quality Assurance
i. Treatment Provided
(Specific inmate cases were discussed here)
3. Defendants' State of Mind
POSTSCRIPT AND PREVIEW
At the beginning of a lawsuit there are always more questions than answers. For example, how do law and policy
permit the Bureau of Prisons to routinely ignore the recommendations of
federal trial judges who, when sentencing mentally ill felons,
specifically direct prison officials to ensure that the men are to be
properly treated for their illness while in prison? The Bacote
complaint alleges no fewer than four examples (Jeremy Pinson, John W.
Naducci, Jr, William Concepcion Sablan, and David Shelby) where this
disconcerting practice allegedly occurred.
How does the Bureau of Prison justify the expense of its
punitive policies when compared to the cost of treating mentally ill
prisoners properly in the first place? The Bacote complaint is
filled with examples of crimes that could have been avoided had mentally
ill federal prisoners been given the right medication, in the right
form, with the right supervision by the prison medical staff? Do the
American people know how expensive it is to treat these mentally ill
inmates with such callous disregard?
How does the Bureau of Prisons justify the evident disconnect
between the diagnoses of the mentally ill prisoners made at other
federal prisons and the diagnoses offered at ADX/Supermax? The Bacote
complaint is filled with examples of prior diagnoses being disregarded
once an inmate arrives at ADX/Supermax. There are sound reasons why a
defendant must be deemed mentally competent to stand trial -- but why
does such a competency determination not impact the severity of an
inmate's incarceration?
It is hard to predict how this lawsuit will play out. Federal
judges are generally reluctant to force bureaucracies to justify their
conduct. First, the Bureau of Prisons likely will move to dismiss the
complaint on procedural grounds before prison officials are required to
provide the plaintiffs with access to internal case files. Then, federal
lawyers likely will argue over the scope of that discovery. If the case
ever makes it to trial, it will be years from now.
And through it all, through all the years of briefing and
hearings and argument ahead, the daily fate of Supermax's mentally ill
prisoners will continue to be at the whims and caprices of their
captors. It would be one thing if federal law and Bureau policy
explicitly permitted ADX officials to treat the mentally ill this way.
But of course the American people would not countenance such inhumane
treatment, even toward society's least loved segment. That's why Bureau
Director Samuels had to tell the Senate yesterday that his officials
give Supermax prisoners "outstanding care, treatment and programming."
Dostoevsky was right: How we treat our prisoners says more about
us than it does about them. Earlier this year, I read Pete Early's
bestselling book Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness.
One of its many profound lessons is that America pays an enormous price
for trying to sweep its mentally ill prisoners under the rug. Win or
lose on the merits, the Bacote case represents a vital new
opportunity to shed light on what is happening to these profoundly ill
men -- what is being done to them in our name.
This is the third in a three-part series about a new class-action
lawsuit filed Monday against the Bureau of Prison and the officials who
run ADX-Florence, the "Supermax" facility that houses some of the
nation's most dangerous criminals. Part I focused upon the complaint, which alleges torture, abuse, and neglect of the prison's mentally ill prisoners. The second part focused upon the plaintiffs and other prisoners named in the lawsuit.
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