Results of the "Solitary Confinement Bill" Bring Moral Victory, New Allies.

This week, an amended version of LD 1611, An Act to Ensure Humane Treatment of Special Management Prisoners passed through both houses of the Maine legislature.  The most satisfying result of the bill's introduction and consideration has been the attention paid by our lawmakers, the press, and the public, to this vital human rights issue.  There seems to be a sea change happening - as happens at times in our culture.  All over the nation, human rights advocates, religious leaders, mental health and medical professionals, federal courts, current and former prisoners and their families, and even prison administrators and staff, are recognizing and beginning to address the overuse of solitary confinement. 

Over the course of the past several months working on this bill - I have learned a tremendous amound about the devastating effects of this practice and the policies and practices that result in it being used in ways totally adverse to corrections goals, public safety, fiscal responsibility, and, most importantly - constitutional and human rights.  For example, the story of the one prisoner who ended up in solitary confinement at the Maine State Prison for 3 months for not getting in line fast enough.  Or another prisoner, legally blind, sent to solitary confinement for months without glasses (they have no access to radio or tv, and are given a mere 3 books per week - not very helpful if your legally blind).

Below is a piece I prepared in the course of the campaign.  It outlines many of the reasons why we need and should demand legislation and oversight on this issue.

While we didn't technically succeed this session (as far as passing legislation), it was, truly, a moral victory.  Many legislators and others who worked on the campaign are fired up.  Maine has joined the rising chorus of voices demanding change. 

It's not over by a long shot.
Check out a couple of great new pieces on the issue -

• One from National Geographic where volunteers spend one week in solitary confinement (though with many more amenities than many prisoners receive in this environment) and a documentary series shot at the Colorado State Penitentiary. 
• And one to an absolutely terrific 1/2-hour radio piece on prison solitary-confinement torture, called "Survivors," on Soundprint, the public radio program.  It just played on Maine Public Radio, and I would guess it is playing on many other public stations. It has the voice of Bobby Dellelo, Ray Luc Levasseur, and others familiar to many who are close to this issue and testified at the LD 1611 public hearing.

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While some may say this bill is not perfect, the goals are sound and the support, in terms of law, science, cost, public safety, and human rights, is strong and growing.
 
As described by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons – “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons. It comes home with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers at the end of each day’s shift. When people live and work in facilities that are unsafe, unhealthy, unproductive, or inhumane, they carry the effects home with them. We must create safe and productive conditions of confinement not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it influences the safety, health, and prosperity of us all.”
 
A growing body of research demonstrates the serious and permanent damage caused by solitary confinement. That’s because human beings require some degree of social interaction and productive activity to establish and sustain a sense of identity and to maintain a grasp on reality.  In the absence of social interactions, unrealistic ruminations and beliefs cannot be tested with others, so they build up inside one’s mind and are transformed into unfocused and irrational thoughts.  Without social interactions, individuals have no way to test the reality of their fantasies, and thus there is a tendency toward paranoia and an inability to control the rage that mounts with each perceived insult.   
 
Under these extreme conditions, psychiatric symptoms begin to emerge in previously healthy prisoners.  In less healthy ones, there is psychosis, mania or compulsive acts of self-abuse or suicide. Social isolation and idleness, as well as the near absolute lack of control over most aspects of daily life, very often lead to serious psychiatric symptoms and breakdown – increasing the dangers for prisoners, guards, staff and community members.  
 
In their amicus brief in Wilkinson v. Austin, before the U.S. Supreme Court, leading mental health experts summarize the clinical and research literature about the effects of prolonged isolated confinement and conclude:  “No study of the effects of solitary or supermax-like confinement that lasted longer than 60 days failed to find evidence of negative psychological effects” (p. 4).
 
As explained by one leading expert, “Clearly, places like the SMU demonstrate that we have acquired the technology to house inmates with little or no direct contact with them – a situation that creates safety in the short term, but inevitably creates more and more chaotic, disruptive and dangerous behavior over the long term.  Over the long term, the SMU does not create a safer environment; it creates a far more dangerous environment.  That’s because institutions like the SMU look good. They make it seem like we are ‘getting tough on crime’.  But in reality, we are getting tough on ourselves.  Ninety-five percent of all incarcerated individuals are eventually released; some directly out of SMU settings.  We have succeeded in making those individuals as sick and internally chaotic as we possibly can.  I have seen some of the tragic, often lethal results of such a policy.”  Below is just a small sample of the data, quotes, and references that provide medical, religious, fiscal, legal and pragmatic support for this important initiative.   Let us know if you’d like further information.
 
LD 1611 Does Not Prohibit the Use of Segregation

• The Nutting/Schatz Report of LD 1611 neither abolishes nor prohibits isolated confinement in Maine prisons. 
• It establishes limits solitary confinement that ensure due process and protect the wellbeing of severely mentally ill prisoners.
• In fact, the bill mirrors much of current Department of Corrections policy. 
• Segregation practices in Maine thirty years ago were more limited and more humane because of a lawsuit and consent decree. Prisoners were only segregated for punishment if found to have committed a misdemeanor (maximum 10 days) or a felony (maximum sentence of 30 days).  Unlike today, inmates who violated prison rules were punished, but could not be subjected to segregation. Inmates v. Mullaney, Maine 1973.

 
Why We Need Legislation: 

• Policies can be changed for a wide variety of reasons - including changes in leadership, like the one that will occur this November when Maine elects a new governor, and as a result, a newly appointed Commissioner of the DOC. 
• Statutory changes will ensure these good policies remain the practice in Maine prisons, regardless of who heads the Department of Corrections.
• Of those in prison, 95 percent eventually return to our communities.

 
LD 1611 is important for medical reasons – 

• Solitary confinement is an extreme sanction. 
• Our drive for safety has had perverse effects: prisoners who should be housed in groups end up locked in their cells 23 hours a day, every day, with no TV or radio allowed and little opportunity to be productive. We heard testimony that getting a tattoo, removing a food item from the cafeteria, or not getting in line quickly enough are all reasons  that some prisoners are in solitary in Maine! The punishment is disproportionate to the crime, and we all end up paying the price.
• Solitary confinement can cause severe physical and psychiatric harm in a matter of days or weeks.  In psychiatric hospitals or similar settings, its use is limited to minutes or hours, not days, weeks, months, or even years. 
• Leading mental health experts concluded:  “No study of the effects of solitary or supermax-like confinement that lasted longer than 60 days failed to find evidence of negative psychological effects.”
• According to DOC data for the past two years, 7 prisoners have been in the SMU for over a year and 21 have been there between 251 and 365 days.
• It exacerbates existing mental illness, induces mental illness in otherwise healthy individuals, triggers self-harm, combativeness, and it even changes brain waves.  Such harm tends to happen more quickly or dramatically for those inmates with previous mental or physical illness, but can happen to even healthy individuals, with disastrous results.
• According to the DOC - almost half the prisoners at the SMU are on some kind of psychotropic medication and one in four has a diagnosis of either psychosis or a major mood disorder!
• Researchers estimate around 30% of prisoners in solitary confinement suffer from serious mental illness, at least some of which was entirely induced by the conditions of isolation; and among inmates in solitary, obsessive ruminations, confused thought processes, oversensitivity to stimuli (a strong startle reaction), irrational anger and social withdrawal were found to be widespread.
• Solitary confinement severely exacerbates previously existing mental conditions or triggers the appearance of a mental illness where none had been observed before.
• Maine has no limit on the length of time a Maine prisoner can be held in solitary confinement and no requirement that placement of prisoners in solitary be the result of a serious rule or legal violation. 
• Prisoners are confined for months as a result of violations as minor as taking a piece of food out of the cafeteria, smoking tobacco, or not getting in line fast enough. 
• In one 7 month time period (July 2009 – Jan. 31, 2010) over 100 prisoners were held in solitary confinement for more than 45 days, and the average length of solitary confinement for high risk prisoners is 205 days.
• Recent research confirms that, of all successful suicides that occur in a correctional system, approximately fifty percent involve the 5 to 10 percent of prisoners who are in some form of isolated confinement at any given time.
• Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, leading expert on the effects of this practice, has found that solitary confinement produces a specific syndrome characterized by "agitation, self-destructive behavior, and overt psychotic disorganization."  
• "Research on effects of solitary confinement has produced a massive body of data documenting serious adverse health effects."

 
Over representation of the mentally ill in supermax conditions:

• According to documents presented by the Dept of Corrections, over half of Maine prisoners are classified as having a serious mental illness.   
• Studies show that the mentally ill in prison are disproportionally found in control units.

 
1611 is important for moral reasons (Solitary confinement is torture)–  

• Every federal court that has considered the issue has found that holding individuals with serious mental illness in isolated confinement with limited social interaction amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.   
• For prisoners who already had serious mental illness, segregation is known to be very likely to inflict serious psychological pain and to exacerbate their illness with catastrophic effects (such as self-mutilation, disassociation, suicide, playing with urine and feces, and extreme combativeness towards guards and staff).
• "All human beings experience isolation as torture."  Effects include compulsive pacing, screaming, depression, lethargy, despair, rage, and even catatonia.
• Religious organizations includingMaine Council of Churches, the Maine Jeremiah Project and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland support placing statutory limits on the use of solitary confinement in Maine prisons based on the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.
• The Maine Council of Churches has been working with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (a coalition of more than 270 religious organizations) to eliminate long-term solitary confinement because the practice meets the definition of torture.  “Torture…degrades everyone involved – policy-makers, perpetrators and victims. It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable.”

 
LD 1611 is important for public safety – The dangerous and damaging effects of solitary confinement and other practices that undermine prisoner mental health not only impact prisoners but also prison guards, staff and the safety and well being of our communities.  Who these individuals are when they come out, is largely determined by the treatment and experiences they have while incarcerated.  Solitary confinement has the potential to cause long lasting psychiatric and behavioral problems and to increase recidivism.

•  “The increasing use of high-security segregation is counter-productive, often caus­ing violence inside facilities and contributing to recidivism after release.”
•  “Housing a prisoner in segregation can be twice as costly as other forms of confinement, and the misuse of segregation works against the process of rehabilitating people, thereby threaten­ing public safety.”
• Inmates kept in prolonged solitary confinement display higher levels of hostility and act out more than those in the general population, which may trigger further use of isolation, exacerbating the cycle. 
• Upon release, inmates carry their hostility and problems socializing back into the community, where it is reflected in increased recidivism, violence, suicide, drug relapse, and other negative outcomes. 
• "All human beings experience isolation as torture."  Dr. Gawande lists such effects as compulsive pacing, screaming, depression, lethargy, despair, rage, and even catatonia.  Many of the results of using solitary confinement increase risks to prisoners and guards.

Solitary Confinement Contributes to Recidivism and Decreases Public Safety

• Some prisoners are released from the SMU directly to the community upon their release.  These prisoners have little ability to adjust back to their environment, increasing the chance that they will recidivate, harming themselves and/or others. 
• Alarmingly, according to the Dept of Corrections, 43 prisoners have been released from the SMU straight onto the streets in the past two years alone. 
• According to public testimony from the hearing on LD 1611, at least one such prisoner, Michael Woodbury, committed an atrocious triple murder upon his return to the community after spending time in the SMU,
• “Prisoners often are released directly from solitary confinement and other high-security units directly to the streets, despite the clear dangers of doing so.”

Better Alternatives Exist

• Despite the trend, over the past couple of decades, to increase the use of solitary confinement, states across the country abandoned the system of solitary confinement in the nineteenth century because of its recognized harmful effects on prisoners and did so without unintended negative consequences. 
• Nations such as England, have eliminated the practice for all but the most egregious situations and with strong due process safeguards – again with no apparent ill effects.

Cost - LD is fiscally sound –

• Data shows that segregation units, like those within the SMU, cost between 2-4 times as much to run and maintain as less restrictive units.
• No preparation for release makes use of solitary, and release to the streets straight from the SMU, hazardous to those of us in the community, as this increases recidivism. Our tax dollars can be better spent and at the same time keep the population safer from repeat offenders.

Constitutional and legal grounds.

• Placement of the seriously mentally ill in solitary or segregation or special management violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
• Every federal court that has considered the issue has found that holding individuals with serious mental illness in isolated confinement with limited social interaction amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.    For these prisoners, segregation is known to be very likely to inflict serious psychological pain and to exacerbate their mental illness with catastrophic effects (such as self-mutilation, disassociation, suicide, playing with urine and feces, and extreme combativeness towards guards and staff).
• The Constitution requires meaningful due process for prisoners placed in prolonged isolation, even those prisoners placed in administrative segregation.
• LD 1611 would enshrine in Maine law, the 8th Amendment protections which bar placement of serious mentally ill prisoners in the SMU.
• LD 1611 would also protect against due process violations.

 
National Standards of Human Rights

• The U.N. Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners[45] states that "Efforts addressed to the abolition of solitary confinement as a punishment, or to the restriction of its use, should be undertaken and encouraged."

Background:

• The damaging effects of isolation have been noted by researchers as early as the 1840s when Charles Dickens reported that the “torture and agony” inflicted by solitary confinement was “immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”
• The oft quoted 2006 US Prison Commission reports that between 1995 and 2000, the growth rate in the number of people housed in “segregation” grew 40%, while the growth of the prison population grew at 28%; a trend in the wrong direction.

Defining Solitary Confinement/Supermax, etc.

• “Special Management Unit” refers to“solitary Confinement”, despite the resistance of the Dept of Corrections to consider it so.