Task Force issues report showing the way to ending solitary confinement

The Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce (FAST) released its Blueprint for Ending Solitary Confinement on Monday, detailing how the government can end solitary confinement of inmates in federal custody through executive, administrative and legislative action, reported Jurist.

On any given day, more than 10,000 people are in a form of solitary confinement in federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities, with people of color, transgender people, and people with mental health needs disproportionately represented in this figure.

FAST’s Blueprint calls for four forms of government action. First, it asks that all forms of solitary confinement of inmates in federal custody be abandoned. This is subject to exceptions, including short lock-ins for the purpose of de-escalation and medical quarantine. Second, it requires that there be alternatives to solitary confinement, which must involve at least 14 hours per day out of the cell, with 7 hours of meaningful activities. Third, due process protections must be enhanced through the utilization of neutral decision-makers. Fourth, oversight and enforcement mechanisms should be implemented.

FAST is a coalition of 130 advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Tammie Gregg, the director of the ACLU’s Stop Solitary Campaign, supported the Blueprint, explaining:

the debilitating, dehumanizing, and even deadly effects [of solitary confinement] on incarcerated people are an ongoing stain on the American legal system. We strongly believe that the reforms outlined in this Blueprint will go a long way towards eradicating much of the senseless and counterproductive harm that has been caused.

In addition to the Blueprint, the ACLU and more than 130 other organizations signed a letter on last week to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris calling for the administration to end the use of solitary confinement. Biden and Harris committed to stopping the use of solitary confinement during the 2020 campaign. Moreover, states are restricting the use of solitary confinement. In 2021, 70 pieces of legislation have been filed in 32 states.

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Lawmakers call for 'torturous' solitary confinement to end

Calling the practice torturous and degrading, a group of Pennsylvania lawmakers, clergy and prison reform advocates gathered in the state Capitol  to call for new laws limiting solitary confinement of prisoners across the state, reported The Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The event took place the same day that advocates erected an 8×12 foot solitary confinement cell in the Capitol. Outfitted with just a sink and a bed, advocates said the replica shows the conditions inmates face when they spend months or years in so-called “restricted housing units.”

“Solitary confinement is a form of torture,” said Sen. Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, a sponsor of a Senate bill putting new restrictions on solitary confinement sentences. “It warehouses people with problems rather than addressing them before releasing people back to society.”

Secluding inmates is a common disciplinary tool in American jails and prisons, despite evidence that prolonged isolation causes depression, psychosis, and suicidal ideation. 

Solitary confinement is generally reserved for inmates who pose a danger themselves or others. But critics of the practice say it can be liberally doled out as a punishment for minor infractions, and that prisoners have no way to appeal a solitary confinement sentence. 

Confined inmates are also subjected to frequent strip-searches when they leave their cells to shower or eat, said Doug Hollis, a formerly incarcerated person who says he spent 30 days in isolation.

 “It’s a humiliating experience,”Hollis said. “You’re stripped of your dignity… whatever the reason [for being there], it’s dehumanizing and wrong.”

In Pennsylvania, 85 percent of inmates in solitary confinement were sent there for failing to obey an order, according to a news article shared by the state Department of Corrections. 

A 2018 report by The Appeal, a non-profit criminal justice news site, found that some of the more than 100 inmates in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania had been held in seclusion for months or years. 

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'Serving Time': Illinois using confinement as a form of discipline in schools

In Pennsylvania the Department of Corrections recently agreed not to use solitary confinement on death row inmates.  In Illinois, school districts use a form of solitary confinement on students, often very young students with disabilities, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

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NJ puts limits on the use of solitary confinement in prison

A lengthy and vocal campaign to strictly limit solitary confinement in New Jersey’s prisons came to a close Thursday when Gov. Phil Murphy signed a long-stalled reform measure into law, reported NJ.Com.

“I am proud to stand together with New Jersey’s criminal justice reform advocates and legislators to advance a humane correctional system that allows for the safe operation of facilities and focuses on strengthening reentry initiatives, substance use disorder treatment, and recovery programs,” the Democratic governor said in a signing statement Thursday.

Supporters say the measure is among the most comprehensive controls on the controversial practice of placing prisoners in isolation in the United States.

Its passage followed several years of debate in the state Legislature that culminated in 2016 when then-Gov. Chris Christie trashed the proposal, claiming solitary confinement did not happen behind bars in the Garden State.

It was a position long held by corrections officials in New Jersey, where prisoners could be placed in “restrictive housing,” “protective custody,” “administrative segregation” and other methods of isolation.

There are many reasons why corrections officials might need to remove an inmate from the general population, including for their own safety or because they pose a danger to other prisoners.

The current acting corrections commissioner, Marcus Hicks, said in a statement Thursday that the new law “will codify certain existing New Jersey Department of Corrections policies into law and prevent isolated confinement from wrongful overuse in the state of New Jersey by future administrations,” suggesting the practice was not currently an issue in the state’s prison system.

But prison reform and civil rights advocates have long argued the bureaucratic language used by the corrections department obscures how often inmates are placed in isolation as an act of punishment or retaliation.

In recent months, a coalition of advocacy groups under the banner of the NJ Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement renewed a push to strictly curtail the practice, collecting testimony of inmates who claimed they spent months in isolation.

“The agony of solitary confinement is that it doesn’t just lock up your body – it locks in your mind," said Nafeesah Goldsmith, a community organizer who says she spent 60 days in solitary confinement while serving a New Jersey prison sentence.

“For New Jersey to institute dramatic restrictions on solitary acknowledges the suffering we’ve endured, along with the scars we’ll bear for the rest of our lives.”

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Justice Sotomayor cites Dickens to blast solitary confinement

After the Supreme Court shot down a challenge to the use of solitary confinement in prison, Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced alarm about depriving inmates of daylight for months and years, according to Courthouse News Service.

Consolidated from two appeals at the 10th Circuit, the case at issue stems from the incarceration of Jonathan Apodaca, Joshua Vigil and Donnie Lowe at the Colorado State Penitentiary.

Sotomayor noted that while the three men were in so-called administrative segregation, doing stints that ran between 11 and 25 months, none were allowed outside except for “recreation time” in a small room with a chin-up bar.

Measuring 90 square feet, this room did have two windows, but the metal grates covering them could almost be said to be more cruel than sealed glass.

“The grates have holes approximately the size of a quarter that open to the outside,” a prior district court described it, as quoted Tuesday by Sotomayor. “The inmate can see through the holes, can sometimes feel a breeze, and can sometimes feel the warmth of the sun. This is his only exposure of any kind to fresh air.”

Sotomayor went on to explain that the court has for years recognized the perversion in capriciously depriving a prisoner of outdoor exercise for extended periods of time.

“It should be clear by now that our Constitution does not permit such a total deprivation in the absence of a particularly compelling interest,” she wrote.

The opinion also notes that petitioner Lowe died in the spring after he was released directly onto the streets after 11 years in solitary confinement. The crime that had sent him to prison was second-degree burglary and introduction of contraband.

“While we do not know what caused his death in May 2018, we do know that solitary confinement imprints on those that it clutches a wide range of psychological scars,” she wrote.

Today Colorado allows all inmates “access to outdoor recreation” for at least one hour, three times per week, subject to “security or safety considerations,” Sotomayor added.

She emphasized that such changes represent “steps toward a more humane system” but “cannot undo what petitioners, and others similarly situated, have experienced.”

Quoting a 2015 concurrence from Justice Anthony Kennedy in the case Davis v. Ayala, Sotomayor also noted that the experience of solitary confinement described in “A Tale of Two Cities” was inspired by a real-life visit Charles Dickens paid to Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary.

“Dickens did not question the penal officers’ motives,” Sotomayor wrote. “He concluded, rather, that they did ‘not know what it is that they are doing’ and that ‘very few’ were ‘capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers.’ The pain caused was invisible and inaudible, such that ‘slumbering humanity’ was ‘not roused up’ to put a stop to it.

“We are no longer so unaware. Courts and corrections officials must accordingly remain alert to the clear constitutional problems raised by keeping prisoners like Apodaca, Vigil, and Lowe in ‘near-total isolation’ from the living world, in what comes perilously close to a penal tomb.”

The Supreme Court did include any grant of certiorari today in its batch of orders.

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PLW: Solitary Confinement: The Prison Within a Prison

Matthew T. Mangino

Pennsylvania Law Weekly

January 12, 2017

A recent article in the New York Review of Books examined an art exhibition at the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England. The prison, formerly known as the Reading Gaol, was for about two years the residence of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde.

At the time, Gaol was run according to the "principles pioneered at the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia." Inmates were locked up for 23 hours a day in complete solitary confinement. It was 1897, and inmates, when exercising in the yard or attending services in the chapel, were isolated from one another in boxes and were made to wear hoods. Strict silence was enforced.

One hundred and eighteen years later, in a U.S. Supreme Court concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy questioned the continued use of solitary confinement.

The decision in Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), had nothing to do with solitary confinement. The case dealt with a Batson challenge to a death sentence. Kennedy's concurring opinion received significant coverage from the media, and The Atlantic suggested that solitary confinement may become a "new battleground" for Kennedy.

Kennedy wrote that he wanted to address a matter that Ayala's counsel did not have a chance to expound upon during oral argument. Kennedy described solitary confinement in much the same way it existed in the time of Wilde. Inmates held "in a windowless cell no larger than a typical parking spot for 23 hours a day; and in the one hour when he leaves it, he likely is allowed little or no opportunity for conversation or interaction with anyone."

Kennedy cited 18th-century British prison reformer John Howard who wrote in "The State of the Prisons in England and Wales," "that criminals who had affected an air of boldness during their trial, and appeared quite unconcerned at the pronouncing sentence upon them, were struck with horror, and shed tears when brought to these darksome solitary abodes."

The concurrence by Kennedy also invoked literature, Charles Dickens in his 1859 masterpiece "A Tale of Two Cities," "recounted the toil of Dr. Manette, whose 18 years of isolation in One Hundred and Five, North Tower, caused him, even years after his release, to lapse in and out of a mindless state with almost no awareness or appreciation for time or his surroundings."

In 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that solitary confinement bears "a further terror and peculiar mark of infamy." In In re Medley, 134 U.S. 160 (1890), the court further found that, "A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short [solitary] confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition ... and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide."

Yet, the high court has yet to definitively determine whether solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

In September, a Pennsylvania federal judge ordered prison officials to come up with a plan to release an inmate from solitary confinement.

Arthur Johnson's lawyers contend that for the last 37 years, their client has been held in an artificially-lit cell "approximately seven feet by 12 feet." He has been permitted one hour of time outside, weather permitting, in a cage roughly the size of his cell. He has not had physical contact—not touched another human being—in decades. According to The Daily Beast, lawyers argued solitary confinement had deprived Johnson of "basic and fundamental human needs" like "mental health and environmental stimulation; social interaction; sleep; a reasonable opportunity to exercise; and dignity."

This comes after a January 2015 settlement, wherein the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections agreed to a complete, statewide overhaul of its policies and practices affecting prisoners in solitary confinement.

The settlement in Disability Rights Network v. Wetzel provides the DOC will stop housing inmates with serious mental illness in the harsh conditions of solitary confinement. New treatment units are to be established to provide appropriate mental health treatment.

While there will continue to be secure units for some inmates, even those units will provide significant out-of-cell time both for therapeutic and non-therapeutic activities. These new units and the treatment and programming provided in them are aimed at ensuring that inmates with serious mental illness have the least amount of restrictions placed on them as clinically necessary.

U.S. District Chief Judge Christopher Conner of the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that the Department of Corrections (DOC) concerns that Arthur Johnson might try to escape, are outweighed by Johnson's argument that the confinement amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment.

University of Pittsburgh law professor Jules Lobel, who worked on Johnson's suit, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "I believe it is the first time that an inmate has been ordered released who was not shown to be mentally ill."

Johnson was released to the general population at SCI Greene last week.

The pervasive use of solitary confinement for problematic inmates with mental illness is egregious. Solitary confinement, or restricted housing units (RHU) as they are referred to by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, have a place in prison management.

The RHU is like a prison within the prison. Inmates violate prison policy, they commit misconducts in much the same way they committed crimes. The "sentence" for a misconduct might be time in the RHU. The use of solitary confinement in this manner is an appropriate administrative tool to manage a prison.

However, throwing an inmate in RHU and throwing away the key, especially those who act out because they are laboring under a mental defect, is unconscionable.

A report released this summer by the Center for American Progress, "Disabled Behind Bars: The Mass Incarceration of People with Disabilities in America's Jails and Prisons," highlights the tragic intersection of two policy shifts. First, the movement toward mass incarceration; second, an underfunded "deinstitutionalization," or removing people with disabilities from mental hospitals without making simultaneous public investments in community treatment. These policies have resulted in the criminal justice system assuming responsibility for mental health treatment—turning prisons into de facto mental hospitals.

According to the ACLU, "Solitary confinement is psychologically difficult for even relatively healthy individuals, but it is devastating for those with mental illness. ... Many engage in bizarre and extreme acts of self-injury and suicide."

There is also a longstanding practice in some prisons of keeping LGBT prisoners in near permanent solitary confinement, under the guise of protecting them from abuse.

Finally, the majority of death-row inmates, around 3,000 inmates in 35 states, are held in perpetual confinement. In Pennsylvania, the roughly 186 inmates sitting on death row have little chance of being executed.

Pennsylvania has made an effort to deal with mental illness in prison, which often leads to prisoners so inflicted to experience stints of solitary confinement and prolonged prison stays. Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel announced that 1,000 staff members have received Crisis Intervention Team training aimed at improving response to inmates with mental health needs.

"We have made significant improvements to our mental health services and key to all of the services being successful is how our employees respond to a mental health crisis at the onset," Wetzel said in a press release.

Inmates with mental illness are no longer held in solitary confinement. Additionally, all staff members—15,000 to 16,000 people, according to Wetzel—are trained in mental health first aid (MHFA).

MHFA is an eight-hour course often compared to CPR training or basic first aid training, reported CNN. DOC staff learns to identify warning signs of a suicide attempt, and how to intervene when someone is experiencing delusions. They are also trained on the various symptoms of mental illnesses.

Twenty thousand people leave our prisons every year and we want them to return to their communities healthier than when they arrived," Wetzel said. "Increasing the level of staff training on mental health issues is one important step toward achieving that goal." •

Special to the Law Weekly Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. Contact him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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Black Women Overrepresented in Solitary Confinement

A new report co-authored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators and The Arthur Liman Program at Yale Law School reveals significant overrepresentation of black women in solitary confinement across the United States.

 Among 40 jurisdictions providing data (38 states, the federal system, and the Virgin Islands), black women constituted 24% of the total female incarcerated population but comprised 41% of the female restricted housing population. 

The report documents smaller but substantial racial disparities in male isolation and estimates the disparities in each jurisdiction. Its authors define restricted housing as “the separation of prisoners from general population and in detention for 22 hours per day or more, for 15 or more continuous days, in single-cells or in double-cells.” 

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Man released from 43 years in solitary confinement: 'I wish I was back in the security of a cell'

Before walking out of jail a free man in February, Albert Woodfox spent 43 years almost without pause in a Louisiana prison isolation cell, becoming the longest standing solitary confinement prisoner in America, The Guardian. 

He had no view of the sky from inside his 6ft by 9ft concrete box, no human contact, and taking a walk meant pacing from one end of the cell to the other and back again.

A few days ago he found himself on a beach in Galveston, Texas, in the company of a friend. He stood marvelling at all the beachgoers under a cloudless sky, and stared out over the Gulf of Mexico as it stretched far out to the horizon.

“You could hear the tide and the water coming in,” he says. “It was so strange, walking on the beach and all these people and kids running around.”

Of all the terrifying details of Woodfox’s four decades of solitary incarceration – the absence of human touch, the panic attacks and bouts of claustrophobia, the way they chained him even during the one hour a day he was allowed outside the cell – perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is what he says now. Two months after the state of Louisiana set him free on his 69th birthday, he says he sometimes wishes he was back in that cell.

“Oh yeah! Yeah!” he says passionately when asked whether he sometimes misses his life in lockdown. “You know, human beings are territorial, they feel more comfortable in areas they are secure. In a cell you have a routine, you pretty much know what is going to happen, when it’s going to happen, but in society it’s difficult, it’s looser. So there are moments when, yeah, I wish I was back in the security of a cell.”

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President Obama's Washington Post Op-Ed on Solitary Confinement

President Barack Obama

Washington Post, January 25, 2016

In 2010, a 16-year-old named Kalief Browder from the Bronx was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers Island to await trial, where he reportedly endured unspeakable violence at the hands of inmates and guards — and spent nearly two years in solitary confinement.

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In 2013, Kalief was released, having never stood trial. He completed a successful semester at Bronx Community College. But life was a constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23 hours a day. One Saturday, he committed suicide at home. He was just 22 years old.

Solitary confinement gained popularity in the United States in the early 1800s, and the rationale for its use has varied over time. Today, it’s increasingly overused on people such as Kalief, with heartbreaking results — which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem.

There are as many as 100,000 people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons — including juveniles and people with mental illnesses. As many as 25,000 inmates are serving months, even years of their sentences alone in a tiny cell, with almost no human contact.

Research suggests that solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. It has been linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others and the potential for violent behavior. Some studies indicate that it can worsen existing mental illnesses and even trigger new ones. Prisoners in solitary are more likely to commit suicide, especially juveniles and people with mental illnesses.

The United States is a nation of second chances, but the experience of solitary confinement too often undercuts that second chance. Those who do make it out often have trouble holding down jobs, reuniting with family and becoming productive members of society. Imagine having served your time and then being unable to hand change over to a customer or look your wife in the eye or hug your children.

As president, my most important job is to keep the American people safe. And since I took office, overall crime rates have decreased by more than 15 percent. In our criminal justice system, the punishment should fit the crime — and those who have served their time should leave prison ready to become productive members of society. How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn’t make us safer. It’s an affront to our common humanity.

That’s why last summer, I directed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and the Justice Department to review the overuse of solitary confinement across U.S. prisons. They found that there are circumstances when solitary is a necessary tool, such as when certain prisoners must be isolated for their own protection or in order to protect staff and other inmates. In those cases, the practice should be limited, applied with constraints and used only as a measure of last resort. They have identified common-sense principles that should guide the use of solitary confinement in our criminal justice system.

The Justice Department has completed its review, and I am adopting its recommendations to reform the federal prison system. These include banning solitary confinement for juveniles and as a response to low-level infractions, expanding treatment for the mentally ill and increasing the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells. These steps will affect some 10,000 federal prisoners held in solitary confinement — and hopefully serve as a model for state and local corrections systems. And I will direct all relevant federal agencies to review these principles and report back to me with a plan to address their use of solitary confinement.

States that have led the way are already seeing positive results. Colorado cut the number of people in solitary confinement, and assaults against staff are the lowest they’ve been since 2006. New Mexico implemented reforms and has seen a drop in solitary confinement, with more prisoners engaging in promising rehabilitation programs. And since 2012, federal prisons have cut the use of solitary confinement by 25 percent and significantly reduced assaults on staff.

Reforming solitary confinement is just one part of a broader bipartisan push for criminal justice reform. Every year, we spend $80 billion to keep 2.2 million people incarcerated. Many criminals belong behind bars. But too many others, especially nonviolent drug offenders, are serving unnecessarily long sentences. That’s why members of Congress in both parties are pushing for change, from reforming sentencing laws to expanding reentry programs to give those who have paid their debt to society the tools they need to become productive members of their communities. And I hope they will send me legislation as soon as possible that makes our criminal justice system smarter, fairer, less expensive and more effective.

In America, we believe in redemption. We believe, in the words of Pope Francis, that “every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.” We believe that when people make mistakes, they deserve the opportunity to remake their lives. And if we can give them the hope of a better future, and a way to get back on their feet, then we will leave our children with a country that is safer, stronger and worthy of our highest ideals.

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GateHoue: Antipathy grows for solitary confinement

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
January 22, 2016

“Sending hardened criminals from death row to solitary confinement is no triumph,” wrote Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski in a recent editorial for the Yale Law Review Journal. “It merely swaps one type of death for another.”
“Taking prisoners off death row and putting them in supermax prisons may soothe our collective conscience ... But we may be condemning those inmates to decades-long torture that may make a swift execution look like an act of grace,” added Kozinski.
What Judge Kozinski overlooks is that not every life sentence is served in solitary confinement. But solitary confinement is painful, degrading and a safety issue inside and out of the prison.
For many policy makers and activists, curbing the use of solitary confinement is a moral imperative, wrote Maurice Chammah for The Marshall Project.
Depriving prisoners of human contact exacerbates and even produces mental illness, increases the risk of suicide, and generally engenders a sense of hopelessness. There is a ground swell of support for criminal justice reform and solitary confinement is front and center.
Chammah asks if motivation for change comes from political pressure, court orders, the high cost of solitary cells, or genuine human concern — regardless of the motivation, prison administrators are on board.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court took note of the agony of solitary confinement. Justice Anthony Kennedy described the “human toll wrought by extended terms of isolation,” the “terrible price” exacted by “years on end of near-total isolation,” including anxiety, self-mutilation, and suicide.
Kennedy brought up the issue of isolation during an argument that had nothing to do with solitary confinement, indicating his growing concern and sense of urgency about an issue that has far reaching implications for the criminal justice system.
According to Slate, Kennedy lauded “penalogical [sic] and psychology experts, including scholars in the legal academy,” for offering “essential information and analysis” about the horrors of solitary confinement.
Last fall, the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College in New York conducted a colloquium on solitary confinement that included the leaders of 15 corrections agencies across the country, as well as leading academic experts and advocates.
The group issued a 90-page report proposing widespread reform of solitary confinement.
“The purpose was to determine if consensus might be achievable about ways to achieve (these) long sought-after reforms by common agreement and without resort to litigation,” former California and Pennsylvania Corrections chief Martin Horn told The Crime Report.
The colloquium recommendations included: Mandating solitary confinement within prison only on the grounds of behavioral issues; exclude persons with mental illness and other vulnerable populations; limit periods of social isolation to “the least amount of time necessary and in the least restrictive conditions.”
Congress has now taken up the torch. The Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2015 proposes establishing a commission to recommend reforms to Congress and the Obama administration, reported The Times Picayune.
The bill requires the Department of Justice to issue regulations on best practices for federal prisons, and provide incentives for changes in operations of state and local prisons.
The bill also calls for major changes in the use of solitary confinement in the punishment of the mentally ill and juvenile offenders.
“We have abused the practice of solitary confinement to the point where it has become modern day torture,” Congressman Cedric Richmond, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, told The (New Orleans, Louisiana) Times-Picayune. “Too many prisoners, including the seriously mentally ill and juveniles are locked away for 23 hours a day, often with little to no due process and at a steep cost to the taxpayer.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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GateHouse: Prison officials: Solitary confinement a ‘grave problem’

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
September 11, 2015

A report issued last week by the Association of State Correctional Administrators and Yale Law School titled “Time-in-Cell” found that prison officials have characterized inmate isolation as a “grave problem” and are searching for alternatives for most inmates.

The report analyzed data from 34 jurisdictions, housing about 73 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million prisoners. The report identified more than 66,000 prisoners in some form of restricted housing — whether termed “administrative segregation,” “disciplinary segregation” or “protective segregation,” reported the National Law Journal. Disciplinary segregation is the “prison within a prison.” Inmates who violate prison rules are sent to isolation. Administrative segregation might include an inmate with mental illness who is disruptive or a gang member who is a threat to security. Protective segregation might include inmates who are at risk for abuse within the prison or may have cooperated with prison officials in an investigation.

If the numbers above are illustrative of the whole prison system, in 2014 about 80,000 to 100,000 inmates were in some form of isolation. The numbers do not include people in local jails, juvenile facilities, or in military and immigration detention.

To corrections officials, solitary confinement is needed to contain disruptive prisoners who may harm other inmates or staff. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, some inmate rights advocates believe that solitary confinement is a violation of human rights--defensible only for limited times with clear rules for a return to general population.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rarely mentioned solitary confinement, and it has never ruled whether the practice violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. However, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recently wrote about solitary confinement concluding that “near-total isolation exacts a terrible price.”

According to the New York Times, Kennedy tried to bolster his position by quoting Dostoevsky: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

Later he wrote in an opinion about the plight of inmate (he) “has been held for all or most of the past 20 years or more in a windowless cell no larger than a typical parking spot for 23 hours a day; and in the one hour when he leaves it, he likely is allowed little or no opportunity for conversation or interaction with anyone.”

Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has conducted a number of studies interviewing hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement. In one study, he found that roughly a third of inmates in solitary confinement were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” According to PBS Frontline, Grassian has since concluded that solitary confinement can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory.

In California, the Department of Corrections recently settled a lawsuit that will limit how long inmates can spend in isolation, while creating restrictive custody units for inmates who refuse to participate in rehabilitation programs or violate prison rules.

California has a history of keeping inmates isolated for longer than any other state, at times up to a decade or more, reported The Christian Science Monitor. The California settlement will limit segregation to inmates who commit new crimes behind bars. The state will no longer lock gang members in soundproofed, windowless cells solely to keep them from directing illegal activities by fellow gang members.

Solitary confinement will continue to be controversial. Corrections departments across the country need to find a balance between the safe and efficient management of correctional facilities and the inmates’ constitutional rights.

As California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard told The Associated Press the settlement will “move California more into the mainstream of what other states are doing while still allowing us the ability to deal with people who are presenting problems within our system.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Secretary Wetzel: The United States has 'overused incarceration'

The United States has "overused incarceration" as a response to crime but consensus is lacking on how to reduce the numbers significantly, says Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John Wetzel. Wetzel, who runs one of the nation's largest prison systems, told a panel in Philadelphia at the Investigative Reporters and Editors annual conference that his state has managed to reduce the prison count by about 1,200 in the last few years, reported The Crime Report. He acknowledged that dealing with inmates who are mentally ill is one of his greatest challenges. About one-quarter of Pennsylvania's prisoners have some kind of mental illness, meaning that the state is responsible for treating about 12,000 people behind bars, Wetzel said. He agreed that prison authorities had subjected too many mentally-ill inmates to solitary confinement, often making their problems worse.
In January, Pennsylvania settled a lawsuit by agreeing to stop putting seriously mentally ill inmates in solitary. Another speaker on Friday, Philadelphia civil-rights lawyer and law professor David Rudovsky, seemed dubious that the U.S. would soon reduce what he termed the "prison-industrial complex," noting that the jobs of many prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and corrections system employees depend on a large corrections system. More than 2 million people are behind bars around the nation, making the U.S. the world's incarceration leader. Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press discussed stories she had written this year on the growing use of "risk assessment" tools by corrections authorities to help decide which prisoners and pre-trial defendants should be released, urging journalists to examine how these systems are being used. Julie Brown of the Miami Herald described her reporting on "horrific" conditions in some Florida prisons, saying she was surprised at the high level of public interest in reporting on how the state is housing its more than 100,000 inmates. The panel was organized by Criminal Justice Journalists, the co-publisher of Crime & Justice News.
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Report: Corrections officers use "unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force"

Correctional officers across America have used "unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force" on prisoners, according to a report  recently released by Human Rights Watch, according to Pennlive.com.
The report – which the organization says involved interviews with 125 jail officials, mental health professionals, lawyers, academics, prisoners, and other experts – sharply criticized an array of incidents which it argues has systematically traumatized mentally ill inmates.
Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections, which handles the state prison system, has also taken fire in recent years for its treatment of mentally ill inmates. In January, the department settled pledged to make sweeping changes after settling with the Disability Rights Network over a lawsuit that alleged that inmates with serious mental illness were being isolated for at least 23 hours a day, severely aggravating their symptoms.
The lawsuit was accompanied by an independent investigation into Pennsylvania's state prison system by the U.S. Department of Justice. In its report, Human Rights Watch draws from several observations about Pennsylvania's prison system that were highlighted by federal investigators, including:

• Mentally ill prisoners in Pennsylvania are twice as likely to be placed in solitary confinement compared to non-mentally ill prisoners.
• In one Pennsylvania prison, there was a "disturbing tendency" by many prison clinicians to describe almost all disruptive conduct as purely willful and not connected with a prison's mental instability.
• A mentally ill person was subjected to five months solitary confinement. When he attempted to hang himself, he was removed from solitary confinement for one day and then returned for another five months. He told investigators that he became extremely depressed and experienced visual hallucinations: including seeing his dead brother encourage him to cut himself.

"The misuse of force is more likely in facilities that are overcrowded, have abysmal physical conditions, and lack educational, rehabilitative, and vocational programs for inmate," the report read. "Force is also more likely where custody staff are too few in number relative to the number of prisoners, are poorly paid, are poorly trained in inter-personal skills and conflict resolution, or are poorly supervised."
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The Vindicator: Ohio should reduce solitary for young

Matthew T. Mangino
The Vindicator
February 15, 2015
Last May, Ohio reached an agreement with the Justice Department, requiring the state’s Department of Youth Services to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the use of seclusion on young people in custody. In Ohio, solitary confinement of young people was practiced with such frequency that the state was among the top three in the nation to use seclusion according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
However, Ohio has a long way to go in terms of reducing the pervasive use of solitary confinement in state prisons and county jails.
Correction officials will say that restrictive housing—solitary confinement—is for the worst of the worst. There would be chaos inside the prison walls if there was no way to punish unruly, violent or dangerous prisoners.
Unfortunately, solitary confinement — the prison within the prison — is not just for the violent or dangerous. “The hole” as many inmates refer to it, is a dumping ground for the most vulnerable prisoners.
Serious mental illness
A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than 64 percent of local inmates, 56 percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners have symptoms of serious mental illnesses.
Inmates with serious mental illness often struggle to conform to prison rules and increasingly end up in isolation as a result.
Granted, isolation and solitary confinement are not just for the mentally ill. Prisoners can be placed in such units for many reasons—as punishment for breaking prison rules; while under investigation; when suspected of gang involvement; protection of the inmate; protection of staff and other inmates.
Although conditions vary from state to state and even institution to institution, isolation and solitary confinement and the accompanying restrictions take many different forms. The American Friends Service Committee, an organization that once won the Nobel Peace Prize, lists on its website some of the restrictions as confinement for 23 hours a day; infrequent phone calls and rare non-contact family visits; limited access to rehabilitative or educational programming; and restricted reading material and personal property.
According to the Washington Post, more than 4 percent of Texas’ prisoners — more than 6,000 people — are in solitary, spending an average of nearly four years in near-total isolation, locked in 60-square-foot cells for at least 22 hours a day.
How does solitary confinement affect prisoners? Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, told NPR he had interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement.
In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” Grassian concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations, panic attacks, overt paranoia, diminished impulse control, hypersensitivity to external stimuli and difficulties with thinking and memory.
In Pennsylvania, the state Department of Corrections recently settled a lawsuit with the Disability Rights Network that will result in new rules regarding the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates. Under the agreement, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when any of the state’s 8,000 inmates with serious mental illness breaks prison rules, they may go to Diversionary Treatment Units, not solitary confinement.
Treatment
In the new units, they will get treatment and a minimum of 20 hours per week outside of the cell, including 10 “structured” and 10 “unstructured” hours. By mid-2016, Pennsylvania will stop punishing seriously mentally ill inmates with assignments to solitary confinement.
Correction’s Secretary John Wetzel told the Post-Gazette, the state was “stepping up to do the right thing” in an era in which prisons “have become the de facto system responsible for treating the mentally ill.”
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino)

GateHouse: Searching for alternatives to solitary confinement

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
February 6, 2015

Prison is not a pleasant place. Every single occupant has committed a crime or series of crimes, each defying the laws and morals of society. That reluctance to conform doesn’t end at the prison gate. Within the prison walls, many inmates continue to ignore the concepts of order and justice.

For those inmates there is a prison within the prison. Correction officials will say that restrictive housing — solitary confinement — is for the worst of the worst. There would be chaos inside the prison walls if there was no way to punish unruly, violent or dangerous prisoners.

Unfortunately, the prison within the prison is not just for the violent or dangerous — “the hole,” as many inmates refer to it, is a dumping ground for the most vulnerable prisoners.

A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than 64 percent of local jail inmates, 56 percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners have symptoms of serious mental illnesses.

Inmates with serious mental illness often struggle to conform to prison rules and increasingly end up in isolation as a result.

Granted, isolation and solitary confinement are not just for the mentally ill. Prisoners can be placed in such units for many reasons — as punishment for breaking prison rules; while under investigation; when suspected of gang involvement; protection of the inmate; protection of staff and other inmates.

Although conditions vary from state to state, and even institution to institution, isolation and solitary confinement, and the accompanying restrictions, take many different forms. The American Friends Service Committee, an organization that once won the Nobel Peace Prize, lists on its website some of the restrictions as — confinement for 23 hours a day; infrequent phone calls and rare non-contact family visits; limited access to rehabilitative or educational programming; and restricted reading material and personal property.

According to The Washington Post, more than 4 percent of Texas’s prisoners — more than 6,000 people — are in solitary, spending an average of nearly four years in near-total isolation, locked in 60-square-foot cells for at least 22 hours a day.

How does solitary confinement effect prisoners? Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, told NPR interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement.

In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” Grassian concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory.

Progress is being made in some parts of the country. A new rule approved by the New York City Board of Correction will prohibit the use of solitary confinement to punish inmates aged 21 and younger on Rikers Island, the city’s primary jail complex. Slate reported that the new rule comes about a year after city officials announced that Rikers would no longer subject inmates classified as “seriously mentally ill” to solitary confinement.

In Pennsylvania, the state Department of Corrections recently settled a lawsuit with the Disability Rights Network that will result in new rules regarding the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates. Under the agreement, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when any of the state’s 8,000 inmates with serious mental illness break prison rules, they may go to diversionary treatment units, not solitary confinement.

In the new units, they will get treatment and a minimum of 20 hours per week outside of the cell, including 10 “structured” and 10 “unstructured” hours. By mid-2016, Pennsylvania will stop punishing seriously mentally ill inmates with assignments to solitary confinement.

Corrections Secretary John Wetzel told The Post-Gazette, the state was “stepping up to do the right thing” in an era in which prisons “have become the de facto system responsible for treating the mentally ill.”

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. His book, “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010,” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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NYC eliminates solitary confinement for inmates 21 and younger

New York City officials have agreed to a plan that would eliminate the use of solitary confinement for all inmates 21 and younger, a move that would place the long-troubled Rikers Island complex at the forefront of national jail reform efforts, reported the New York Times.

The policy change was a stark turnaround by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, which recently eliminated the use of solitary confinement for 16- and 17-year-olds but, backed by the powerful correction officers union, had resisted curtailing the practice more broadly.

Even the most innovative jails in the country punish disruptive inmates over age 18 with solitary confinement, said Christine Herrman, director of the Segregation Reduction Project at the Vera Institute of Justice. “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening anywhere else,” she said, referring to the New York City plan. “It would definitely be an innovation.”

The Correction Department has faced repeated criticism over the past year after revelations of horrific brutality and neglect of inmates at Rikers, the country’s second-largest jail system. Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, is suing the city over the treatment of adolescent inmates at the jail complex.

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GateHouse: UN takes a swipe at torture in America

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
December 10, 2014

This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the results of a five-year investigation of CIA interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks.

According to USA Today, the investigation concluded that the interrogations were more brutal than the CIA had previously admitted. Committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in some cases, the conduct amounted to “torture.”

With a “little” less fanfare, the United Nations Commission Against Torture recently released a report on the United States’ involvement in questionable conduct that the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed to confirm.

Not surprisingly, the report referenced the use of extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques, overseas torture and issues relating to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

A closer look at the U.N. report reveals some concern about issues closer to home. The 15-page report released by the Committee Against Torture suggests a link between torture and U.S. policies regarding the death penalty, juvenile life without parole, excessive use of force by police and solitary confinement.

Regarding the issue of solitary confinement the U.N. raised concerns about extensive use of solitary confinement and other forms of isolation in U.S. prisons “for purposes of punishment, discipline and protection, as well as for health-related reasons.”

Although the U.N. did not recommend the complete abolition of solitary confinement the report did recommended only using “solitary confinement as a measure of last resort, for a (sic) short time as possible, under strict supervision.”

A new report from the University of North Carolina School of Law suggests that long-term solitary confinement is a cruel, inhumane and degrading form of punishment. The report, “Solitary Confinement as Torture,” contends that solitary confinement as a form of punishment is “beyond the bounds of human decency.”

Next, the U.N. took up the issue of juvenile life without parole. The U.N. applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decisions eliminating life for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses and a more recent decision abolishing mandatory life without parole for juveniles.

The report expressed dismay regarding a half-dozen states that have ruled that the latter decision does “not apply retroactively, and that a majority of the 28 states that required mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for children have not passed legislation” to prohibit the practice.

Beyond those concerns, the U.N. has called on the U.S. to “abolish the sentence of life imprisonment without parole for offences committed by children under 18 years of age,” regardless of the crime.

With the police-related deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, the U.N. committee made a broad statement concerning “the frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals.”

Earlier this year, USA Today reported that nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012. The data was from the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI. On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police.

The U.N. recommended that “police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officers are investigated promptly, effectively and impartially by an independent mechanism.
Finally, the U.N. committee recommended the abolition of the death penalty. The U.N. suggested that the death penalty is torture, because it inherently includes “the threat of imminent death.” The committee also condemned lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagrees on the death penalty, and has consistently made rulings contrary to the position of the U.N. on domestic issues of punishment and accountability.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. His recent book, “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010,” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Report: Solitary confinement is torture

The UNC School of Law's Immigration/Human Rights Clinic recently released a study that equates solitary confinement with torture, according to The Fayetteville Observer.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina is among the organizations that supported the university's 217-page study, which provides a blunt assessment:
"Our conclusion is straightforward and simple: solitary confinement is ineffective at decreasing violence within prisons; it is ineffective at preserving public safety; it is ineffective at managing scarce monetary resources; and it violates the boundaries of human dignity and justice. Prison officials and the courts must find a way to end the practice without delay."
The study, titled "Solitary Confinement as Torture," says the state places an "inordinately high proportion" of prisoners in solitary confinement - nearly 10 percent of the state's 37,628 prisoners were in control units. The report says the percentage does not appear to include disciplinary and administrative segregation, "which could push the number of prisoners in solitary conditions much, much higher."
The report says prisoners are "confined for 22-24 hours a day to small concrete boxes. The air is recirculated, reeking of the putrid environment in which it is trapped. Human interaction is limited to the give-and-take with corrections officers, who often suffer institutional dehumanization that leaves them indifferent to the suffering of their wards."
One of the study's authors, UNC Professor Deborah M. Weissman, said the N.C. Department of Correction's recommended improvements "do not address the fact that it is too easy to place prisoners in solitary and too difficult to get out. As a form of punishment, it is meted out without adequate due process protections and crosses the threshold of acceptable punishment. We suggest it is a form of torture."
Weissman said studies clearly show that extreme isolation causes severe psychological problems for prisoners who previously did not have mental problems and exacerbates such conditions for those who do.
"Based on the criminological and mental health research, we urge the end of the practice of solitary confinement for everyone - prisoners with mental health illness and those without," Weissman said. "Solitary confinement is not about physical protection of prisoners from each other or correctional officers. Rather, it is a means of punishment that fails to achieve any goals."
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California prison problem more than overcrowding

It has been a bad week for California Prisons.  As many as 30,000 prisoners have started a hunger strike, an investigation revealed that the prison system has illegally sterilized female inmates and a panel of judges that has threatened contempt of court against Governor Jerry Brown, demands the release of 10,000 prisoners.

Officials said 30,000 California inmates refused meals Monday at the start of a prison strike involving two-thirds of the state's 33 lockups, as well as four out-of-state facilities, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Participants refused breakfast and lunch, said a corrections spokeswoman. In addition, 2,300 prisoners skipped work or classes, some saying they were sick.

The protest was organized by a small group of inmates held in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border. Their complaints focus on policies that put inmates in isolation indefinitely, some for decades, if they are suspected of having ties to prison gangs.

If things weren't bad enough in California, doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future.

GateHouse: Criminalizing mental illness

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse News Service

June 21, 2013

 

This month President Barack Obama addressed the National Conference on Mental Health. The president made it clear, “The overwhelming majority of people who suffer from mental illnesses are not violent. They will never pose a threat to themselves or others. And there are a whole lot of violent people with no diagnosable mental health issues.” 

 

The president is right on point. Most people suffering from mental illness are not a threat, yet we lock away the mentally ill at alarming rates. Seriously mentally ill people are 3.2 times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized, according to a survey conducted by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association, More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals: A Survey of the States.

The survey also found that about 16 percent of inmates in jails and prisons have a serious mental illness. Twenty years ago, the seriously mentally ill accounted for only 6.4 percent of all incarcerated offenders.

 

According to NPR, more 350,000 offenders with mental illness are confined in America’s prisons and jails. More Americans receive mental health treatment behind bars than in hospitals or treatment centers. In fact, the three largest inpatient psychiatric facilities in the country are the Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island in New York City and Cook County jail in Chicago.

 

In California alone there are about 33,000 mentally ill inmates in state prison, close to 30 percent of the entire prison population. The number of suicides in California prisons has soared in recent years, to about 24 suicides per 100,000 inmates a year, a rate that is about 48 percent higher than the national average.

 

President Obama also noted that “less than 40 percent of people with mental illness receive treatment ... even though three-quarters of mental illnesses emerge by the age of 24, only about half of children with mental health problems receive treatment.” 

 

Why?

 

It is extremely difficult to find a bed for a seriously mentally ill person who needs to be hospitalized. In 1955 there was one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. In 2005 there was one psychiatric bed for every 3,000 Americans.

 

Even fewer people with mental illness receive adequate treatment in prison.

 

The U.S. Department of Justice recently cited a number of states for their unconstitutional treatment of mentally ill inmates. In Pennsylvania, the DOJ found that one correctional facility, SCI Cresson, routinely resorted to locking prisoners with serious mental illness in their cells for 22 to 23 hours a day, for months or even years at a time. The DOJ concluded that SCI Cresson’s misuse of solitary confinement of prisoners with serious mental illness had dire consequences, including depression, psychosis, self-mutilation and suicide. 

 

SCI Cresson came to rely on solitary confinement as a means of warehousing many of its prisoners with serious mental illness, due in part to a dysfunctional mental health program within the facility. 

Prison medical systems were not designed nor equipped to provide quality mental health services to prisoners in need. The problem reaches beyond Pennsylvania’s prisons — seriously mentally ill inmates often face overworked or undermanned staff, overwhelmed with the need to evaluate and implement treatment plans for an ever-growing population of ill inmates.

 

Getting a handle on the treatment of the mentally ill is more than a family or community problem. Criminalizing mental illness is more than a tragedy. The plight of the mentally ill in prison, and on the street, must be addressed at the highest levels of government. President Obama has taken a first step — there is yet a long way to go.

 

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George and the former district attorney for Lawrence County, Pa. You can read his blog at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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