Tagged: isolation

Prof. Michael B. Mushlin Testifies at Briefing on Solitary Confinement in CT

Michael B. Mushlin, Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, Scholar, and Renowned Expert on Prisoners’ Rights, testified on February 7, 2017 before the Connecticut Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as part of their scheduled Briefing on Solitary Confinement.

Prof. Mushlin has been advocating for more humane conditions in state and federal prisons and jails, he has testified in the past, and written extensively on the topic. He has been consistently calling to ban the use of solitary confinement in prisons and jails coupled with instituting an external and independent oversight to ensure the reform is sustained.

Please read his entire testimony here.

Solitary Confinement and Prisoners with Disabilities

Our blog has written on the use of solitary confinement, its impacts, and the efforts for prison reform many times.

To continue the discussion about this dark penal practice, here is a more recent report compiled and published by ACLU. It sheds the much needed light on the use and misuse of solitary confinement and prisoners with mental and physical disabilities.

This report provides a first-ever national ACLU account of the suffering prisoners with physical disabilities experience in solitary confinement. It spotlights the dangers for blind people, Deaf people, people who are unable to walk without assistance, and people with other physical disabilities who are being held in small cells for 22 hours a day or longer, for days, months, and even years.

Few statistics from the report:

  • “Nearly 50% of all suicides by incarcerated people are completed in solitary confinement.”
  • “Prisoners with disabilities are placed in solitary confinement even when it serves no penological purpose.”
  • “Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 people are held in solitary confinement in the U.S.”
  • “32% prisoners and 40% of jail detainees report having at least one disability.”
  • “Solitary confinement inflicts psychological and physical damage on human beings.”
  • “Prisoners with physical disabilities are placed into solitary confinement due to a lack of accessible cells.”

Report:

Colorado Proposes Bill Limiting the Use of Solitary Confinement for Mentally Ill

The State of Colorado is taking steps to restrict the use of solitary confinement for those with a serious mental illness. Colorado Senate Bill 14-064, A Bill for an Act Concerning Restricting the Use of Long-Term Isolated Confinement for Inmates with Serious Mental Illness, has passed through the second regular session reading and would require

the department of corrections to review the status of all offenders held in long-term isolated confinement within 90 days after the effective date of the bill.

According to the bill, if such review concludes that an inmate is suffering from a serious mental illness, the correction facility would be required to move the inmate to a mental health unit, prison hospital or other form of housing that would not include long-term solitary confinement. Further, this bill would require that any inmate would go through a mental evaluation prior to being placed in isolation.

Colorado isn’t the first state revising this long-established and controversial practice of placing inmates in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time. In 2013, Massachusetts introduced a Bill S. 1133, An Act Relative to the Appropriate Use of Solitary Confinement, requiring that the decision to place an inmate in segregation be reviewed within 15 days of such placement and at 90 day intervals thereafter and that an inmate shall receive a written notice, a hearing at which inmate has the opportunity to dispute such placement, and a final written decision on the matter.

In California, Senator L. Lee introduced SB Bill 970 that would limit the use of solitary confinement on minors at state and county juvenile correctional facilities. This bill would

prohibit a minor or ward who is detained in, or sentenced to, any juvenile facility or other secure state or local facility from being subject to solitary confinement, unless the minor or ward poses 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.

And more recently on May 8, 2014, Rep. Cedric Richmond from 2d District of Louisiana, introduced H.R. 4618, Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014, intended to develop and implement national standards for the use of solitary confinement in the Nation’s prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities. The recommendations include:

  • Limiting the use of segregation to only extreme and specifically defined situations;
  • Ensuring that prior to being placed in segregation, an inmate is entitled to a meaningful hearing on the reasons for and duration of the confinement;
  • Ensuring that indefinite sentencing of an adult inmate to long-term isolation will not be allowed;
  • Ensuring that inmates are afforded a meaningful review of the confinement at least once every 30 days;
  • Ensuring that prisoners and juvenile detainees diagnosed with a serious mental illness shall not be held in long-term solitary confinement;
  • Limiting the use of solitary for the purpose of protective custody only; and more.

This bill was co-sponsored by 22 other representatives from California, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, D.C, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, and Texas, and on May 8, 2014 it was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Related Readings:

Boxing Up Our Rights: The CJS Tackles Solitary Confinement

Criminal Justice Society at Pace hosted a Spring 2014 event dedicated to discussing solitary confinement. The event was well attended leaving the attendees with a lot to think about. Our first year students who attended this event shared some of their thoughts with us below.

POST WRITTEN BY: Alexandria Capaccio (’16), Ashley Kersting (’16), and Jake B. Sher (’16)

Loneliness is very much like pain.  It has evolved over time to change our behavior so that we reconnect with others, which is necessary for our survival. … Being ignored is so painful it’s better to be treated badly by someone than ignored….

John Cacioppo, Social Neuroscientist, City of Chicago

These words from National Geographic’s “Lonely Prisoners” Program served as the opening gambit for The Pace Criminal Justice Society’s discussion on solitary confinement, entitled Thinking Outside the Box.  The panel brought attention to the serious issues of solitary confinement in prisons. Pace’s Professor Michael B. Mushlin engaged three panelists: Sarah Kerr, Staff Attorney in the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society; Five Mualimm-ak, a solitary confinement victim and prison reform activist; and Leah Gitter, whose family member with mental illness has been held in solitary confinement at a number of prisons including Rikers Island. The panelists drove home the central issue that the current method of solitary confinement is not working; it is both inhumane and counter-productive.

Over 80,000 prisoners in this country are living 23 hour days alone in their cells deprived of any meaningful stimulation. The panelists referred to these extreme conditions as “torture.” A former inmate, Five changed his first name to memorialize the five of his twelve years of incarceration that he spent in solitary confinement.  Five was placed in solitary confinement not as a punishment for the crime he committed or any violent behavior, but instead for minor disciplinary violations he allegedly committed while incarcerated.

Five explained that even minor disciplinary violations, such as possessing too many pencils or t-shirts, frequently subject a prisoner to an indefinite period of time in the “box.”  There are no governing time limitations or regulations on the time spent in the “box,” instead the decision about the duration of this type of confinement is left to the discretion of prison officials.

Collectively, the panel agreed with the goal of the prison system to protect, reform and rehabilitate inmates, but took the position that subjecting mentally ill prisoners to solitary confinement does not further those goals.  Instead, solitary confinement is unnecessary and inflicts further psychological damage on inmates.

The panelists stressed that contrary to the common belief that solitary confinement is used to protect other prisoners from other dangerous, violent, or gang affiliated members, the majority of prisoners spending time in the “box” are there due to the prison’s inability to deal with the inmates’ mental and physical disabilities.  These harsh living conditions remove inmates from human sensory stimulation and contact; and as such, they are directly attributable to the high recidivism rates of inmates subjected to such confinement.

The public’s attention on issues of solitary confinement tends to focus on the question of whether prisoners are serving time because they are guilty.  This focus, however, obfuscates the actual problem that solitary confinement poses to the liberty of prisoners and law-abiding citizens alike. In the seminal case on the issue, the Supreme Court held: “Prison disciplinary proceedings are not part of a criminal prosecution, and the full panoply of rights due a defendant in such proceedings does not apply.”  Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556 (1974).  New York’s Appellate Division has held Wolff to mean that inmates charged with violating disciplinary hearings are entitled to minimal due process protections that do not include the right to counsel or to confront or cross-examine witnesses. Laureano v. Kuhlmann, 550 N.E.2d 437, 439 (N.Y. 1990) (emphasis added). Courts are divided as to the evidentiary standard used for disciplinary proceedings between “some evidence” and “substantial evidence” – both standards well below the preponderance of the evidence standard used in civil litigation (to say nothing of “beyond a reasonable doubt”).

American citizens who retain their “full panoply of rights” would never tolerate the loose evidentiary standard that is used when determining whether an inmate should be placed in solitary confinement.

Perhaps a better way of considering the problem revolves around Professor Mushlin’s haunting statement that some former victims of solitary confinement may be – or are – our neighbors; they are either released after their prison terms have ended, as Five was, or worse, they are exonerated innocents.  They are our fellow citizens’ cousins, friends, spouses, or parents.  If we would not tolerate the trampling of our own rights under the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments, we should not tolerate theirs, either; the slope is slippery, and we are much closer to their plight than we would prefer to believe.