I certainly feel that way, although not to this extreme:
"Massachusetts prisons still rely heavily — too heavily — on the use of solitary confinement to discipline and control prisoners. Other than Arkansas, only Massachusetts allows prisoners to be sentenced for up to 10 years in isolation for disciplinary infractions, according to the Boston-based Prisoners’ Legal Services. It’s not a proud distinction....
And yet we are raised on smug regional superiority around here.
The impetus for prison reform in Massachusetts was stronger five or six years ago. That’s when the system had fallen under harsh scrutiny for a shocking spike in prisoner suicides, suicide attempts, and acts of self-mutilation by mentally ill prisoners. Things have calmed down since then. But failure to address the overuse of solitary confinement now is almost certain to set off another crisis in the future....
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"Solitary confinement comes under new scrutiny; Courts, legislators look to rein in a practice they say causes behavioral problems but state prison officials call an essential tool" by Milton J. Valencia | Globe Staff, May 07, 2013
Neil Miller is still haunted by the seclusion, the disorientation, the darkness.
During his more than 10 years as a prisoner, Miller spent weeks, months, and once even two years in solitary confinement units, where inmates are kept for as many as 23 hours a day.
“It’s a mental game in there,” Miller, now 46, said recently, still reflecting the anger and acting out that repeatedly got him sent to what prisoners call “the hole.” “You’re fighting with your own sanity, trying to keep yourself together.”
He was eventually vindicated by new DNA evidence and freed — but not before the time spent alone in a cell had taken its toll.
Oh, no ANOTHER INNOCENT MAN who spent time in JAIL!
I $uppo$e that is what happens when pri$on becomes an indu$try in AmeriKa. No wonder we have so many s*** laws.
The use of segregation units — where roughly 500 of the state’s 11,000 prisoners are held in Massachusetts on any given day — has come under increased scrutiny over the last year, with state and federal court rulings limiting their use. State legislators have proposed regulating them further.
Only took 'em four f***ing years!
The Department of Correction defends what it calls special management units, saying they are needed to keep unruly inmates in order.
“We have to be realistic when we’re running these prisons … Segregation is a necessary tool in a prison environment,” said Luis S. Spencer, the department’s commissioner of correction.
Maybe we should just execute them all and have done with it, huh?
After all, prisoners are simply the guys the cops didn't kill.
The growing divide over their use in Massachusetts mirrors a national trend. Prisoner-rights advocates, legislators, and even corrections commissioners in other states are increasingly denouncing the use of solitary confinement, while others defend the practice as an essential part of prison management.
Look, it's Massachusetts' very own debate about torture.
“There really is a seismic shift going on in both the public attitude and corrections practice,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, which has researched the effects of segregation. “I think there has been a growing awareness of the extremely damaging effects of solitary confinement.”
Massachusetts officials maintain that prisoners are kept in the units only as long as needed and that department staff check their records multiple times a week to determine whether it is time to return them to the larger prison population.
But the protocol is often contradicted by the department’s own data.
Translation: You were just lied to by the state. I say we put them in isolation!
Recent data compiled by the Prisoners’ Legal Services, a Massachusetts prisoners advocate group, show that inmates in some short-term units are being held far longer than initially intended....
Sad to say it, but that is standard.
The use of segregation is as old as the American judicial system.
That seems at odds with the liberty and justice for all on which I was raised.
Though the units differ from one facility to the next, prisoners in a typical solitary confinement-like setting are locked in a cell for all but an hour a day; during that time they are allowed to exercise or shower.
Alcatraz!
Food is brought to them. They have a pad and pen, though on rare occasions they may have a radio or television. For the most part, they are by themselves....
Might be safer that way -- for them.
“I think over the past year, there’s been a lot more scrutiny and discussion over, ‘is this the proper way to treat human beings,’ ” said State Senator James Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, who has two state prisons in his district, sponsored a bill recently that would significantly limit the use of solitary confinement to only the most necessary occasions.
Studies have increasingly shown that prisoners’ mental illness — often an undetected, underlying factor in behavior problems — worsens in solitary confinement settings. Advocates speak anecdotally of inmates trying to keep themselves sane by writing on toilet paper, or talking to birds.
V for Vendetta!
Prisoners with no history of mental illness can develop one in the units, government and academic studies have found.
You know who benefit$ there, right?
And prison officials are finding that the costs of running solitary confinement units are sometimes outpacing the associated benefits of their use....
Translation: it's costing the greedy state tax loot -- thus a policy change is in order.
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Related: The State of Massachusetts is Mentally Ill
Sure looks like torture to me.
And we are one of the "good" ones -- or so I'm told.
UPDATE:
"Solitary overused, harmful in prison, advocates say" by Alyssa A. Botelho | Globe Correspondent, June 21, 2013
Former inmate Jose Bou remembers the anxiety of solitary confinement as being so powerful that when he finally stepped out of his cell, he felt “like a rubber band pulled tight . . . ready to snap.”
A decade ago, the now 37-year-old Bou was serving time in a maximum-security prison after being convicted on drug charges. He remained there for two years, confined to his cell 21 hours a day.
Bou’s case, and stories like his, brought state lawmakers together with activists, lawyers, and medical professionals at a State House briefing Thursday to heighten awareness and promote an easing of solitary confinement policies. Those policies, they said, harm rather than rehabilitate prisoners who feel alienated from the community to which they are striving to return.
Welcome to AmeriKan justice, going strong for over 200 years now.
Roughly 500 of the 11,000 state prisoners are in segregation units on a given day. Solitary confinement cells differ between institutions, but in most cases the inmates are kept under lock and key for all but a few hours a day.
Lighting and ventilation in the cells can be poor, and prisoners are rarely allowed to keep books or watch television. At Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, where Bou was held, he was allowed a shower three times a week.
Massachusetts is one of two states (the other is Arkansas) where an inmate can be sentenced to solitary confinement for up to 10 years.
Senator James Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, has two state prisons in his district.
“Each year I walk through the prisons, and I have a chance to step inside a solitary confinement cell,” he said at the briefing. “You get a very cold feeling imagining what that life is like. . . . It’s shocking that these are the policies we have.”
Eldridge and Representative Elizabeth Malia, a Jamaica Plain Democrat, are spearheading a bill that would allow for inmates facing severe isolation sentences to be given more rehabilitation and a chance for early release.
There are two kinds of solitary confinement in Massachusetts. In “administrative segregation,” inmates, such as those awaiting trial, are kept in isolation for up to 15 days until correction officers determine where to move them.
But the 15-day rule does not apply to inmates who face “disciplinary segregation” for violence or other behavior problems. Prisoners with the most serious infractions are sent to the Department Disciplinary Unit at MCI Cedar Junction in Walpole, where they are kept in isolation 23 hours a day.
The bill Eldridge and Malia sponsored would require that inmates facing disciplinary segregation at Walpole and other facilities be given a hearing within 15 days of being confined and every 90 days afterward to evaluate behavior. Prisoners would also be given notice of what they need to do to be released, as well as a conditional release date.
Solitary confinement sentences would be limited to six months for all but the most extraordinary circumstances.
Stuart Grassian, a Massachusetts psychiatrist, said confinement exacerbates suffering for the mentally ill and can cause previously healthy inmates to become psychotic.
And then they will have to be pre$cribed some pharmaceutical. Hmmmm.
“Environmental deprivation has a profound, deleterious effect on mental function,” he said.
Long-term isolation, Malia said, is a steep monetary burden on the state. The average cost to guard a state prisoner is roughly $45,000 each year, but it is double to triple that for an inmate in solitary confinement, she said.
While advocates of solitary confinement say such units are essential to keeping unruly inmates from harming themselves and others, Bou, now a youth counselor, said the segregation is a double blow to inmates’ chances for reintegration: It takes away educational resources and drives prisoners to internalize an image of themselves as threats to society, he said.
Looking at the crowd of mostly college-age listeners Thursday, Bou said, “Everyone here looks like students. Imagine if you were in prison trying to start your education at 30, locked in a cell with no books.”
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Afghan Classroom
Yeah, imagine.
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At least the roof ain't falling in.
