<\/p>\n
Guest Post by Jacob Alderdice, HLS ’14<\/p>\n
Harvard PLAP Panel on Solitary Confinement<\/strong><\/p>\n Solitary confinement, a practice that has been under scrutiny for hundreds of years, continues to be widespread within United States prisons.\u00a0 Despite abundant medical literature detailing the severe and disastrous effects such isolation can cause, correctional institutions continue to utilize this practice on thousands of incarcerated people.\u00a0 Advocates have filed lawsuits and spoken out to try to bring this issue to the forefront of the public mind.<\/p>\n On Monday, February 25th<\/sup>, the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project (PLAP), along with several co-sponsors, hosted a panel on Solitary Confinement.\u00a0 HLS students and PLAP Policy Coordinators Jeanne Segil \u201914 and Sia Henry \u201914 put the event together, assembling a panel of experts that encompassed several sides of the issue.<\/p>\n Over one hundred students, activists, and outside community members filled Austin West to capacity and then some to see the panel moderated by Matthew Segal, the Legal Director of the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts.\u00a0 The panel included:<\/p>\n Professor Jules Lobel, the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has been leading litigation challenging U.S. solitary confinement practices under the 8th<\/sup> Amendment\u2019s prohibition of \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d and the 14th<\/sup> Amendment\u2019s guarantee of due process;<\/p>\n Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who has extensively researched the psychological effects of solitary confinement;<\/p>\n Bobby Dellelo, an activist working for the American Friends Service Committee\u2019s Criminal Justice Program, who experienced solitary confinement in Massachusetts; and<\/p>\n Mikail DeVeaux, the Executive Director and Founder of Citizens Against Recidivism, a New York City community organization advocating for both incarcerated people and their families.<\/p>\n A powerful and moving conversation ensued among the five men.<\/p>\n \u201cJust Describing the Situation Seems to Define Cruelty\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Professor Lobel introduced the topic of solitary confinement by describing one of his legal battles in the field.\u00a0 An Ohio district court judge declared that the informal procedures for placing people into solitary confinement in a Youngstown, Ohio Supermax were a violation of their procedural due process.\u00a0 The Supermax, a term for the highest security prison, had been placing people into solitary confinement without hearings, including many mentally ill people and \u201cpeople that didn\u2019t belong\u201d in solitary confinement.\u00a0 After the ruling, the institution conducted hearings and reduced the amount of people in solitary from 500 to 50, seemingly affirming that many of the people indeed did not belong there.\u00a0 Yet the Supreme Court later overturned the district court\u2019s decision, holding that the original informal procedures were sufficient.<\/p>\n Professor Lobel introduced a recurring motif for the night: the shocking nature of solitary confinement being met with judicial and institutional apathy.\u00a0 80,000 people are in solitary confinement nationwide, 25,000 of them in Supermax prisons, and 1,000 of them in Pelican Bay State Prison alone, a California Supermax.\u00a0 The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit last year against the California Department of Corrections, alleging that the solitary confinement practices of Pelican Bay violate the 8th<\/sup> Amendment\u2019s prohibition of \u201ccruel and unusual punishment,\u201d and the 14th<\/sup> Amendment\u2019s guarantees of due process.<\/p>\n The 1,000 people in solitary in Pelican Bay remain in windowless cells for twenty-three hours a day.\u00a0 For the remaining hour, they are put into \u201crecreation\u201d cells, with twelve-foot walls and wire mesh covering the ceiling, blocking natural light.\u00a0 The cells used to be empty of any items used for recreation.\u00a0 After the inmates led a hunger strike, there is now a ball in the cells.\u00a0 During their time in solitary, incarcerated individuals are unable to receive visitors and prohibited from engaging in programs, thus cutting off any meaningful activity or interaction with the outside world.\u00a0 Some of the people put into this isolation were put there due to dangerous, violent behavior.\u00a0 But many were put there solely out of a concern that they are gang-affiliated.\u00a0 For example, some inmates were placed into solitary confinement after correctional officers found posters in their rooms of George Jackson, a renowned author and prison activist.<\/p>\n Of the 1,000 people in isolation at Pelican Bay, 500 have been there for ten years or more.\u00a0 100 have been there for over twenty years.\u00a0 A United Nations inquiry into solitary confinement established a limit at which the treatment becomes torture: 15 days.\u00a0 Professor Lobel noted, \u201cJust describing the situation seems to define cruelty.\u201d\u00a0 However, \u201ccourts are demanding more.\u201d\u00a0 Courts are not satisfied with \u201cmere\u201d mental anguish and suffering.\u00a0 The 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act narrowly defines injury, requiring physical injury or serious mental illness for a prisoner to receive damages.\u00a0 Professor Lobel ended by noting that if the torture conducted at Abu Ghraib, including sensory deprivation, humiliation, and waterboarding, had occurred in the United States, the prisoners would not have an 8th<\/sup> Amendment claim available to them due to the Prison Litigation Reform Act.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Prisons Refuse to Look\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n After noting that the \u201ctorture\u201d of solitary confinement is \u201cfar greater than physical pain,\u201d Dr. Stuart Grassian explained how people in the prison system are well aware of these effects, but actively ignore them.\u00a0 Dr. Grassian supported this by pointing at the extensive history of documentation of the severely harmful effects of solitary confinement.\u00a0 As early as colonial America, the Puritans experimented with solitary confinement.\u00a0 They believed this type of forced isolation would be a \u201cmonastic experience,\u201d allowing people to repent (thus the name \u201cpenitentiaries\u201d).\u00a0 This experiment was a disaster, resulting in case after case of psychosis and suicide.<\/p>\n This experience remained in the collective American conscience, as late as an 1890 Supreme Court case.\u00a0 Dr. Grassian described the case of James Medley, a Colorado man that was convicted of murdering his wife.\u00a0 Instead of being hanged immediately, he was placed in solitary confinement for a term of zero to forty-five days, to be held before his hanging.\u00a0 In the case of In Re Medley<\/em>, the Supreme Court declared this additional sentence unconstitutional, stating that \u201cexperience demonstrated that there were serious objections\u201d to solitary confinement.\u00a0 Describing the sordid history of the practice, the Court was so struck by the punishment that they let Mr. Medley, a convicted murderer, go free.<\/p>\n Dr. Grassian also cited modern research into the severe effects of confinement.\u00a0 Research conducted during the Korean War by Harvard psychologists and funded by the United States, demonstrated the extreme effects of sensory deprivation.\u00a0 There is also an abundance of \u201ccommon medical literature\u201d describing the effects of similar phenomena, such as ICU (Intensive Care Unit) psychosis, and visual impairment.\u00a0 While the American prison system has shown no concern about the effects of this treatment, the Navy and NASA, concerned for the effects of people in deep sea and space isolation, have commissioned many studies and taken many precautions.\u00a0 Dr. Grassian emphasized the \u201creadily accessible medical literature\u201d that was available from all of these studies, but lamented that \u201cprisons refuse to look.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMonster Factories\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Bobby Dellelo began by trying to help everyone picture themselves in a cell, alone.\u00a0 He spent five years in solitary confinement in Walpole, Massachusetts, in what is called the Departmental Disciplinary Unit (DDU).\u00a0 He described how the cells feel \u201chuge\u201d, and that \u201cyou become small\u201d in them.\u00a0 Although Professor Lobel said his clients are typically in the cells for 23 hours a day, Dellelo said it more often became 24 hours a day.\u00a0 For many different reasons, people would not be taken out all day.\u00a0 He went on to describe the \u201chighly toxic environment\u201d of solitary confinement that affects the individual, the guard, and the administration.<\/p>\n Once he had been removed from human interaction, Dellelo could no longer function the few times he was able to see people.\u00a0 When his lawyer came to visit, he would look away for a moment, then look back and completely lose the conversation.\u00a0 No longer able to maintain conversation, he would become paranoid and disturbed until he returned to his cell.<\/p>\n At night, Mr. Dellelo was jolted awake every forty-five minutes to an hour by the blaring buzzer that would go off every time the correctional officers entered on patrol.\u00a0 The officers\u2019 footsteps would echo through the halls, as other inmates began yelling.\u00a0 As the effects of the isolation and sleep deprivation built up, smaller noises started to become words.\u00a0 The soft buzzing of the radiator started as \u201ceeeeehhhhhh\u201d but turned into \u201cwhatareyoudoing whatareyoudoing killyourself.\u201d\u00a0 Dellelo noted, \u201cThere is no doubt I was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding to these feelings of psychosis was the \u201cunbearable rage\u201d Mr. Dellelo felt towards the correctional officers.\u00a0 \u201cThey would toss my cell every time I left,\u201d he said.\u00a0 When he returned to his cell, the legal materials that he spent all day organizing would be out of order.\u00a0 The area outside the cells was considerably warmer than inside the cells, so the officers would turn the temperature down to stay comfortable.\u00a0 This left the inmates freezing inside of the cells.\u00a0 Near the cells, there was a gym intended for the inmates (\u201cWe couldn\u2019t use it. The guards used it.\u201d), and a dining room (\u201cWe couldn\u2019t use it. The guards used it.\u201d)\u00a0 Dellelo was driven to fantasizing about attacking and brutally murdering the officers.\u00a0 He reflected, \u201cI didn\u2019t know how much of me was going to be left inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Dellelo acknowledged the rationale for separating some people.\u00a0 He admitted he was an \u201cescape artist.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYou put me in minimum security, I\u2019m gone,\u201d he said, waving his hand goodbye.\u00a0 \u201cBut why can\u2019t you separate people in a humane way?\u201d\u00a0 He pointed to Maine, which removed 70 percent of its segregated population from solitary confinement and has not encountered any serious problems with violence.<\/p>\n Dellelo now has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which he says is \u201chappening to everyone\u201d that has spent extensive time in solitary.\u00a0 He remembered the people that were already seriously mentally ill that were placed in DDU, that would do things like put feces in their mouth and \u201cspit feces at each other\u201d when they were taken out.\u00a0\u00a0 Calling the solitary confinement units \u201cmonster factories\u201d, he wondered, \u201cDo you want people better or worse when they return to the community?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of The People, Not One of Those People\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Mikail DeVeaux\u2019s remarks contrasted with the other speakers\u2019 description of the problems of solitary confinement. Rather than detailing the abuse and effects of the issue, he took an advocate\u2019s perspective and focused on what we can do to facilitate change.\u00a0 He set the tone of the night by reminding everyone that we must not just think of incarcerated individuals as \u201cprisoners\u201d, but rather as people, in order to avoid the \u201cnot like them mentality\u201d that often surrounds incarcerated people.\u00a0 If even advocates for incarcerated people think of prisoners as \u201cothers\u201d, if they work in isolation from the community of incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated people, then it becomes more difficult to convince the public that the suffering of \u201cprisoners\u201d is something that they should care about.<\/p>\n Mr. DeVeaux emphasized this point while mentioning that a flyer for the panel had originally noted that he had spent time in Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York.\u00a0 DeVeaux requested this part of the flyer to be removed.\u00a0 He had indeed been in Sing Sing; he had also been in Green Haven, Comstock, Clinton, Auburn and other prisons in New York.\u00a0 He spent time in solitary confinement.\u00a0 But he strove while in prison to \u201cnot become institutionalized.\u201d<\/p>\n Knowing that he \u201ccould not win physically\u201d against the guards, he fought to stay alive mentally; reading and trying to maintain a connection to the outside world.\u00a0 He said that talking to people on the outside and reading authors like George Jackson \u201chelps you to see yourself in the larger context.\u201d\u00a0 He had come from an impoverished background, living in Harlem with underfunded public schools.\u00a0 Once DeVeaux saw the bigger picture, it helped him lift himself up, acquire a college education and become a successful advocate both inside and outside of prison.<\/p>\n \u201cChange How People Think, Then Organize, Then Mobilize\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n When asked how we can achieve victories in the movement against solitary confinement, Professor Lobel pointed out that while courts have been \u201creasonably bad\u201d in the area, there were some signs that \u201cthe tide has turned.\u201d\u00a0 While even some liberal judges have upheld solitary confinement practices in the past, the \u201cperceptible abuse\u201d of the practices is now \u201crankling courts.\u201d\u00a0 He referenced a Louisiana case, the \u201cAngola Three\u201d, in which three prison activists had been solitarily confined for an alleged murder, two of them for forty years.\u00a0 Their civil lawsuit recently survived a motion to dismiss.\u00a0 Lobel stated simply that courts must recognize that solitary confinement \u201cdeprives people of a fundamental need of human interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Grassian began speaking to the same point, suggesting that \u201ccourts need to embrace more fully the psychiatric pain\u201d caused by solitary confinement.\u00a0 Mr. DeVeaux then jumped in, saying it \u201ccan\u2019t just be the courts or the lawyers\u201d forcing the change.\u00a0 \u201cWe need all the players at the table for these cases, including the community.\u201d\u00a0 He exhorted the large crowd of people in the room to \u201cget involved.\u201d\u00a0 Change would come \u201cif the general public were more aware.\u00a0 They need to get it.\u201d\u00a0 This is why people cannot have the \u201cthey\u2019re not us\u201d reaction to incarcerated people.\u00a0 \u201cWe have to change how people think.\u00a0 Then organize them, then mobilize them.\u201d<\/p>\n Professor Lobel pointed to the recent hunger strikes organized by Pelican Bay prisoners as a way of trying to get the public\u2019s attention.\u00a0 He ended by suggesting alternatives to the current system.\u00a0 Correctional institutions can still have some segregation without it being an \u201cexaggerated response to alleged gang affiliation\u201d and while \u201cdoing it in a humane way.\u201d\u00a0 The CCR\u2019s California lawsuit suggests that \u201cif someone commits a serious crime in prison, they can get a sentence of a limited (not indeterminate) amount of time in solitary.\u201d\u00a0 He offered another alternative, but one that he acknowledged had not gotten much traction in court: \u201cStudies show that if you just treat people with respect, they are less likely to react violently.\u201d<\/p>\n Ways to Get Involved<\/strong><\/p>\n In response to Mr. Deveaux\u2019s challenge to the crowd to get involved, Matthew Segal turned to members of the crowd that are involved in prisoners\u2019 rights and solitary confinement advocacy.\u00a0 Links to their organizations are below.<\/p>\n Prisoners\u2019 Legal Services: http:\/\/www.plsma.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n Physicians for Human Rights: http:\/\/physiciansforhumanrights.org\/issues\/torture\/<\/a><\/p>\n American Friends Service Committee: http:\/\/afsc.org\/goal\/healing-justice<\/a><\/p>\n Between the Bars:\u00a0https:\/\/betweenthebars.org\/ Related Links:<\/p>\n On Bobby Dellelo (and Solitary Confinement Generally): http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/03\/30\/090330fa_fact_gawande<\/a><\/p>\n On Pelican Bay Lawsuit: http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/05\/31\/pelican-bay-lawsuit-solitary-confinement_n_1560918.html<\/a><\/p>\n