PENNED UP The grid of fencing visible to the right of center is where the solitary inmates exercise. |
Solitary confinement sickness
In American supermaxes inmates spend almost no time outside their tiny cells. Maine inmates get an hour alone in a small cage outdoors five days a week in good weather (some prisoners are permitted outside in groups). In their infrequent trips to the showers or the glass-partitioned visitor booths, they’re in handcuffs and ankle irons with a guard on either side, even if they have no history of violence. Radios and televisions are forbidden. Cell lights are always on. Cold food is shoved through a slot in the steel door. The slot is probably hazardous because feces, urine, and blood often coat the cell and corridor walls, floors, and ceilings.
Throwing body waste and blood and cutting up to produce the blood are extremely common in supermaxes. The human mind fares poorly in isolation, which “often results in severe exacerbation of a previously existing mental condition or in the appearance of a mental illness where none had been observed before,” Stuart Grassian, a leading researcher on solitary confinement, writes of supermaxes.
Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist who planned to testify to the Maine Legislature at a hearing on a bill to limit the prison’s solitary confinement (see sidebar, “Seeking Humane Treatment”), says that supermaxes produce a “specific syndrome” characterized by “agitation, self-destructive behavior, and overt psychotic disorganization.” He also notes memory lapses, “primitive aggressive fantasies,” paranoia, loss of control over impulses, and hallucinations.
Grassian’s is the consensus view. “Research on effects of solitary confinement has produced a massive body of data documenting serious adverse health effects,” writes Peter Scharff Smith, a Danish researcher who has compiled the most comprehensive survey of medical literature on the subject. Other symptoms include depression and even catatonia. Researchers agree the effects may start within a few days, involve as many as three-quarters of supermax inmates, and often become permanent.
Another authority on solitary confinement, psychiatrist Terry Kupers, writes that “being held in isolated confinement for longer than three months causes lasting emotional damage if not full-blown psychosis and functional disability.” Former Maine State Prison chaplain Stan Moody can name 25 inmates who have been in the supermax for extremely long periods: “I’ve seen prisoners stay in segregation for up to 20 months. They simply get forgotten.”
But listen to voices from the Maine supermax itself or from men who have had experience there. These are excerpts from my interviews or letters written to me or to Judy Garvey, a prisoner-rights activist in Blue Hill.
-Supermax inmates “often, after long periods of time — nine months and up — play in their feces and urine, spreading it all over the cell and throwing it at guards, thus getting them physical abuse, more disciplinary time . . . The effects on me were horrific. . . . The walls begin to have faces and voices. . . . There’s a lot I haven’t even told my Mom” _Ed Graham
-One mentally ill man held for a long period “cut his testicle open” and another time “pulled out his vein” _Sam Caison
-“I started hearing voices and was so dizzy for seven days straight . . . the pain got so bad I couldn’t take it and tried to commit suicide by hanging myself” _Tino Marino, who has filed a federal lawsuit against prison officials for sexual and physical abuse
-The isolation included being alone in a cell “with no blankets, no clothes, butt-naked for three days, snow coming in the door, Mace covering me” _Michael James
-“I’ve seen several men attempt to commit suicide . . . One prisoner cut a main artery and painted Bible scripture on his walls because he thought the Lord told him to do so” _Jacob McInnis Sr.
-“Animals are treated better than how they treated me . . . They never shut the light out. Your mind plays tricks on you and sleep deprivation sets in. You don’t know what time it is or what day it is. . . . You lose all hope after a while” _Billy Leland
-“Being in solitary confinement . . . has affected me the most by depriving me of any contact visitation with my two young children.” _Jacob McInnis Sr.
-“I was devastated in that cold cell. I had a two-inch-thick foam covered in dirty, blue plastic for a mattress and no pillow on a cement bed. They left me there for days with no books or nothing to write with. Time went by so slowly, and I wanted to die” _Billy Leland
-“It is torture. We are being left in these cells not to be taught a lesson but to be taunted, pushed over the edge, to be psychologically broken down, and for some of us to lose our integrity, our dignity, and our minds” _Jacob McInnis Sr.
Wardens and politicians traditionally describe supermax prisoners as “the worst of the worst,” and segregating violent inmates was the justification for building supermaxes in the 1980s and 1990s. Most inmates, though, are not placed in the supermax because of violence, but for such things as possession of contraband like marijuana, a refusal or just a hesitation to follow a guard’s order, an unproven accusation by one inmate against another, and even the benign motivation of protecting them from other inmates. Deane Brown, the convicted burglar who provided me with crucial information for my first story about the Maine supermax, was put in solitary for months because items were found in his cell — such as wire and a screwdriver — which he said he used for fixing other inmates’ radios and TVs.
But mental illness is the most common denominator: mentally ill inmates have a hard time following prison rules. A study in Wisconsin found that three-quarters of the inmates in two supermax units were mentally ill. In a cruel cycle, the mentally ill have their stay extended the longest because they can’t prevent themselves from protesting the conditions.
Federal courts have found that keeping mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Constitution, and the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have successfully sued in several states to keep the mentally ill out of supermaxes. But in most states, including Maine, these court rulings have been ignored. The United Nations Convention against Torture, to which the US is a party, prohibits “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” in prison punishment, but this law, too, is ignored.
