[Ppnews] Voices from Solitary: Colorado Department of Corrections in Need of Correction

[Political Prisoner News]

Voices from Solitary: Colorado Department of Corrections in Need of Correction

April 30, 2011
http://solitarywatch.com/2011/04/30/voices-from-solitary-colorado-department-of-corrections-in-need-of-correction/

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

For seven years, Clair L. Beazer has been an 
inmate in the supermax Colorado State 
Penitentiary in 
<http://solitarywatch.com/2010/10/11/the-colorado-files-leaving-canon-city/>Cañon 
City–which, as we’ve written before, qualifies as 
the 
<http://solitarywatch.com/about/fortresses-of-solitude-part-2/>solitary 
confinement capital of the Western World. In this 
essay, Beazer describes the effects of years of 
solitary confinement, pointing out that while it 
is particularly torturous for inmates already 
suffering from mental illness, this 
“interminable, indefinite” isolation also causes 
lasting psychological and physical  damage to all prisoners who endure it.

Beazer notes that “at long last,” some hope is 
offered by the bill introduced in the Colorado 
state legislature to limit the use of solitary 
confinement. In an instance of grim irony, we 
received his essay, written last month, just a 
day before 
<http://solitarywatch.com/2011/04/28/colorado-lawmakers-present-weakened-version-of-solitary-confinement-bill/>lawmakers 
chose to back away from most meaningful portions of the bill.

In most instances the law is a simple matter of 
doing what you should rather than what you want. 
One consequence of continuing to do what you want 
regardless is that a conscientious legislator 
someplace may find it necessary to propose a law 
to compel you to do what you should do.

Just such a circumstance has come about in the 
state of Colorado’s Department of Corrections 
(C.D.O.C.), of whom some are known to say the 
reason they’re called the “Department of 
Corrections” is because they’re always getting it wrong.

The C.D.O.C’s execrable practice of warehousing 
the mentally ill in lockdown 24/7 is 
unconscionable. To sentence men without due 
process to a solitary existence in a lonely cell 
with only the company of their psychoses  and 
personal demons for interminable, indefinite 
periods, some lasting decades would and does 
appear on the surface alone indefensible. To 
further exacerbate their evil usage by holding 
them thus until their mandatory release date only 
serves to discharge infinitely more dangerous parolees into the public.

Enduring this type of incarceration has many 
debilitating effects, the most common being 
depression with accompanying apathy and lethargy. 
The minimal activity and lack of meaningful 
exercise can atrophy their legs and some can 
barely walk after years of inactivity, and you 
can bet that there is little market for ex-cons 
who can’t even walk a quarter mile after release.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, 
motivated, active, angry inmates that 
compulsively work out 2, 4, 8 hours a day in the 
fashion of the hardened vengeful convict 
portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the movie “Cape 
Fear.” For months, then years, then decades, 
driven by their isolation, not even allowed IN 
PRISON to walk out of a cell without a two or 
three-man escort. In restrains, handcuffs, 
shackles, bellychains, lock-boxes. Surrounded by 
thick concrete walls, high fences, barbed wire, 
razor wire, armed tower and perimeter guards, electrified kill fences.

Ominously and inevitably their long-awaited day 
arrives, and when it does the C.D.O.C. dutifully, 
imprisoned in full restraints, escorts them to 
the prison gates, where and when they unleash 
them upon the public. Not surprisingly, their 
recidivism rate is exponentially and in some 
cases horrifyingly higher, as is their toll on 
society
you know, the public the C.D.O.C. ostensibly exists to defend.

The public may want to consider if perhaps the 
Prison Industrial Complex (of which the C.D.O.C. 
is definitely a part with its Incarceration 
Capitol of the World designation and proud title) 
finds it more profitable to release their 
home-made monsters. After all, we all know that 
high-profile horrific crimes can and often do 
drive news cycles, and have for years. Surely 
after all these years of high-profile horrific 
crimes that lead the news cycles somebody, 
anybody, everybody must have noticed that they drive incarceration rates.

Even so, no one is surprised that the C.D.O.C. 
has come out in fierce opposition to the Senate 
Bill 176 (introduced by Sen. Morgan Carroll, if 
passed the C.D.O.C would need to limit the 
solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners 
–Denver Post, March 14, 2011) , as they claim it 
is because they say there is no indication 
officials are abusing the use of solitary 
confinement. Please allow me, from my true 
insider perspective, to disabuse you of that 
notion because for those of us actually in 
solitary confinement, we say they are abusing the 
over-use of solitary confinement.

They also make the preposterous claim that the 
average stay is 18 months. Let me tell you that 
those numbers are about as an off the books as 
C.D.O. (Collateralized Debt Obligation) at AIG. I 
personally have been in Ad Seg for 7 years. Let 
me to a survey, to my immediate right 7 years, to 
my left 8 years, next to him 4 years and under me 
10 years. In my 7 years, I’ve only witnessed 2 men get of Ad Seg. 2!

The C.D.O.C. is in need of correction and the 
honorable Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire 
Levy are the conscientious lawmakers trying to 
write another C.D.O.C. with Senate Bill 176, 
which is a start, a good start, at least, at long last.

I (we) don’t have much hope up here in the 
shameless incarceration capital of the world, and 
maybe, just maybe these venerable legislators can 
compel the C.D.O.C to stop doing what it wants 
and force it to begin doing what it should.

You can read an earlier essay by Clair Beazer 
<http://solitarywatch.com/2010/08/01/voices-from-solitary-supermaxed-out-in-colorado/>here, 
and write to him at the following address: Mr. 
Clair L. Beazer, CSP #49801, C.C.F., Box Number 600, Canon City, CO 81215-0600.




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