[Ppnews] New Report Examines the Hardships of Life After Solitary Confinement

[Political Prisoner News]

  New Report Examines the Hardships of Life After Solitary Confinement

August 10, 2012
http://solitarywatch.com/2012/08/10/new-report-examines-the-hardships-of-life-after-solitary-confinement/ 
<http://solitarywatch.com/tag/supermax-prisons/>
by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway 
<http://solitarywatch.com/author/jeancasellaandjamesridgeway/>

An important new report, released yesterday by the American Friends 
Service Committee in Arizona, is the first to focus on the effects 
solitary confinement has on its survivors /after/they leave prison. 
/Lifetime in Lockdown: How Isolation Conditions Impact Prisoner Reentry/ 
<http://afsc.org/document/lifetime-lockdown-report>, finds that spending 
time in solitary leaves people "deeply traumatized and essentially 
socially disabled." These "crippling symptoms" combine with "the 
extensive legal and structural barriers to successful reentry" to create 
"recipe for failure." It is hardly surprising, then, that the report is 
able to "directly link conditions in Arizona's supermax prisons with the 
state's high recidivism rate."

/Lifetimes in Lockdown/ raises issues that have been largely absent from 
research and discussions on prisoner reentry and recidivism. As the 
report points out:

    Much of the discourse...has focused on what are referred to as
    'collateral consequences': the structural barriers erected by
    institutions that bar people with criminal convictions from voting,
    housing, employment, welfare assistance, and other factors critical
    to ensuring success upon release. Rarely is there discussion of the
    direct impact that prison conditions have on a person's cognitive,
    emotional, social, and behavioral functioning and therefore, on that
    person's ability to function as a member of society post-incarceration.

The most serious problems, of course, result from the "deleterious 
mental health impacts of incarceration in super maximum-security---or 
"supermax"---environments," which remain with people long after they 
leave solitary for the general population, or leave prison for the free 
world. In addition, the report finds, "policies limiting visitation and 
prohibiting maximum-security prisoners from participation in education, 
treatment, and employment have a negative impact on these prisoners' 
reentry prospects."

Yet the Arizona Department of Corrections, like most prison systems, 
does little to "prepare prisoners who have been held in supermax during 
their incarceration for reentry to the community," and on the outside, 
"social service agencies are largely unaware of, and unprepared to 
address, the special needs of this population." Many survivors of 
solitary "'slip through the cracks,' while others self-isolate and 
deliberately avoid social service agencies."

The report is based largely on research done by Dr. Brackette F. 
Williams, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of 
Arizona, under a Soros Justice Fellowship. Under the name "Project 
Homecoming," Brackette worked with the AFSC in Arizona to study the 
impact of solitary confinement on prisoner reetry. As the report notes:

    Psychologist Dr. Terry Kupers makes the comparison between prisoners
    who have just been released from solitary confinement in a supermax
    facility and persons who were recently on suicide watch. The most
    likely and dangerous time for violence, acting out, or another
    crisis to occur is immediately after one is released. Dr. Kupers
    says, "Whether a prisoner leaves the isolation unit and gets into
    trouble on the yard or 'maxes out...' and gets into trouble in the
    community, we are seeing a new population of prisoners who, on
    account of lengthy stints in isolation units, are not well prepared
    to return to a social milieu." This is an institutional and systemic
    problem that is created by the conditions of incarceration...

    The participants reported that they would often avoid the areas
    where the few available social service agencies, transitional homes,
    and homeless shelters are located, because these are areas where
    they made poor choices previously. Likewise, available shelters
    offer very little in the way of privacy, are always crowded, and
    difficult to get into. For prisoners who have spent years in
    isolation, such an environment would be the last place they would
    want to turn. While deciding to avoid problem locations would
    usually be considered wise, the reality is complex--in these cases,
    it renders the individuals even more isolated and lacking any
    support networks or services. Here, the self-inflicted social
    isolation that was created by the extreme isolation in prison is
    most noticeably debilitating.

    In describing his life on the outside, one participant who avoided
    old neighborhoods and contacts said that "life is way harder out
    here for me than it is in there." He is not alone in this nostalgia
    for prison life and for the isolation of the supermax cell. A female
    participant, also homeless and barely getting by at the time of the
    interview, said almost ashamedly, "The worst thing that I can
    honestly say about trying to get back into society is I miss my cage
    more and more everyday. I just can't function out here." When asked,
    "Do you want to the small cage back or the big cage?" she replied,
    "The smaller the better. I can control everything in it." They make
    repeated efforts to avoid people, for example moving to the edge of
    the city or living alone in a tunnel. It is strikingly reminiscent
    of the social withdrawal that Craig Haney describes as endemic to
    persons held in isolation for long periods, except now they are
    outside the supermax cell, in the great wide open of supposed
    freedom, which terrifies them.

    Thoughts of suicide permeated many of the participants' interviews,
    especially when the conversation turned toward plans for the future.
    At least 10 of the male participants (50 percent) from Pima County
    had considered suicide between their release from prison and their
    first interview. Each participant who reported suicidal thoughts
    mentioned them in more than one of their interviews. Strikingly,
    some of these men had been out of prison less than one week when the
    first interview took place. They reported the inability to see a
    viable way to remain out of prison, yet at the same time could not
    imagine doing more prison time. By their final interview, three of
    these men stated that they considered suicide on a daily basis, but
    had yet to act on these considerations. A few also considered
    committing some crime that would land them back in prison and allow
    for more time to devise a better strategy for handling life on the
    outside.

    Anyone leaving prison is faced with an unwelcoming social landscape.
    The simultaneous necessity and absence of housing and work are
    experienced immediately. The freedom of release is truncated by
    limited housing options, partially as a result of neighborhood bans
    on people with felony convictions, and a job market that has very
    little inclination or incentive to hire former prisoners. Add to
    this reality significantly higher rates of mental illness;
    tendencies toward social withdrawal; lack of support networks or
    family to rely on due to the added social distance of a supermax
    prison; and no transition services after spending years in the most
    extreme isolation, and the experience of a former supermax prisoner
    begins to take shape. More notably it begins to demonstrate the
    compounded effects of supermax confinement and the additional
    limitations once released. In the same way, one prisoner's perceived
    ease of life in prison compared to his experiences of life on the
    outside, as well as another's longing for a space she can control
    even if it is a cage, demonstrates precisely the extra layer of
    difficulties created by prolonged isolation.

A press release from AFSC calls the report's findings "a wake-up call to 
corrections officials, state leaders, and social service agencies, who 
are often completely unaware of the prison experiences of their clients 
or how to assist them in this transition. AFSC hopes that this research 
will add to the growing body of evidence that the practice of long-term 
solitary confinement in supermax units creates more problems than it is 
purported to solve and should be abolished."

AFSC also notes that "the release of this report coincides with the 
launch of Arizona is Maxed Out 
<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1890/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11317>, 
a joint campaign with the ACLU of Arizona against the planned expansion 
of maximum-security prisons in Arizona. The latest state budget 
allocated $50 million to build 500 more maximum-security beds in the 
next two years."

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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