[Pnews] 100, 000 U.S. Prisoners Are Trapped in Isolation Units. Terry Kupers Explains Why
Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Fri Oct 6 12:21:36 EDT 2017
http://www.colorlines.com/articles/100000-us-prisoners-are-trapped-isolation-units-solitary-author-and-forensic-psychiatrist
100,000 U.S. Prisoners Are Trapped in Isolation Units. 'Solitary'
Author and Forensic Psychiatrist Terry Kupers Explains Why
Bill Berkowitz - October 6, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are nearly 100,000 people being held in solitary confinement today
in America’s prisons. They are locked up in cramped, often windowless
cells for nearly 24 hours a day. They eat alone. They exercise alone in
small fenced-in areas known as cages or dog runs. They are almost
completely segregated from the mainstream population and there are no
programs available to them. Most aren’t allowed to make phone calls to
loved ones. And they are often subject to extreme and excessive
punishment, euphemistically called “cell extractions.”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/us/when-cell-door-opens-tough-tactics-and-risk.html>
Robert Hillary King, an Angola 3 <http://angola3.org/> member who spent
29 in solitary confinement, <http://www.kingsfreelines.com/> has called
this isolation a matter of “moral depravity.”
Forensic psychiatrist Terry Allen Kupers knows this moral depravity all
too well. He has spent 40 years evaluating prisons and jails and
testifying in class action suits revolving around prisoners’ rights
issues such as overcrowding, sexual abuse and the lack of decent mental
health treatment.
In his new book <https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520292239>,
“Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish
It,” Kupers describes how long-term solitary confinement destroys the
minds of those imprisoned. He also explains how prisons became
warehouses for the mentally ill, which set the stage for a 30-year boom
in supermax prison construction and the placement of a large number of
prisoners in solitary confinement.
Here, in his first extensive interview since the September release of
“Solitary,” Kupers discusses private prison practices, the role of race
in solitary confinement and why he does this painful work.
*Describe what you look for when you investigate a prison.*
I tour the facilities, noting things like crowding, gymnasiums converted
into impromptu dorms, prisoners lying in their bunks in the middle of
the day because there is nothing productive to do, excessive use of
force [by guards] and filthy isolation cells. I talk to prisoners about
the conditions and their medical and psychiatric treatment. I review
cartons of documents, including prison policies, medical charts and
reports of audits and accreditation inspections. I would like to talk to
staff in depth about what they do, but usually the attorney general will
not permit that. I have to learn the staff’s perspective by reading
depositions they give in the case.
*What role do you play in court cases? *
I am a psychiatric expert witness, or sometimes I serve as monitor after
the case is settled and I assess the state’s performance in carrying out
the court’s orders. I testify about inhumane and unconstitutional
conditions of confinement, including solitary confinement, inadequate or
harmful mental health services and sexual abuse. After I have done
my investigation, the county or state’s attorneys depose me under oath.
Some large class actions are settled at that point. Some go to trial,
and then I testify in court as a psychiatric expert. After I describe
unconstitutional and abusive conditions and practices, I am asked what
remedies I would recommend, and that’s when I have an opportunity to
share with the judge or jury the proven effective alternatives to prison
crowding and solitary confinement.
*How do private prisons play into all this? *
Private prisons are the sites of some of the worst human rights abuses.
After all, the way corporations make a profit is to cut corners on
staffing costs and drastically cut down on rehabilitative programs.
Private prisons, which tend to be more crowded than those run by the
government, rely a lot on solitary confinement to manage prisoners. They
pay staff lower wages and provide them less training than in government
facilities. President Obama favored moving away from private prisons
<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/obama-administration-end-use-private-prisons/>
and solitary confinement in the federal system, but the Trump
administration favors the private prison corporations
<http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/23/516916688/private-prisons-back-in-mix-for-federal-inmates-as-sessions-rescinds-order>,
especially in the realm of immigration detention. The stock of the
private prison corporations rose precipitously in value immediately
after Trump won the election.
*What motivated you to get involved in prison work? *
Back in the day, I was the physician for the Black Panther Party’s
Bunchy Carter Free Clinic in South Central L.A. In 1971, COINTELPRO and
the LAPD Red Squad attacked the Panther office—the building where the
clinic was located—and shot the 13 Panthers sleeping there. I went to
the L.A. County Jail Hospital Ward and demanded to see my patients. The
conditions and treatment in the jail were horrid, and I reported that to
the press.
*How did you end up testifying in class action cases?*
A couple of years later, the ACLU sued the L.A. County sheriff over
unconstitutional conditions and inadequate treatment at Men’s Central
Jail and asked me to be their expert witness. I went back in and this
time reported the appalling conditions to the federal judge. The
psychiatric community was just beginning to discover that a large number
of individuals suffering from serious mental illness were behind bars.
Once I learned of the horrors that regularly occur [in jails and
prisons] I felt compelled to investigate, testify and generally holler
about the massive abuses.
*I understand there are 100,000 prisoners in solitary confinement today.
How did that happen?*
In the 1980s, prisons were overcrowded [due to] longer sentences and the
War on Drugs, and they were out of control with a lot of violence. The
choice was to either downsize the prison population through sentencing
reform while upgrading rehabilitation for prisoners, or to lock up “the
worst of the worst” in solitary. The powers that be decided on [the
isolation option]. This was a historic wrong turn, and we entered the
age of supermax. There was no improvement in the violence or gang
problems, but there was massive human damage.
*What role does race play in solitary confinement? *
It’s all about race, of course. It starts with who goes to prison: While
approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population is African American,
over 40 percent of prisoners are Black. Latinos are equivalently
overrepresented in prison. In terms of consignment to SHU (Security
Housing Units), there is an unfortunate national trend to send White
prisoners to mental-health treatment for the same rule-breaking
behaviors that get Blacks placed in SHU.
*Can you given me an example?*
In New York, according to a 2014 study by the New York Advisory
Committee to The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, African Americans make
up almost 18 percent of the state population but nearly 50 percent of
the state’s prisoners and 59 percent of those kept in extreme isolation.
For prisoners under age 21, Black youths constitute 66 percent of those
in solitary confinement.
In other words, the racial disparities and discrimination that permeate
our society are multiplied and exaggerated behind bars. The racial
discrimination of officers is well known, and that includes
corrections officers.
*Why are there so many people with serious mental illness in our jails
and prisons, and why do so many of them wind up in solitary confinement?*
With deinstitutionalization
<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/timeline-mental-health-america/>,
the War on Drugs and the de-funding of social welfare safety net
programs, a lot of people with mental illness ran afoul of the law. In
prison, they are victimized or they find it difficult to follow all the
rules and they get singled out for punishment with solitary confinement.
Just about everyone in solitary develops dreadful symptoms, including
massive anxiety, mounting anger, despair, paranoia, repetitive behaviors
such as pacing, and, too often, suicide. When individuals suffering from
mental illness are consigned to SHU, it exacerbates their mental health
problems. They develop worse disabilities and prognoses.
*What effect is the Trump/Sessions regime having on prison reform, and,
by extension, solitary confinement?*
Before Trump, there was a bipartisan effort
<https://www.colorlines.com/articles/new-development-prison-reform> to
put radical sentence reform on the legislative agenda. Obama
<https://www.colorlines.com/articles/president-obama-after-prison-visit-%E2%80%98there-grace-god%E2%80%99>,
[Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
<https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/kalief-browder-justice-kennedy-solitary-confinement/396320/>]
and many influential people were calling for a move away from solitary
confinement, and we were on a path to reform. But Attorney General Jeff
Sessions
<https://www.colorlines.com/articles/icymi-criminal-justice-orgs-denounce-jeff-sessions-mandatory-minimums-directive>
insists on the harshest sentences and Trump likes waterboarding
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1374/bring-back-waterboarding/>.
I worry that the progress of recent years will be reversed. The scenario
that scares me the most is the detention of millions of immigrants in
[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention centers, where the feds
ask the states and counties to incarcerate the overflow and prison
crowding returns with a vengeance. Correctional authorities [will] once
again make the wrong decision and put a lot of prisoners in solitary.
*I imagine that the correctional authorities insist they need solitary
confinement to keep prisons safe. How do you respond to that?*
Research shows no improvement in the violence rate in prisons, the gang
problem continues unabated, and a huge number of prisoners are very
damaged from their stints in solitary. Actually, prisoners who spend
time in solitary are more difficult to manage after they are returned to
general population, and that’s why the violence rate is not improved.
*Tell me about some of the court cases you’ve been involved with.*
I have testified in dozens of court cases. Among the most significant is
/Coleman v. Wilson,/ which was about mental healthcare throughout the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. This case
resulted in an order from the Supreme Court to downsize the state’s
prisons. Then there was /Presley v. Epps/, which was about conditions
and inadequate treatment for prisoners with serious mental illness at
the supermax unit within the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
And /Ashker v. Brown/ was a case that came out of hunger strikes at
Pelican Bay State Prison in California. It addressed conditions and due
process in the SHU.
*Do you think class action lawsuits an effective way to reform the
criminal justice system? What about legislation and social activism?
What is needed at this point?*
Lawsuits alone will not change things, but they permit us to enter the
prisons and assess the damage. Only with social activism, starting with
calls for radical sentence reform and massive downsizing of the prisons,
will we see progress. Some legislatures are responding to advocates,
including prisoners’ families, and they’re passing sentencing- and
prison-reform legislation.
/Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland-based freelance writer who has covered
conservative movements and related issues. His work has appeared in The
Progressive, The Nation, Z Magazine and AlterNet, and he has authored
several books. Berkowitz wrote the pioneering study on welfare
privatization
<https://www.raceforward.org/research/reports/prospecting-among-poor-1>,
“Prospecting Among the Poor.” He is the recipient of a Special
Journalism Award from the Before Columbus Foundation./
--
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