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<h1><font size=4><b>City Plans to Double Solitary Confinement Cells on
Rikers Island</b></font></h1><font size=3>November 21, 2011<br>
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/11/21/city-plans-to-double-solitary-confinement-cells-on-rikers-island/" eudora="autourl">
http://solitarywatch.com/2011/11/21/city-plans-to-double-solitary-confinement-cells-on-rikers-island/<br>
</a>by <a href="http://solitarywatch.com/author/casellaj4/">Jean
Casella</a> <br><br>
<b>By Jean Casella and Dina Levy<br><br>
</b>Over the past year, the New York City Department of Corrections
(NYCDOC) has quietly implemented a massive expansion in the number of
solitary confinement units on Rikers Island. By the end of 2011, the
number of “punitive segregation” cells at Rikers will have grown by 34
percent, from 602 to 958–and further expansions may soon bring the number
to more than 1200. Some of these cells, in which prisoners are isolated
for up to 23 hours a day, hold juveniles, inmates with mental illness,
and pre-trial detainees not yet convicted of any crime. Once the
expansion is complete, New York City’s island jail will have one of the
highest rates of solitary confinement in the country.<br><br>
In increasing its use of solitary confinement at this time, NYDOC is
bucking a national trend. A growing body of academic research suggests
that solitary confinement can cause severe
<a href="http://solitarywatch.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/fact-sheet-psychological-effects-of-solitary-confinement2.pdf">
psychological damage</a>, and may in fact increase both
<a href="http://www.prisoncommission.org/pdfs/Confronting_Confinement.pdf">
violent behavior</a> and
<a href="http://www.urbanjustice.org/pdf/press/pojo_17oct10.pdf">suicide
rates</a> among prisoners. In recent years, criminal justice reformers
and human rights and civil liberties advocates have increasingly
questioned the widespread and routine use of solitary confinement in
America’s prisons and jails, and states from
<a href="http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/129316-reducing-solitary-confinement/">
Maine</a> to
<a href="http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/courts-corrections/mississippi-correction-reform.html">
Mississippi</a> have taken steps to
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-06-13-solitary-confinement-being-cut_N.htm">
reduce the number</a> of inmates they hold in isolation.<br><br>
In New York City, in contrast, the Department of Corrections is doing
everything possible to expand its use of solitary confinement. “Every bed
that can be converted is being converted” to punitive segregation,
<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=8436212">
NYDOC Commissioner Dora Schriro said</a> at a November 17 meeting of the
City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee. Schriro was grilled about a
spike in violence on Rikers, both at the meeting and in
<a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/dora_schriro_co.php">
recent run-ins</a> with the Rikers guards’ union. The Correction
Officers’ Benevolent Association
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/rooms-rikers-lack-space-solitary-confinement-leads-spike-violence-article-1.980606?localLinksEnabled=false">
attributes an increase</a> in inmate attacks on the large backlog of
prisoners waiting to serve their time in “the Bing,” as the punitive
segregation units are commonly called. In response, Shriro promised that
punitive segregation at Rikers would eventually increase by 45 percent
over current levels, bringing the total number of Bing cells to 1250.
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/rooms-rikers-lack-space-solitary-confinement-leads-spike-violence-article-1.980606">
According to the
</a>
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/rooms-rikers-lack-space-solitary-confinement-leads-spike-violence-article-1.980606">
<i>Daily News</a></i>, ”It costs the cash-strapped department thousands
of dollars to convert jail cells into solitary sections. The so-called
‘bing’ cells also require extra staffing because guards must escort these
inmates everywhere.”<br><br>
Sentences in the Bing range from days to months, and multiple sentences
can add up to a year or more. During this time, inmates leave their cells
only for short periods of segregated exercise and in order to bathe,
attend religious services, or receive visits. “Punitive segregation is
one of several management strategies for preventing and reducing violence
in the jails,” Sharman Stein, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information
at the NYDOC, said in an email to Solitary Watch. She added that the
NYDOC also utilizes a reward system “to incentivize pro-social
behavior.”<br><br>
Nevertheless, inmates can end up doing time in the Bing not only for
violent offenses, but for nonviolent infractions ranging from insolence
toward guards to testing positive for drugs to possessing contraband of
any kind. (In a recent high-profile case, rapper Lil Wayne
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/06/lil-wayne-solitary-confinement">
received a month of punitive segregation</a> for having a smuggled iPod
in his cell.) Schriro insists that the backlog of inmates awaiting Bing
time is made up of nonviolent offenders only.<br><br>
Critics believe that solitary confinement is overused, rather than
under-utilized, on Rikers. “DOC should find methods that are
rehabilitative not punitive,” says Jennifer Parish, Director of Criminal
Justice Advocacy at the Urban Justice Center. Advocacy groups including
the Urban Justice Center, Legal Aid Society, and Correctional Association
are
<a href="http://www.reentry.net/ny/calendar/event.398882-Planning_Meeting_on_the_Conditions_of_Jails_on_Rikers_Island">
convening a strategy session</a> on December 1 to discuss the problems at
Rikers, including the dramatic growth in solitary confinement.<br><br>
Some critics argue that large-scale punitive segregation is a misguided
response to prison violence. “Prison officials often cite a decrease in
violence after expanding the use of solitary,” said Stuart Grassian, a
psychiatrist who served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has
conducted studies on the effects of solitary confinement. “I think this
needs to be placed in context. Of course when inmates cannot
interact with each other or with staff they simply cannot engage in
violent behavior. But this does not mean that the problem of violence is
thereby addressed. You can put a dog in a cage and beat it and starve it
and kick it all you want. It certainly won’t be violent as a result.
Until, that is, you open the cage.”<br><br>
As Grassian pointed out in an interview with Solitary Watch, “The cages
at Rikers will, someday, open.” A majority of inmates in the island jail
are in detention awaiting trial, and the rest are serving short sentences
of up to one year, mostly for nonviolent crimes. So “virtually all the
inmates confined in that way will, someday, get out, and be among us,”
Grassian continued. “Then the pent up violence their confinement caused
will be unleashed, not in solitary, but out among us–in the
community.”<br><br>
According to Sharman Stein, adolescent male inmates are among the most
prone to violence, which is why the NYDOC has chosen to add 60 new
isolation cells to Rikers Islands’
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/nyregion/two-officers-at-rikers-island-plead-guilty-in-assault-case.html">
scandal-ridden</a> Robert N. Davoran Center, the facility that houses
male teens. Stein stated that since expanding the number of solitary
units at Davoren, fights have decreased by 39 percent over a six month
period. At the same time,
<a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_8_67/ai_106225215/">
critics contend</a> that isolation is
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/lost-boys-juvenile-detention">
especially damaging</a> for teenagers.<br><br>
“I couldn’t believe they would treat a child this way,” said Lisa Ortega,
a single mother and community activist in the Bronx, whose 16-year old
son was sent to Davoren last year on charges of possessing a firearm. In
an interview, Ortega said her son suffers from extreme hyperactivity and
other psychological problems, though he has not been clinically
diagnosed. He was placed in solitary confinement within a week of
arriving at Riker’s for “cursing at a guard.”<br><br>
Ortega said that her son suffered terrible anxiety attacks while in
solitary and talked openly about harming himself to escape the isolation.
He was released from punitive segregation after about 10 days, but soon
was accused of “inciting a riot” after getting into a fist fight. This
time he was sentenced to 20 days in the Bing, and his physical health
deteriorated along with his mental condition. “I was shocked when I saw
him,” Ortega said. “He had lost 20 pounds, and his hair was falling out.
A sixteen-year-old boy whose hair is falling out!”<br><br>
Ortega’s son is now facing an 80-day sentence in solitary confinement,
once again for fighting. Ortega believes strongly that her child would
benefit greatly from a thorough medical evaluation, a formal diagnosis,
and an appropriate course of treatment. So far she has been unable to get
Riker’s to provide that level of care. “They gave him some anxiety
medicine after he threatened to hurt himself. That was the end of
it.”<br><br>
One-third of the prisoners on Rikers have been diagnosed with mental
illness, making the island jail effectively the largest in-patient
psychiatric facility in New York State. While the NYDOC maintains several
special mental health units, it also has two punitive segregation wings
designated specifically for inmates with mental illness–and advocates say
that the mentally ill are found throughout the Bings.<br><br>
Solitary confinement has been shown to
<a href="http://www.supermaxed.com/NewSupermaxMaterials/Haney-MentalHealthIssues.pdf">
cause psychological damage</a> to prisoners without underlying
psychiatric conditions. (One study showed reduced EEG activity after as
little as one week in solitary.) For those with mental illness, isolation
can be particularly devastating.
<a href="http://www.prisonlegalnews.org/%28S%284fyatdeavf314jml4qmpmza3%29%29/includes/_public/_briefbanks/motions/jonesel_v_litscher_wi_memorandum_in_support_pi_motion_2001_mental_health_supermax.pdf">
According to Terry Kupers</a>, a clinical psychiatrist and professor at
the Wright Institute in Berkeley, solitary confinement is “an extreme
hazard to the mental health and wellbeing” of inmates who are suffering
from or prone to serious mental illness. “It causes irreparable emotional
damage and psychiatric disability as well an extreme mental anguish and
suffering, and in some cases presents a risk of death by
suicide.”<br><br>
Yet by exhibiting the symptoms of untreated or inadequately treated
mental illness, these very inmates are more likely than others to land in
the Bing. The fractured system creates a perpetual cycle of crime and
punishment which can be extremely difficult to break.<br><br>
Randi Sinnreich, a social worker at Bronx Defenders, related one example
of how this paradox plays out. Several years ago she represented a young
man who had been clinically diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Charged
with stealing a cell phone and unable to afford bail, her client was
forced to wait for his trail on Rikers Island. When he arrived at the
jail, he was misdiagnosed and then denied the necessary medication that
would control his disease. As a result, his behavior became erratic and
he was soon serving time in punitive segregation. Living in extreme
isolation triggered more outbursts, and following each episode his
sentence in solitary was extended.<br><br>
Sinnreich spent countless hours working through the administrative
red-tape at Riker’s in attempt to get her client a psychological
re-evaluation. She ultimately succeeded, and his condition was
re-classified, but not before he had served almost a full year in
solitary confinement while awaiting trial. Sinnreich said she worries
that with more than 356 new solitary confinement beds to fill, a growing
number of prisoners in need of mental health treatment will instead be
spending more time in 23-hour-a-day lockdown.<br><br>
In September, the Bloomberg Administration announced a new initiative
designed to address the high rate of mentally ill prisoners in the city’s
jail system. According to a
<a href="http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2011b%2Fpr338-11.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1">
press release</a>, the initiative’s steering committee is “committed to
investigating the specific challenges this population faces and ensuring
their needs are in fact being addressed.”<br><br>
While encouraged by the announcement, advocates for prisoners with mental
illness are perplexed by the NYCDOC’s decision to simultaneously
undertake the largest expansion of solitary confinement units in recent
memory. According to the Urban Justice Center’s Jennifer Parish, the two
initiatives are directly at odds, since “it is well documented that
solitary confinement has a negative impact on mental health.”<br><br>
Once the expansion of punitive segregation at Rikers is completed and the
cells filled to capacity, close to 10 percent of the islands average
daily population of 12,700 inmates will be in 23-hour-a-day lockdown.
This exceeds even the rate of disciplinary confinement in New York
State’s prisons, which at 7.6 percent is the highest in the nation,
<a href="http://www.correctionalassociation.org/publications/download/pvp/issue_reports/lockdown-new-york_report.pdf">
according to a report by the Correctional Association</a>. Nationwide,
the rate of solitary confinement is thought to be between 2 and 4
percent, which itself far exceeds the rates of solitary confinement in
other industrialized countries.<br><br>
The
<a href="http://www.aclu.org/stop-solitary-dangerous-overuse-solitary-confinement-united-states">
American Civil Liberties Union</a>,
<a href="http://afsc.org/campaign/stopmax">American Friends Service
Committee</a>, and
<a href="http://www.nrcat.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=429&Itemid=311">
National Religious Campaign Against Torture</a> are among the national
groups that have taken a strong stand against what the ACLU calls the
“dangerous overuse of solitary confinement in the United States.” In
October,
<a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2011/10/19/un-torture-investigator-calls-on-nations-to-end-solitary-confinement/">
Juan Mendez</a>, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, called
on UN member nations to ban nearly all uses of solitary confinement.
Mendez criticized precisely the kinds of practices that are alive and
growing on Rikers Island, stating that the isolation of prisoners should
never exceed 15 days, and that it “can amount to torture or cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment,
during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for
persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”<br><br>
Beyond concerns about its innate cruelty, Grassian argues that solitary
confinement is bad for society as well as for the prisoners themselves.
Inmates who have spent time in solitary on Rikers “will someday leave
prison,” he says, “and our prison system will have succeeded in making
them as out of control and dangerous to the community as it possibly
could. Rikers will not have gotten tough on crime. It will
have gotten tough on us–on the community to which these individuals will
someday return.”<br><br>
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