The “Torture of Isolation” Gains Media Attention

From Solitary Watch:  http://solitarywatch.com/2012/06/27/the-torture-of-isolation-gains-media-attention/

June 27, 2012

“The Torture of Isolation” is the title of a post on Andrew Sullivan’s hugely popular blog The Dish, at the Daily Beast. The post features a new video from Reason TV, a project of the libertarian foundation that also publishes Reason magazine. Reason’s editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie interviews SW’s James Ridgeway on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails.

Also referenced in Sullivan’s post is a new piece by Time magazine’s legal columnist Adam Cohen, titled “It’s Time to End Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons“–one of many editorial, op-eds, and articles that follow up on the historic June 19 Senate hearing on solitary. Cohen writes:

Solitary confinement takes a brutal toll on anyone subjected to it — often pushing them past the breaking point. At last week’s congressional hearing, one former inmate — who was released from a Texas prison in 2010 after being exonerated — said that solitary confinement is “by its design driving men insane.” About half of suicides and a disproportionate amount of cases of self-mutilation occur among inmates in solitary. It is not just modern sensibilities that are offended by the cruelty of solitary confinement. Charles Dickens called it a “dreadful” punishment and declared it mentally torturous in ways that “none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creatures.”
Rather than reserving solitary confinement for the most vicious, unrepentant criminals, American prisons dole it out in heaping portions — and often for no good reason. Some inmates are put in solitary confinement for repeated violations of minor prison rules. There was a report at the congressional hearing of a prisoner who was caught with 17 packs of cigarettes and given 15 days for each pack, or eight months. Worse still: many inmates are put in solitary not because they have done anything wrong, but for their own protection. This includes victims of in-prison attacks and sexual assaults, gay inmates and children.
Adding to the numbers: the 1990s boom in Supermax prisons, which were built to house inmates in solitary confinement. One 2005 study found that 40 states were operating Supermax, or similar-styled, prisons, which held 25,000 inmates. But many ordinary prisons also place inmates in solitary — generally at the unchecked discretion of corrections officials.

Also see the latest batch of strongly worded editorials opposing the use and abuse of solitary confinement, not only in the New York Times, but also in smaller papers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Toledo Blade. Or Google “solitary confinement Senate hearing” to view the widespread coverage this event received. And consider that just two years ago, it was highly rare to see any mention of this issue outside of Solitary Watch–a tribute to the prisoners, advocates, and grassroots activists who have made solitary confinement in America increasingly impossible to ignore.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

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The Abuse of Solitary Confinement

From the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/opinion/the-abuse-of-solitary-confinement.html

June 20, 2012

Solitary confinement in this country has devolved from a short-term punishment imposed infrequently for violating prison rules into a routine form of prison management. Today, tens of thousands of local, state and federal prisoners are held in prolonged abusive isolation — in tiny, windowless cells for up to 23 hours a day.

On Tuesday, a Senate judiciary subcommittee met to consider the many costs of this practice — the first time that Congress has even acknowledged the problem.

More than 80,000 of the nation’s 2.3 million prisoners are held in isolation, noted the subcommittee’s chairman, Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois. While defenders claim that solitary confinement is needed to control the most violent prisoners, prolonged isolation is known to induce suffering and mental illness. About half of prison suicides take place in isolation units.

A 2006 study of prison safety and abuse led by a former federal court of appeals judge, John Gibbons, and a former attorney general, the late Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, raised concerns about higher recidivism rates when prisoners are released directly from solitary to the community. High rates of security segregation can actually increase incidents of violence.

Some of the most moving testimony at the hearing came from Anthony Graves, who was wrongly convicted of murder and served a decade of his 18 years in incarceration in brutal solitary confinement in Texas before his exoneration and release from prison in 2010. He described the agony of living in the “worst conditions imaginable” and the continued psychological toll.

The committee also heard from Christopher Epps, who is the commissioner of the Department of Corrections in Mississippi, one of a growing number of states that have reduced prison violence and reaped millions in budgetary savings by steeply cutting back on solitary confinement. Discouragingly, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Charles Samuels Jr., expressed scant interest in pursuing similar reforms even though 15,000 federal prisoners — 7 percent of the total population — are currently serving time in solitary. That compares with just 1.4 percent in Mississippi, a state hardly known for being soft on crime.

Senator Durbin says he is working on legislation that would require greater transparency about state and federal use of solitary confinement and looking at ways to remove barriers that make it nearly impossible for inmates held in solitary to protect their rights in court. The first step, though, should be clear standards minimizing the use of this form of punishment, including an immediate, strictly enforced bar on holding children and mentally ill inmates in severe conditions of isolation.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

Voices from Solitary: “I Lost the Will to Live”

From Solitary Watch:  http://solitarywatch.com/2012/06/24/voices-from-solitary-i-lost-the-will-to-live/

June 24, 2012

The following is an excerpt from testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights, which held a hearing on solitary confinement on June 19th. Brian Nelson, in written testimony, testifies to his 12 years in Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in Illinois.  Nelson, transferred from a minimum security prison in New Mexico, describes a harrowing experience of prison isolation and the significantly detrimental effects on his health and well-being. Tamms has recently been in the news for a contentious debate over its closure; this week, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced its  closure by August 31st.For the full testimony, click here. –Sal Rodriguez

As the time went by I remained in he gray box I degenerated even worse. I lost the will to live. I lost hope, even though I was scheduled to be released in a couple years. Depression overwhelmed me. Then a lawsuit as filed over the treatment of inmates with serious mental illness not being properly treated  at Tamms. I was named in that suit. In reply, Tamms mental health employees began to harass me and started placing me on suicide watches for no reason. I was given the Minnesota Multi Personality Test. When the results came back, the head psychologist called me to the infirmary had me locked in a bathroom and screamed at me that I was making her look bad. She then ordered officers to strip me naked–which they did leaving me locked on the bathroom for approximately 10 hours. The psychologist then ordered that my medication be immediately stoped. As part of the case, our lawyer arranged for two doctors to come into Tamms to evaluate me–Dr. Kathryn Burns and Dr. Terry Kupers. Both doctors confirmed that I was severely depressed and the conditions at Tamms exacerbated the depression. Both found that I was actively suicidal.

Even though Drs. Burns and Kupers are experts on the conditions of supermax prisons, the Tamm’ psychologist refused to initiate any of the therapy they proposed. I got worse. Another serious suicide attempt followed and I lost so much weight that the Deputy Director, after seeing me in the holding cell, ordered that some sort of treatment be started, and immediately had me weighed. I weighed 119 lbs. All the boned in my body protruded. I shuffled instead of walked. I had no appetite and wanted to die.

Everyday I went to sleep I got down on my knees and prayed that I would die in my sleep, yet God’s will was not mine. When I woke up in the night I prayed harder for death. I couldn’t sleep, and during thos period got no more than 16 hours of sleep a week. I went days pacing back and forth like a zombie (a condition now recognized as a sign of severe mental illness when exhibited by animals in zoos–but apparently its okay when people suffer this way). I looked like I was already dead and I had no will to live. Day after day all I saw was gray walls and over time my world became the gray box. I fought hard with my own mind, and I prayed. I copies the Catholic Bible word for word which took me 1 year 9 months and 2 days. I copied the Rule of St. Benedict 3 times and studied with Cisterician Monks and Priests. I watched a friend give up and kill himself at Tamms. Sadly, several minutes before he died, he told the nurse and mental health worker that he was going to commit suicide. They just didn’t care and walked away. Marcus Chapman was finally released from the gray box in a black body bag on August 24, 2005.

He concludes his testimony with the following:
I spent 12 years in solitary confinement and I was never told why I was placed in solitary. I am a human being and every day I still struggle with the trauma being held in that gray box. I wake screaming at night. I can’ get it out of my head some days. Solitary confinement in my opinion is worse than being beaten. That I spent twelve years in such conditions in America is appalling.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

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MICHGAN CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTICE

The Governor's Indigent Defense Advisory Commission will hold its last meeting this Friday, June 22 at 9:30 a.m. at Cooley Law School, Room 911, 300 S. Capitol Ave., Lansing, 48933. We're expecting the Commission to issue its final report at this brief meeting.

In other Campaign news, I wanted to let you know I will be leaving the Campaign for Justice at the end of this month, but I will still be fighting for indigent defense reform at my new position. The Campaign's current Deputy Director, Marcela Westrate, will serve as Interim Executive Director. For more details please see the news release below.

Thank you,

Peter Cunningham

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 12, 2012

Matt Resch, Campaign for Justice

(517) 371-7843

Marcela Westrate Named Interim Executive Director of Michigan Campaign for Justice

LANSING, MI – The Michigan Campaign for Justice today named Marcela Westrate the organization’s Interim Executive Director. Westrate previously served the Campaign as Deputy Director and takes the reigns as it was announced today that current Executive Director Peter Cunningham has been named Director of Government Relations for the State Bar of Michigan.

“We are thrilled that Marcela will be leading the team and the important effort to reform public defense in Michigan,” said Dawn Van Hoek, member of the Campaign for Justice Board of Directors. “Her experience with the Campaign and the skills she has developed through nearly a decade of work with lawmakers and the legislative process are a tremendous asset as we continue to build momentum for reform in Michigan.”

Before joining the Campaign for Justice, Westrate worked for the Michigan House of Representatives for five years where she advised lawmakers on ethical issues and House procedures, drafted legislation, reviewed and analyzed legislation for members of several committees including the Judiciary Standing Committee and members of the Appropriations Subcommittees on Corrections and Higher Education.

A 2003 Magna Cum Laude graduate of the Michigan State University Detroit College of Law, Westrate has also clerked for 54-A District Court Judge Amy Krause.

“The Campaign is also very grateful to Peter for his service, and we wish him the best,” Van Hoek said. “We look forward to continuing our work with him on indigent defense reform in his new role with the State Bar.”

Cunningham added: “We have made great progress in recent months on public defense reform with the naming of the Governor’s Commission on Indigent Defense Reform and its soon to be released report and recommendations. I look forward to continuing this effort, working together with the Campaign and the entire coalition of those who have advocated for reform for so long.”

The State Bar and Michigan Campaign for Justice have worked together in recent years as the Campaign has built of a broad-based coalition of organizations and individuals from across the political spectrum fighting for a fair and effective public defense system in Michigan. The Campaign believes that legislative reform is needed to improve cost effectiveness, protect the public’s safety and ensure one's Constitutional right to counsel.

More information about the Campaign for Justice is available online at www.michigancampaignforjustice.org

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

Xavius Scullark-Johnson, Prisoner, Dies After He's Denied Health Care

From The Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/xavius-scullark-johnson-dead_n_1625547.html?icid=hp_front_top_art

June 26, 2012

A prisoner was left in his urine-soaked cell to die after a nurse turned away an ambulance, even though he had suffered several seizures, according to documents obtained by the Star Tribune.

Xavius Scullark-Johnson, 27, was three months away from getting out of prison when he died in June 2010. He was serving a five-month sentence for a probation violation stemming from a second-degree assault conviction. Now his mother, Olivia Scullark, is suing two nurses employed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections at the Rush City prison, as well as other medical staff and corrections officers, according to the Pioneer Press.

Scullark told The Huffington Post she filed the lawsuit because that's what her son, who suffered from schizophrenia and a seizure disorder, told her to do if he didn't make it out of the prison alive.
"My son has written me a lot of letters," Scullark said. "His seizures got worse there. He said if he doesn't get out of there, I should sue them."

The Minnesota DOC declined to comment on Scullark-Johnson's death, citing the pending litigation. But in an email to HuffPost, DOC spokesperson Sarah Berg said, "the department must balance the needs of our offender population with the limited resources appropriated by the legislature."

Scullark said her son deserved to be treated much better.

"You can't even leave an animal like that," she said. "I'm pretty angry, but I'm glad that some justice is gonna come."

According to DOC documents and ambulance reports obtained by the Tribune, Scullark-Johnson was found "soaked in urine on the floor of his cell" on the night of June 28, 2010. "He was coiled in a fetal position and in an altered state of consciousness that suggested he had suffered a seizure," according to notes taken by nurse Linda Andrews.

The nurse left the prison after her shift ended without contacting the on-call doctor, instead telling corrections officers to keep an eye on him, according to the documents.

When a corrections officer later phoned the doctor after Scullark-Johnson's condition seemed to worsen, the doctor advised the officer to call 911, documents said. But when an ambulance showed up to take Scullark-Johnson to a hospital, the nurse on duty, Denise Garin, turned it away. Scullark-Johnson was pronounced dead hours later.

The Tribune notes that ambulance runs are "strictly monitored" in "an effort to cut costs" by Corizon Inc., the for-profit company contracted by the DOC to care for its prisoners.

Berg said DOC has a contract with a private health care company "to help manage care in a cost-efficient manner while still complying with community standards of care.

"Like any healthcare consumer may experience, this includes formularies, utilization review and managed care," Berg said. "It should be noted that the DOC does not train staff to consider costs when responding to life-threatening emergencies."

David Fathi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, told HuffPost that the government is constitutionally required to protect prisoners' health. “Prison officials have a duty under the Constitution to provide prisoners with adequate medical care," Fathi said in an email. "When they violate that duty, the results can be tragic.”

Fathi insisted that responsibility remains in the hands of the government, even when a private company is put in charge of caring for inmates.

"Prison officials can hire private contractors to provide health care, but the legal responsibility for ensuring that prisoners receive adequate care always lies with the state," he said.

Companies looking out for their bottom lines have no business providing services to prisoners, according to Fathi.

"We believe that incarceration is a uniquely governmental function that should never be contracted out to private, for-profit corporations," Fathi said. "When you combine the profit motive with limited oversight and an unpopular, politically powerless group like prisoners, it’s a recipe for bad outcomes.”

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

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Senators Start a Review of Solitary Confinement

From NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/senators-start-a-review-of-solitary-confinement.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

By ERICA GOODE Published: June 19, 2012

WASHINGTON — Solitary confinement “is inhumane and by its design it is driving men insane,” a former inmate who spent 18 years in prison in Texas, a decade of that time in isolation on death row before being exonerated, told a Senate panel in a hearing on Tuesday.

“I lived behind a steel door that had two small slits in it, the space replaced with iron and wire, which was dirty and filthy,” said Anthony Graves, whose conviction for involvement in multiple murders was overturned in 2006. “I had no television, no telephone and most importantly, I had no physical contact with another human being.”

The hearing, held before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, represents the first time lawmakers on Capitol Hill have taken up the issue of solitary confinement, a form of imprisonment that many human rights advocates believe violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” and that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months in the United States and internationally.

The practice, which is widespread in American prisons, has also been the target of a growing number of lawsuits, including a class-action suit filed on Monday on behalf of mentally ill inmates held in solitary at ADX, the federal super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Last month, civil rights lawyers representing prisoners held for more than 10 years in isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison in California filed suit in federal court, arguing that solitary confinement is unconstitutional.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the assistant majority leader, began the hearing — which he said had the support of both Democratic and Republican committee members — by noting that more prisoners are held in isolation in the United States than in any other democracy and that about half of all prison suicides occur among inmates in solitary confinement.

“We can have a just society, and we can be humane in the process,” Mr. Durbin said. “We can punish wrongdoers, and they should be punished under our system of justice, but we don’t have to cross that line.” He said he was working on legislation to encourage changes in the way solitary confinement is used.

With more than 250 people packed into two rooms, the hearing was “one of the best attended of the year,” Mr. Durbin said, an indication “of the fact that the time is due for us to have this conversation about where we’re going.”

Over the course of two hours, the senators heard testimony about the effects of solitary confinement and the steps taken in Mississippi and several other states to reduce the number of prisoners kept in isolation.

But the hearing also included a testy exchange between Mr. Durbin and Charles E. Samuels Jr., director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who defended the use of solitary confinement for inmates who pose a threat to the safety of staff members or other inmates.

“Do you believe you could live in a box like that 23 hours a day, a person who goes in normal, and it wouldn’t have any negative impact on you?” Mr. Durbin asked, pointing to a life-size replica of a solitary confinement cell that had been set up in the hearing room.

“Our objective is always to have the individual to freely be in the general population,” Mr. Samuels responded.

“I’m trying to zero in on a specific question,” Mr. Durbin said, adding, “Do you believe, based on your life experience in this business, that that is going to have a negative impact on an individual?”

“I would say I don’t believe it is the preferred option,” Mr. Samuels conceded, “and that there would be some concerns with prolonged confinement.”

Mr. Samuels said that of the 218,000 prisoners the bureau is responsible for, only 7 percent are kept in isolation cells. The ADX supermax — where many inmates spend 22 to 24 hours a day in their cells and are denied visitors and other privileges — houses only 490 prisoners, or 0.2 percent of the total population, he said.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

The Abuse of Solitary Confinement

From NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/opinion/the-abuse-of-solitary-confinement.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Solitary confinement in this country has devolved from a short-term punishment imposed infrequently for violating prison rules into a routine form of prison management. Today, tens of thousands of local, state and federal prisoners are held in prolonged abusive isolation — in tiny, windowless cells for up to 23 hours a day.

On Tuesday, a Senate judiciary subcommittee met to consider the many costs of this practice — the first time that Congress has even acknowledged the problem.

More than 80,000 of the nation’s 2.3 million prisoners are held in isolation, noted the subcommittee’s chairman, Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois. While defenders claim that solitary confinement is needed to control the most violent prisoners, prolonged isolation is known to induce suffering and mental illness. About half of prison suicides take place in isolation units.

A 2006 study of prison safety and abuse led by a former federal court of appeals judge, John Gibbons, and a former attorney general, the late Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, raised concerns about higher recidivism rates when prisoners are released directly from solitary to the community. High rates of security segregation can actually increase incidents of violence.

Some of the most moving testimony at the hearing came from Anthony Graves, who was wrongly convicted of murder and served a decade of his 18 years in incarceration in brutal solitary confinement in Texas before his exoneration and release from prison in 2010. He described the agony of living in the “worst conditions imaginable” and the continued psychological toll.

The committee also heard from Christopher Epps, who is the commissioner of the Department of Corrections in Mississippi, one of a growing number of states that have reduced prison violence and reaped millions in budgetary savings by steeply cutting back on solitary confinement. Discouragingly, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Charles Samuels Jr., expressed scant interest in pursuing similar reforms even though 15,000 federal prisoners — 7 percent of the total population — are currently serving time in solitary. That compares with just 1.4 percent in Mississippi, a state hardly known for being soft on crime.

Senator Durbin says he is working on legislation that would require greater transparency about state and federal use of solitary confinement and looking at ways to remove barriers that make it nearly impossible for inmates held in solitary to protect their rights in court. The first step, though, should be clear standards minimizing the use of this form of punishment, including an immediate, strictly enforced bar on holding children and mentally ill inmates in severe conditions of isolation.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

Nations High Court Ends Mandatory Life Without Parole Sentences for Youth

by Efren Paredes, Jr.     

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion abolishing life without parole (LWOP) sentences for the 2,500 prisoners across the U.S. who were condemned to die in prison for crimes they were convicted of as juveniles.

Courts will now have discretion to impose a lesser sentence in those cases and consider age as a factor in sentencing. Juveniles can receive LWOP sentences, however, it is a discretionary sentence now, not a mandatory sentence in cases involving homicide. Prisoners all ready serving LWOP sentences for crimes they were convicted of as juveniles are now eligible for resentencing. How that process occurs will vary by state.

The court conveyed what any parent, educator and common sense can tell us: children are different than adults. They possess the unique capacity for change and growth because they are still cognitively developing, and should be provided a path for rehabilitation during their incarceration.

Children are not incorrigible or expendable, nor are they miniature adults. They are not transformed into adults because they make mistakes or bad choices no more than they are transformed into adults for positive achievements or making good decisions.

It is undisputed that young people must be held accountable for their actions. This accountability, however, can only be achieved in ways that reflect the young person's age and his/her capacity for change. Just as the punishment should fit the crime, the punishment should also fit the offender.

In Michigan, 73% of the prisoners serving LWOP sentences for crimes they were convicted of committing when they were juveniles are people of color, yet they comprise only 27% of the youth in the state.

Nearly half of those convicted are also first-time offenders. Most grew up in impoverished areas, were victims of abuse, and were regularly exposed to drugs and violence.

The International Journal of Forensic Mental Health reports that 2/3 of males and 3/4 of females in the juvenile justice system show signs of one or more psychiatric disorders.

Taken together these findings reflect a very vulnerable demographic of 200,000 to 250,000 juveniles annually transferred to adult courts that are disparately being subjected to the harshest sentences meted out by judges.

Sadly, the vast majority of these juveniles are incapable of defending themselves against the political gamesmanship and cascade of abuses and mistreatment they are subjected to by older, experienced professionals in the criminal justice system.

It is a moral imperative that we now amplify the national conversation about the draconian policy of sentencing juveniles in adult courts. Rather than abandon and demonize young people, citizens should urge legislators to reform sentencing guidelines and work to ensure fairness in the parole process.

Life sentences in any form are veritable death sentences in Michigan. As long as they remain sentencing options for juveniles their opportunity for serious parole consideration will remain unattainable reality.

(Efren Paredes, Jr. is a Michigan prisoner sentenced to LWOP as a juvenile in 1989. Learn more about Efren at www.4Efren.com)

Mentally ill prisoners must have proper care

From azcentral.com:  http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/06/21/20120621brncik0623-mentally-ill-prisoners-must-proper-care.html

by Mary Lou Brncik - Jun. 23, 2012

The ridiculous column by Steve Twist, a former chief assistant attorney general, wherein he claims our Arizona state prisons to be humane and secure, was sad to read ("Ariz. prisons are humane, secure despite criticism," Opinions, June 16).

As an advocate for those with mental illness, I receive frequent requests for help from the mentally ill and their families, who are seeking to find just a glimpse of humanity from the administrators of our state prisons.
Instead, they find themselves cast into the abyss of brutality under the reign of the current Arizona Department of Corrections administration.

Even those suffering from psychosis caused by severe mental illness are not immune from harsh policies, regularly being sent to long-term isolation for refusing to obey commands of the officers in charge.

Those with severe disorientation due to psychosis can be kept in isolation for years, without sunlight or fresh air, permanently cut off from contact with any other human being in any meaningful way.

You won't hear DOC officials call their isolation policies solitary confinement. They sanitize the term, calling it segregation and tell us that only the most violent are sent there.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona filed a class-action lawsuit in March regarding the lack of medical and mental-health care provided in state prisons. This lawsuit is a godsend to all those who want justice and decency to prevail in Arizona's prisons.

If successful, this lawsuit will provide opportunities for lasting reforms in our prisons, including rehabilitation and successful reintegration of offenders back into our communities.

Our society will be judged by how we treat the least among us.

Without adequate mental-health care, our incarcerated mentally ill will return to us more ill and damaged than before we locked them up.

How will this make our communities safer or save taxpayer dollars? All inmates in Arizona prisons should be treated humanely.

More than 95 percent of all inmates will return to our communities one day.

I ask you to consider our state correctional policies and decide what it is we will have taught these prisoners.
We are deeply grateful to The ArizonaRepublic investigative reporter Bob Ortega for shining the light of truth on the despicable lack of respect for human dignity, under which our present-day DOC operates.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

Sundram: Cuomo is Staking Reputation on Justice Center

From:  Capitol Confidential (Times Union):  http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/136055/sundram-cuomo-is-staking-reputation-on-justice-center/


With lawmakers apparently headed toward approval of a sweeping new Justice Center that would oversee the care and guard against abuse and neglect for vulnerable populations, Clarence Sundram, who Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped to help develop the new plan, said the governor would be staking his reputation on whether the new system worked or not.

“By putting this idea out there and by putting the power of his office behind this legislation he’s going to be accountable for how it performs,” Sundram said during an interview with Fred Dicker on Talk 1300 radio.
While supported by many in the disability community, there have been critics, notably Michael Carey, who believes the oversight should not be a part of the state bureaucracy.

Under Cuomo’s plan, the governor would be in charge of the new Justice Center and the state would hire a non-profit group to provide some additional oversight.

In a twist, Sundram said the new Center would also respond to assaults in which juveniles who are in state-run youth prisons attack their guards.

“Serious incidents may involve an assault upon a staff person,” Sundram said. “The Justice Center would be looking at those sorts of incidents that compromise safety,” he added.

While much of the focus has been on preventing abuse and neglect by facilities that are run or operated by the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities, the new law also would cover other agencies including the Office for Children and Family Services, which runs the youth prisons.

As to cameras (Carey, whose son Jonathan died while under state care) Sundram said they can be a “useful investigative tool” but there are privacy issues surrounding putting the devices in peoples’ bedrooms and bathrooms.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

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Senators Start a Review of Solitary Confinement

From the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/senators-start-a-review-of-solitary-confinement.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

WASHINGTON — Solitary confinement “is inhumane and by its design it is driving men insane,” a former inmate who spent 18 years in prison in Texas, a decade of that time in isolation on death row before being exonerated, told a Senate panel in a hearing on Tuesday.

“I lived behind a steel door that had two small slits in it, the space replaced with iron and wire, which was dirty and filthy,” said Anthony Graves, whose conviction for involvement in multiple murders was overturned in 2006. “I had no television, no telephone and most importantly, I had no physical contact with another human being.”

The hearing, held before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, represents the first time lawmakers on Capitol Hill have taken up the issue of solitary confinement, a form of imprisonment that many human rights advocates believe violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” and that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months in the United States and internationally.

The practice, which is widespread in American prisons, has also been the target of a growing number of lawsuits, including a class-action suit filed on Monday on behalf of mentally ill inmates held in solitary at ADX, the federal super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Last month, civil rights lawyers representing prisoners held for more than 10 years in isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison in California filed suit in federal court, arguing that solitary confinement is unconstitutional.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the assistant majority leader, began the hearing — which he said had the support of both Democratic and Republican committee members — by noting that more prisoners are held in isolation in the United States than in any other democracy and that about half of all prison suicides occur among inmates in solitary confinement.

“We can have a just society, and we can be humane in the process,” Mr. Durbin said. “We can punish wrongdoers, and they should be punished under our system of justice, but we don’t have to cross that line.” He said he was working on legislation to encourage changes in the way solitary confinement is used.

With more than 250 people packed into two rooms, the hearing was “one of the best attended of the year,” Mr. Durbin said, an indication “of the fact that the time is due for us to have this conversation about where we’re going.”

Over the course of two hours, the senators heard testimony about the effects of solitary confinement and the steps taken in Mississippi and several other states to reduce the number of prisoners kept in isolation.

But the hearing also included a testy exchange between Mr. Durbin and Charles E. Samuels Jr., director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who defended the use of solitary confinement for inmates who pose a threat to the safety of staff members or other inmates.

“Do you believe you could live in a box like that 23 hours a day, a person who goes in normal, and it wouldn’t have any negative impact on you?” Mr. Durbin asked, pointing to a life-size replica of a solitary confinement cell that had been set up in the hearing room.

“Our objective is always to have the individual to freely be in the general population,” Mr. Samuels responded.

“I’m trying to zero in on a specific question,” Mr. Durbin said, adding, “Do you believe, based on your life experience in this business, that that is going to have a negative impact on an individual?”

“I would say I don’t believe it is the preferred option,” Mr. Samuels conceded, “and that there would be some concerns with prolonged confinement.”

Mr. Samuels said that of the 218,000 prisoners the bureau is responsible for, only 7 percent are kept in isolation cells. The ADX supermax — where many inmates spend 22 to 24 hours a day in their cells and are denied visitors and other privileges — houses only 490 prisoners, or 0.2 percent of the total population, he said.

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

Life without parole at issue

From AFC:  http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/life-without-parole-at-1459776.html?printArticle=y

5:57 a.m. Monday, June 18, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court has already said — twice — that teenage criminals are not the same as their adult counterparts.

Now the high court is expected to rule, perhaps today, whether it is constitutional to sentence teenage killers to life without parole, considering that teenagers’ brains are not yet fully developed.

Life without parole is a punishment Georgia and 38 other states have imposed on 2,700 juvenile killers, and the court ruling could impact the punishment of Jonathan Bun, who was 17 when he murdered Clayton County sheriff’s Deputy Rick Daly last July.

Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, Bun’s lawyer is due in court Thursday to argue that it would be cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to sentence the teenager to life without parole for something he did as a juvenile.

Clayton County District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson disagrees. “Once in a while there is a young person so mean that the only way to protect society is to lock them away for the rest of their lives,” she said.

“The question is how big a pound of flesh do you need?” said Stephen Bright, senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights and a law professor at Yale University. “We know in the teenage years the child’s brain is not fully developed, especially for anger control and impulsive behavior.”

Opponents of the sentence say some people can be redeemed and should have a chance at parole, at least after they have spent decades in prison — a minimum of 30 years for anyone sentenced to life.

Advocates of life without parole for criminals of any age say the penalty is designed for those who are likely to always be so dangerous that they should never again walk free.

In 2005, the Supreme Court put the death penalty off-limits for murderers younger than 18, which left prosecutors with only the option of life in prison without parole for juveniles who commit crimes so heinous that life with the possibility of clemency is not enough.

In 2010 the justices again looked at punishment for teenage criminals. At that time, the court ruled that sentencing a teenager to life without parole for a crime that didn’t involve a death violated constitutional protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

Now the justices are examining the cases of two 14-year-old killers — one in Alabama and the other in Arkansas — to determine whether a juvenile should be sentenced to life without parole for any crime.

Emory law professor Kay Levine said previous Supreme Court decisions suggest the justices have a “deepening appreciation for scientific evidence of the developing juvenile brains. The brain does not develop until around the age of 25. As a result, the court is increasingly uncomfortable with enforcing such harsh punishment ... on people whose brains have not formed.”

Of the 39 states that allow life without parole for juveniles, Pennsylvania has the most — 450 inmates — who came into the prison system for crimes they committed when they were teenagers.

Georgia has sentenced far fewer teenagers to life without parole. Until recent years, state law allowed prosecutors to ask for life without parole only when the circumstances called for the death penalty, which they could not seek for juvenile defendants.

Of the 31 Georgia juveniles sentenced to life without parole, one was 13 and two were 14 when they killed. Only one of the 31 is still a juvenile, according to Department of Corrections data.

Lacey Aaron Schmidt, now 16, was sentenced in March. He was 14 when he shot classmate Alana Calahan in the head and hid her body in Columbia County woods.

The girl’s parents called Schmidt a monster and a hateful beast.

Still, Levine raises the question: “Does it make sense to condemn someone for the rest of his or her life for a dangerous, irrational decision made as a juvenile?”

“You cannot predict how a teenager is going to be in 20, 30 years,” Bright said.

But there must be consequences, said Bruce Holmes of Rex, whose 17-month-old great-grandson was murdered in 2009 by his teenage father.

Brain development is “not an excuse,” Holmes said. Otherwise, “it would become open season for people to commit crimes knowing they won’t have to serve any big time for it. They aren’t thinking with a full deck here. You’re opening the door for a lot of stuff.”

According to legal experts, the Supreme Court’s possible decisions are:

● Let the 39 states’ laws stand.
● Determine that under no circumstances should children be sentenced to life without parole.
● Rule that a judge must take into consideration the age and the circumstances before choosing a sentence of life without parole.

If the justices choose the third option, Bright said, the 31 in Georgia prisons could still be resentenced to life without parole after a judge takes their age into account.

If the Supreme Court decides to allow the penalty of life without parole for juveniles, said Lloyd Matthews, Bun’s defense attorney, “taxpayers will be paying until he dies. ... He did kill someone and he needs to be punished. But he is not as culpable.”

That makes no difference to Holmes. In the case of the killer of his great-grandson, he said, life without parole “is not enough time for the crime.”

**This information is being shared by Citizens for Prison Reform for purely informational purposes.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Website:  www.micpr.org

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MichiganCPR

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution