mentally ill in prison

Introduction and call to action

2010-12-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

Prison Insanity
"Unfortunately in our society, jails have become the largest mental institutes, and the staff isn't trained for that," says Hamblin. "We'd prefer not to have mentally ill people in jail. It's not an appropriate use of this space, and alternatives are cheaper. But treatment has to be [adequately] funded, and it's not, on either the state or the federal level." From Isthmus article , 2006 Dane county

Our mental hospitals were closed in the 90’s and were replaced in large part by prisons and jails. If you are have little money and have a mentally ill family member, there is little you can do but watch his or her behavior get destructive enough until finally someone calls the cops. Our prisons are filled with the mentally ill and they often end up in segregation because they cannot cope with the dehumanizing prison conditions and act out. There is little treatment and what there is, is almost totally ineffective.

We at FFUP have long been concerned about conditions in segregation for even mentally healthy prisoners and have advocated without success that all prisoners in segregation be allowed books and magazines from the outside, and that families be allowed to buy programs for them, buy tv’s and that all prisoners get daily exercise and access to the outside. To no avail.

What is happening to hundreds of mentally ill prisoners in Wisconsin is difficult to describe . The healthy prisoners become sick, the mentally ill prisoner harm themselves, spread feces and become forever stuck in an insane cycle of retribution and acting out .

We are starting a blog where I will include letters from prisoners and copies of the DOC rules that mandate mind boggling indifference from prison staff. As soon as the legislature begins their session this fall we will be pushing for a rule change in the admnistrative condinement division of segregation. It will be start toward better conditions. Once we know the route to getting laws and rules changed, we hope to change many.

After 9 years of prison work, we have come to the conclusion that the legislature cannot act to the benefit of prisoners. The climate is too vengeful and legislators fear for their jobs if they take a sane approach to prison insanity. The conditions for some prisoners are dire.Here is an excerpt from a recent letter of a prisoner in Waupun Segregation. It is hard reading:

“We who are confined to H.S.C. unit receive no mental health treatment whatsoever, are subjected to almost total sensory and social isolation. The so-called psychologists never do any rounds and many of us cannot take being housed on this unit and the only way that myself as well as many others deal with it is to hurt ourselves.

I have cut my throat with razors, glass and metal and wasn’t suppose to live through any of those incidents. My arms are so scarred I don’t even look human any more. And yes, I do get teased and laughed at quite a bit by staff and other inmates. However, they don’t understand that the only way I feel alive or human is when I can see the evidence of my mortality flowing from my veins and the only way these people here respond is by stripping me naked and putting me in a cold cell but then a few days later putting me back on the tier declaring me “OK”. But I’m not okay, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The doctor cut off my anti-psychotic meds and everyday I want to cut myself but because these people will use it against me to keep me locked in here I try and resist the urge. I don’t know what to do any more.

Honestly , I believe the fight for our rights is the only thing that is keeping me alive right now. Without the cause or the fight I have nothing. Ms Swan, I ask you to please help us to get our voices heard so that we may change things for the better so that no more human beings die in here.”

There is one point in the system where humanity can be inserted and that is Wisconsin Resource Center, (WRC)- A place where real treatment goes on. However, with a 300 hundred bed capacity, prisoners can stay there only a short time before they are cycled back to prison and often, segregation again.

What is important to note is that is not the problem of the Department of Corrections- it is our problem and our responsibility. We need treatment facilities and alternatives, drug treatment centers and good therapy alternatives out here. The DOC is doing what the DOC does best – repress. When We funnel our mentally ill to them , we are saying “do what you will- keep them out of our sight”.

three things you can do today to help :

1)read this blog devoted to raising awareness on the mentally ill. Of particular interest is a court transcript where a psychiatrist is fired for refusing to change the diagnosis of a bipolar prisoner to one that is less serious. See Brain Locke's blog for complete story: We must force the prison to change their practices while we work to open up treatment and prevention alternatives that make prison unnecessary.

2) Write one of the prisoners in segregation we list in our special needs post. You can make all the difference to them whether or not they they survive their solitary ordeal .

3) If you live in Wiscosnins, Join with us in January as we try to get the rules changed for solitary confinement- As it is now, each prison can decide whether or not they will allow prisoners in segregation to have books from the outside, tv, magazines and other property. It is one thing to deprive a prisoner of these things for a limited time , as when there is a conduct report, but in Wisconsin , mentally ill prisoners spend years in what is called "non-punitive administrative confinement" without anything to occupy their minds. We are working with the legislature to change that. Email us for more information as this is an ongoing campaign and much help is needed.

4) For those outside Wisconsin , Write one of the people listed below if you want to help with the Wisconsin campaign , or write the legislators in your district as this is a country wide problem. See our essays concerning the national plague of control unit prisons:

Here is a sample letter to legislators telling them you care what happens inside our prisons. :
Overuse and abuse of solitary confinement
Secretary of Corrections
Po Box 7925
Madison, Wi 53707
Re: Solitary confinement in Wisconsin prisons
Dear Sir,
I am deeply concerned about the overuse of solitary in Wisconsin prisons. Recently it has been reported that Wisconsin leads the nation in prison suicides, and most of those suicides occur while prisoners are in solitary. We also lead the nation in having the highest per capita ratio of Black prisoners. I realize that the balancing of our present punitive system with treatment and rehabilitation is a long term project and will take the participation of the larger society but there are a few important things that can be done right now to help prisoners survive solitary confinement.

The almost total deprivation inflicted in segregation cells does not cause the inmate to become more compliant, instead he gets angry and sick. Many people spend their entire sentence in solitary and then are released to society with absolutely no social or job skills. Many are so angry they have no prospects of making a successful transition and wreak havoc on society before being returned to their cage.
I propose that certain uniform rules be imposed on all segregation units. These are small steps toward allowing the families and friends to get involved. I propose that:
1) All prisoners in segregation be allowed books sent in from the outside.
2) All prisoners be allowed access to GED and other educational programs and that family and friends be allowed to buy correspondence courses.
3) All prisoners, no matter what status they are or if they have a huge legal loan , be allowed embossed envelopes sent from the outside.( as it is now in some prisons, if an inmate has a lawsuit and is indigent, he pays for law copies and postage with a "legal loan" and if that loan gets big enough, he cannot receive money from the outside and gets only one stamp a week for the institution, has no canteen etc. )
4) All prisoners, no matter what status, be allowed to receive at least one call a week from the outside.
5) We ask that this be part of a general turn about in policy to a rehabilitative system.
6) All prisoners get outside recreation time.

Yours sincerely,

cc.
Governor Doyle: 11 East, State Capitol; Madison, Wi 53702
Representative Mark Pocan; Po Box 8953; Madison, WI 53708
Rep Tamara Grigsby; PO Box 8952,Madison, Wi 53708
Rep Spenser Black; PO Box 8952, Madison, Wi 53708

prisoners in seg now needing encouragement and support

2010-12-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

It is winter 2010-11 and FFUP and some mentally prisoners in segregation are making a concerted effort to get informal projects going that can help them stay healthy and find a way out of segregation and finally prison. All help is needed. One of the easiest ways to help is to write a nurturing note to one of the men below. Please contact FFUP if you would like to get involved at swansol@mwt.net.

Here is a list of some of the prisoners we are trying to get books to , writing and engaging in newlsetter projects . They need encouragement and we need help badly in helping them.
Timothy Crowley 243754 CCI; PO box 900; Portage ,Wi 53901

Ali Mursal 541673 GBCI PO Box 19033; Green Bay, Wi 54307

Marcus Greer 469316 CCI PO box 900; Portage ,Wi 53901

Al-Amin Akbar 211383 CCI PO box 900; Portage ,Wi 53901

Nathan Gillis 273445 CCI PO box 900; Portage ,Wi 53901

Travis D Coleman 103600 CCI PO box 900; Portage ,Wi 53901

Lorenzo Balli #238265;GBCI ;PO Box 19033;Green Bay. WI 54307

Terrance Grissom, Luiz Ramirez, Nathan Gillis, Samuel upthegrove, Have Photos and profiles on this blog.

To view report on Segregation at Columbia Correctional Institution (CCI), click here. It gives a good idea of what is going on in most prisons.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Please send these very lonely people a caring note.

We will keep a listing here of prisoners in trouble in seg. Just a brief note would mean so much , However, feel free to establish a long term relationship as you may find yourself being a tremendous vehicle for healing. The need is so great that often just a small amount of commitment is all it takes for these prisoners to turn their lives around.

We will start with these 6 people in Wisconsin segregation units. They are not allowed books from the outside, canteen, t.v. or much of anything in possessions. We are trying to get these rules changed it is slow. In at least two Wisconsin prisons, especially for the mentally ill , There is no fixed date for release from seg because they are on what is called "non Punitive segregation"which allows them top remain in isolation for years.

At present we are cooking up a newsletter with segregation prisoners to compliment our regular newsletter and are looking for people to help us type offerings. I have asked segregation prisoners who are writing us asking for help , to write for this blog- a way to help them keep focused and healthy . Two of the prisoners listed here regularly cut themselves . Many prisoners in long term seg end up spreading in feces and doing harm to themselves.

Shawn Matz #264654 WCI; PO Box 351; Waupun, Wi 53963

Shawn Matz is another prisoner who has begun writing us from WCI. I have tried to send in books and been denied. Here is what he says: “Ms Swan, I have cut my throat with razors, glass and metal and wasn’t suppose to live through any of those incidents. My arms are so scarred I don’t even look human any more. And yes, I do get teased and laughed at quite a bit by staff and other inmates. However, they don’t understand that the only way I feel alive or human is when I can see the evidence of my mortality flowing from my veins and the only way these people here respond is by stripping me naked and putting me in a cold cell but then a few days later putting me back on the tier declaring me “OK”. But I’m not okay, Ms Swan and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The doctor cut off my anti-psychotic meds and everyday I want to cut myself but because these people will use it against me to keep me locked in here I try and resist the urge. I don’t know what to do any more.”

He has more to offer for this blog, Coming soon.

Brian Locke#96897 Green Bay Correctional Institution( GBCI); PO Box 19033; Green Bay, Wi 54307

Brian Locke is fighting for his life and for the betterment of all solitary confinement prisoners. He is manic depressive and writes me several times a week from his cell in Green Bay, pleading for placement in Columbia, where A/C prisoners are allowed property . This is the man who has looked into the changing for the administrative confinement rule and given us all , perhaps , a way to make a very big and positive change in the whole system.
Note: addendum on Brian Locke not included- will discuss on phone call if appropriate. Here is link to article on Locke.
here is the link to an Isthmus newspaper story on him :http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=22710

and his blog post::http://mentallyillinprison.blogspot.com/2008/08/brian-lockes-story-diagnosis-illegally.html. In it is the story of the court testimony of Brian's former psychiatrist, who tesitifies he was fired for refusing to illegally change Brian's diagnosis. We have long suspected that convenient changes of diagnosis' were gojng on but here we see proof. Brinsa remains in the most draconian isolation and is manic depressive- a very volitile combination.He also, At minimum,asks to be transfered to a prison where he can have books and magazines tv and property.

Steven Stewart , WSPF; PO Box 9900; Boscobel. Wi 53805
Again, for Steven, we have asked the DOC that he be allowed to have books and magazines from the outside to start and have not succedded in getting even this for him. He needs letters and cards.

Steven Stewart was a very sane man. Visits with him were much fun. He is now in trouble after years of segregation. There is a cycle here. The treatment is very degragding and most people do act out and are here in segregation in the first polace because they lack self control. The only reaction to misbehavior, no matter how minor , is punishment-i.e.: more degrading treatment. Once you get your coattails into one of these units, it is hard to get out. Some people within the system have tried to help Steven get to population but it has not worked. He has severe health problems and is a difficult case. He needs friendship most of all right now. His mental health has deteriorated dramatically in the years we have known him.

PTSD and Prison

2010-12-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

the inhumane, non-professional treatment of prisoners who have went from “patients” to “psychologically tormented inmates” after mental health systems deinstitutionalization of the late 1980’s is staggering and heartbreaking

PTSD and Prison
Joshua Guan 279006-A
GBCI; PO Box 19033
Green Bay, WI 54307

see his penpal post at http://latestpenpals.blogspot.com/2009/12/joshua-gann.html

I have been in segregation for 10 months as of 1/11/10. I was told yesterday that I would be getting put on administrative confinement.

I admit that the initial segregation time was warranted, as I go into a physical altercation w/a few correctional officers, however, this was in part due to a 15 year battle with a mental illness called post traumatic stress disorder, and the system’s reckless handling of my medication. They stabilize you, then they take you off medication/psych therapies that are necessary to maintain that imperative, they often opt out and give medications used to treat mental illnesses in the 1960s-70s over newer more effective (less side effects and more expensive medications).

I was told by a specialist that my P.T.S.D. was like that of a combat war veteran, to my benefit I have been treated by non-prison doctors who have taught me many ways to persevere, however the inhumane, non-professional treatment of prisoners who have went from “patients” to “psychologically tormented inmates” after mental health systems deinstitutionalization of the late 1980’s is staggering and heartbreaking because I am a high functioning ( an overall I.Q. of 139 on the WAIS III 99%)

I try to advocate for those less fortunate who suffer the demons of mental illness , and Green Bay tends to disproportionately house us with an “axis I” mental health issue in segregation. But there is so much one man can do, however, I refuse to let current environment (solitary confinement) demagogic conditioning, or feeble attempts to break my spirit by the officials “in Charge” determine who I am .
I love those who need my sound advice, when I can give it, and live by the more noble virtues- courage, truth, honor, fidelity, hospitality, discipline, industriousness, self reliance, and perseverance. Those of us who realize what my grandma (r.i.p.) told me (regardless of our ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs, who suffer from mental infirmities-spiritual or physical) tough times don’t last, tough people do.” Will overcome oppression and adversity and will by strengthened by the experience.

A SHADOW IN THE DARK: SEGREGATED SOULS

2010-12-19T17:53:00.000-08:00

A SHADOW IN THE DARK: SEGREGATED SOULS ' PART I
- by Hakim Naseer
Good morning and good afternoon America.

My name is Hakim Naseer. It is truly an honor to have the opportunity to advise our country of an ongoing crisis which is continuously creating infantile attitudes within the segregation environment, among most prisons, which will dangerously affect the public safety at a catastrophic level! My goal is not to shock the conscience and/or sensibilities of our readers with merely using hearsay. The overall goal is to be modest when expressing intriguing facts pertaining to the constant battle, mentally speaking, of being incarcerated and housed in punitive segregation. My purpose, after personally being subjected to inhuman, barbarous, tortuous punishments and some punishments unknown to common law, is to make a difference and a change by giving back to my community and challenging the minds of those spectators, politicians, prison officials, law enforcement agencies, judges, district attorneys, radio stations, newscasts, etc. My destiny is to become a "Bridge of Voices" participant. Not to mention, I have seen the gates of hell!
By federal and state law, "double punishment" is prohibited. If anyone is caught engaging in such cruel act, they could be prosecuted criminally and/or civilly. Although we may all think, as the less fortunate (mentally ill), that it is a smashing success once we have sued the DOC after 7 prison guards were found guilty of subjecting a mentally ill prisoner to "double punishment" in civil court, in reality, it's just another loss the DOC can afford to lose. As a result, the real smashing success remains a shadow in the dark.

A vital strategy in winning a constant battle against the opposing team is to get every corrupt prison guard arrested as soon as possible for making ongoing attempts in turning a solitary confinement environment into a torture chamber, contrary to Wis. Stats. §§ 940.29 and 940.285. After enough prosecutions/convictions are exposed publicly, the DOC will have to make heroic sacrifices in order to stop a negative frenzy from escalating within the tabloids all over the nation. Furthermore, the power struggle and the huge wall that the DOC continuously holds up to keep us away with all of our questions and concerns will no longer exist. It will allow for a mind that was once sketchy and skeptical of mentally ill prisoners serving time in solitary confinement to be reduced to a level that will change our current conditions of confinement. This particular method can be a stabilizing factor. Have you ever heard of the phrase, "Hard work pays off"? Well then ... give this particular method your best efforts and you will become a thousand steps closer to bettering your condemned lifestyles that are currently jeopardizing your future. However, be advised that help is on the way regardless. If we could come together, this process can be in effect sooner than we think. Nothing is too impossible. Those who are not fighting for a positive benefit, an alternative program, a logical sense of living, a greater satisfaction, equality, essential needs, flexible visualization, preventive medicine, healthier punishments and adequate justice will not only die mentally, but will also continue to go unnoticed like a shadow in the dark.

Solitary confinement is most certainly an abnormal environment, generally speaking. Although such environments should be considered imprudent, there's no other way to contain violent and inappropriate behavior that is displayed by prisoners without segregating them in an isolated place where they can be closely monitored and supervised for their own safety as well as others. Segregation was originally designed to punish and then rehabilitate a prisoner's way of thinking before acting. However, the punishing process became so harsh that it created a disastrous mental affect in the already mentally ill prisoners, which in turn made it highly impossible for the rehabilitation to take place.
They say, "Two wrongs don't make a right," but in solitary confinement such phrase does not exist. If an inmate continuously acts out in a mentally ill manner by using profane and abusive language that is directed at prison staff, within that same week that particular mentally ill inmate will most certainly undergo one or more of the following:

Not being provided an adequate meal serving even after the institution food menu indicates that something is missing from your food tray but that same officer that you disrespected doesn't care;

"Torture ... any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."
- Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment - (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46 [xxxlx])

"The Hole" by Anonymous

2010-12-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

Anonymous
“the Hole”
Well, I gave been in the hole now for a little over a month and let me tell you it’s a “hell” of an experience. I’ve never thought that I’d see so much pain, anguish and despair. It’s really hard for some of these men to come to grips with the possibility that they will never go home. And the crazy part is that a lot of the pain the inmates have caused on their “victims”, the inmates suffer or share that same pain. It has been my experience by closely observing other inmates behavior and conversations, that their pasts have been filled with the same hurts and abuse as was carried out on “victims”. And inmates too, try to deal wit this internal pain by physically harming themselves. I’ve “seen” inmates literally cut their Face with scissors (gash themselves literally) swallow razors, swallow glass, swallow screws, slice their wrists, attempt suicide by strangulation etc. The list goes on and on. These poor men can’t deal with the mental trauma so they try to deaden the mental pain by exchanging it for physical pain. I’ve heard men scream for hours!! Trying to wrap their minds around the fact that they may have a life sentence w/no parole and couple with the mental pain they have to live with that was caused from neglect and sexual abuse and physical abuse as a child. I don’t even think a trained psychologist could fully understand the weight or depths of their pain unless you’re able to experience this first hand like I am. It’s really sad and though my heart goes out to each and every victim that has ever been wronged in this world my heart goes out to these men too. It’s strange how the mind works and how the mind, body and soul thirst for affection and love. I’ve witnessed situations where men would go against their own moral , religious and ethical code just to receive love and affection from others because family has abandoned them. I thank God every day that He has given me strength and blessed me with a friend like you. I never judge people with regard to the sexual preference but I am glad I’ve never been in a situation where ii was so weak oat such a point of despair where my moral, ethical and religious belief was compromised due t lack of affection to the point of “me” resorting to homosexuality, and as I said before I don’t judge I just observe with compassion because the environment is unnatural to everyone who is subjected to it. ….
________________________________________________________

Call for help from seg

2010-12-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

A Letter From Long Ago:
this prisoner' s first letter to FFUP . It gives a good description of life in seg. This man has become an accomplished artist and model for other prisoners.
See his art at : http://darrenmorrisartist.blogspot.com/
read his guide for urban youth: http://guidebydarrenmorris.blogspot.com

August 17th 2006

Darren Morris #236425
Waupun Correctional Institution
Post Office Box 351
Waupun, Wisconsin, 53963

My name is Darren Morris, and I am an inmate here in Waupun Correctional Institution, where I am currently being held in a Segregation Cell. At the age of 17, I began to have "more"severe psychotic episodes, in which I had to be hospitalized for more than once. I was put on the medication called Haldol. I would hallucinations and delusional thinking that would lead to violent acts. I was arrested for PTAC of first-degree intentional homicide, and once in prison I continued to have these psychotic episodes. I would go through periods with no episodes, and then it was like someone snatched the rug from under me. I had numerous disciplinary actions taken against me, more so since being in Waupun Correctional. I have been shocked with some kind of electrical device It was around 1999 some time. I'm sorry my memory can't come with exact dates.. I thought I was in danger, that my medication had been switched and laced with poison, so I stopped taking them. Soon I had a psychotic break and I was put into segregation, though I cannot remember the charge and my delusions continued. They put me into the "Naked Man Cell", (observation). they chained me to the cell door, cut my clothes off, they put me in the cell naked. I don't remember much, though I do remember I was cold and crying. I was given two squares of tissue to clean myself with after using the toilet. I could not sleep because I was naked, it was cold and there was no mattress. Instead of a mattress there was a hard rubber mat, and the lack of sleep only made things worse. I started to pound on the door, at which I was given a direct order to stop, and I did not. In turn they gassed me and came in with these black suits and helmets, and when they attacked me I fought back. I was choked until I blacked out. When I woke up I was handcuffed to a concrete slab by both wrists and my feet. I began banging my head on this slab. They came in and put a strap on me to hold my head down. About a day later i was let out of restraints, I was still naked, I began pounding on the door, and told them if they gave me a blanket I'd stop. They gassed me again, they came in with the suits on and when they had me pinned down to the floor some electroshocked me. i went to Wisconsin resource Center- twice. I had many situations where my illness caused me to get a ticket and put in the hole. I'm also hard of hearing, I'm supposed to have a hearing and for both ears. I came here from the outside with two- they lost them, and claimed not to be responsible. They gave me only one hearing aid and told me to make due as best I could with that. i got two tickets once for sleeping during count, I never heard the buzzer and they put me ion the hole for, I think, 90 days that time. Now I am stable on my medication and had been doing okay, but I got a ticket again for disobeying an order. They gave me 60 days in the hole. Since I been here I tell them I can't hear the buzzer for meals or medication or other things. Here, when the tone sounds you must stand at your cell door to get that meal, medication, showers or whatever if you are not at that door, I don't get to eat or my medication for the schizo effective bipolar type. I keep telling them, I can't hear the buzzer, They have 2, one in the hall, which is the one I can't hear. Then there is one in the cell which they use sometimes- that one I can hear just fine. They should not be able to pass me for meds and especially medication- if I can't hear the sound then I can't react to it. I have about a 7th or 8th grade reading level and I'm trying to figure out the law because I'm knowing what they do is wrong. I want to teach them that it is not okay to let a person go hungry, and to discriminate against people. I want to change the rules and the way they do things here(..her he asks for help) .. They never ask how to help me, they leave the lights on all the time, my brain don't get a chance to rest, the people argue, and pound all day long and the COs pick on them when they get quiet to make them argue again. Every time I hear keys I get worried they coming with them suits again and shock me and cuff me up or gas me up. I tell them I hear voices and they give me no counseling or help with my issues, and I try to tell me self it's in my head, nothing to fear, but when I hear them keys I get ready to fight cause I think they coming to get me.
If you cannot help. will you please find someone who can. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely, Darren
________________________________________

Testimony to mental health audit in 2008

2010-12-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

This is DarRen Morris , with his story- many people in prison have similar stories of neglect and abuse through out young lives, then in courts. DarRen has made his way out of the darkness and is determined to make a better future. Here he gives testimony to a legislative audit on the mentally ill in prison.

Janis Mueller
Legislative Audit Bureau
22 E. Mifflin Suite 500,
Madison, WI 53703

Re.: Mental Illness Testimony

Date: October 28, 2008

Darren Morris (#236425)
Columbia Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 900,
Portage, WI 53901

Peace and Love

Ms Mueller,

Recently Peggy Swan has informed that you are conducting some sort of audit on the Mental Health treatment of inmates, I will share with you my experiences and hopefully it will help you to help us, and help people like Peg. I truly believe that Peg saved my life, had she not gotten involved and let the prison know that someone was watching they would have killed me, because I was in a place in my mind that I would act without regard for my own well being or fore thought what they would do to me.

I am not sure what all you need to know so I will give you a short history of how I got here. My mental health problems seem to have plagued me from the beginning. When I was about 3, I was playing with my father´s pistol, and when my mother seen me, she went to take the gun from me; as she snatched it, it went off, hitting my mother. From that point on I was not very well liked among family members. My mother lived, and gave the story to the officials that when she set the gun down on the dresser, it went off accidentally, this was to keep the State from taking her children. My brothers and others would often do things to me to punish me. I will not go into specifics, most of it was physical, and restraints (home made), different types of isolation, there was some sexual from both older males and females.
I accepted what ever they did without complaint, I felt that I deserved it for shooting my mother.

Until I was about 11, one of my mother´s boyfriends done something to me that was a wake up call, I do not remember how I understood it but I knew that if I did not do something, they were going to kill me in that house. I began to retaliate whenever and however I could. This sudden violence shocked many people that were not in the home and did not know the situation, because I was a very silent person, I read a lot and tried as best as I could to not be seen or heard. This change in them, or rather in me, brought a change in that they became even more violent, if that was possible.

I went through a very long depression by the time I was thirteen, I was hearing voices and it would be like I would see somebody on the side of me out of the corner of my eye, but when I would look, they would be gone. I would be fine for a while, and things would just change, I did not understand what was going on and what was happening to me. I was sent to a special school after seeing the school shrink who sent me to another doctor, who diagnosed me with Schizophrenia, and they put me on medication

In 1993 I was released from boys school (Lincoln Hills), they sent me to a group home before sending me home. When my medication ran out I stopped taking it. I never told my mother. She noticed that I began to change and thought that I was on drugs. She felt that “we” were in need of a fresh start. She moved me to Green Bay, where a family friend had moved to and told her that they had more resources to help me up there than they did in the inner city.

Within a few months, I was convinced that people were trying to kill me, I even lost weight because I was certain that my mother was poisoning my food, so I would only eat can goods, but I went through great lengths to ensure that I picked my own cans from the store. My weight went from about 220 to about 185, maybe 190 pounds, I worked out and ate a lot of beans, I had to be ready for when they came.

I eventually hit a breaking point. First I tore up my mother´s apartment, trying to figure out where these voices were coming from. I was taken to Brown County Mental Health Center, I was there for a day or so and they let me go, I was convinced that I had been drugged, so I told them that I was drugged and that is what they went with.

Two weeks later I felt I was being followed in school and the voices were telling me that they were going to kill me, I kept trying to get away. I got trapped in a hallway that had only one way out and these two guys that I thought were about to get me had just entered the hallway. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew what they came to do and I started to fight for my life, several teachers attempted to restrain me, I hate to be grabbed! They were unable to restrain me. They let me leave rather than attempt to try and fight with me. I was picked up by the police, I fought with them, with additional officers; they were able to restrain me.

I was taken to the hospital, which referred me to the psych. hospital. They took a urine sample, because they were sure I had to be on drugs I was not. They told my mother I was dangerous, something needed to be done. My mother asked me how I felt, I said I was fine as long as she did not let them tie me down again. The first night I was in there they strapped me down to a bed and left me in there alone. I told my mother that, she refused to sign the commitment papers.

I was taken to court and they sought to get an order from the court, but because I was 17, the judge did not want to place me in an institution without trying everything else first. I was released on a 90 day consent settlement. I was put on medication called Haldol. I was sent to counselling. I got better.

By 1994 I was so good that I thought I was cured and I stopped taking the medication. March 22 I had fallen back into the same pattern, but I had not peaked yet, I was at an apartment with my then girlfriend and either because it was true or these people thought it was funny to mess with the crazy guy, the people in this apartment started talking about gang members with guns outside wanting to kill us, people were running this way and that way, screaming, they would go to the window and say stuff like there they go and run away from the window. I use to be in a gang and many of my childhood friends in the Kenosha and Northern Illinois area were shot and stabbed by members of a gang called Latin Kings and these were the same people they said were outside. This went on for 1 maybe 3 hours, I was convinced I could not get out.

Eventually, I was backed into such a place mentally that I began to hear stuff, and I became fearful that it was true that they were going to kill me. I could not stay in that apartment any more, I had to get out, armed with a knife I went out. There was a man in a red truck. This man lost his life there in some dispute about what actually happened. Witnesses told police that I stabbed the victim 3 times. The next day I was arrested and I could not remember stabbing the victim. I remembered going outside with the knife and then waking up.

Over the next few months I began remembering things, each memory about that night, and each one was as real as any memory I ever had, if not more real. The county jail had me see a psych. doctor and put me back on medication (Haldol). My attorney was told about this, I pled a special plea, of Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The Judge signed an order to have me evaluated for mental responsibility, but they never did the evaluation.

The day of trial my attorney told the court that he had written a letter and I signed it wanting to withdraw the plea. The court asked me one question, if that was true, to which I said yeah.
I was convicted and I was sent to prison. In Dodge they put me back on medication. I had stopped taking it before trial, because I could not think on it. I went into a long depression. I was sent to Green Bay Correctional. I was okay for a while, then I was sent to Waupun Correctional Institution and they had a very different way of doing things. I was placed in segregation.

They locked me in this room, and before long I had attempted suicide, I could not take it anymore, and the only way to escape that I know was to hang myself, but fortunately for me, I did not brake my neck or crush anything, I was choked unconscious. But that was only the beginning. I would fight with them, they would fight back, they would gas me, and as punishment, they would leave the stuff on burning, and they would tell me to remember that feeling. But sometimes they would attack me when I had not done anything.

Once I was placed in observation, after I told the psych doctor that I was hearing voices. They took all my clothes and placed me in a cell with big windows and a camera, naked, I did not have a blanket or a mattress. They gave me this rubber mat that looks like the mat that they put on the back of them trucks to keep from scratching it up. I was up for 2 days. It is extremely cold in there even in the summer time, which is not normal. I had fallen asleep finally, when the psych doctor came to see me. I told him to go away, I did not want to talk to him anymore, I refused to talk with him, so they gassed me, they then shocked me with a taser, they came in with the gorilla suits on, they beat me up and then tied me down to a bed, and every few hours, the nurse would ask if I had to go, and when I did have to go, the nurse would come in while 2 blue shirts and a white shirt stood watch, the nurse would take my penis and place it into this thing that looked like a big clear plastic coffee mug, or if I needed a bed pan, they would leave me strapped to that bed and just slide it under me without letting me up to clean myself, or give me the privacy to go.

This would be a revolving cycle, at times I would be blessed to get out of seg, but it would
not last long. I would be written up for some sort of rule violation, some times it was legit, I had done something wrong, and sometimes, the officers would bet on a pool on how long a “Seg. rat”, which is a name they use to call inmates that spend a lot of time in the hole. The pool would be based on how long it would take before they could make me snap or act out. In population there is no one to talk with who can help you through the rough times. Every 3 months I would be seen by a head shrink to see how I was, but he would have 4 or 5 guys scheduled for one hour, and he would push you back out of the door as quick as you came in.

There were times, I wanted to learn what was wrong with (me) and have some one to talk with and help me do that. I eventually learned from some very special people and funny enough I met them all about the time, Peg, a lady named Jamyi Witch, who was a chaplain at Waupun Correctional, and George Kammer, a crisis intervention worker at Waupun. These people really cared for me, and no matter how long it took in some cases that meant hours, they would talk with me, explain things to me, and the helped me reconnect with something that was lost. These type of people are not well liked in here. The guards make life very hard for them, and the women who want to help and actually care, usually get accused of having some kind of inappropriate relationship with one or so inmates.

Peg helped me reconnect with painting and drawing, as a way to distract and soothe. No one had ever taken time to explain simple things like that. Those seg units are not right. I understand that if I do something wrong, I should be held to answer for that.

The place usually smells of urine, and I do not mean the gas station bathroom kind, this is the kind that when I first smelled it, I got sick, partly because it is usually fused with other smells, body odor from guys that have not washed in a while, and at times fecal matter. There is an endless attack of noise, banging and yelling, but if I take out my hearing aides to escape the noise, then I do not get fed. There are no real programs to deal with the needs of the mentally ill, the staff do not know how to deal with us and often times they do things to intentionally make it worse and sometimes it seems unintentional.

They cannot make an accurate diagnosis of what is really wrong, because they see so many people they just give you pills and send you on your way, and they will change that diagnosis to suit their needs. I had been in a single cell for nearly 14 years. When I got here as a way to get even with me and punish me, they took my single cell status and doubled me up.

I have a very real fear about contact with an adult male, if I think he is peeking at me, with any hint of funny ideals, I can not handle that. But I have to remind myself to think first. I was fortunate, I was blessed to meet people that helped me brake the cycle. I have been stable for about 3 years on medication. It helps when there is a real check and balance, when Peg let them know that someone was watching out for me and willing to go to bat for me, it made them back off me long enough for others who want to help, to help.

I have many medical records and will do whatever I need to do, to help you help us. Most of the time I am fine, from time to time I need a little extra help, as I have gotten older, I am now being treated for Bi-Polar, manic-depressive type.

Be at Peace, Be Blessed
See DaRen's art at : http://darrenmorrisartist.blogspot.com/read his guide for urban youth: http://guidebydarrenmorris.blogspot.com

Call For An Investigation

2010-12-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

This prisoner has been released. However , we should still heed his words.
Call for an InvestigationNovember 20, 2008

I’m incarcerated at Waupun Corr Ist. In Waupun, Wiscosnin. I came to this institution in February 2007 and I’ve been in the segregation unit since March 2007 til today. I’m supposed to get out to general population December 24th, 2008.
I believe it’s my duty to bring in the hearts and minds of Wisconsin citizens in society and let them know that us prisoners are not rehabilitated and treated but instead we are being punished and mistreated. I’m currently assigned to a psychiatrist Dr. Callister cause I’ve been diagnosed with major depression, anxiety disorder, anti-social behavior, explosive disorder and I take psychotropic medication for depression and anxiety daily.

My psychologist has referred me to Wisconsin resource Center but for some odd reason I’ve been denied mental health treatment twice. There are 180 inmates that can be housed in this segregation unit at full capacity. Out of that 180 at least 80 of the inmates have some sort of mental illness.

And instead of sending them to mental health facilities for help they locked them up in the segregation unit for months and years without any treatment or programs that will help them cope with their mental illnesses and or behavior problems, so once they are released to general population they can follow rules and once released to society become law abiding citizens.

There’s a high number of past civil suits and pending lawsuits against WCI and GBCI staff. There’s several suits for abuse of discretion. Lawsuits for( guard negative retaliation). There’s been several suicides in the unit and , I was in the same hallway where one suicide took place this year. There’s been several self-mutilating attempts on a regular basis.
See the following case sites:
Matz v Frank, 05-C-1093
Matz-v- Frank 08-CD-0491
Gidarisingh v McCaughtry, 2007 Lexis 28117
Sanville V Mc Caughtry, 266 F.3d 724
The staff are continuing to be unprofessional and malicious on duty.
People are abused, slammed down with handcuffs on them in the hallways, inmates are being gassed with pepper spray and OC Gas, stripped down with no clothes on, unregistered officers who are not doctors or nurses are handling and distributing medications, untrained officers are dealing with mental patients.
I’ve personally witnessed inmates smear their own feces on themselves, the doors, windows, shower stalls. I’ve seen inmates keep medications to commit suicide. I myself have attempted to do so. Waupun Correctional Institution is a living hell and I have the names of inmates who can attest to this with supported paperwork, conduct reports, incidents reports, psychological files, lawsuit paper-work, etc, as well as state representatives who have information regarding the unprofessional and many times criminal handling of people, situation s and mental health crisis’s.
There are numerous incidents of prisoner abandonment, they don’t do security rounds on the inmates in segregation hallways every thirty minutes as protocol except on 3rd shift. There’s cases of food tampering, mail tampering, professional misconduct. Staff make-up situations/Rule infractions to lock certain inmates up to keep them in segregation and administrative confinement. Also, to keep the inmates controlled, afraid and intimidated.
The infraction/disciplinary hearing officer-captain O Donovan has been named in a lawsuit seg unit and there are retaliation suits against staff that still work here.. If you get a ticket, they will make it stick regardless of how ridiculous the alleged infraction. The staff appointed advocate will tell you, “I am not your lawyer not is it my job to search for your innocence.”
There is clearly a racial issue here. Majority of the inmates locked up in seg are black. White inmates are given the best jobs I the institution, most people would concur. The segregation unit at this time , 1-20-08 is like 265 inmates and I bet there is at least 120 inmates who are Black or Latino. 85% of tickets are wrote on African Americans. The complaint system is very inadequate, they don’t question inmate witnesses only the person being complained about. They don’t believe in doing a full investigation. If inmates were questioned, this would be a clear cut exposure. I can provide names of all races to concur what is being written here.
The housing in segregation and general population is terrible. The plumbing is out dated, bed mattresses are old, cracked and mildewed. Sheets and blankets are old and out dated , canteen prices are high, visits in segregation is very unfair – on a screen , not in person.
Segregation inmates are not allowed any personal books or law books , no magazines, no newspapers, no pictures of Family members , no canteen food items. You’re locked in the room alone 3 days a week for 24 hours a day and 4 days a week for 23 hour a day. When we go to the outside rec cages ( dog kennels) in the winter months we are only given a coat, no gloves and hats at all . It’s crazy here.
The warden is the captain of the boat along with the security director. It is them who allows and condones the behavior of the staff. Here at Waupun Corr. Inst. You’re guilty and they don’t care if you’re not. They never investigate to find the truth , only to find out how many can be determined guilty.
All of these allegations need to be looked into and investigated fully by an outside person. If you need manes of person, I have them. But I need support for outside people because they are going to retaliate against me for writing this letter so I need addresses and phone numbers of people I can write to on a regular basis.

Testimony from Indiana

2010-12-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

Aaron Isby #892219
(WVCF A-701 SCU)
P.O. Box 1111
Carlisle, IN 47838

Forum For Understanding Prisons (FFUP)

I do hope that this letter reaches you in the best of health. It is my intention to explain the ongoing abusive treatment being inflicted upon me and those being held in solitary isolation at the infamous Secure Housing Unit (SHU) at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, Indiana.
On October 23, 2006, with a hearing or charge, I was removed from the prison's general population, and isolated in the SHU. This occurred three weeks after I had been released from the segregation unit at Westville Control Unit following my completion of a six-month term. There was no justification to isolate me in the SHU. I was placed here and continue to be held in solitary confinement because of my long history of litigation (writ writing), complaint filings and as a way to frustrate my constitutional rights to obtain legal redress from the courts on my wrongful and illegal custody. The IDOC officials are attempting to keep those who support my cause and the public from knowing my plight and issues, as well as prevent widespread sympathy from those on the outside. I am being held under a status IDOC officials call, "Departmental-wide Administrative Segregation." In order for one to be on this status, he must demonstrate an extraordinary security concern. There is no evidence that I meet this criteria. I've never been involved with drug trafficking, riots, hostage crises or takeovers, nor am I a leader of a gang, etc. The IDOC is claiming that my past conduct (that I was already punished for) is the reason I was placed on this status. The conduct reports being used are anywhere from ten to twenty years old. IDOC officials are punishing me for the case that I was convicted of in the Madison County Circuit Court. I have spent over 17 years in solitary confinement, including more than three years in this SHU for a Case that I was convicted of and sentenced for in Madison County Circuit Court. Isn't this double jeopardy or an ex post facto violation?
I truly need your help in gaining my release and transfer out of this facility. We are being subjected to non-consensual scientific experimentations of physical and psychological torture IN THIS SHU. I assert that on the watch and with the implicit and explicit approval of Edwin Buss, J. Wynn, J. Basinger, Major Russell, Lt. King, and various food and medical staff, we are subjected, deliberately and without any possible justification, to extraordinarily harsh, or restrictive and potentially harmful conditions of detention, which is causing me considerable physical and psychological pain and suffering. Although the state agents herein and those working in concert will deny it, I believe that certain, as well as our (my) conditions as a whole at the SHU or supermax violates our (my) human, civil and constitutional rights and amounts to torture and crimes of genocide. The violations or ill treatment of those of us housed in the SCU (SHU) include, but are not limited to the following:
The SHU serves no penological purpose or justification. It is a Unit being used by state prison officials and their agents herein for the sole purpose to met out their vengeance against those who they find undesirable and to disable these men through spiritual, psychological and physical breakdown. In carrying out this objective, we are subjected to prolonged and indefinite solitary isolation and sensory deprivation, which is used as a weapon of behavior modification and torture against us.
The conditions that contribute to our abuse are the arbitrary placements and indefinite retentions in solitary confinement without any objective means for release. The decisions as to whether a prisoner is transferred out of SHU rests exclusively on the subjective judgment of staff. Although we have no contact with each other or other human beings (except for the prison guards during escorts), we have been commonly subjected to a practice of routine sexual harassment, dehumanization, humiliation and abuse.
Some SHU guards have singled out selective prisoners, without any reasonable suspicion (belief), to strip stark naked and make them spread their buttocks before they could go to solitary outdoor recreation in the SHU pens. These unreasonable searches have been used as weapons of retaliation, punishment, intimidation and a means of behavior modification against those of us who are followers of the Islamic and Hebrew Israelite faith, and those of us who file complaints or lawsuits.
We are being subjected to secret drugging of our food, forced to drink contaminated water and intentional nutrition and food deprivation tactics as behavior and thought control measures to punish and torture us against our will. As a result of these calculated measures, 90% of us on this unit are suffering from severe weight loss and deteriorated health. I have lost forty pounds.
Because of my many complaints about the tampering of my food by SHU guards, on 11/7/09, one officer was given instructions to single me out for harassment. At supper time this officer was distributing meals when he reached my range (701 A-West SCU) and intentionally left my food tray in the hallway so that other staff could tamper with it. He gave trays to the other prisoners in cells 702-706. I asked officer Mohmed why he didn't give me a tray. He responded, "Your tray is sitting in the hallway. You will get it later." When I received my tray it appeared as if someone had been playing with my bread and cookie. The next day (11/8/09) at breakfast, another officer the same act with my breakfast tray. When I confronted him about it he told me to "Stop crying," and that if I continued to complain I would not get fed.
It is obvious that someone is instructing these guards to nit pick and target me because these crimes of abuse are continuing to escalate. I have filed over 300 complaints since I've been on this unit. Officers Thomas and Mohmed have been among the many staff that I have brought racial harassment complaints, etc., against.
The rampant institutionalized racism, cronyism and nepotism that permeates the hidden confines of this unit has allowed these staff to commit these violations with a license.Our lights in our cells stay on 24 hours a day as a weapon to punish, torture and modify our behavior.
They use the air conditioner and exposure to extreme outdoor weather during the fall and winter months as weapons of torture and behavior modification. We are commonly left shivering in our cells under this refrigeration.
We are experiencing routine reading and searching of our incoming and outgoing legal and personal mail, as well as systematic withholding and rifling of our incoming and outgoing personal and legal mail by staff as a means to inflict sensory deprivation, retaliation and behavior modification. I have not been allowed to write or receive letters from various family and friends on the outside for the past three years. We are not allowed any opportunity to develop social bonds or emotional support structures with our fellow prisoners or our families.
Due to the limited phone access and the draconian practice of video-only visitations, my ability to communicate with my family and friends in the outside world is virtually nonexistent. For the past three years I have been denied all phone calls to my family and friends. Officials here have placed restrictions on all of my phone numbers to prohibit me from calling out to my family.
We do not receive adequate health care. The health care that is provided to us is substandard at best. I am supposed to get a chest x-ray every three years. When I question the medical staff here they claim that they have no knowledge of this information, even though it is reflected in my medical records.
Our access to education, worship (especially those who adhere to non-Christian religions) and vocational training are extremely limited or non-existent. We are denied monthly idle pay. We are frequently subjected to entrapment and petty power plays, verbal harassment and antagonism by guards and staff.
I am not allowed due process of law. I have not been allowed to file grievances on many occasions. When we are allowed to complain nothing is ever done. The grievance procedure here is useless and for most of us has been suspended.
These punitive conditions and allegations of ill treatment herein are not accidents but instead are accepted practices of torture by these state officials who use them to intentionally cause us unnecessary pain and suffering that is geared to ultimately destroy or profoundly disrupt my human capacity, senses or personality. I assert that many aspects of the SHU conditions are tortuous and exceed what is required to meet reasonable security or other penological goals.
By choosing to subject hundreds of SHU prisoners to prolonged periods in extremely harsh and potentially harmful conditions that cannot be justified as reasonably necessary to ensure security or serve the legitimate goals of punishment, the state officials herein have violated the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual scientific or medical experimentations contained in the international covenant on political and civil rights, as well as the United Nations' Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. The state of Indiana's commitment under the charter of the United Nations is clearly being violated herein. Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and any intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethical, racial or religious group. I feel the U.S. government would certainly recognize these human rights violations herein if these men in SHU were held in any other country. I further assert that people on the outside should demand a full investigation of our conditions of confinement by the U.S. Department of Justice who has jurisdiction in this matter pursuant to the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. §1997, the Torture Victim Protection Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242, 1702 and 1708 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. §2000, sections 2 and 3.
I want to point out to the public that these SHU experiments , involving prolonged or indefinite solitary isolation, psychological and physical torture against us raises serious cultural, legal, political and ethical questions for the same reasons that the human radiation and biochemical experiments conducted on Oregon state prisoners from the 1940s to the 1970s were found to be troublesome. I need the public to urge the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene on my behalf, and also urge Edwin Buss and J. Wynn, of the Indiana Department of Corrections, to transfer me out of this prison to ensure my safety and to ensure that I am no longer retaliated against for speaking out about these hidden crimes.
It must be made clear to IDOC officials that the continued abuse by their SCU (SHU) staff will not be tolerated by the public!

Spread the word .
Aaron Isby-Israel#892219
A-701 SCU (SHU)
WVCF
P.O. Box 1111
6908 S. Old U.S. Hwy 41
Carlisle, IN 47838

3 brief poems by prisoners always alone

2009-11-24T20:50:00.000-08:00

In The Hole.
In the hole, where C.O.’s would love to see you hang yourself
And your only dream is to find the means to get out of this cell
Cause it seems like Hell when you can’t even tell whether It’s night or it’s day.
No razors to shave, no way to get paid, no place for the made
One must be brave and face each day, expecting the worst
You gotta prepare cause inside here, insanity lurks
so when it hurts and you’re feeling like you can’t go on
you stay strong cause that pain will not last long.

In the hole, where the C.O.’s would love to see you cut your throat,
And your only goal is to keep a hold of what’s left of your soul.
Cause they mess with your hopes and step on your toes trying to see if you’ll break,
It’s a game to be played, a fight too stay sane, a place for the crazed,
One must maintain and busy his brain, or all will be lost
If you don’t change but come out the same, then DAUG you the boss,
So when the cost seems like too much and tomorrow is hopeless,
You continue to cope push aside your sorrows and keep your focus.
anonymous

How Long

I’ve been buried alive in a stone tomb

I’m trying to find a ray of light seeking illumination from the moon

Every night I’m chipping at the walls, but only in my mind

I can’t sleep because I hear sounds echoing from past crimes

Nothing but distant images penetrate my eyes

Like Galileo with no telescope to see the stars in the sky

At times I just lay down with my head beneath the blanket

A frustrated way to escape because I hate it

My thoughts are of the world

but me it never mentions

All it does is spin and witnesses the tension

Every night when the sun hides from the beauty of the stars

I relax to meditate and my mind drifts through the bars

Every night I leave my cell and enter into the unknown

It’s a bit of a relief but it’s no place like home.

How long until I’m not alone?

WSPF Prisoner

Sometime I Cry
Sometimes when I'm alone, I cry because I'm on my own.

The tears I cry are bitter and warm, they flow with life but take no form.

I cry because my heart is torn, and I find it difficult to carry on.

If I had an ear to confide in,

I would cry among my treasured friends,

but who do you know that stops that long to help another carry on?

The world moves fast and would rather pass You by

than to stop and see what makes you cry.

It's painful and sad, and sometimes I cry

And no one cares about why!

fetal acohol syndrome

2009-11-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

Criminal minds?
Some say justice system fails inmates with fetal alcohol disorders

Steven Elbow (madison.com)
May 12, 2008

Tyler Mills lost nearly 25 pounds over the course of three weeks, but his jailers didn't see anything alarming about that. It was his choice to stop eating, his choice to stop drinking, his choice to swallow the toothbrush that was lodged in his stomach.
Sauk County Jail officials deemed it a behavior issue, not a medical one. It could be handled with discipline -- solitary confinement, suspension of privileges, physical restraints.
On June 8, 2006, jail staff and human services personnel got the 28-year-old inmate to a Boscobel hospital on a psychological commitment, and medical staff immediately saw they had a medical emergency on their hands.
Even so, jail officials adamantly refused to pay for medical care, according to Mills' medical records. They also wouldn't provide security for medical treatment, leaving Mills to be guarded by a nurse while he was moved to a medical unit for badly needed fluids.
Eventually jail officials relented and accompanied Mills to University Hospital, where the toothbrush was surgically removed.
At the time, Mills was in jail in Sauk County for auto theft and related charges. He was also wanted on an outstanding warrant in Eau Claire County for going into an Internet chat room in 2004 and asking a 14-year-old girl, who turned out to be a 40-year-old cop, to "de-virginize" him.
During his 17 months in the Sauk County Jail and seven months in the Eau Claire County Jail, Mills has stretched the patience of jail officials to the limit, eating pencils and utensils, spreading feces on the wall, throwing tantrums, and demanding psychiatric treatment, which he never received.
Several experts contend that Mills' bizarre behavior stems from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD -- brain damage from his mother's consumption of alcohol while he was in the womb.
He's among legions -- some say hundreds of thousands -- of inmates nationwide with fetal alcohol disorders, and jails and prisons are at a loss as to how to deal with their particular brand of misbehavior. Mills was hoping to be the first person in the nation to be found not guilty of a crime because of mental illness caused by fetal alcohol exposure.
But while an Eau Claire jury last week unanimously found that his fetal alcohol defects constituted a mental disease, it also ruled that his defect didn't lead him to commit his crime of child enticement.
But Mills did come close to getting a new trial. He needed 10 of 12 jurors to side with him for a not-guilty verdict, but only three for a hung jury. He got two.
It would have been a landmark case, said Natalie Novick Brown, a clinical psychologist at the University of Washington's Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit who testified at his trial and offered a written affidavit supporting Mills' claim of having a mental defect.
Now, instead of setting a precedent that would have helped change the way the justice system treats those afflicted with fetal alcohol disorder, Mills faces up to 25 years in prison at his sentencing next month. He would have faced up to 20 more, but the jury failed to make a decision on a charge of attempted sexual assault of a child.
"This would have been a wonderful precedent in terms of the court's awareness that FASD is a mental defect and that it does decrease someone's ability to control their behavior," Novick Brown said.
But she said the case, while tragic for Mills, is a small step getting the courts toward recognizing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a mitigating factor in criminal cases.
"We take the victories where we can find them, and in terms of the jury seeing the mental defect, that is a victory," she said. "At last two jury members heard the message this time, and hopefully next time more jurors will hear."

More cases expected
Advocates for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder expect a growing number of court cases in coming years contesting the justice system's treatment of people with the disease, who they say often do not understand their legal right to refuse to talk to police without a lawyer or their right to refuse to consent to a search. They say people who suffer from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder also often confess to crimes they didn't commit during police questioning and don't have access to lawyers who are knowledgeable about FASD.
And they see a coming wave of cases to force corrections officials to institute programs to deal with the unique needs of inmates afflicted with the disease.
"FASD is brain damage -- it's a disability," said Jonathan Rudin, who tracks legal issues as program director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto and is co-chair of FASD Stakeholders of Ontario. "It's not going to be possible, I don't think, for people who run corrections systems to ignore this for a long period of time. If they don't voluntarily start moving that way there's going to be more and more cases."
Advocates are pushing reforms that include shorter periods of incarceration and longer supervision, milder sanctions that take into account the behavior problems and mental limitations of those afflicted with FASD, and leniency for parole violations. The objective is to give offenders a structured life in a group home or other facility that helps them overcome their inability to meet day-to-day challenges.
Mills is a prime example of the problems inmates with fetal alcohol disorder pose to their jailers, and his jailers have been prime examples of how poorly corrections officials are responding to these issues.
During his stay at the Sauk County Jail, Mills ate pencils, razors, toothbrushes, even feces, according to medical records compiled by Mills' civil rights attorney and released to The Capital Times with Mills' permission.
He also acted out in other ways. He spread feces on the wall, bashed his head against the wall, overdosed on Tylenol and tried to hang himself.
Sauk County Jail officials responded with threats, restraints and a refusal to provide psychiatric care.
To Todd Winstrom, an advocacy attorney working to get Mills psychiatric care, the cause of Mills actions is unambiguous: "In Tyler's case it's very clear that his behavior is the result of his fetal alcohol disorder."
Mills' case in Sauk County was eventually resolved -- he pleaded no contest to possession of burglary tools, vehicle theft and two counts of identity theft and was sentenced to time he had already served -- and he was taken to Eau Claire County to face charges of attempted child enticement and attempted sexual assault of a child.

The behavior problems resurfaced.
Eau Claire County Assistant Jail Administrator Lt. Patti Salimas said that during his stay at the Eau Claire County Jail Mills has eaten razor blades and pencils. He's still in segregation. He's depressed and he's not getting medications.
"It's just complete isolation," Mills said in a recent phone conversation. "I'm going downhill. The frustration is getting overwhelming."
Winstrom works for Disability Rights Wisconsin, the state-appointed agency to advocate for the disabled, and has spent countless hours documenting Mills' experiences in jail and trying to get him psychiatric care.
Eau Claire County has allowed Mills one visit to a psychiatrist, but the drugs he received caused side effects. Jail staff canceled a subsequent appointment.
"It's a basic legal standard established by the courts that you've got to provide access to psychiatric care, and they just don't do it," Winstrom said.
Meanwhile, as was the case in Sauk County, Winstrom said, Eau Claire County is just warehousing Mills until they can get rid of him.
"Their continued response seems to be, 'We've got to solve this problem by getting this guy out of here -- get him sentenced, get him off to prison, solve the problem by making him someone else's problem.'"
'I end up getting in trouble somehow'
Mills, his supporters say, just doesn't fit in a correctional setting. Yet, because he can't conform to societal norms either, he keeps ending up back in the jail.
Whenever he finds himself on his own, he said, "I end up getting in trouble somehow."
He has been arrested in the states of Washington, Minnesota, Florida and Wisconsin, most often for peeking at women in public restrooms.
On May 9, 2006, he was arrested while stealing a wallet from a woman in a locker room on the UW-Baraboo campus. Caught at the scene, he handed the wallet to a police officer and asked to be let go, explaining that he had made a bad decision, according to a criminal complaint against him.
What he didn't tell police was that a 65-year-old accomplice -- who threatened Mills and his family with harm if he told police of his involvement -- had put him up to the crime. While Mills spoke to police, the accomplice made a quiet getaway on foot, leaving behind a stolen mini-van loaded with burglary tools.
The two had previously traveled to several northern Wisconsin counties, where the man showed Mills how to steal credit cards and draw cash from ATM machines, Mills says. In March and April of 2006, they committed enough petty financial crimes to rack up more than 100 years of potential prison time for Mills. Many of these cases are still pending.
While court documents don't confirm Mills' account, the accomplice, who met Mills at a Minnesota halfway house connected to the federal prison system, admitted during an interview with The Capital Times that he had come to Wisconsin with Mills for something "illegal." But he denied any specific allegations.
It was Mills' last taste of freedom in a life where freedom has been scarce. He and his brother, who also shows signs of fetal alcohol effects but has never been diagnosed, were adopted as babies by a foster mother and grew up in the Wausau area. While Mills' little brother has learning disabilities, he has managed to stay out of trouble. Mills has not been as lucky.
In conversation, Mills appears bright and articulate and has a remarkable memory for names and dates. But it's obvious that something isn't right.
"I've got the book smarts, but the social stupidity," he said.
Since the age of 6, he has lived mostly in institutions -- in mental hospitals as a boy, in jail or prison as an adult.
For years, Mills didn't understand why he kept getting into trouble. Then in 2002 an enlightened parole officer in Minnesota, where he had just served a year and a half in federal prison for writing threatening letters to public officials, noticed that Mills had, among his many psychological diagnoses, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
The officer had a doctor confirm the diagnosis, and a light went on in Mills' severely damaged brain.
"That's when I knew what it was," he said.

Documented damage to brain
An MRI of Mills' brain, analyzed by physicians at the fetal alcohol unit at the University of Minnesota, shows the unmistakable damage associated with alcohol exposure in the womb. His corpus callosum, the neural bridge between the two sides of his brain, is shrunken, limiting his ability to process information. He has little understanding of cause and effect. His brain's executive function, which allows for impulse control, is almost non-existent.
The fact that Mills' mother drank while she was pregnant with him has been documented. The brother he grew up with and two other brothers have developmental problems that also may have been caused by her drinking.
Mills has seen an array of specialists who have identified mental and physical evidence of FASD.
Novick Brown, the psychologist at the University of Washington's Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, said that Mills was a prime candidate to get an acquittal on the basis of FASD. While he's not by any means a rarity in having the affliction, his case is unique because it's so well documented.
"Getting all that information is what's difficult," said Novick Brown. "In Tyler's case, we have everything we need."
Novick Brown met Mills in 2002, when, during one of Mills' rare periods of freedom, he showed up at the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit after finding the group on the Internet. Founded in the 1970s, the unit has teams of psychiatric specialists, social workers and legal experts that do groundbreaking work on fetal alcohol issues.
The unit has developed ways to identify and help people suffering from fetal alcohol brain damage, who make up a large percentage of the nation's unemployable, homeless and drug-addicted populations. Its work has been cited extensively by the Centers for Disease Control, which in recent years has issued criteria for screening for FASD symptoms.
While fetal alcohol disorder affects people differently, there are some common traits.
About a quarter of those afflicted have tell-tale facial features -- small eye openings, a flat mid-face, a thin upper lip. Mills has some of these features. He also has a number of medical conditions and illnesses related to the disease: cerebral palsey, Marcus Gunn jaw wink syndrome, a drooping left eye, asthma and muscle rigidity that hampered the use of his legs.
Behavioral symptoms include a lack of impulse control, poor judgment, alcohol and drug problems, inability to understand verbal information, inappropriate sexual behavior, explosive episodes, and a tendency to be easily led. People with the disorder lack a capacity to understand cause and effect, and consequently sometimes fail to see the correlation between criminal acts and jail. The crimes they commit tend to lack any kind of planning, and often are ludicrously stupid.
More than half have run-ins with the law, according to the unit's studies, and 35 percent have spent time in jails and prisons.
According to studies done in Canada -- there have been no similar ones in the United States -- nearly 25 percent of that country's incarcerated population may have some form of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Once in prison, they often are victimized by fellow inmates, unable to follow rules, and placed in solitary confinement, either for punishment or for their own protection.
"I've seen them get reduced to despicable states by isolation," said Ann Streissguth, a clinical psychologist who 30 years ago founded the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit. "You take away all their normal cues and they just go berserk."
The cost to society is great, says Kay Kelly, who provides legal and advocacy services at the Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit.
"Virtually all folks with this disability have real problems with judgment," she said. "We need to figure out how to deal with this disability so people can conform. That's the smartest thing to do from a taxpayer's point of view."
Legal aspects
The greatest challenge, experts say, is getting people to realize that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is brain damage.
While a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder defense has not yet garnered a not-guilty verdict, a Seattle defense attorney has used it to soften up prosecutors.
The attorney, Jonathan Newcomb, said his client tried to commit "suicide by cop" and was facing life in prison because of a three-strikes-you're-out law. Prosecutors agreed to the use of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a contributing cause of the man's crime because they felt the sentence outweighed the crime.
Newcomb said images from a brain scan of his client that showed a dramatically withered corpus callosum were key.
"Anybody who has a brain deformity like that, you have to think there's something screwy upstairs, even if you don't know what it is," he said.
Mills says his attorney, state-appointed defense lawyer Peter Thompson, showed a scan of Mills' brain to jurors, but didn't ask one of his expert witnesses, Fred Bookstein of the University of Washington's fetal alcohol unit, to explain the difference between an image of Mills' brain and a normal brain. It was a missed opportunity. Bookstein is an expert in using brain scans to identify fetal alcohol brain damage.
Thompson didn't return a phone call seeking comment on the trial. (After publication Thompson said that Bookstein did explain the differences between Mills' brain and a normal brain.)
Winstrom says Mills' mental health care may be somewhat better in the state prison system than it was in jail because the state has more resources at its disposal than counties. He calls that a "sad commentary" on the jails, since the state system is under federal scrutiny for providing inadequate mental health care.
But, he added, "There's a high probability that because of behaviors associated with his mental illness, Tyler will spend great amounts of time in the hole."
Mills freely admits that he committed the crime that he was convicted of.
In fact, he says, he can't understand why the jury didn't convict him of the second charge, attempted sexual assault of a child.
"It doesn't make sense," he said. "I did it. They had me dead to rights."
It's a candor that's disquieting, delivered with a breezy tone of voice that seems to suggest little understanding of the conviction that would carry such profound implications for his future.
But in another instant his disappointment emerges.
Had he been found not guilty by reason of mental defect, he had hoped to eventually be released to the custody of Westbrook farms near Duluth, Minn., a fetal alcohol disorder treatment program where he was offered a chance to live with others who suffer from the same disorder.
Instead, even when he completes his prison sentence, the state will likely draw upon a long list of sex-related crimes to have him committed, possibly for the rest of his life, as a sexual predator. This is one concept Mills seems to have no problem grasping.
"I'll probably spend the rest of my life in prison."

Can You Hear Me Now?

2009-11-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

Can You Hear Me Now?”
by William Tony Julian #110970; Sussex I State Prison; Waverly, Virginia

Many of you have watched the wireless phone commercial. You know the one I’m speaking of. Every few steps the actor stops. Asks into his wireless phone, “ Can you hear me now?” He smiles at the instant response. Then walks on, only to start his scene over again. Every time I see this marvelous invention, I am in awe. Not so much by the wireless phone, but rather man’s ingenuity. If it will make the world more convenient, a better place to live, work and play, then someone will give us another technological breakthrough in the form of a gadget. With each new devise we walk around in circles, mumbling to ourselves, “ how did we ever get along without this gadget?” Coupled with this great ingenuity to make the world more convenient for living, working, playing and staying awhile, is the utopian utilities of false prophets.

Visit with me yet another of man’s inventions- Prison! Another gadget for convenience. In the late sixties, politicians began preaching the grand “deinstitutionalization” scheme, to rid the nation of our dark, dank and outdated mental hospitals . We were pitched the idea that a more cost effective way to treat the mentally ill was to establish community based mental health programs. The idea of this altruistic, cost effective scheme delighted all of us at the time. We were headed into a new era of mental health care.

However, the concept never became a reality. As soon as the mental health hospitals were emptied, the politicians were on a new soapbox. This time preaching a drug war. “Punitive anti –crime “ was born. This epidemical attitude by politicians sparked media frenzy. Citizens became worried sick that loved ones would step out the front door, only to return a few minutes later confirmed drug addicts.

This would change too, as our attention was diverted to yet another direction. The rising taxes! Rather than stem the influx of drugs across the borders into the US, it was geared toward the recreational user.

Results were immediate. The rising cost of this drug war was causing the rising voice of discontent to rise. Sweeping raids were showing needed results. Positive attrition was accomplished . But the recreational users were, along with the mentally ill, being rounded up. As quickly as they were arrested, they were run through the judicial system-. then to jails or prisons.

Citizens seeing these drugs arrests on television, began to feel confident in their communities. This is why no one was prepared for the consequences that were about to explode upon us- these thousands and thousands of arrests, flowing through the judicial system, filling up prisons across the nation.

Once more, politicians rose atop their soapboxes to preach the urgent , immediate need for more prisons. In 2004, the prison domination still continues. Only now, it’s privatized by corporations who deem crime as the new billion dollar business. All with the same rehabilitative void.

The conservative estimate of the number of people with mental disorders in US prisons is three hundred thousand. Their psychological disorders range from schizophrenia, depression, major depression, bi polar disorder, serious impulse control, paranoia, psychosthemia, serious suicidal tendencies.

“ A well disciplined institution facilitates correctional objectives, permits prisoners to live safely with one another. It allows them to concentrate on self- improvement rather than self- protection. This is the fundamental requirement for institutional order.” With this directive in mind, realize that our prisons and prison directors have exceeded this pre-preventive directive. As in constitutional violations. Especially toward the mentally ill.

The mentally ill prisoners are subjected to “chemical restraints,” chemical cocktails of psychotropics. This chemical cocktail restraint usually consists of an anti psychotic drug called “haldol”. So powerful to the nervous system, it can cause lethal reactions, mild strokes, heart attacks, convulsions and temporary blindness. To counter the above dangers with “haldol”, a pill is given three times daily. It is called “ Cogentin”. The drug is given to control the nervous system and helps to control muscle spasms and other Parkinsons-like symptoms. Daily side effects to haldol are muscle aches (sometimes severe), deadened motor skills, clouded interpretational abilities, severe lack of ability to concentrate, a dead pan facial stare, no attention span and memory loss.

In 2000, the Bureau of Justice statistics reported that in Virginia there were 2,540 prisoners on “chemical restraints”- psychotropic drugs. Then a confidential report was released in California on the widespread use of Psychotropics. They were being used to control the mentally ill in the state’s eleven youth institutions. The report was released in conjunction with an investigation brought about by a class-action lawsuit. The report’s disclosure came one week after two more teenage boys had hung themselves.

In February 2004, State Senator Gloria Ramera, who sits on the corrections oversight committee stated , “widespread use of so called “chemical restraints” is intolerable! This is not the 1930’s. Even in mental hospitals, I thought we had gotten rid of these practices long ago. We have a serious problem, and before another teenager commits suicide, the California Youth Authority has got to get it’s act together.”

“Intolerable” is too soft to use for this inhumane treatment. “Damnable” is more appropriate as well as “cruel and inhumane”.

Added to this is the placement of the mentally ill in supermax prisons. It is well established that prisoners with no mental illness have extreme difficulties coping with the stress, frustration, elevated harshness, negativity, idleness and boredom.

Prisoners with mental disorders tend to have, in addition, extreme depth perception disorders, despair, anguish, confusion and a frightening loneliness. For years now, prisoners have been trying to reach out to the world to explain these over the edge, harsh and inhumane treatments directed at them. But most of their pleas for help are drowned out by the politicians who preach that “they are bad guys just looking for sympathy.”

Now though, it is realized through class action lawsuit investigations that the conditions described by many inmates are a terrible reality that can no longer be drowned out by politicians with evil to hide.

The only “gadget” to right these wrongs has been in existence since every human was born-conscience. It is time for this nation to take a real stand for democracy.

Stop the fraudulent treatment of our own! Accountability! Then other nations will recognize that we say what me mean and do what we say on our own soil. I was inspired to write this article by Andrew Skeeter #234061. A mentally ill prisoner at Sussex 1 State Prison, a maximum security prison. Andrew will talk to you and then ask, “ can you hear me now ?.” It should be noted that Andrew was diagnosed with mental illness prior to his conviction. He receives Psychotropics.

On Psychological Death Row

2009-11-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

On Psychological Death Row Green Bay, WI. -

Technically, Wisconsin doesn't have the death penalty. However, it does have a penal system with a prison mortality rate exceeding the execution rates of any state in the U.S. Only here it is the conditions of confinement that has led to suicide as the form of exacting that ultimate punishment.

A January 2005 report by Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) mental health director Kevin Kallas and psychology director Don Hands has revealed that suicides are committed within WI. prisons at a rate nearly twice the national average. The nation averages 14 suicides per 100,000 prisoners, while WI. averages about 25 per 100,000. From 2001-2005 there were 28 suicides at the state's prisons, averaging 7 suicides per year. The latest death is that of prisoner John Virgin, a striving Brother of the incarcerated Islamic Ummah and a personal friend. We spoke and saw each other regularly; that is, until he was taken to the segregation unit of Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI), and placed in "the box" (the box-car cells of the unit). John, just 25 years old, with only 15 months remaining on a 2 years sentence, reportedly hung himself on April 7, 2006. In the box prisoners are isolated from the general population and subject to much harsher conditions: 23-24 hour cell confinement, limited communication, sleep deprivation (cells illuminated 24 hrs. a day), loss of property (t.v., radio, books, etc.), no-contact visits, denial of food, clothing and running water, among other similarly atypical hardships.

In July 2000, while confined to WI.'s Supermax Prison, I and co-plaintiff Emir Siddigl(f.k.a. Micha-El Johnson) filed a class action law suit which resulted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of WI. finding that such conditions as those described in the box violates the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment when prisoners experiencing psychological problems, or With a history of them, are housed there. See Jones-El V. Berge, 164 F.Supp.2d 1096 (W.D. WI. 2001). In spite of the Jones-El decision, nearly 5 years later Kallas and Hands's report show a steady incline from 2001-2005 of mentally ill prisoners being subject to the conditions of "the box". In fact, officials report that they are placing prisoners with mental illnesses in these type of "segregated settings" at a rate twice that of other prisoners. Quoting Kallas, "We recognize that being in a segregated setting can lead to more mental health issues." There is clearly no lack of awareness of the debilitating and lethal effects segregation units, and especially at GBCI. In July 2001 mentally ill and epileptic prisoner Kelvin Brooks was placed in GBCI's box and accused of violating the rules. As a result, he was placed on a food restriction known as "seg. loaf" (a medley of congealed food particles) which caused him to vomit, making it impossible to keep down his anti-seizure medication. On July 12, 2001, disturbing videotapes show Brooks buck-naked in the cell (on "clothing restriction") and having full-blown seizures repeatedly, which GBCI staff claimed he was faking to get his clothes back. He was already in rigor mortis when medical personnel did respond. On November 1, 2004, his family settled a wrongful death suit against the DOC for $600,000 dollars in the case of Brooks V. Bertrand, #01-0-1017. Just last year GBCI's notorious "box" claimed the life of prisoner Jae Sumners on October 17, 2005, reportedly a suicide.Method of death? Hanging. Who says WI. doesn't have the death penalty? While WI.'s seg. units make up only 10% of its 22,000 person prison system/ more than 50% of its suicides occur there. Most of these occur at the state's 6 maximum security prisons ,where more than half of the state's seg. units are, in some cases making up 20%-25% of the prison. GBCI is one such prison with approximately 20% of its available bed space comprised of seg. cells. It's operating capacity is for a population of 749 prisoners, but it houses 1088 at this writing. The cry of prison over-crowding and the need for more building and thus more jobs, is echoed throughout the state by proponent of the prison industrial complex.

However, instead of building more general population units, the DOC has chosen to build more and more high-tech, expensive and draconian control seg. units and are using them in place of general population units. Once built, these units, as a matter of necessity, must be filled. Since WI. state prisons are not known for frequent homicides, rapes and riots as are some more notorious prisons, these units are being filled up mostly with prisoners who have committed only minor offennses (shoes untied, pants sagging, talking too loud etc.), and the mentally ill. These are offenses a prisoner would hardly be placed in seg. for in most prisons. Moreover, prisoners in WI. are doing more time in seg. for minor offenses. WI. prisoners once housed out-of-state (MN, TX, TN, MS, OK, Federal prisons) invariably report to no more than 30-90 days in seg. for the type of offenses (fighting, use or possession of intoxicants, soliciting staff etc.) that prisoners here often find themselves doing years in seg. for. Thus, it is no strange wonder that WI. is leading in prison suicides. It's basic mathematics. If most suicides occur in seg. units and by the mentally ill and WI. is keeping its mentally ill prisoner there at twice the rate of other prisoners for minor offenses and for longer periods of time, you're gonna predictably have more suicides here. So why was our brother John Virgin placed in "the box"? For having a pair of state issued pants that didn't have his name and prison on them, and it cost him his life. You would think that with these type of offenses being the DOC's usual worries, as opposed to more serious offenses, the prison population would be rewarded with more privileges, better prison jobs and wages, a greater good-time program/ etc.

Instead the reward in WI. state prisons has been new control seg. units, a ban on cassettes tapes, on smoking, on most hip-hop magazines, a 30% and the building of an unjustifiable Super-max prison at a cost of over 44 million dollars, which now has to be made into a general population — what it should have been in the first place. ConsideR, prior to November 1999, when Supermax Correctional Institution (SMCI — now called Wisconsin Secure Program Facility) opened there was only an average of about 30 WI. prisoners on administrative confinement (as security threats)out of 20/000. Less than a year of SMCI being opened that number increased to over 300, a 1000 % increase. impossible,but true. There were no unprecedented violent incidents in the prison system, so what was the justification? There was and is none. It was simply a part of the prison industry's evolution into a self-serving machine and placing its profit interest over the state's penological interests and prisoner's well-being. A case of "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us." (Winston Churchill,addressing the House of Commons/ Oct. 28, 1943).

Punishment for crime is supposed to be loss of liberty, not humanity, and not a person's sanity. It is clear that this problem with WI.'s prisons has grown lethal- making it impossible for some prisoners to survive within the system and obviously not capable of surviving outside it.
However. "The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.?" — Dune .

For the proponents of the death penalty the message should be clear: Before worrying about instituting a new death penalty, try fixing the one you already have.
By Wisconsin Prisoner

Brian Locke's story- diagnosis illegally changed

2009-08-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

link to Isthmus article online

Supermax: Psychiatrist alleges Dept. of Corrections retaliation
Narinder K. Saini says refusal to change inmate's diagnosis cost him his job
Bill Lueders on Thursday 05/22/2008 ,

A veteran state psychiatrist testified in court last year that he was asked to change the diagnosis of a state prison inmate and fired because he refused.

Narinder K. Saini, a state employee since 1990, dropped this bombshell in a Dodge County courtroom last July at the sentencing hearing of former Lodi resident Brian Locke. He stated that in mid-2004, he was asked by his boss, Dr. Kevin Kallas, to agree that Locke did not have a bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness, "so he could be sent successfully to Boscobel."
At the time, Saini was in his 10th year of employment with the state Department of Corrections, then under a court order not to use the supermaximum security prison at Boscobel for patients with serious mental illness.

"[Kallas] asked me to change the diagnosis because they knew if I will not change the diagnosis, [Locke] cannot go to Supermax," Saini testified. "I refused to do that."

Saini knew Locke from previous contacts and felt he had been correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He said Kallas was "not happy with my clinical diagnosis" and overruled him, sending Locke to Boscobel, but that another doctor who also knew Locke's medical history ordered his return. Shortly thereafter, "I was terminated by the DOC...for mishandling the case, not cooperating with them."

The DOC, Saini added, cut Locke off medications that had proved effective in the past. Why would it do this? he was asked. "Save money," he replied.
Saini said he tried restoring these medications but "was not allowed to."

The DOC wanted to send Locke to Boscobel because he had assaulted a guard, the incident for which he was being sentenced. At the hearing, Saini suggested the assault owed at least in part to Locke being taken off his medication.

Dodge County Judge Andrew Bissonette, in sentencing Locke to an additional five years in prison, noted that he had, prior to this incident, been "complaining to staff that he was being deprived of the meds he needed." The judge called Saini's testimony "kind of damning to the DOC," adding that the agency "has a responsibility to provide care to all of its inmates so we don't have incidents like this where staff are injured."

DOC spokesman John Dipko calls Saini's testimony "inaccurate on nearly every count. The Department of Corrections does not withhold necessary medication from inmates because of cost, and the department does not fabricate documentation to send inmates to [Boscobel]."
Brian Locke, now 50 and incarcerated at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, could be a poster boy for the dangers of using prisons to deal with people with serious mental illness.
His attack on the guard after his medications were yanked was his first felony conviction. His prior convictions were all misdemeanors, although he did draw a multi-year sentence in 2002 on multiple misdemeanor counts.

In a letter to Isthmus, Locke says this incident — an attack on medical personnel transporting him to a hospital — owed to a mix-up involving medications: "I was still responsible for my actions, but not the intent."

Locke later sued his Madison defense attorney, David Stokes, for malpractice; the case was dismissed last fall but is now being appealed. Armed with records he obtained through discovery, Locke has also alleged that Stokes defrauded the State Public Defender's Office through overbilling. He initiated a John Doe proceeding against Stokes in Dane County court.
Sounds nuts, right? But this February, around the time when the Legislature nearly passed a bill to bar inmates from bringing such actions, Dane County Judge Sarah O'Brien found probable cause that Stokes repeatedly submitted "false and fraudulent" records. David Feiss, an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County, has been named special prosecutor. He says no charges have yet been filed and Stokes is presumed innocent.

In 2000, inmates at the Boscobel prison filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that conditions there constituted cruel and unusual punishment. A settlement agreement reached in 2002 mandated some policy changes and prohibited the DOC from using the prison for mentally ill inmates.
Carlos Pabellon, an attorney with the office of Ed Garvey, which represented the inmates, came to suspect the DOC was "manipulating" diagnoses to sidestep this ban.

"What we discovered," says Pabellon, "is that a number of these inmates had on one day an MH-2 classification" [meaning they could not be sent to Boscobel] and after the next visit an MH-1 classification [meaning they could be and were]." He believes the DOC was under pressure to "fill the empty beds at Boscobel, and, unfortunately, it appeared to us that they were doing it at the expense of the mental health of these inmates."

Federal Judge Barbara Crabb tapped a Medical College psychiatrist to monitor whether seriously mentally ill inmates were going to Boscobel. This appointment ended earlier this month, as did the court order against using Boscobel for seriously mentally ill inmates.
DOC spokesman Dipko says "the screening process" that was developed in response to the lawsuit remains in place. But others say the Locke case underscores that the DOC cannot be trusted.

"They're still putting mentally ill prisoners into [Boscobel]," says Frank Vanden Bosch, an inmate rights activist who lives near the prison. "They're really not concerned with the prisoners. They're concerned about keeping the prison full. It makes a mockery of what the courts have decided."

Dr. Kallas, in a recent interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, admitted he sometimes overrules diagnoses made by colleagues. But he claimed it is on the other end of the spectrum.
"While the psychologist may be technically correct in saying there's not serious mental illness, I err on the side of caution and say, 'Let's not send this person,'" Kallas maintained. "I've just taken a more conservative stance and in many cases have decided that I don't want certain inmates there even though they may technically under the court criteria qualify."

The transcript of the July 2007 hearing was not completed until late October. In January of this year, Locke filed a complaint against Dr. Kallas with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing, arguing that he committed "medical malpractice" and violated Judge Crabb's order. That complaint is pending.

Locke has also asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene, saying, "It is time to put the DOC in check and punish them for this behavior." This is also pending.

Dr. Saini himself briefly agitated against his termination. His Madison attorney, Richard Bolton, sent a letter dated Dec. 30, 2004, to Matthew Frank, then DOC secretary. It says Saini worked at the agency for 10 years "without serious criticism of his performance" and occasional commendations, only to be fired in August 2004, shortly after "failing to cooperate" with the DOC's attempt to "manipulate" Locke's diagnosis so he could be sent to Boscobel.

Saini, who is now working at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, declined opportunities to comment. Bolton says the DOC denied there was any connection between Saini's termination and the Locke matter. Saini did not pursue legal action.

Read court transcript and see other posts about Brian

Wisconsin's Myth of Rehabilitation

2008-11-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin’s Myth of Rehabilitation
By: Wisconsin Prisoner

In recent years there has been more than ever calls for longer sentences to combat the growing fear and rise of crime or criminal elements within our neighborhoods and communities. Not only has aspiring, but veteran politicians used the tougher sentencing scheme as a platform to ignite their political careers and to perpetuate this fear and outcry from everyday citizens which cut across all ethnic lines, whose lives has been touched directly or indirectly by crime, which has resulted in the overcrowding of jails and orisons all around the state of Wisconsin.

With a significance primarily focused on the predominantly larger Black or Hispanic or minority areas, and while more and more young Black and Brown males are being incarcerated for demonstrating antisocial behaviors such as drug addictions, robberies, homicides, sexual crimes, etc., many of these poor underprivileged and under-represented class of people suffer from some form of mental affliction ranging from severe to mild mental diseases and defects.

It is these outcasted members of society who can't afford to hire competent attorney's for representation to defend them or help them get into drug rehabilitation clinics or mental health institutions to combat the poisonous chemical they have become dependent upon in an attempt to escape the realities of their living condition of impoverished and depressing neighborhoods.

The rich rarely serve time in any prison for any kind of crime, as they can buy their way out with hiring a good high profile attorney and receive real justice. America and Wisconsin has a longstanding history of incarcerating the uneducated, untrained and oftentimes mentally handicapped minority who are ignorant of the laws and intricacies of the criminal justice system, so they are provided quarter defenses' if that, by state paid overworked, burnt out, underpaid State Public Defenders whose main objective is not to fight and mount any kind of real defense but to get the measly few thousand dollars the state is paying him/her and dispose of the case quickly, which oftentimes more than not are settled through plea agreements.

Such a quagmire are realities for minorities who has the unfortunate luck to get caught-up within the American System of Justice. It's also unfortunate that so many has come to believe in the political rhetoric and media propaganda that's locking up citizens and warehousing them in these industrialized institutions now called "Correctional Institutions," rather than what they are ("Prisons") will solve the problem of crime.

This misrepresentation and manipulative power of circumstances as well environment are in my belief the root behind thousands of minorities arrested daily within Wisconsin's ghetto's for serious and petty crimes, in an attempt to feed their addictions from drugs to materialism, placing them in processes of legal and judicial entanglement.

I, like so many Blacks in the ghetto's of America was also duped into criminal activities for whatever reason and has served as a conduit for the accumulation of political power and grandstanding by those politicians and aspiring political figures who complain about repeat criminal offenders (primarily blacks). While these hypocrites secretly make millions from the criminal elements of the streets. What realistic opportunity does an unskilled, undereducated ex-con have for success when you have a governmental body that has passed laws which says companies and corporations doesn't have to hire ex-offenders, Housing and Urban Development can deny you housing, school grants can be denied you simply because you're an felon, and there is no governmental assistance programs to act as a safety net for ex-offenders.

The answer, of course is self-evident— he has no options, he must do more crime in order to survive or revocate himself. Wisconsin like the Country has taken on the title "Correctional Institutions," from the root word [Correct] meaning to remove the errors or fault. This very play of words are design to manipulate and hoodwink the masses of society by the power structure and government into believing prisoners are not just being imprisoned as punishment, but are being rehabilitated.

The reality is that many prisoners rehabilitate themselves and yet, even though many are eligible for parole, in Wisconsin's penal system we remain imprisoned as society is methodically manipulated by politicians and Prison Unions who utilizes pernicious, insidious schemes to exploit and sensationalize with the help of the media those circumstances where an ex-offender gets out and re-offend.

This type of cunning and intellectual racism is superb. America and States like Wisconsin has a proud history of thwarting minority progress; It is not enough that most incarcerated prisoners are disadvantaged, but must be kept in a system of disenfranchisement and slavery for as long as humanly possible.

This is how rural "White America," and its dying farm industry has been revitalized, and how "white," underprivileged Americans become middle or the working class, as Wisconsin's Prison system is predominately 65% or better of Black and or African-American, while 95% of those hired to guard and administrate these places are White.

It doesn't take Einstein to see the system is designed to make profit off black bodies as it has done since America and Western Europe invaded Africa in 1618.

And no accident that the Parole Board and Parole Chairman has been denying eligible prisoners parole, instead opting to give lengthy defferals such as 48 months, 60 months and longer as Parole Board Chairman Alonzo Graham, an ex police approve these questionable and undoubtedly racially motivated deferrals.

No program of rehabilitation and consequent social, economic regeneration can be effectively achieved, unless these depraved and racist tactics to keep incarcerated eligible prisoners incarcerated are addressed by the people of this state and its Governor. This kind of dissipation must be destroyed and removed from the penal system. So long as this practice and program continues to operate as presently allowed, there can be no real chance for regeneration of minorities members back into society as productive citizens. Wisconsin Parole system needs to undergo serious changes in its policies and practices.

In most states the Parole Board consist of two or more members to fairly and accurately reflect a panel that's impartial in body and thought, however, in Wisconsin there's only one person sitting as decision maker, determining whether or not parole should be granted. This policy and practice is merely perfunctory, a sham process whose primary goal is to do nothing, but make society believe its affording prisoners a fair and accurate hearing for chances at parole. Through the genius of trickonolledgy politicians and the Wisconsin's DOC Parole Board has reinstituted a situation that's identical to institutionalized slavery because there are no grassroot support or outcries against the practices being promulgated in Wisconsin.

No public outcry of the rampant inmate abuses and fraudulent misbehavior reports orchestrated and designed to keep prisoners incarcerated as former governor Tommy Thompson advocated, and although other states that employ loss of good time, the prisoner is allowed or afforded the chance to re-earn their loss time through good behavior, not so in Wisconsin penal system. This time is taken and never returned. This is much like the slave who could not effectively stand up and challenge his/her slave master. This was true because the slave had no ally to help alter the balance of power in his /her favor.

Timeline of Solitary Confinement

2008-11-24T19:48:00.000-08:00

NPR.org July 2006

Timeline: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisonsby Laura Sullivan

The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where the first American experiment in solitary confinement took place. Library of Congress

NPR.org July 2006

Pentonville is a prison built in 1842 in North London. Its design was influenced by the "separate system" developed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Stapleton Collection/CORBIS © 1862

The "Birdman of Alcatraz," Robert Stroud, is one of the prison's most famous D Block residents. Stroud got his nickname from a previous prison stay in Leavenworth, Calif., where he raised canaries. Bettmann/CORBIS

Thirteen years ago, Pelican Bay State Prison was cut out of a dense forest near Crescent City, Calif. The highlight of the Supermax prison was the Security Housing Unit (SHU), where 1,300 of the state's most hardened criminals are kept in near isolation. San Francisco Bay Area Press Photographers Association

Guards at the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU put handcuffs on an inmate through a small hole in the door. Adam Tanner/Reuters/Corbis

In 1995, a federal judge rule that conditions at the Pelican Bay facility "may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable." Adam Tanner/Reuters/Corbis

The ADX (administrative maximum) Supermax Prison in Florence, Colo., is a state-of-the-art isolation prison for repeat and high-profile felony offenders. Corbis

NPR.org, July 26, 2006 •

An overview of key moments in the history of solitary confinement.
1829 - The first experiment in solitary confinement in the United States begins at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is based on a Quaker belief that prisoners isolated in stone cells with only a Bible would use the time to repent, pray and find introspection. But many of the inmates go insane, commit suicide, or are no longer able to function in society, and the practice is slowly abandoned during the following decades.

1890 - In an opinion concerning the effects of solitary confinement on inmates housed in Philadelphia (Re: Medley, 134 U.S. 160), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Freeman Miller finds, "A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community."

1934 - The federal government opens Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to house the nation's worst criminals. Most inmates spend many hours outside in the yard and on required work details. But a few dozen are kept in "D Block," the prison’s solitary-confinement hallway. One cell in particular is called "The Hole" -- a room of bare concrete except for a hole in the floor. There is no light, inmates are kept naked, and bread and water is shoved through a small hole in the door. Although most inmates only spend a few days in the hole, some spend years on D Block. Conditions are better than in The Hole -- inmates have clothes and food -- but they are not permitted contact with other inmates and are rarely let out of their cells. The most famous inmate on D Block is Robert Stroud, known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz,” who spends six years there. A 1962 movie about Stroud -- and subsequent media reports on the conditions on D Block -- made solitary confinement a fixture of the American imagination for the first time.

1983 - Two correctional officers at a Marion, Ill., prison are murdered by inmates in two separate incidents on the same day. The warden at the time puts the prison in what he calls "permanent lockdown." It is the first prison in the country to adopt 23-hour-a-day cell isolation and no communal yard time for all inmates. Inmates are no longer allowed to work, attend educational programs, or eat in a cafeteria. Within a few years, several other states also adopt permanent lockdown at existing facilities.

1989 - California builds Pelican Bay, a new prison built solely to house inmates in isolation. By most accounts, it is the first Supermax facility in the country. There is no need to build a yard, cafeteria, classrooms or shops. Inmates spend 22 1/2 hours a day inside an 8-by-10-foot cell. The other 1 1/2 hours are spent alone in a small concrete exercise pen.

1990s - The building boom of Supermax or control-unit prisons begins. Oregon, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and a dozen other states all build new, free-standing, isolation units.

1994 - The U.S. Bureau of Prisons builds ADX Florence, the federal government's first and only Supermax facility, in Florence, Colo. It's known popularly as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies." It currently houses 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, Unibomber Ted Kaczynski, former FBI agent and convicted spy Robert Hanssen, Olympic Park and abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, and many others.

1995 - A federal judge finds conditions at Pelican Bay in California "may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable" (Madrid v. Gomez). But he rules that there is no constitutional basis for the courts to shut down the unit or to alter it substantially. He says the court must defer to the states about how best to incarcerate offenders.

1999 - A report by the Department of Justice finds that more than 30 states are operating a Supermax-type facility with 23-hours-a-day lockdown and long-term isolation. The study finds that some states put 0.5 percent of their total inmates in this kind of facility, while other states lock up more than 20 percent of their inmates this way.

2005 - Daniel P. Mears, an associate professor at Florida State University, conducts a nationwide study and finds there are now 40 states operating Supermax or control-unit prisons, which collectively hold more than 25,000 U.S. prisoners.

Making It on the outside after decades of Isolation

2008-11-24T19:43:00.000-08:00

All Things Considered, July 28, 2006 •
Daud Tulam likes to sit on the porch of his mother's house in Salem, N.J., and watch traffic whiz by.
"I spent most of the whole summer out here, daytime and night," he says. "After being confined for that long period of time, you really do have an appreciation for the outside."
That "long period" was the past 25 years, which Tulam spent inside the New Jersey State Prison. For most of that time, Tulam was held in isolation. He spent 23 hours a day alone in a cell no bigger than a bathroom and one hour in a concrete exercise yard.
Tulam is one of more than 25,000 inmates who serve their sentences this way in the United States. It's not what these prisoners did on the outside that sends them to isolation: It's how they behave on the inside. And once in isolation, there is often no way out.

Two Decades in Solitude
In Tulam's case, he was sent to prison for trying to rob a gun store. He was sent to isolation after prison officials say they caught him planning to assault officers. He stayed in isolation for 18 years.
New Jersey prison officials say he never participated in any programs that could have gotten him out. Tulam says he tried to participate, but they never let him out, so he gave up.
Now, on the outside, Tulam has trouble making small talk. Even after all those years alone, when faced with people looking for a conversation, Tulam doesn't engage.
Tulam is taking a class on welding at a local community college. During one recent session, he hid in the back of the classroom.
When the teacher comes over to check his work, Tulam only looks at the floor. At one point, the instructor asks Tulam if he understands a welding technique. Tulam does not look up -- or answer. Eventually, the instructor gives up and moves on.
'I Lost My Social Skills'
In many ways, Tulam's days are still filled with this kind of silence. But there is one place where Tulam suddenly has a lot to say: behind the wheel of his car, when his eyes -- and yours -- are on the road.
"I'm certain that I lost my social skills to a certain extent," Tulam says as he drives through the rundown streets of Salem. "Not that I'm unable to socialize. Just that trivial conversation for conversation's sake, I don't have no tolerance for."
Tulam's 6-foot-frame seems too big for the 15-year-old Taurus he's driving. He's wearing what he wears everyday: old jeans and a sweatshirt. He passes boarded-up buildings and liquor stores. Much has changed about this town, but he says even more has changed about him.
Tulam's luckier that most ex-convicts. He has a family, a place to stay and even some occasional construction work. But he finds much about society difficult. He doesn't like grocery stores, busy sidewalks or going to the movies. And he doesn't like parties.
That came as a shock to his family. Tulam's mother, Charlotte Fletcher, says Tulam used to love to socialize.
"He always had a few friends. But as far as I was concerned, it wasn't the right kind," Fletcher says.
Early on, she says, it was hard to keep her son away from kids who wanted to party.
"He was a young kid when he first got in trouble -- last year of high school," Fletcher says. "He was around with these guys. They been doing a lot of drinking and other things, so I guess he did some wild things."
Looking for 'Some Kind of Relief'
On the day Tulam was released from prison, his family threw him a party in the backyard. He spent the whole time sitting alone in a folding chair in the corner, while his nieces and nephews played. That's the other thing Tulam doesn't like anymore.
"You know, in prison there are no children," Tulam says. "The trivial kind of things kids do, the nonsensical things kids do, you don't have a tolerance for that. I'm still trying to really adapt."
Tulam says he struggled to make the days he spent in solitary pass. He began dividing his time into little increments: Make the bed. Write a letter. Do push ups.
"Even if I would have to go to sleep early, just to look for the next day to bring some kind of relief," Tulam says.
He still does that now. He schedules his day into activities: Take a shower. Eat breakfast. Sit outside. Go for a drive.
"I never use alarm clocks," Tulam says. "I've done it for so long, it's almost like second nature."
'You Become Your Best Company'New Jersey has one of the least restrictive isolation units in the country. Prisoners in solitary are allowed visits with relatives, though Tulam's family could rarely afford the trip. They are also allowed televisions. Tulam says he kept his TV set on every day, morning until night, for 18 years.
"Up until that time, I never owned a TV, never had much interest in TV," he says. "But when I got into solitary, it was so quiet in there, I genuinely had to get me a TV, just to hear some noise."
Now he can't stand television. But he doesn't want to hang out with people, either. He doesn't talk much with his family. He hasn't joined any groups. He doesn't talk about having any friends.
"Having been in isolation, with hardly anybody to talk to, anyway, you just acquire a knack of just being able to -- like with me, you become your best company," Tulam says.
The Odds Against Making ItThere are few statistics about how inmates who spend time in isolation adjust on the outside. Only two studies have been conducted; one looked at former inmates in Washington state, the other at those in Texas. The results weren't good.
In both studies, the rate of recidivism for inmates released from isolation was higher than for those released from the general prison population. And in Washington, researchers found these ex-inmates were more likely to commit violent crimes than their general population counterparts.
In that sense, Tulam is doing better than expected. Having a place to live and a mother to make him food has made a big difference. But at 51 years old, he's spent almost half his life in prison, most of it alone.
"I do have some regrets," he says, pausing for a moment before getting out of the car. "But ask me if I would ever want anybody else's life? Nah. I'm comfortable with the life that I've been given. You know, like saying that I'm a realist. I genuinely believe that every individual struggles in this life, anyway."
So after 18 years of isolation, Daud Tulam's greatest struggle may be finding a way not to live an isolated life.

Working the Isolation Unit: A Prison Officer's Tale

2008-11-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

NPR.org
July 28 2006

For 25 years, Sgt. Gary Harkins was a correctional officer at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He retired in February. For part of that time, Harkins worked in the prison's isolation unit.
"It's only when you leave it that you really truly understand how much stress you were under," he says of his time in the solitary ward.

Isolation in Oregon and most other states in the country means 23 hours a day locked in a cell the size of a bathroom. One hour alone in a small exercise yard. No contact with anyone. No television. No windows.

These conditions can be difficult for inmates who spend years -- and in some cases, decades -- in them. But, as Harkins found, they are also difficult on the officers.
"I kept thinking about it. I couldn't get away from the job," he says. "I'd be dreaming about what happened the day before at night. Or I'd be sitting at home, watching [a TV] show, and something would trigger something that happened at work. You know, the times when people would act out. So you would relive some sort of cell extraction or some sort of altercation -- you would relive it."

Dark Days
While working in the giant, windowless, gray prison building, Harkins says months went by where he'd never see the sun: "You're down there for 12 hours a day. You walk in at six in the morning just as the sun is coming up. In the wintertime, you're going in when it's dark and coming out when it's dark. Sometimes, you can never see the sun."

Every day, the routine was the same. Deliver food on plastic trays. Take inmates to the shower. Walk the tiers for hours, in front of hundreds of inmates who are often angry, frustrated and abusive.

"When people are driving on you, telling you you're bad, you suck -- all day, eight hours a day -- you gotta have 16 hours a day where you get all the positive."
But, he says, a lot of officers he knows don't have that.

"Some of them go to the bar. Some of them go home and kick the cat," he says. "I mean, various people would have different ways of trying to get rid of the tension. And some people didn't do a very good job at doing that."

In general population, Harkins says, he could spent half his day talking with inmates about sports or the news. But in isolation, the inmates don't talk to the officers, and the officers don't talk to the inmates: "An us-versus-them attitude quickly takes over."

Cold Interactions

Harkins says there were inmates in the general population with whom he was on great terms. But when they got sent to segregation, they would no longer even look at him.
"When he gets down to segregation, to IMU, to Intensive Management, something changes," he says. "They become hostile. They become withdrawn a bit. They won't talk to you."

Any interaction is short and businesslike: "Instead of saying, 'Please pick the papers up off the floor,' you walk in and say, 'Pick the papers up.'"
And he says the relationship would get even more tense, because in isolation, the inmates can't do or get anything for themselves.

"It's kind of a weird situation in that you're their servant," Harkin says. "Whatever need they want, you're supposed to take care of their needs."
'We're Not Doing Society Any Good'

As each day passed on the dim and noisy tiers, Harkins says he began to feel trapped like his prisoners; he asked for a transfer back to general population, where he worked until he retired. That wasn't uncommon. Even now, Oregon, like most states, is having a hard time getting officers to work in segregation units.

Harkins doesn't have any sympathy for the inmates there -- especially those who aren't trying to work their way out. But when he thinks about solitary now, from outside the prison's walls, he says he finds himself worried as much about the unit's effect on prisoners as he is about its effect on officers.

"Those people are going to be your neighbors some day," Harkins says. "And if our system is maintaining people in a negative, antisocial way, we're not doing ourselves any good. We're not doing society any good."

Many officials in Oregon seem to agree. The state has put a number of changes in place in recent years. Prison officials have limited the amount of time inmates can stay in isolation, and they've also started providing therapy. The results so far have been good. Prison officials say they've seen the violence rates in their isolation unit, and in the overall prison population, decrease.

Wisconsin Prisoner tells of his experience in segregation

2008-08-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

I am writing in support of those who are seeking positive change in Wisconsin prisons; specifically, those who seek change in the segregation/isolation buildings within the prison system. I have personally been in some of the seg. buildings as punishment during the years of my incarceration so that I am aware of much of the waste and unnecessary suffering that takes place inside them.

It is a sad fact-among many concerning corrections issues- that segregation units are a necessary "prison within a prison" which are needed to deter rule violations and keep the relative peace. Though many inmates are too "macho" to admit it, the great majority of us wont a peaceful environment in which to work, study and live so that I believe many staff as well as inmates would be in agreement that order does need to be maintained within the prison system.

However, one of the questions concerning this issue of segregation is, to what degree is it necessary to punish prisoners in order to achieve the sought after objective of changing inmate unacceptable behavior? And at what point does punishment without incentive toward good behavior become only an additional contributor to problem behavior?

My introduction-to the neo-seg units--a new building constructed to hold more inmates than the old a seg unit, began in August of 2000 at Fox lake Correctional Institution(FLCl). Approximately four months later I was transferred to the Wisconsin Secure Prison Facility-then known as the "Supermax" prison-in Boscobel Wisconsin.

In both facilities I experienced sweltering heat during summer months as one of the problems is that there are no windows which can be opened because of the physical construction of the buildings. Winter months were equally physically taxing as the cells became very cold, even though I was fully dressed and covered with blankets.

At FLCI I was permitted personal books as was the case at Supermax. My personal collection in seg. Consisted of English Grammar/ Spanish text books and math books. Supermax also had a library containing educational material. The point is-and not enough emphasis can be added here-is that educational material is a positive which I used to offset or negate the almost entirely negative conditions in which I found myself.

In the WCI seg building no such opportunity for educational material exists. Men there are permitted two (2) paper-back books (mostly western's and novels) per week from the so-called segregation prison library. Many of them are missing pages and lack any educational value outside of the practice gained form reading a written language. I am told that the GBCI is more restrictive and that neither seg facility permits personal books.

I believe that the jury has long-since been in on the question of education pertaining to prisoners i.e. more education equals less recidivism. I entered prison functionally illiterate. Education is a never-ending process and I have a long way to go, but I am pleased to say that I have earned my HSED certificates in vocational education and others along the way, and I am currently seeking higher educational opportunities.

So my question and statement is this: Who does it serve when educational material is denied to prisoners? Believe me, I still wanted to get out of segregation even though I was permitted my books and access to a reasonably good library while in Supermax. Segregation really is psychologically and physically brutal with or without educational material. Denying educational material does not help to bring the initiate in line with institution rules. If all an inmate has to do while in seg. is holler-out it certainly does not serve the inmate hollering or other inmates and staff who are subjected to it.

The denial of educational material to inmates anywhere, for any reason except in the most necessary circumstances, for example, if an inmate began destroying material, does not serve anyone, including the public whose taxes are wasted by such segregation rules which deny access to materials to seg. inmates, thereby contributing to their ignorance, contrary to education and rehabilitation.

I am aware that-statistically-less than one percent of all funding for state and federal prisons in the united states goes towards education, including segregation and general prison populations, and many people are convinced that a better job can be done educationally in these places than is currently being done. Inmates in segregation should at least be permitted to have materials that they or their family purchase for them since, ultimately, everyone benefits.

Also noteworthy is that many inmates are being held In segregation in administrative confinement. As to how long they should be held in seg.in this status, is another issue, but while they are in this status there are rules within the Wisconsin State Administrative Code which provide that administrative confinement is not a punitive status and that personal property which an inmate may possess in general population status which cannot be considered harmful to staff or inmates in seg. should be provided to the innate there. This is not being done.

One final issue that I would like to bring up here is the matter of the cost of postage for those in seg. who are in debt to the state for legal loans and other fees for which the state takes 100% of funds received by the inmate from whatever source until the debt(s) are paid in full.

Outside of the legal loan-money which can only be used by the inmate for legal matters-inmates in debt are permitted one 42 cent embossed envelope per week to use to write to family, loved-ones and friends.

During the 2006 gubernatorial debates Governor Doyle stated that Wisconsin inmates were brought back from out-of -state prisons so they could be closer to family-strengthening fatally ties, so that allowing prisoners to correspond with family more regularly (allowing family to send money into prison for postage-payment for prisoners) can only further this goal and does not seem like an unreasonable request.

I believe that the best way to find out if the soup is fit to eat is to try some yourself. That is, when deciding what is just for others, the decision-maker(s) should at least try to imagine themselves in these places and circumstances under the rules as they are being implemented.

It is clear that, when asked for an opinion, many members of society want their pound of flesh as payment for crimes. The question is, what is reasonable. And how high is the cost to society when the result is counter productive.