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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 2009)
8 C £ Z .£ B R A T » fG A X>£CAD£ > 1 . A' street roots" Education * Dialogue ^Independence NATIONAL " C A P T tV E " B Y T O G O (H Y U N G -R A E ) TARSELLi* C O ljR T tiS Y O F T l4 £ A M E R IC A N ^ O U R N A L O F PU B L IC H E A L T H ) Suffer the solitary The prison practice o f solitary confinement draws criticism from those inside and out BY ELI BRAUN STREET N E W S SERVICE Cincinatti, Ohio — uring his 70 days of solitary confinement at Toledo Correctional Institution, Sean Swain spent 23 hours a day locked in his cell. He spent the 24th hour, his only opportunity for social interaction and “recreation,” being strip- searched, including a “visual body-cavity search.” By comparison, inmates in “general population” spend 11 hours a day locked in their cells. Solitary confinement cripples prisoners’ capacity for social interaction and can exacerbate or even cause mental-health crises. The rise of solitary-confinement units at U.S. prisons indicates a disturbing trend, especially for prisoners suffering from mental illness or drug abuse. Studies find that solitary confinement is not just ineffective at promoting good behavior, but is a full-fledged form of torture, breaking down the healthy and further enfeebling the m. Since 1991, Swain, now 49, has been sent to solitary confinement “seven or eight times,” including a 144-day stint from May to October 2003. Most recently, he violated rules by “encourage(ing) prisoners to partake in a 30-day work stoppage,” D according to the official conduct report. During his 70 days in isolation, Swain didn’t know when he would be returned to general population. He remains in prison. Cage without a curtain Swam details, the conditions in solitary confinement, also known as “segregation.” “The tube lighting in segregation cells is never shut off,” Swain says. “Insects were breeding in the mops, which had not been exchanged for months. Those same insect- infested mops were provided to us for cell- cleaning.” .As he cleaned, insects would swarm around the cell’s lighting fixture. Prisoners in solitary confinement had access to showers and recreation Monday to Friday. Weekends were spent entirely locked in, though Swain believes that policy m ight have changed. At times he lacked soap and toothpaste. In his final week in segregation, as solitary confinement is known, the cellblock ran out of toilet paper, he says. Reports from Ohio’s Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC) and correspondence with other prisoners confirm unsanitary conditions at some prisons. The CÏÏC is authorized by the Ohio Legislature to regularly inspect prisons and provide oversight For showers, “I was issued a single state towel upon entering segregation” and never > had the opportunity “to exchange if for clean,” Swain says. But he considered himself fortunate to have been issued a towel at all, as some inmates in segregation never got one. “Or maybe I wasn’t so lucky, since I ended up with bacteria and fungus on my feet,” he says. Prisoners who didn’t receive towels I instead used bed Sheets. The shower stall was “a cage without a curtain, Swain says. Even though prisoners tried to arrange their clothing across the shower bars for privacy, prisoners were subject to public view. Some prisoners, would watch through the bars of their cells , “as if enjoying a personal peep-show/ Swaim Says. The water would last approximately five to 10 minutes, then stop without w arning for 10 minutes. “If someone has soap on his face or in her eyes, he must stand naked and wet for 10 m inutes.... In some of the showers, hitting the button before the 10-minute waiting duration resets the-timer and causes the 10-minute duration to start over,” Swain says. Isolation cells might no longer be strictly isolated. Due to overcrowding, some prisons now double-bunk their segregation cells. Some prisoners spend 23 hours a day locked in with another person, in a cell desig n ed for single occupancy. System-wide, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections operates at 134 percent of capacity, with 11 of the 32 institutions operating above 150 percent capacity. Accordiffg to one CIIC report, “One had to stand sideways to walk through the rows of bunk beds.” Overcrowding m ight also result in long waits “for those in segregation who are being transferred to other prisons, all . due to the need to wait for an open bed,” the CHC reported. The result, it appears, is extended periods of isolation. Swain attributes the length of his 144-day-term in isolation in.2003 not to the severity of his infraction but to the wait for an open bed. The hole’ by any other name Although he spent 23 hours a day alone in his cell, in another sense, Swain wasn’t alone. Some 25,000 U.S. prisoners reside in solitary confinement at “supermax prisons.” An additional 50,000 to 80,000 prisoners reside in restrictive and isolated See SOLITARY, page 9
