Prison inmates struggling with severe mental illness make up more than half of those held in solitary confinement across Colorado prisons. Prolonged isolation is known to worsen disorders, yet has become a preferred punishment methods.
On any day, chosen at random in 2012, the Colorado Department of
Corrections (CDOC) housed between 537 and 686 mentally ill
inmates in solitary confinement – with an average stay of 16
months, according to a new report from the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU).
A typical prisoner in solitary confinement is held for 23 hours a
day in a small, often windowless cell without access to a phone.
They are usually given one hour of outdoor time per day, or
allowed access to an exercise room with a small amount of
equipment. The conditions frequently lead inmates, even ones who
were otherwise healthy before isolation, to states of psychosis,
where they “bang their heads against the wall in an effort to
drown out the voices in their heads,” the ACLU said.
“Warehousing mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement is
not only costly, cruel, and unlawful, its puts the public at
serious risk,” wrote ACLU attorney Rebecca Wallace, who
drafted the report. “When mental illness goes untreated, or is
made worse by solitary confinement, it can lead to criminal or
antisocial actions once a prisoner is released, leaving the
public to suffer the consequences.”
Medical physicians and human rights advocates have consistently
classified solitary confinement as inhumane, as a form of
torture, and cruel and unusual punishment – the last of which is
prohibited by the US Constitution.
Courts have agreed, with a California judge refusing to dismiss a
suit brought earlier this year by inmates in solitary confinement
at the state’s notorious Pelican Bay supermax facility. The
lawsuit, which California officials sought to have thrown out,
revealed that as of 2011, over 500 inmates had been isolated in
security housing units (SHU), administrative jargon for
isolation, for over ten years. Seventy-eight others were in the
SHU — pronounced “shoe” behind bars — for two
decades.
The ACLU report determined that prisoners with mental
deficiencies are more likely to be sent to the SHU because they
are less likely or simply unable to follow the rules. Once there,
they “appear to have no road out of severely restrictive
confinement.”
With many states slashing budgets for mental hospitals and
treatment funding, prisons have increasingly become inundated
with prisoners unfit for confined life. Just a few days, though,
of isolation can introduce an inmate to hallucinations,
difficulty thinking and other lasting effects.
“The restriction of environmental stimulation and social
isolation associated with confinement in solitary are strikingly
toxic to mental functioning, producing a stuporous condition
associated with perceptual and cognitive impairment and affective
disturbances,” wrote former Harvard Medical School
Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, as quoted by Think Progress. “As
a consequence, the practice has been deemed torture, cruel and
inhuman treatment, and a ‘living death.’”
Republished from: RT