by Victoria Law
A mass prisoner hunger strike rocked California’s prison system this
past summer, drawing international attention to the extensive use of
solitary confinement in the United States. Increasingly, solitary is
finding its way into the mainstream media and onto activist agendas.
Nearly all of the attention, however, has focused on solitary
confinement in men’s prisons; much less is known about the conditions
and experiences inside women’s prisons.
At Central California Women’s Facility, more than a hundred women are held in isolation.
During
October’s legislative hearing on solitary confinement in California,
lawmakers asked prison officials about women in solitary confinement.
Officials from the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) stated that 74 women were held in the Security
Housing Unit at the California Institution for Women (CIW) and a handful
of women were awaiting transfer from the Central California Women’s
Facility (CCWF). CDCR does not separate people in the SHU with mental
illness from those without mental illness. CDCR officials did not
address the number of people in the Administrative Segregation (or Ad
Seg) Unit.
According to
CDCR
statistics, as of September 2013, 107 women were held in Ad Seg at
CCWF, which has a budgeted capacity of 38. The average stay was 131
days. Twenty women had been there longer than 200 days, two had exceeded
400 days, and another two women had exceeded 800 days. At CIW, 34 women
were in Ad Seg with an average stay of 73 days. Two women have exceeded
200 days.
Lawmakers’ inquiry prompted advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners to send an
open letter to Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner
requesting that she investigate conditions of solitary confinement in
women’s prisons. The group noted that, with the conversion of Valley
State Prison for Women to a men’s prison and the transfer of several
hundred women to California’s other two women’s prisons, the use of
solitary confinement has dramatically increased.
To justify the increase, CDCR has cited “enemy concerns” or a
documented disagreement between people that may have led to threats or
violence. Those designated as having “enemy concerns” are locked in
their cells 22 to 24 hours a day and lose all privileges. CDCR reports
do not separate the number of people in Ad Seg or the SHU for rules
violations versus those confined because of “enemy concerns.” The
California Coalition for Women Prisoners has noted that many of these
“enemy concerns” are based on incidents that happened years ago and may
not be valid today.
With the
conversion of Valley State Prison for Women to a men’s prison and the
transfer of several hundred women to California’s other two women’s
prisons, the use of solitary confinement has dramatically increased.
Dolores Canales has a son who has spent 13 years in Pelican Bay’s SHU. Canales has also had
firsthand experience with solitary confinement.
While imprisoned at CIW, she spent nine months in Ad Seg, where she was
confined to her cell 22 hours a day. “There, I had a window. The guards
would take me out to the yard every day. I’d get to go out to the yard
with other people,” she recalled.
But the isolation still took its toll: “There’s an anxiety that
overcomes you in the middle of the night because you’re so locked in,”
she described. Even after being released from segregation, Canales was
unable to shake that anxiety. She broke into a sweat and panicked each
time she saw a group of officers even though she had broken no rules. “I
just can’t forget,” she stated years after her release from prison.
Although the spotlight on solitary has focused largely on California,
every women’s prison has a solitary confinement unit. Florida’s Lowell
Correctional Institution for Women has a Closed Management Special
Housing Unit (CM SHU) where women are confined to their cells 23 to 24
hours a day. “There is no free movement or social interaction,” reported
one woman. “We just sit locked in a concrete and steel room the size of
a small residential bathroom.”
On Jan. 26, 2013, the Chowchilla Freedom Rally brought hundreds to
the town where California’s main women’s prison is located to bring to
public attention the dire conditions there – overcrowding at 175 percent
of capacity and over a hundred women in solitary confinement. – Photo:
Wanda Sabir
In Indiana, Sarah Jo Pender has spent nearly five years in
solitary. “My cell is approximately 68 square feet of concrete with a
heavy steel door at the front and a heavily barred window at the back
that does not open,” she described. “Walls are covered in white; the
paint chipped off by bored prisoners reveals another layer of primer
white. No family photos or art or reminder notes are allowed to be taped
to the walls; they must remain bare. Our windowsills would be a great
place to display greeting cards and pictures, but those are off-limits,
too …
“There is a concrete platform and thin plastic mat, a 14-by-20-inch
shelf and round stool mounted to the floor, and a steel toilet-sink
combo unit. We get no boxes to contain our few personal items.
Everything must fit on the shelf, bed or end up on the floor.”
Her cell is searched daily by guards although, like everyone else in
the prison, she is strip searched any time she leaves the unit for a
doctor’s appointment or a no-contact visit. When she is taken to the
showers, she is handcuffed, then locked into a 3-foot-by-3-foot shower
stall with a steel cage door for a 15-minute shower. As is the case
across the country, visits are conducted behind glass.
Pender was placed in solitary confinement after successfully escaping
from prison in 2008. With the assistance of a guard who had been having
sex with her and several other women in the prison, she escaped. After
136 days, she was found, re-arrested and returned to prison, where she
began her unending stint in solitary confinement.
Because Pender is considered a high escape risk, the administration
has taken steps to isolate her even within the segregation unit. “Other
women could talk to each other through their doors, but they were
instructed to never talk to me or else they’d be punished,” she
recounted. “The male guards were never to speak to me unless there was a
second guard present, and only to give me orders. Female guards only
spoke when absolutely necessary, per orders, except they chatted freely
with any other prisoner.”
As in many jails and prisons, those with mental health concerns are
often placed in segregation. “One of them is going to be released to
society this month,” Pender wrote. “She has been in solitary for six or
eight months because she has repeatedly cut herself with razors,
including her throat, several times. Their solution: Lock her in a room
and don’t give her a razor.”
Another woman spent two and a half years in segregation, originally
for disruptive behavior. Her stay was extended each time she hurt
herself. “She cut her wrists in the shower. They found her, took her to
the hospital, stitched her up, put her back in lock and wrote her up for
self-mutilation.
“She ripped the stitches out and got another battery write-up. Threw a
mop bucket at the sergeant for another assault write-up and was
completely maxed out on her sentence, so they let her go home from
solitary. She returned that same year with new charges. She never got
therapy while here – or any mental health care that she obviously
needed.”
As in many jails and prisons, those with mental health concerns are often placed in segregation.
While Pender did not enter with preexisting mental health concerns,
years of little to no human contact has taken its toll. At times she
feels lethargic and depressed. In 2010, she had a psychotic break, which
lasted nine months. Since then, she has been on and off half a dozen
kinds of psychotropic medications.
“I didn’t need the meds for the two years I spent in godawful Marion
County Jail and didn’t need them for five years at Rockville prison,”
she recalled. “But when you lock people in rooms for long periods of
time, the isolation degenerates us into madness, or at least
depression.”
Women who report being sexually assaulted by prison staff face abuse and isolation in a tiny cell like this.
Others with no preexisting mental health conditions have also been
affected. “I watched a woman claw chunks out of her cheeks and nose and
write on the window with her blood,” Pender said. “My neighbor bashed
her head against the concrete until officers dragged her out to a padded
cell. Two other women tried to asphyxiate themselves with shoestrings
and bras.”
In Florida, faced with the prospect of ten months in CM SHU, a woman attempted suicide. “I had hung myself and was
quite dead
when the guards cut me down. My heart must’ve stopped because of the
loss of involuntary functions, but still they wrapped me in a sheet and
rushed me to medical and succeeded in reviving me,” she recalled.
Despite being locked in a cell the size of a bathroom for the
foreseeable future, Pender hopes the increased outrage about solitary
confinement leads to concrete changes. What would she ask people to do?
“They can help by contacting their legislators and judges about their
views on long-term solitary confinement. They can help by supporting
small groups of activists and organizations who are passionate about
this topic.
“Many people don’t have the desire to donate two hours of their week
or month to a group, but what about two hours of their monthly wages? Or
the book of stamps and box of envelopes that has been collecting dust
since email was invented?
“There are lots of ways to help change the system. Whatever you
choose to do, just DO something. Just having conversations with others
about the subject is doing something. Someone else might volunteer to
type up and format a newsletter. Help design a website. Circulate the
info. Make phone calls to organize events. Anything is better than
turning the page to the next article and forgetting about us, leaving us
alone in our cells,” she said.
Sent to solitary for reporting sexual assault
It seems absurd that a person who has been sexually assaulted would
be punished for speaking up, especially since prison policy prohibits
sexual contact between staff and the people whom they guard. Yet, in
many women’s prisons, many of those who report rape and other forms of
sexual assault by prison personnel are sent to solitary confinement.
After enduring over a year of repeated sexual assaults by a guard,
Stacy Barker became one of 31 women incarcerated in Michigan who filed
Nunn v. MDOC, a 1996 lawsuit against the Department of Corrections for
the widespread sexual abuse by prison guards. The following year, Barker
was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an officer, who was also a
defendant in Nunn.
In many
women’s prisons, many of those who report rape and other forms of sexual
assault by prison personnel are sent to solitary confinement.
After a month of silence, she reported the assaults to a prison
psychiatrist. Barker was immediately placed in segregation and then
transferred to Huron Valley Center, which was then a psychiatric
hospital for prisoners. There, she reported that hospital attendants
verbally harassed her.
In October 1997, Barker attempted suicide. Barker did not receive
counseling or psychiatric evaluation. Instead, three male guards
stripped her naked, placed her in five-point restraints (a procedure in
which a prisoner is placed on her back in a spread-eagle position with
her hands, feet and chest secured by straps) on a bed with no blanket
for nine hours. She was then placed on suicide watch. She
reported that one of the staff who monitored her repeatedly told her he would “bring her down a few rungs.”
At last January’s Chowchilla Freedom Rally, where most of the
protesters were young women of color, the mood was determined but also
sad as these supporters and loved ones of prisoners listened to speakers
tell of the hell the women are going through on the other side of the
prison wall. – Photo: Scott Braley
Placing women in solitary confinement for reporting staff sexual harassment or abuse is far from rare. In 1996,
Human Rights Watch found
that, in Michigan, incarcerated women who report staff sexual
misconduct are placed in segregation pending the institution’s
investigation of their cases. The placement is allegedly for the woman’s
own protection. The five other states investigated also had similar
practices of placing women in segregation after they reported abuse.
Not much has changed in the 13 years since Human Rights Watch
chronicled the pervasive and persistent sexual abuse and use of
retaliatory segregation in 11 women’s prisons.
Former staff at Ohio’s Reformatory for Women
have stated that women who reported sexual abuse are subjected to
lengthy periods of time in solitary confinement, where cells often had
feces and blood smeared on the wall.
In Kentucky, a woman who saved evidence from her sexual assault was
placed in segregation for 50 days. In Illinois, a
prison administrator threatened to add a year onto the sentence of a woman who attempted to report repeated sexual assaults. She was then placed in solitary confinement.
Placing women in solitary confinement for reporting staff sexual harassment or abuse is far from rare.
In 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) became law,
ostensibly to address the widespread sexual abuse in the nation’s jails
and prisons. Among its recommendations was “the timely and comprehensive
investigation of staff sexual misconduct involving rape or other sexual
assault on inmates.”
However, this has not stopped the widespread practice of utilizing solitary to punish those who speak out. An
investigation into sexual abuse at Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women found that women who report sexual abuse “are routinely placed in segregation by the warden.”
Some prison systems have also created new rules to continue
discouraging reports of staff sexual assault. At Denver Women’s
Correctional Facility, a woman reported that prison officials responded
to PREA by creating a rule called “False Reporting to Authorities.”
“A lot of us do not report any kind of staff misconduct because
history has proven that any kind of reports true or false are found [by
the administration] to be false,” she stated. “When it was found to be
false, the people were immediately found guilty and sent to
administrative segregation.” In some cases, a woman may not even file an
official complaint but may only be speaking within earshot of another
staff member.
“I didn’t want to believe it, but then I experienced it first hand
with a close acquaintance of mine. She had conversations with a guard
and he asked sexually explicit questions about what she would be able to
do in bed because of her disability and it went on for a while.
“She came to me and said she didn’t want to be around him and she
told an office worker about him and he ended up writing a report on her,
before she could do it to him, and she was eventually questioned. I was
questioned and I told the investigator that I believed her and that the
officer was a pervert and flirted openly with any girl who was
desperate for a man’s attention.
“I told him I felt like he was a predator and shouldn’t be working at
a women’s prison. I later found out she went to the hole and was going
to be Ad Seg’d just like the others but she left on her mandatory parole
to go back to court and was re-sentenced and brought back. Luckily they
didn’t Ad Seg her when she came back. I’m not sure why they dropped it
but maybe it was because she was gone for a while.”
Some prison systems have also created new rules to continue discouraging reports of staff sexual assault.
Under PREA, those accused of sexual assault are sent to solitary confinement even before the charges are proven. In California,
Amy Preasmyer was placed in solitary confinement after being accused of sexual assault by another woman.
“I was abruptly removed from my bed late in the evening to face an
extended wait and then a transfer to Ad-Seg,” she reported. “Upon
entering my newly assigned chambers at 3 a.m., I found the toilet was
backed up and a DD3 (EOP) [person with a disability] had urinated
everywhere prior to me, leaving extremely unsanitary conditions and
aromas.” She was not allowed to access supplies that would allow her to
clean or disinfect her cell.
Although she was eventually cleared of all charges, being in Ad Seg
forced her to miss her final examinations for college. During that time,
she also lost the privilege to shop, walk outside or even call home.
Preasmyer reflected on the double standard between prison staff and
prisoners accused under PREA: “Had this woman falsely accused an
officer, would that officer have been arrested and forced to relinquish
rights pending results of the investigation into the accusation? Would
the employee suffer a wage loss? Would disciplinary action and
consequences be rendered to the accuser once charges turned out to be
baseless?”
After reading
Preasmyer’s article
in her segregation cell in Indiana, Sarah Jo Pender, who has spent five
years in solitary confinement after an officer helped her escape,
agreed. She noted that, although the officer who helped her escape had
had sex with her and seven other women in the prison, he evaded a sexual
misconduct charge as part of a plea bargain.
Victoria Law
He was sentenced to seven years in prison and released after two
years. As far as Pender knows, he spent no time in solitary confinement.
On the other hand, the superintendent at the Indiana Women’s Prison has
told her that she will remain in segregation so long as she is
incarcerated so that he knows where she is at any given time.
We might know more about the prevalence of isolating those who report
sexual abuse if that threat didn’t hang over their heads. But it does,
bullying who-knows-how-many into silence. As one woman in Texas
reported:
“When officers and inmates are found to be involved, the common
course of action here is to move her to another facility. If she
consented in any way, she will be placed in Ad Seg. Being moved with the
jacket of a prior officer relationship can make time very difficult.
And, if they found any reason to write the inmate a major case, it also
costs her at least a one-year parole set-off. Being moved, time in
isolation, a label and a set-off? Those are powerful motivations to keep
a girl quiet.”
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and mother. After a brief
stint as a teenage armed robber, she became involved in prisoner
support. She is the author of “Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of
Incarcerated Women” (PM Press 2009), the editor of the zine Tenacious:
Art and Writings from Women in Prison and a co-founder of Books Through
Bars – NYC. She wrote this as two stories for Solitary Watch, “Women in Solitary Confinement: ‘The Isolation Degenerates Us Into Madness’” and “Women in Solitary Confinement: Sent to Solitary for Reporting Sexual Assault.”She can be reached by mail at Victoria Law, P.O. Box 20388, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009, or by email at vikkimL@yahoo.com.
