March 18, 2013 By Sal Rodriguez
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/03/18/lawsuit-filed-against-solitary-confinement-of-800-seriously-mentally-ill-in-pennsylvania/
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/03/18/lawsuit-filed-against-solitary-confinement-of-800-seriously-mentally-ill-in-pennsylvania/
The Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania (DRNP) has filed a lawsuit
against John Wetzel, the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections, charging that the confinement of prisoners in Restricted
Housing Units (RHUs) amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” of those
diagnosed as “seriously mentally ill.” The suit seeks an end to
long-term segregation of such individuals and seeks an order that DOC
prisoners “receive constitutionally adequate mental health care.”
According to the lawsuit, prisoners in the RHUs are “locked in
extremely small cells for at least 23 hours a day on weekdays and 24
hours a day on weekends and holidays. Typically, the lights are on in
the cell all the time. The prisoners are denied adequate mental health
care and prohibited from working, participating in educational or
rehabilitative programs, or attending religious services.”
Prisoners in the RHU are generally held alone, notes the lawsuit,
though even in cases when prisoners are assigned a cellmate, this may
be “as deleterious to their mental health as solitary confinement” if
the cellmate is “psychotic or violent.”
Placing people in such conditions, can create a “Dickensian
nightmare,” in which prisoners “are trapped in an endless cycle of
isolation and punishment, further deterioration of their mental
illness, deprivation of adequate mental health treatment, and inability
to qualify for parole.”
The lawsuit provides profiles of 12 men housed in the RHU, which
serve to illustrate the widespread use of solitary confinement against
prisoners who have been diagnosed as having “serious mental
illnesses.” A man identified as “Prisoner #1″ is described in the
lawsuit as having been diagnosed with a delusional disorder with
paranoid features and a borderline intellectual disability. Initially
placed in a Special Needs Unit, in which prisoners receive psychiatric
treatment, he was frequently placed in the RHU following incidents
precipitated by delusions. Despite expressing suicidal thoughts before
and during his confinement in the RHU, he remained in the RHU until he
committed suicide by hanging on May 6, 2011.
“Prisoner #8″ is a 28-year old man at State Correctional
Institution-Green (SCI-Green) who has been diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia, a psychotic disorder, a paraphilia, and a personality
disorder. According to the lawsuit, he claims to receive “messages from
the television and from dead people.” The lawsuit states that he has
expressed suicidal ideation and has been placed in the RHU after being
deemed by the Department of Corrections a “danger to himself and
others.”
The lawsuit charges that Wetzel “knows or is deliberately
indifferent to the fact that the DOC’s treatment of prisoners with
mental illness, including the practice of segregating them for long
periods of time in RHUs, can cause grave harm to their mental health.”
While it is unclear what DSM-Axis I
mental disorders fall under the scope of “serious mental illness,” the
lawsuit argues that the current disciplinary system within Pennsylvania
prisons fails to “consider a prisoner’s serious mental illness and the
impact of isolation in assessing whether to sanction the prisoners.”
Pennsylvania prisoner Ricardo Noble, who has spent over five years
in the RHU, has written
to Solitary Watch about the nature of life in the isolation units:
“In the RHU life is intense. Especially in the beginning weeks or
months. As time passes your mind begins to become clouded with mixed
emotions, anger, guilt, hate, paranoia, hopelessness, loneliness, and
other frustrations. Some who fail to productively channel their
frustrations tend to take it out on those closest to them (mainly other
prisoners) or even themselves because they can’t lash out on the ones
(the Administration) who can affect change of the physical aspects of
their harsh condition.”
Approximately 1/3 of prisoners in the RHUs, which as of February
28th housed 844 prisoners in long-term Administrative Custody and
an additional 1,417 in shorter term Disciplinary Custody, have been described
by DRNP as “seriously mentally ill.” The DRNP cited the position of the
American Psychiatric Association, which in December 2012 declared
that “prolonged segregation of adult inmates with serious mental
illness, with rare exceptions should be avoided due to the potential
harm to such inmates.”
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