picture from google
People who have experienced 'administrative segregation' weigh in on its long-term effects
By Brett Story and Craig Desson, CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/09/06/f-solitary-confinement-segregation-prison-ideas.html
Last Updated: Sep 8, 2013 9:16 AM ET
[Listen to CBC Radio Ideas documentary about
solitary confinement in the audio player to the left of this page, or
visit the
Ideas website.]
Ashley Smith was alone when she choked to death after tying a cloth
strip around her neck, while guards looked on. She died in a
segregation cell, a controversial form of prison isolation that experts
compare to solitary confinement.
As the ongoing
inquest into her death in 2007 has heard, the effects of the kind
of long-term segregation she faced during her multiple years in
confinement can be deeply detrimental to a person’s mental well-being.
According to The Correctional Service of Canada, administrative
segregation — commonly known as solitary confinement — is “not a form
of punishment,” but rather a means “to help ensure the safety of all
inmates, staff and visitors.” It is to be used only when “there is no
reasonable alternative and for the shortest period of time necessary.”
Furthermore, Correctional Service of Canada spokeswoman Lori Pothier
told CBC News that, “Within 24 hours of admission to segregation, an
offender’s mental health needs and physical needs are assessed by a
health care professional.”
Despite this, government figures show that the use of indefinite
administrative segregation is growing in Canada.
The Ombudsman for federal offenders says there were 8,221 federal
inmates in segregation across Canada in 2012-2013. Many suffer mental
health problems, and a third of them, according to the Ombudsman’s same
statistics, are aboriginal. Admissions into segregation totalled 7,137
in 2003-04.
There’s a similar trend in the United States, where more than 80,000
inmates are being held in solitary confinement, many of them kept in
isolation for years at a time.
In July of this year in California, an estimated 30,000 inmates
began the largest hunger strike in the state’s history to protest
conditions of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation. In the
California prison system there are more than 500 men that have been
held in isolation cells for over a decade.
Life in solitary
But statistics only tell one side of the story. CBC Radio’s Ideas spoke to people who have been in solitary confinement about its psychological toll.Susan Rosenberg is an American political activist who spent close to 11 years in some form of isolation during the 16 years she was incarcerated. For four of those years she was kept in solitary confinement and sensory deprivation in a highly experimental high-security unit in the basement of a prison in Lexington, Kentucky.
In a response to a query from CBC Radio’s Ideas regarding
why segregation is used and considered necessary in the Canadian
penitentiary system, a representative from the Correctional Service of
Canada stated: “In accordance with criteria set out in the Corrections
and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), an inmate can be placed in
administrative segregation for the following reasons:
She says solitary confinement may not sound harsh to someone who
hasn’t experienced it, but it can have profound effects on a prisoner’s
mental health.- If the inmate’s safety is at risk;
- If the inmate jeopardizes the security of the institution or the safety of other inmates or staff;
- If the inmate would interfere with an investigation that could lead to a criminal charge or a serious disciplinary offence.
“If one thinks about being locked in your bathroom, where you have a
bathtub in it, and you can never go anywhere except in that bathroom,
right, that is the extent of your life, with only hostile and negative
interactions with somebody on the other side of the door who hates you,
and is feeding you, or giving you water, or telling you No! That’s a
beginning approximation of what it’s like to be in solitary
confinement.”
Lee Chappelle, who spent a total of a year and a half in segregation
in Ontario, describes that experience this way: “You’re under constant
light, 24 hours a day. There’s no relief from [fluorescent] light in
your cell. The days are exceptionally long. There’s no reading
material. There’s literally no stimulation of any sort. So you’re
living inside your head, and your living inside this little, hard room.”
Rosenberg was also under fluorescent lights 24 hours a day. The
monotony of that light and lack of colour in her cell led to her and
another inmate to develop something she called “white vision blindness.”
“We began to not be able to see. You [can’t] see past six feet, and
everything is white, so that literally you lose the capacity to see
colour.”
Human contact
Greg McMaster is currently incarcerated at Fenbrook prison in
Gravenhurst, Ont., for killing four men in 1978. He has spent more than
seven years in segregation — most of that time in the U.S. prison
system. He describes the lengths he and others would go to have contact
with one another, even a simple conversation.
The position of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture is that any
period of more than 15 consecutive days in solitary confinement
constitutes a form of torture.
“You can take the water out of your toilet and there’s an open
pipeway. As disgusting as it may sound, when you’re a man in solitary
confinement and you have not spoken to another human being in a month,
you will take that water out of your toilet.
“All you know is that you need that contact. I’ve known men who’ve
actually lost the ability to speak. Or to have a rational thought. It’s
spiraling depressions, and you dig so deep into your soul just to stay
alive. And then when you have human contact, whatever form it may be,
you relish that.”
Michael Jackson is a law professor at the University of British
Columbia who has written about solitary confinement and advocated for
prisoners in segregation for more than 40 years. He has seen first-hand
the impact of segregation.
'In solitary it’s not just a loneliness, it’s a craziness. It’s a devastating experience.'—Susan Rosenberg
“Last week I was talking to a man who I’ve known for 25 years, and
in the last month he spent most of his time in segregation units at two
prisons in Canada. And the despair in his voice, the hopelessness, the
fact that over the phone I am pleading with him not to take his own
life," Jackson said. "It’s a despair that just calls for a human
response, and it’s a response that he has difficulty in finding from
those who confine him.”
In the experience of Susan Rosenberg, the limited contact with
guards offered only antagonism.
“I think they were specifically trained what to say and told, these
are the most difficult, terrible, horrible people you have ever run
across in your life, and you'd better treat them as such. And when
somebody would break that mould, they would be removed. They would be
caught on camera being kind and they would be removed.”
Rosenberg was released from prison in 2001 after having her sentence
commuted by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. While she
continues to work as a writer and anti-prison activist, the effects of
her time in isolation remain with her.
“In solitary it’s not just a loneliness, it’s a craziness. It’s a
devastating experience.”
--
Freedom Archives
Freedom Archives
Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org
--
SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!
Free All Political Prisoners!
www.jerichony.org
No comments:
Post a Comment