Author: Brian Sonenstein

Posted on All Posts, Inmate Healthcare

Prisons Are Obsolete: California Mental Health Edition

California corrections officials have reached an agreement on changes to the treatment of mentally ill inmates held in solitary confinement at their facilities.

The special attention is long overdue. The mentally ill are some of the most vulnerable people within the American prison system, and the abuse that prompted U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton to rule California’s treatment of mentally ill inmates was ‘cruel and unusual’ typifies the prison system’s failures to care for them:

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton acted after the release of videos made by correctional officers that showed guards pumping large amounts of pepper spray into the cells of mentally ill inmates, some screaming and delirious.

Under the agreement, the state will create separate short- and long-term housing units for about 2,500 mentally ill inmates who prison officials say must be kept in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons. The agreement calls for them to get more treatment and more time out of their prison cells.

For me, the issue here is not just that mentally ill inmates need specialized care they’re not getting among the general population. It’s that the very care they need is essentially at odds with the overall terms of their confinement, whether it be in isolation or in prison at all. There are, and there can be, better institutional settings for people with such needs. Continue reading →

1 Comment Posted on All Posts, Immigrant Detention, Privatization

Peaceful Inmate Protest Highlights Dysfunction and Disservice of CCA’s Ohio Private Immigrant Prison

There is rightful anger at Correction Corp. of America’s failures in response to a 14-hour, 250-inmate protest at their for-profit Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Ohio. But any critique that does not discuss the actual protest and its context is missing the point.

Inmates appear to have reached a breaking point in their tolerance for poor living conditions at NEOCC, and given CCA’s alarming track record at the facility, we should be paying close attention:

CCA first operated a for-profit prison in Ohio when it opened NEOCC in 1997. In its first 14 months of operation, the facility experienced 13 stabbings, two murders, and six escapes. The city of Youngstown eventually filed a lawsuit against CCA on behalf of the prisoners. Even after those tragedies, CCA still operates the prison today.

These inmates knew they would be risking severe punishment and retaliation for their decision to disobey orders to return to their cells. They knew this action could provoke violence from militarized guards, or a possible stint in solitary. They knew they could lose access to their families and communities through a punitive reduction in visiting hours and phone calls.

Still, in light of these potential consequences, between 250 and 400 of them decided it was still worth doing for 14 whole hours. Even as guards began preparing chemical munitions and setting up command posts to confront a peaceful demonstration, the prisoners refused to back down.

CCA should have been completely transparent about the protest from the beginning, but instead attempted to keep the situation under wraps. After all, it doesn’t make CCA look good for there to be allegations of mistreatment and mismanagement, nor when inmates are disobeying commands in order to protest about them. Continue reading →

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Prison Guard Resigns After Dousing Inmates’ Pizza in Pepper Spray, Sending One to Hospital

While some Missouri cops were busy killing an unarmed black teenager, brutalizing community members and threatening journalists in Ferguson, a deputy police officer on the other side of the state was feeding pizzas laced with pepper spray to prisoners at the Franklin County Jail.

The deputy, who has not been named, was originally placed on paid leave but then abruptly resigned pending a disciplinary hearing after four inmates accused him of offering them the pizza, which caused them to vomit, suffer severe mouth and stomach pains, and sent one to the hospital.

The deputy’s story has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard, claiming an inmate stole the pizza from a janitor’s closet where he had been innocently testing pepper spray cans in a sink. Continue reading →

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Did a New Mexico County Commissioner Make House Arrest Inmates Do His Yard Work?

Back in July, New Mexico’s KRQE News reported that officials in Bernalillo County were “scrambling to resurrect a long-dormant investigation into why a group of jail inmates on house arrest was sent to the upscale South Valley homes of Bernalillo County Commissioner Art De La Cruz and some of his friends with weed whackers, rakes and hedge trimmers to do some clean-up work.”

Bernalillo officials were also supposed to examine why this ‘clean team’ spent so much time in Cruz’s district as compared to others in the state. According to KRQE, the clean team spent “more than 70 percent of its work time in Da La Cruz’s district, one of five in the county, during the past year.”

This was not the first time De La Cruz has been alleged to have abused his position and, unsurprisingly, he vehemently denied the accusations outright. He specifically claimed that “No one (from the clean team) ever stepped on my property.” Continue reading →

5 Comments Posted on All Posts, Immigrant Detention, Privatization

State Rep. Hagan Tours Ohio Private Immigrant Prison After Nearly 250 Inmates Protest Conditions and Treatment

Ohio State Rep. Bob Hagan continues to push Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for answers about its handling of a recent incident at the for-profit Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (NEOCC) in which 248 prisoners waged a 14-hour nonviolent protest against their treatment and conditions.

After he was denied entry in the hours after the August 12th protest, Hagan was invited back to the prison last Friday for a tour. He was also given the opportunity to evaluate security camera footage and speak with some of the prisoners involved.

WKBN.com reports that Rep. Hagan was told there are three main issues concerning inmates: health care, food quality and commissary prices. Continue reading →

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Tennessee Death Row Inmates Sue to Block Electric Chair

Another perverse reaction to the campaign to end the death penalty. Like other states, Tennessee is facing shortages of lethal injection chemicals like sodium thiopental. Manufacturers have stopped producing the drug in response to global anti-death penalty activism.

Unfortunately, rather than put a hold on executions or re-evaluate the practice, TN has decided to take a step backward and reinstate the electric chair.

Other states have opted to experiment with other chemical cocktails with horrifying results. I’m not sure what’s worse.

Read more from the Prison Reform Movement below:

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Cold Meals Only for Prisoners at Benton County Jail

5NEWSOnline reports that Benton County Jail will continue to provide only cold meals to its inmates for a variety of reasons, all of which are absurd and wildly offensive.

Let’s run through them, starting with perhaps the most honest reason of them all:

“I’ts [sic] food,” said Keshia Guyll, with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. “Would I want to eat it every day? Probably not. But, you know, this is a jail. They are here for a reason.”

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“We wanted people to know that this isn’t just solely a punitive measure, serving inmates cold food,” Guyll said. “There’s other things that go along with that, and like I said, budget is one of the main ones.”

Mistreating prisoners because you think they’re “there for a reason” is not only an opinion ignorant of the various reasons why people end up in prison — just and unjust — it’s also immoral. The courts may have found that cold meals are not constitutional violations of a prisoner’s 8th amendment rights, but some states have outlawed them.

However, in Rhodes v Chapman, the courts found that while prisoners are “not entitled to luxury or ‘comfort,'” facilities must be run in a “manner “compatible with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” With such disagreement between states, I’d say the jury is still out on this one.

The bottom line is that this view of prisons and prisoners is what allows their abuse to continue unchallenged. Laws and courts are not inherently just, and not everyone in jail has been convicted of a crime. This is a vile case of buck-passing and victim blaming. Continue reading →