Vol. 77/No. 2      January 21, 2013

BY SETH GALINSKY  
NEW YORK—A recent report by the New York Civil Liberties Union and a lawsuit by the group have brought some attention to the extensive use of solitary confine-ment in New York state prisons.

“On any given day, approximately 4,300 people are locked down 23 hours a day in tiny concrete cells” the size of a parking space or small elevator, notes the lawsuit filed Dec. 6 in U.S. District Court on behalf of Leroy Peoples, currently imprisoned at Attica Correc-tional Facility.

“The lawsuit alleges that it is the arbitrariness and gross disproportionality of the disciplinary process that is unconstitutional,” New York Civil Liberties Union spokesper-son Jennifer Carnig told the Militant. “People can be sent to confinement as a punishment for just about any rule infraction.”

Among the “offenses” N.Y. prison officials use to sentence people to the Special Housing Unit, known as the “hole” by prisoners, are “untidy cell or person,” “excessive tobacco,” “unreported illness,” “unauthorized literature,” “unfastened long hair,” “refusal to obey orders,” and “unauthorized legal assistance.”

Like the overall incarceration rate, Blacks are put in solitary disproportionately. While Blacks are 14.4 percent of the population of New York, they are 49.5 percent of workers behind bars. At the Upstate and Southport prisons, which house the bulk of those held in extreme isola-tion, 62 percent are Black.

Peoples, an African-American, spent 780 days in extreme isolation in a cell with one other prisoner for “unauthorized legal materials and filings.” He was allowed showers only twice a week, denied phone use, and delivered meals through a slot in the cell door.

The Civil Liberties Union report, titled “Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isola-tion in New York’s Prisons,” notes that half of those in isolation are locked down with another prisoner, a practice known as “double-celling.” Prison officials are allowed to impose additional deprivation orders, including denying those in isolation the right to showers, reading material, clothing, bedding and even toilet paper.

A. “Big Chief” Ramos, who spent most of the last 20 years in New York state prisons, including about three years in solitary, told the Militant he was often put into solitary as retaliation by prison officials for helping other prisoners file grievances and pro-tect their rights.

“The most horrendous conditions are in what they call the ‘S’ Blocks,” said Ramos. “You’re in a cell with another individual. There’s a tin can shower in your cell and there’s no curtains. The water comes out and splashes your bed.

“I’m not saying close the SHU [Special Housing Units]. I can understand the 72 hour cooling-off period,” Ramos said. “But 72 hours should be the max.”

Tens of thousands in solitary in U.S.

No accurate figures exist for the number of people held in solitary in local, state, and fed-eral prisons. The U.S. Department of Justice reported in 2000 that 80,000 prisoners are in solitary. The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons in 2006 reported that this is “just a fraction” of the real figure.

Donnell Joseph spent 19 years in half a dozen federal prisons until his release last May. “I spent a couple of years altogether in solitary,” Joseph said. “Nowadays they call it ‘security housing.’ They try to change the way it’s viewed, but the treatment, the cells, the brutality of the guards is all the same.

“They would put me in the hole because I was marked as a troublemaker, because of the complaints I had filed against staff,” Joseph said. “I don’t do drugs. I don’t gamble. Most of my problems come from speaking out about the mistreatment of prisoners.”

According to Joseph, at the United States Penitentiary at Beaumont, Texas, he was once put in a four-point restraints for seven days, his hands and feet chained to a concrete block, after he was falsely accused of being part of a prison fight.

“They use it to break you. Sometimes they do break you,” he said. “Solitary should be abolished. There’s always another solution instead of taking away a man’s humanity.”

Pretrial solitary

“They use solitary to force people to take a plea bargain,” Jenkins said. “Your attorney comes in, there is no privacy. The prison officials are listening to every-thing. You can’t really talk about your case.

“The lights were on 24 hours a day. The cell was cold,” Jenkins said. “Not being able to speak to anyone, that to me is inhumane and cruel.”

Shah accepted a plea bargain in November 2007 and is now serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison in Virginia.

Pretrial solitary confinement, used to impede defense efforts and weaken prisoners’ will, is common—and almost guaranteed for political prisoners. The Cuban Five, framed-up on false charges of conspiracy to commit espionage, for example, were put in the hole for 17 months prior to being convicted in 2001. Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera has spent 12 years in solitary confinement during what is now more than 31 years of in-carceration.

Working people behind bars from California to Georgia and North Carolina have protested against solitary confinement. In Georgia, prisoners held hunger strikes in December 2010 and June 2012. In North Carolina, dozens of prisoners in three prisons conducted hunger strikes last July. In California prisoners in July 2011 carried out a three-week hunger strike. Their protest demands included the elimination of solitary confinement.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home