January 6, 2011

Supermax: Hell on earth or . . . not as bad as we thought?

I thought everyone knew that being locked up alone in a tiny cell -- sometimes for years at a stretch -- is bad for one's psyche.

But I was wrong. Based on a one-year project with the Colorado Department of Corrections, a group of researchers says there is a dearth of evidence to support the popular notion that solitary confinement exacerbates psychiatric symptoms among mentally ill prisoners. Although the prisoners they studied did manifest problems, these were preexisting and so could not be attributed to the effects of administrative segregation confinement, the researchers contend.

I was dubious when I heard the researchers present their study, "One-Year Longitudinal Study of the Psychological Effects of Administrative Segregation," at the APA's annual convention last year. Having worked in a Segregated Housing Unit ("SHU") for mentally ill prisoners, I saw with my own eyes the rapid and profound mental deterioration of mentally ill prisoners assigned to the SHU.

Even prisoners who had no preexisting mental disorders fell apart when subjected to prolonged isolation. I will never forget one youngster, a first-timer incarcerated for violating probation in a minor stolen property case, who was sent to the SHU for protection after he reported being raped by his cellmate. They ended up taking him out on a stretcher following a serious suicide attempt. The last time I saw him, when I visited him on the medical ward of a maximum-security prison, he was completely changed from the happy-go-lucky kid I had known.

But he started out healthy. Maybe, contrary to popular wisdom, the mentally ill -- at least those in Colorado -- have more robust psyches than everyone else. Or maybe they are asocial or masochistic. Anyway, I'm just telling you my own personal anecdotes. That's not science.

Study under fire

The report just came out, and already it is generating a lot of heat from those who fear it will be used to legitimize continued warehousing of mentally ill prisoners in SHU's. The ACLU has issued a statement pointing out that the Colorado findings contradict a sizeable body of research, not to mention common sense.

Two leading experts on prison conditions, psychiatrists Terry Kupers and Stuart Grassian, are publicly assailing the study as fatally flawed. They criticize the researchers for not conducting interviews with the prisoners who were the subjects of the year-long study.

"The methodology of the study is so deeply flawed that I would consider the conclusions almost entirely erroneous," said Kupers, author of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars. "And far from finding 'no harm,' there were many episodes of psychosis and suicidal behavior during the course of the study -- the researchers merely minimize the emotional pain and suffering because they judge the prisoners to have been already damaged before they arrived at supermax."

Grassian, the former Harvard professor who coined the term segregation psychosis and who has done research with hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement, said he notified the researchers of several severe methodological flaws, including a failure to analyze contradictory data, but the flaws were not addressed.

Grassian said the prison's own records document almost two incidents of suicidal or self-destructive behavior for every three prisoners in solitary confinement (63%), compared with less than one incident for every ten prisoners (9%) in the general population.

Since the supermax craze took off in the early 1990s, almost every U.S. state has signed on to the dubious concept, and an estimated 25,000 American prisoners are now locked 24/7 in these tiny, antiseptic cubicles. Although SHU housing was originally intended for relatively short terms of confinement, nowadays prisoners may remain in these constantly lit and electronically surveilled sensory deprivation holes for years -- or even decades. A federal court recently agreed to hear a challenge brought by a man named Tommy Silverstein who has spent a whopping 27 years in solitary confinement.

If they had just talked with the prisoners …

While the Colorado correctional researchers were busy tabulating survey data instead of talking with the prisoners themselves about their subjective experiences, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley took the exact opposite approach, and -- not surprisingly -- came to diametrically opposed conclusions.

Keramet Reiter's series of in-depth interviews with former SHU prisoners in California, far and away the world's leader with about 3,330 SHU prisoners, was part of her research into the rise of supermaximum confinement in America.

The settings that the men chose was telling in and of itself: After years in tiny, concrete-filled boxes, almost all asked to meet her either outdoors of close to a window.

Reiter told UC reporter Cathy Cockrell that she was moved by the former prisoners' tragic accounts of the effects of sensory deprivation.

"People spoke of having no clocks, daylight, or seasons to mark the passage of time; growing pale from lack of sunlight; and being amazed at the sight of a single bird, insect, or even the moon, after months or years of virtually no exposure to the natural world."

But, hey, maybe if they had been mentally ill to start with, they wouldn't have minded ad-seg so much. Just a serene vacation, away from the hubbub and stress of general population housing.

Not a vacation I would ever want to take but, hey, that's just me.

Further readings:

Drawings: (1) Prisoner sketch by Herman Wallace, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola; (2) prisoner sketch, Pelican Bay, California; (3) prisoner sketch, Tommy Silverstein, ADX federal supermax, Florence, Colorado; (4) prisoner sketch, Pelican Bay, California; (5) my (comparatively crude) sketch of a suicidal prisoner whom I observed chained to the floor of a bare concrete "protective" cell.

My Psychology Today post, at my blog Witness, is HERE. For more frequent posts by me on this and other topics, subscribe to my Twitter feed, HERE.

11 comments:

  1. you should send this to Laura Rovner Tommy Silversteins atty.
    Isolation is torture, against the constitution and a more expensive way to houe inmates, proving the system is about money not justice

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  2. Perhaps this very interesting piece could benefit from at least a comment or two on the need to be cautious when "talking with prisoners." Most folks familiar with correctional populations do not find them to be particularly accurate historians. Sometimes grad students need to keep this in mind.

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  3. Eddie Griffin wrote "Breaking men's minds" Isolation is a deliberate torture, thank God for grad students willing to investigate. And we need less skeptics and more investigators in the prison system. Which is completely useless driving criminals that ARE people insane serves no benefit. Thousands are housed this way and as I said in above post it is more expensive to house inmates this way. @Daniel do you want to continue to pay more? Indefinite solitary confinement what purpose does it serve? The system has created an industry, it has its own lobbies in Washington, this is about money not justice or public safety.Thank you Karen for the insightful article

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  4. I currently work in a SHU setting and see first-hand the affects of long-term isolation and deprivation. What is really wrong is that a lot of these guys are there for NON-DISCIPLINARY reasons due to overcrowding. Unfortunately, they may be there for 1-3 months waiting for an opening at another prison. The SHU has become an overflow for those coming and going to different prisons. They do it all in the name of "safety and security".

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  5. Good grief, 4nSick, can this be true? Can't somebody sue the system on these unfortunates' behalf?

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  6. Cavall de Quer:

    I can vouch for the accuracy of 4nSick's account. The same thing happened at the SHU where I used to work. Mentally ill prisoners were placed in the SHU to await beds in the mental health treatment program. Naturally, they got significantly worse while waiting.

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  7. Thank you 4nSick...
    My loved one has been in the SHU for lever 6 years, and I bet hands down he would LOVE to teach the author of this ridiculous article, first-handedly, what it means to truly suffer a hell beyond all comprehension because of the lies of others, such as hers. The negative impact of such articles is only justification for the Justice system's "Hate Machine," commonly, and tragically, known as "Dept of Corrections"

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  8. Let's say that I wanted to intentionally induce depression in a person. Here's what I would do: (1) I would deprive a person of the comforts of life, (2) I would act in a condescending manner towards the person-depriving them of their dignity, (3) I would limit/prohibit exposure to sunlight (a natural antidepressant, and I would (4) limit contact with others (including in-going/out-going mail). This is what happens in a SHU or Administrative Segregation setting. On top of this, inmates have to deal with the harassment of CO's (e.g. withholding food, denying showers or recreation time, throwing away their written grievances, provoking them so they can justify "teaching them a lesson" by roughing them up or pepper spraying them , etc.) The inmates also have to deal with other inmates yelling and making noise throughout the night. There is virtually no heating so this time of year the inmates are freezing cold and they are not given anything but some boxers, a thin jumpsuit, and a thin blanket. The SHU is literally a depression factory. So with all of this going on, they want us (psychologist) to come in and treat these guys for depression? It's honestly a losing battle.

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  9. 4nSick: Tragically, everything you say is so true.

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  10. 4nSick... thank you for your candid honesty. My husband is one of those who suffers exactly as you describe,,,, its disheartening.

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  11. My name Chance, I'm 19 years old. I was arrested on adult charges at 17. I suffer from schizophrenia, Bipolar, Manic Depression, ADHD, and Personality disorder. As a 17 year old I was eligible to be charged as an adult yet ineligible to be in GP due to my age. So instead of moving me to a juvenile facility I was put in SHU. I got one phone call three days after I was arrested, only to find out my (now wife) then girl friend was pregnant. I sent only 4 months before I was released due to dismissal of my charges. I've been re-arrested several times, and spent many days in Seg. I can say from first hand experience that it was not in anyway productive. I was actually more angry, depressed, and mentally unstable after I got out. I became dependent on isolation. When I was released I felt overwhelmed with how big the sky was. I couldn't open my eyes because the sun was to bright, yet it was an overcast day. I forgot what fresh air smelled like, what cars sounded like. I did then and still do sometimes find myself unconsciously having conversations with myself. The worst part was I forgot how to interact with people. My sister in law gave me a hug upon my release and I couldn't even process what was going on. A normal gesture seemed astoundingly foreign to me. I've done a total of 9 months in solitary. If this is the result of 9 months, who the fuck says numerous years isn't harmful. These people aren't being rehabilitated for society. They're being locked away and forgotten about in the name of justice. In the words of moral value. Two wrongs DO NOT make a right, and SHU doesn't help anyone. It turns sane people crazy, and takes mentally Ill beyond the point of any type of rehabilitation,

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