by Bruce Reilly, VOTE Deputy Director

Torture by another name
​When I walked into a New Orleans conference room for a public comment session on torture standards in United States jails and prisons, the vice president of the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America was speaking. His testimony captured the ‘feel good’ spirit of a fraternal group, a group of over 100 men and women that could have been addressing a mundane corporate challenge in shipping or customer service. Things used to be pretty bad, but they’re getting better. There is less violence in prisons and we are reducing incarceration. He could have written the talking points for a politician wanting to move on to a different issue.
 
The American Correctional Association (ACA) was there to revise standards regarding what they refer to as “restrictive housing,” but many others will know it as solitary confinement, the hole, segregation, SHU, CCU and other names. In fact, one of the primary revisions is changing the reference from "segregation" to "restrictive housing." Perhaps the next euphemism will be "extremely affordable housing," when all people in prison are charged $5 per day to forcibly rent a room.

The ACA has accredited 500 prisons and other entities across America, including well-known local places such as Angola, Wade, Dixon, Avoyelles, and Rayburn; and notorious facilities across the nation, including Pelican Bay, Folsom, San Quentin, Lompoc, Marion, Cook County Jail, Sing Sing, Attica, and many others. Places where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have taken turns entering sensory deprivation cages for days, weeks, months, and years on end.
 
The ACA may not have been expecting input from people who have been held in solitary confinement. Such entities rarely, if ever, explicitly seek the input of directly impacted people. Their staffs and committee members are people who run an industry, not people who come from the impacted community- and prison is possibly the one industry where their only accountability is regarding the deaths of confined people, or (more accurately) how to keep costs down while keeping them alive.
 
I could not possibly speak on behalf of millions of incarcerated people. I could not even speak on behalf of any single other person who has undergone the unique torture process designed solely to break one’s mind and spirit. I could, however, share my experience of having spent roughly 1000 days in solitary confinement during my years of incarceration. To root my all-too-brief ten minutes in grim reality, I was compelled to make a few anecdotal points rather than rattle off my specific editorial comments on the podium in front of me. I am, after all, a legally trained professional. Because I'm known to become passionate about these subjects, I could only hope Norris Henderson would follow up with his calm and wise demeanor- which he inevitably did.

Here are ten key points we put out there:

1. It doesn’t take much to become a “problem” in prison. My label as “Pain in the Ass Reilly” began when I attempted to get the prison employees to enforce their own policy claiming a non-smoker could live in a smoke-free cell. For months I was forced to live in an ashtray, without any bars or windows, as poor ventilation and a magnetic door made for an unbearable experience for 20 hours per day in general population. The sad reality is- anyone struggling to maintain, or regain, a shred of human decency and other attributes that translate well into the outside world will find themselves as a target for prison staff.
2. Violence in segregation is commonplace. I experienced the next level of inhumanity and helplessness when I was attempting to get the paltry money left in my bank so I might get a lawyer. While in solitary confinement, certainly for something petty, I was brought down to a little room by two guards and their shift supervisor. They cuffed me to a chair and proceeded to go ballistic on me, as I had the gall to request a phone call to the bank after receiving a letter that I need to personally call them. Then they started punching me straight in the face. After ten or fifteen minutes of me defiantly staring them down, determined to show no affect, they brought me back to the cage, pushed me back to the far wall, uncuffed me, and ran to the door before I could turn around. I was around 20-21 years old and I still remember the guards’ names, voices, and faces. That shift supervisor is now a warden. My main point to the ACA is not that I experienced a lack of professionalism, nor that I was a victim of any sort. My point is that this was not even a special event. That is just a regular ol’ story in prison.
3. Measuring “Performance” can easily miss the mark. The ACA wants to create Performance Based measures, and collect data to that end. Good. I asked them to add in the percentage of people who receive bookings after going to the Hole, along with the difference between initial entry time to serve and the ultimate time served. People get “buried” in solitary, due to interactions like the one I had over trying to call the bank or a host of others that are exacerbated when the torture starts working: when the spirit erodes and minds begin to break. They also need to report on results of status review hearings; if nobody’s restricted housing status is changing, then these are pointless hearings. How many psychiatric diagnoses? How much medication prescribed and taken? How many violent interactions? Performance.
4. The most obvious standard is already unenforced; now more standards? The strangest part of the preexisting standards (ACA 4-4141) is that "all cells in segregation provide a minimum of 80 square feet, of which 35 square feet is unencumbered." I asked them how many of their accredited institutions meet this very basic requirement? In all my years, and also in all the years of Norris Henderson (Executive Director of VOTE, who also testified), we have never seen an 8’ x 10’ cell. They were more like 5’ x 8’ or 6’ x 10’ (for two people). Generally, unencumbered space is a strip between the cell and desk and toilet- about five feet by one foot. Or 5 square feet. I could not read the looks on their faces. Were they dumbfounded? Did everyone know this but just move along? What makes this standard most problematic is that it is concrete, literally concrete and steel. You can’t hide the size of a cage, nor misinterpret it. I feel like if they can’t uphold this one, amongst all their accredited facilities, what does the rest even matter?
5. Impartial oversight is mandatory. Impartial review of a guard’s allegations is generally no more than a kangaroo court or an empty ceremony. This also goes for review of people’s indefinite segregation status. Correctional officers are in a Brotherhood, a union, and are accountable to each other inside and outside the prison. I have heard many brazenly admit they would never take the word of an inmate over that of an officer. Hopefully, they would bend that rule if they saw overt criminal activity involved, but history shows that is not the case for many workers who understandably feel they are in a war, and they may need a fellow worker to watch their back someday. Ultimately, the failure of substantial review ensures people spend excessive time in the hole.
6. Solitary confinement is unnecessary and rampantly overused. When I went to the parole board after nearly seven years in prison, I was naturally concerned with explaining my hundreds of days spent in solitary confinement for dozens of infractions. I knew there was no point in rearguing my case on each and every booking. But then the chairwoman, a police officer not known for any form of leniency at the time, said “Well all your bookings are petty stuff.” And there is my point for the ACA: thousands of people collectively serving decades in torture cages for “petty stuff.”
7. There is a whole other off-the-books prison to consider. Norris pointed out people like Albert Woodfox, known to many as the face on a mural near the Superdome, or repeatedly having his conviction overturned, or having served over 40 years in solitary confinement in the face of countless “reviews.” Officials put people in the hole and blatantly throw away the key- and still get ACA accreditation. Prison officials also put people in hospital cells, incommunicado, as happened to me for roughly three months. No light. No sight of people, just a tray that would arrive. After a while, I could not remember if my daily check mark on the wall was after breakfast or after dinner. My mind, such a crucial thing to me then and now, was beginning to fade away. I have seen the end results to many others, but never witnessed the process and never thought it could happen to me.
8. Observing torture does nothing to prevent or treat the effects. Mental health in prisons is atrocious. The ACA should immediately remove accreditation of all institutions that are under the medical care of someone with a suspended license, such as Dr. Singh, who is in charge of 40,000 incarcerated Louisianans and defendant in a massive lawsuit. Such a sanction is rationally related to their employment, and they should not be in control of human health, certainly not over people who cannot go elsewhere.  The new standards rightfully put repeated emphasis on monitoring and psychological care, however, by whom? And to what degree? As a committee member from Colorado remarked later, restrictive housing, at best, delays the problem; at worst, it exacerbates the problem. Solitary confinement doesn’t solve anything.
9. Definitions can be subjective. The ACA calls for removing “ineffective” staff from restrictive housing units, but they do not define ineffective. The three guards who beat me effectively intimidated me from putting in another request slip for anything while in the hole.
10. Some standards are far from reality. The standards have been calling for law library access, consistent with one’s constitutional rights. This is not close to happening now, and certainly won’t happen in the many facilities (such as every Louisiana jail) that lacks law libraries in the entire facility. This is especially important in jails, where one is facing conviction and further imprisonment. It is also where someone is typically more active with their families, employers, and court dates. To that end, visits, phone calls, and personal hygiene are extremely important, and yet much of that is completely eliminated for people in solitary confinement.

 
The effectiveness of "restrictive housing."
Solitary confinement has been very effective in destroying families that are barely holding on with a visit or phone call. It is very effective in cutting off reading materials and deteriorating physical health. It is an excellent way to break people, and turn them into zombies doing the “Thorazine shuffle,” posing no further concern to the guards or other inmates. They become slow-moving statues, and sometimes go off their heavy doses of medication to wake up in a strange world difficult to navigate or understand. These cages are excellent tools for enhanced punishment techniques, serving the internal needs of the short-tempered, the vindictive, and the sadistic.
 
Restrictive housing is not just another prison wing. Children in adult facilities are typically in solitary confinement, labeled as "Administrative Segregation," and being controlled by guards accustomed to dealing with adults. Transgender people, medically impaired people, and politically unpopular people fill the cages of solitary. It is shameful that Americans can know more about the conditions of Guantanamo Bay than the prisons in their own backyard. It is time for that ignorance to end, and current political candidates to be leaders, and should be seeking the input of people who are currently in those windowless concrete cages. Otherwise, they will be left reading reports by the cagers who will pass a new set of standards over coffee based on actuarial spreadsheets and warden reports.