Heck, Man, Just Throw Them in the Clinker

[Clone]

Harrowing Before/After Photos of Two Years in Solitary


http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/ima...09a1bd.jpg

On the left: Stephen Slevin in 2005, when he was arrested in New Mexico's Dona Ana County on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving a stolen vehicle (Slevin says the car was lent to him by a friend). On the right: Slevin in 2007, just before he was released after spending nearly all of two years in solitary confinement in the county jail.

Slevin was awarded $22 million in damages by a federal jury for his ordeal, which involved being confined to a small cell with no natural light for 23 hours a day. He sent letters to the county jail's nurse (credentials: bachelor's degree in biology), whose response was only to up his dose of sedatives.

Meanwhile, his relatives were trying to find out: where's Stephen?

The answer, for most of his 22-month detainment, was that he was in "deplorable" conditions of his solitary "pod," court documents state, except for a 14-day period in May 2007, when he was sent to New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., for a psychiatric review. He had lost a third of his body weight by that point, documents say, and had bed sores and a fungal infection on his skin.


[...]

It wouldn't be until months later that Slevin's sister, whose name and location [attorney Matt] Coyte did not give, found out what her brother was going through: Forced to pull out his own tooth because he was denied access to a dentist, he told reporters on Tuesday. Toenails curling around his foot because they were so long. Basically forgotten about in his dark cell for more than 22 months.

"Basically" forgotten about, yes, though Slevin says guards walked by frequently. In May of 2007, he was allowed a brief stint at a "mental health institute," where he was able to shave and cut his hair; he then returned to solitary before being released — charges dropped due to his deteriorating mental health — in June. And Dona County? Why, it has a "disturbing history of settling cases involving the mistreatment of prisoners," The

http://gawker.com/5879939/the-harrowing-...n-solitary

[bbqboy]

well shit, if he'd been in Jackson County Oregon we would have shot him, so he should feel lucky.

[Wonky]

Harrowing Before/After Photos of Two Years in Solitary


http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/ima...09a1bd.jpg

On the left: Stephen Slevin in 2005, when he was arrested in New Mexico's Dona Ana County on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving a stolen vehicle (Slevin says the car was lent to him by a friend). On the right: Slevin in 2007, just before he was released after spending nearly all of two years in solitary confinement in the county jail.

Slevin was awarded $22 million in damages by a federal jury for his ordeal, which involved being confined to a small cell with no natural light for 23 hours a day. He sent letters to the county jail's nurse (credentials: bachelor's degree in biology), whose response was only to up his dose of sedatives.

Meanwhile, his relatives were trying to find out: where's Stephen?

The answer, for most of his 22-month detainment, was that he was in "deplorable" conditions of his solitary "pod," court documents state, except for a 14-day period in May 2007, when he was sent to New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., for a psychiatric review. He had lost a third of his body weight by that point, documents say, and had bed sores and a fungal infection on his skin.


[...]

It wouldn't be until months later that Slevin's sister, whose name and location [attorney Matt] Coyte did not give, found out what her brother was going through: Forced to pull out his own tooth because he was denied access to a dentist, he told reporters on Tuesday. Toenails curling around his foot because they were so long. Basically forgotten about in his dark cell for more than 22 months.

"Basically" forgotten about, yes, though Slevin says guards walked by frequently. In May of 2007, he was allowed a brief stint at a "mental health institute," where he was able to shave and cut his hair; he then returned to solitary before being released — charges dropped due to his deteriorating mental health — in June. And Dona County? Why, it has a "disturbing history of settling cases involving the mistreatment of prisoners," The

http://gawker.com/5879939/the-harrowing-...n-solitary

I see this was also reported by MSNBC.

This is truly a horror story. God help us if we are suffering confusion, addiction, or even just plain stupidity. We should be able to expect "the system" to be accountable to at least minimum standards.

I wonder just how much good the 22 million dollars will do him. Talk about PSTD!

Our institutions are failing all but the wealthy. If this man had enjoyed the support of representation that only money can buy, he would never had suffered this degrading experience.

What can we learn from this? This man was depressed, drinking, and wanted to leave the place he been living. Maybe we should "be our brothers keepers" and try to protect those on the edge.

We have someone in our neighborhood who insists he is Jesus Christ, the messiah, part of the God Head. And he seems to truly believe it. Should we bait and berate him, or find a more humane way of interacting with him?

I don't know. But I am wondering.

Sad story Clone, but one we need to know.

[Clone]

They forgot him, Wonky.

[Wonky]

They forgot him, Wonky.

<Snip Photo>

And it they can forget him, they can forget...

[Clone]

They forgot him, Wonky.

<Snip Photo>

And it they can forget him, they can forget...

I can hardly bear to look at the pictures, yet I do.
Kinda like rubber necking at a car accident scene.
Poor man....
Well, he's not poor financially anymore.

[cletus1]

The following is an excerpt from an ACLU article on the overuse of solitary confinement.

..."it is a commonplace experience for tens of thousands of prisoners right here in the United States, where at least 25,000 people are held in solitary on any given day. Across the U.S., prisoners in solitary are locked alone in a cell for at least 23 hours a day, day in and day out, often with no natural light and with no meaningful human contact. Prisoners in solitary are often subjected to inhumane conditions — recently, hundreds of prisoners in California undertook a hunger strike to protest the awful conditions in solitary there. The Washington Post recently editorialized that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort.

Solitary confinement causes severe psychological trauma — prolonged terms of years and even decades exacerbate the effects, in mentally ill prisoners as well as others. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, recently raised the alarm about solitary confinement as a form of torture and characterized the practice as “growing and diversifying in its use and severity.” Indeed, solitary confinement is well recognized as painful and difficult to endure. “It's an awful thing, solitary,” Sen. John McCain wrote of his time in isolation as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-right...nds-people

[cletus1]

UN Special Rapporteur on torture calls for the prohibition of solitary confinement

NEW YORK (18 October 2011) – “Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, Supermax, the hole, Secure Housing Unit (SHU)… whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by States as a punishment or extortion technique,” said today the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, to the UN General Assembly.

“Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which is contrary to rehabilitation, the aim of the penitentiary system,” the rights expert stressed presenting his first interim report* to the General Assembly. In it, he examines the practice of solitary confinement “which is global in nature and subject to widespread abuse.”

There is no universal definition for solitary confinement because the degree of social isolation varies with different practices. However, for the Special Rapporteur, it is “any regime where an inmate is held in isolation from others (except guards) for at least twenty-two hours a day.”

“Social isolation is one of the harmful elements of solitary confinement and its main objective. It reduces meaningful social contact to an absolute minimum,” Mr. Méndez said. “A significant number of individuals will experience serious health problems regardless of the specific conditions of time, place, and pre-existing personal factors”.

“Indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement, in excess of fifteen days, should also be subject to an absolute prohibition,” the expert said noting that scientific studies have established that some lasting mental damage is caused after a few days of social isolation.

The Special Rapporteur also called for an end to the practice of solitary confinement in pre-trial detention based solely on the seriousness of the offense alleged, as well as a complete ban on its use for juveniles and persons with mental disabilities.

“Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause,” Mr. Méndez warned, “it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”

Solitary confinement for shorter terms or for legitimate disciplinary reasons can also amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment where the physical conditions of prison regime (sanitation, access to food and water) fail to respect the inherent dignity of the human person and cause severe mental and physical pain or suffering.

“Solitary confinement should be used only in very exceptional circumstances, for as short a time as possible,” the independent expert emphasized. “In the exceptional circumstances in which its use is legitimate, procedural safeguards must be followed. I urge States to apply a set of guiding principles when using solitary confinement.”

http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages...6&LangID=E

[cletus1]

One More fairly long article then I'll wait for TVguy to log on. I will save the best for last.


Jan 27th, 2012

Posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU at 11:35am

Overincarceration in America


We believe that America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. But more Americans are deprived of their liberty than ever before - unfairly and unnecessarily, with no benefit to public safety. It’s a problem that affects people of color most of all. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik tackles the subject of mass incarceration in America, and takes on questions many of us in the criminal justice world as every day: how did we get here, and where do we go now?

As Gopnik explains:

More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some point in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today — perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal justice system — in prison, on probation, or on parole — than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America — more than six million — than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.
That’s right: If all the people under “correctional supervision” were a city, it would be the second largest city in the U.S.

As more people find themselves locked up, more people face the culture of violence and inhumanity that persists in many of America’s prisons. Many prisoners are kept in solitary confinement — “at least fifty thousand men — a full house at Yankee Stadium,” says Gopnik — where they are confined to a bathroom-sized cell for 23 hours a day with little or no human contact. It is literally enough to make the sane go crazy. In our own work to end the overuse of solitary, we argue that the practice is not only a waste of taxpayer dollars, but threatens public safety and is fundamentally inhumane. A U.N. expert has called solitary confinement torture. The Washington Post has called for its use only as a last resort.

Those not in solitary endure brutal conditions as well, including the constant threat of guard brutality and rape.

How did we get here? Gopnik’s piece explores two theories. Those who subscribe to the “Northern” theory point to the American justice system’s emphasis on process and procedure over principles, arguing that we tend to accept brutal conditions when we think of them as regular and systematic, imposed after a measure of due process has landed someone in prison. In other words, “The more professionalized and procedural a system is, the more insulated we become from its real effects on real people.” The “Southern” theory holds that prisons are a modern-day extension of plantations; that, as legal scholar Michelle Alexander has argued, mass imprisonment is the “new Jim Crow.” Blacks face police harassment as youths, are incarcerated at a far greater rate than whites, and are released often stripped of their right to vote — a cycle of legal discrimination and disempowerment.

These schools of thought converge to conclude, most basically, that there are too many people in prison and for all the wrong reasons. Overcrowded prisons, in turn, only worsen the conditions of confinement, as we have seen in California where the Supreme Court recently ordered a reduction in prisoner population.

Inflated prison populations have also fueled the for-profit prison industry. As a recent ACLU report shows, mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for this special interest group, which includes businesses like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) — even as current incarceration levels harm the country as a whole. Says Gopnik, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” By CCA’s own admission, anything that would decrease the prison population would be bad for business. In a 2005 annual report, the company wrote:

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities… The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relocation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.
Private prison corporations, then, have a self-preservation motive to push for an increase in incarceration. And there are others, too, who argue for the continued detention of more and more Americans, pointing to a decline in crime over the same period that incarceration skyrocketed. But there is little proof of a direct causation, and we must not simply accept that overincarceration cured crime. In fact, Gopnik’s piece argues and we agree, this culture of mass incarceration has actually had little effect on crime levels. A better explanation might be that there is no one reason for the decline but rather several smaller pieces of the puzzle that have slowly chipped away at the problem; that there are more effective policies that are also more fair and cost less. As we wrote in another recent report, many states have already begun to show that smart reform is possible, introducing policies that reduce their dependence on incarceration while protecting communities.

And if that’s true — if, indeed, mass incarceration plays a small role in reducing crime — then, Gopnik concludes, “very few people, rich or poor, should be in prison for nonviolent crime.”

Like Gopnik, we believe it’s time for a change. It’s time to improve our criminal justice system, by reducing the number of people who needlessly enter prison in the first place, by shrinking the existing prison population by allowing prisoners who have proven they are ready to re-enter society the opportunity to transition out of confinement, and by investing in alternative solutions that are more effective than lengthy sentences.

We can and must be both safe and fair.

[illcommandante]

There was a guy lying in The Josephine County Jail with an unreduced fracture with his arm bone sticking out. Some doctor was entertaining sheriffs. And, needs shot for that.

[Clone]

One can only imagine (and shudder at) what Pelican Bay Level 5 CA state prison is releasing back into society. I think it fair to assume that many of them are worse animals than when they went in.

[tvguy]

Like Gopnik, we believe it’s time for a change. It’s time to improve our criminal justice system, by reducing the number of people who needlessly enter prison in the first place, by shrinking the existing prison population by allowing prisoners who have proven they are ready to re-enter society the opportunity to transition out of confinement, and by investing in alternative solutions that are more effective than lengthy sentences.

Like what?

[cletus1]

Like Gopnik, we believe it’s time for a change. It’s time to improve our criminal justice system, by reducing the number of people who needlessly enter prison in the first place, by shrinking the existing prison population by allowing prisoners who have proven they are ready to re-enter society the opportunity to transition out of confinement, and by investing in alternative solutions that are more effective than lengthy sentences.

Like what?

Community service.

[tvguy]

Like Gopnik, we believe it’s time for a change. It’s time to improve our criminal justice system, by reducing the number of people who needlessly enter prison in the first place, by shrinking the existing prison population by allowing prisoners who have proven they are ready to re-enter society the opportunity to transition out of confinement, and by investing in alternative solutions that are more effective than lengthy sentences.

Like what?

Community service.

Well They already do that but yeah they could do it more for convicts who were not a danger to society.

[cletus1]

Like Gopnik, we believe it’s time for a change. It’s time to improve our criminal justice system, by reducing the number of people who needlessly enter prison in the first place, by shrinking the existing prison population by allowing prisoners who have proven they are ready to re-enter society the opportunity to transition out of confinement, and by investing in alternative solutions that are more effective than lengthy sentences.

Like what?

Community service.

Well They already do that but yeah they could do it more for convicts who were not a danger to society.

And home detention if someone thinks it is needed, but community service is a more severe punishment IMO and actually accomplishes work that is needed. This part of the article caught my attention and gave me another reason to consider alternative sentencing when it is appropriate for a non violent offender.

Inflated prison populations have also fueled the for-profit prison industry. As a recent ACLU report shows, mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for this special interest group, which includes businesses like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) — even as current incarceration levels harm the country as a whole. Says Gopnik, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” By CCA’s own admission, anything that would decrease the prison population would be bad for business. In a 2005 annual report, the company wrote:

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities… The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relocation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.
Private prison corporations, then, have a self-preservation motive to push for an increase in incarceration.