Guarding Solitary Confinement

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXedosnEnVevuCSuR7FGA0a05RqQxdGHO51jX3RE4m572xRFlpLP4tCHfgfA0m-mgdcd_wMOMu2NdmdHZwSrXhzy8KFzy3OceZ9n1muRQd0gcon4RrwgMqhvjYsk_0AwvVGWeG7BaY780/s1600/Solitary+Confinement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Solitary confinement cell: Entombed alive" border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXedosnEnVevuCSuR7FGA0a05RqQxdGHO51jX3RE4m572xRFlpLP4tCHfgfA0m-mgdcd_wMOMu2NdmdHZwSrXhzy8KFzy3OceZ9n1muRQd0gcon4RrwgMqhvjYsk_0AwvVGWeG7BaY780/s400/Solitary+Confinement.jpg" title="Solitary confinement cell: Entombed alive" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Solitary confinement cell: Entombed alive</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Interview with a Former Corrections Officer Who Worked in Prison Isolation Units</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Recently, <i>Solitary Watch</i> had the opportunity to sit down with “X,” a former corrections officer who spent almost two years working on a segregation unit in Pennsylvania. (The guard requested complete anonymity in exchange for the interview). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X, now 48, worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections between 2006 and 2009, and in the Special Housing Units (SHU) from 2008-2009. He spoke candidly with journalist Aviva Stahl about what drew him to work “in the hole,” what he saw while he was there, and what he thinks about the growing movement to reform the use of solitary. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This interview has been edited for length and clarity</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: Did you start working in the SHU or did you work in general population first?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: It’s always general population first. Always. You don’t work in solitary confinement until you’ve established yourself as a CO. They want to see how you react. How you handle yourself. How you are with the other CO’s, how you interact with inmates. And they take that all… and you get to know your lieutenants, your captains, your majors, and your other staff members, your peers, your other CO’s. Whether or not they can trust you and you can trust them before you’re ever considered for down there, the hole. We used to call it the hole. People want to see what you’re made of.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: Do you remember the kind of people who were there for disciplinary or punishment, do you remember the range of stuff they had done to warrant being put in the hole?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: Mm-hm. It could be an offense towards an officer. It could be, any inmates if they got in any kind of a fight or something both of them automatically go down. Normally a couple days, you have a trial, find out what’s going on, bring the officers in that seen it. “Yeah I seen this, the inmate so and so you know initiated it.” So normally the one that didn’t, they’d get released back to general population. They could be down there for, I mean, stealing, whether it had been in the chow hall, from one of the workshops trying to bring things in, offenses that they committed during visiting when they were visiting family and friends during visiting hour. There would be state offenses against officers like spitting, hitting. Anything.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: Did you ever see people go crazy in the SHU?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: Oh yeah. Yeah it was, we had one inmate, he was in his 70’s… We had another inmate being transferred from another institution and he said yeah, he would take a cellie. Well, ended up, both celled together. It was the second night together and the younger inmate who was like 24, raped the 77 year old inmate. And I remember when [the 77-year-old] came out of there, the Lieutenant comes out and we had him on a stretcher and I mean this man, we thought he was going to have a heart attack, a stroke or…he was just horrified that this had happened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: I think you told me you walked in on someone who had hanged himself, right?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: We had one inmate, he was dead when we got him. He snapped his neck from hanging himself. Had some that the genitalia, tried to cut it off with a plastic spoon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: And the people who tried to commit suicide in solitary or who cut themselves, do you think it was because they were in solitary? Do you think it was the solitary that was driving them crazy?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: No, I think it was just incarceration. And situations that happen while they were in there, if they had a loved one that died or their spouse or their child or someone you’re going to know what happens when it happens. The inmates don’t take time to tell you. They’ll tell you what happened. But they can’t go on anymore and they’ll tell you they don’t want to live anymore. They’ll write Dear John letters. It’s the same as what happens out here. They start giving away everything, they write a note, they start, they lose all affect for anything. You don’t want to be involved anymore and they withdraw. It’s a norm. [In fact, 50 percent of all prison suicides take place among the approximately 5 percent of prisoners held in solitary.]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: The other thing I was curious about that we talked about when we met was forced cell extractions. I don’t know if you want to talk about that, what it was like to participate in those or kind of what it looked like.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: Basically, where we would be doing, whether it would be a fence, they would grab ahold of one of the nurses, when it was pill-passing time. They would mix up stuff, they would defecate all over their cells, they would paint the windows, so you have to be able to see, no matter what, you have to be able to see to do your count, make sure for the safety of the inmates. You have to be able to see in that cell. And they would cover the windows with feces, it was bad. And man, it stunk. But you don’t know if they were dead or what was going to go on there. If they had something they had made shanks out of. We had one inmate he took towels and kind of strapped his shanks to his hands and he was like “come and get me.” And so you have to go in, that’s just it. So a team assembles and you give them several chances to come to the grill to be cuffed and he comes down there, he’s the one giving the order, and no matter what happens before the cellie’s direction or any sort of pepper spray or anything there’s always a lieutenant there. He’s the one giving the order. I’m ordering you to inmate so and so, I’m giving you a lawful order and you need to come to the pie hole to be handcuffed. “No. Come on and get me.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If they didn’t want to come out then be cuffed up, you have no other choice but to go in. Or you have to hit them with pepper spray. We had our teams for them with our batons and our pepper spray and everybody has a set of cuffs on them. You used to have to overpower them and take them down. I mean you came out with some bangs and bruises on you but, you got done what had to be done.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AS: How often would that happen?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">X: Sometimes you may not have a cell extraction for a week or two. But normally it was probably 2 or 3 times a week. Yeah, it happened quite frequently. If you believe somebody had something in their cell, a weapon, and they wouldn’t come out, you’d have to go in and get it.</div><br /><b><a href="http://solitarywatch.com/2016/06/28/guarding-solitary-confinement/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article</a></b><br /><br />Source: Solitary Watch, Aviva Stahl, June 28, 2016<br /><br /><div><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div>

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Solitary confinement cell: Entombed alive Interview with a Former Corrections Officer Who Worked in Prison Isolation Units Recently, Solitar...

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Connecticut: Law Provides Guidance On How Former Death-Row Inmates Will Be Housed

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3pK7lU_kxLTdHXSxgP3SnK893jE1RiPNUQ7mOnXBOcF0lLnwspL8EZ3fV34MqHoWjjSgXxbzYc2VUxqtUCZ3yK07UoQH906f44jmLJB8GIPCxDPqyzCyJEXrx-UrrTwLW05AhGO5lOMI/s1600/Northern+Correctional+Institution+in+Somers%252C+Connecticut%252C+USA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers" border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3pK7lU_kxLTdHXSxgP3SnK893jE1RiPNUQ7mOnXBOcF0lLnwspL8EZ3fV34MqHoWjjSgXxbzYc2VUxqtUCZ3yK07UoQH906f44jmLJB8GIPCxDPqyzCyJEXrx-UrrTwLW05AhGO5lOMI/s400/Northern+Correctional+Institution+in+Somers%252C+Connecticut%252C+USA.jpg" title="Maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Everyday life for Maryland's death-row inmates barely changed in 2014 when Gov. Martin O'Malley commuted their sentences to life in prison without the chance of parole.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"They were already housed in general population," Gerard M. Shields, a spokesman for Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said about the four men facing execution in 2013, the year Maryland abolished capital punishment."We didn't have a separate death row and they had the same rights as everybody else, so nothing really changed for them in terms of their housing."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now that capital punishment is officially in the history books in Connecticut, the question remains about how the lives of 11 formerly condemned prisoners will change.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Corrections officials are working to adjust their prison housing directives to comply with a state law regarding the incarceration of former death-row inmates and those now convicted of the crime of murder with special circumstances.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The law addressing those inmates, put in place when the death penalty was repealed in 2012, will likely keep the former death-row inmates away from the general prison population and locked up in maximum-security facilities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All 11 former death-row inmates, as of Friday, were still being housed in a special unit at the maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But now that Cheshire home invasion killer Steven Hayes has been resentenced, corrections officials are conducting a state-mandated "reclassification process" for Hayes that will dictate how he is managed in prison, Karen Martucci, acting director of the external affairs division of the state Department of Correction, said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Martucci said Hayes, who received six consecutive life sentences during a brief hearing in Superior Court in New Haven on Wednesday, is the only inmate going through the reclassification process. As each former death-row inmate is resentenced, he also will go through reclassification, Martucci said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Reclassification involves placing an inmate on a "special circumstances high-security status" and assessing whether an inmate could be dangerous to staff and other inmates and belongs in either "administrative segregation," also known as solitary confinement, or protective custody, according to the 2012 state law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An inmate with a "special circumstances high-security" status will be placed with inmates with the same status in a maximum-security facility, the law states.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The conditions of confinement could include that the inmate's movements must be monitored and that he must be escorted by corrections officers. He could be moved to a new cell at least every 90 days, have his cell searched at least twice a week and not be able to have contact during social visits, according to the law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Work assignments will be allowed only in the assigned housing unit and the inmate will be allowed no more than 2 hours of recreational activity per day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The law allows the confinement conditions to be reviewed annually and changed "for compelling correctional management or safety reasons."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Martucci said the corrections department has its own classification system for prisoners but in the case of classification for the former death-row inmates, state law is superseding the department's policies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This statute is governing everything," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Connecticut abolished the death penalty in April 2012 but made the law prospective, meaning it applied only to new cases. Attorneys representing those on death row challenged the law, saying it violated the condemned inmates' constitutional rights.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In August 2015, the justices ruled 4-3 to ban capital punishment for all defendants, saying in the majority decision that Connecticut's death penalty no longer fit with societal values and served no valid purpose as punishment, a ruling they echoed in a decision last month that essentially ended prosecutors' fight to keep execution possible for those already on death row.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Susan O. Storey, Connecticut's chief public defender, said attorneys in the capital defense unit representing former-death row clients are poised to move forward with additional resentencings once they are notified about how corrections officials are interpreting the 2012 law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We're waiting to get some clarification on how this law will be interpreted and enforced so that each of the lawyers can decide how they are going to proceed," Storey said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hayes' accomplice in the 2007 Cheshire home invasion and killings, Joshua Komisarjevsky, is scheduled for resentencing in New Haven Superior Court in New Haven on July 26.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the resentencing in state court of Richard Reynolds, convicted of fatally shooting a Waterbury police officer, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, after the justices upheld his murder conviction but overturned his death sentence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hearings for Reynolds and the remaining 8 inmates have not yet been scheduled.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In older cases in which a sentencing judge has retired, the criminal presiding judge in that judicial district will assign a judge to hear those cases, Melissa Farley, executive director of external affairs for the state judicial branch, said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Hartford Courant, June 19, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

Abolition Connecticut Maryland Solitary confinement USA Connecticut: Law Provides Guidance On How Former Death-Row Inmates Will Be Housed

Maximum-security Northern Correctional Institution in Somers Everyday life for Maryland's death-row inmates barely changed in 2014 when ...

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