[NYAPRS Enews] Newsday OP ED: Will NYS End Solitary Confinement for Psychiatrially Disabled Inmates?

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: The following OP ED appeared in yesterday's Newsday,
written by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, author of "Crazy in America: The Hidden
Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill,' and a long time proponent of
'SHU' legislation aimed at ending the policy of solitary confinement of
inmates with severe psychiatric disabilities in NYS prisons.

 

 

Mentally Ill Inmates Face A Cruel System

Will The State End Long Solitary Confinement And Other Prison Abuses, Or
Go On As Usual?

BY MARY BETH PFEIFFER   Newsday OP ED May 6, 2007

 

In 1998, 11 years after a federal judge ordered improved mental health
care for prisoners at New York State's Attica Correctional Facility, a
psychotic 28-year-old man identified as Inmate A hanged himself in an
Attica solitary confinement unit.

 

The inmate had tried suicide several times before and was experiencing
delusions and hallucinations - clear signs of mental illness - but this
did not affect how his keepers viewed him: as a "malingerer," according
to court documents, who deserved round-the-clock lockup in a veritable
closet for his prison misdeeds. Nor did it matter that the prison was
operating under the watchful eye of a federal court that had sought to
avoid this kind of outcome. 

 

Now, nine years later, such abusive long-term isolated confinement of
mentally ill inmates is at the center of another, more far-reaching
federal lawsuit recently settled by New York State, alleging dismal
inmate mental health care across its 71 prisons. With the state's pledge
to add 400 treatment beds and curbs on how mentally ill inmates are
disciplined, the settlement has the potential to lift hundreds of
prisoners out of miserably punitive conditions. Nonetheless, caution is
advised.

 

One need only look at Inmate A and others who died long after the state
had agreed to improve their lot - even as court monitors kept a regular
vigil - to know the limits of judicial reach. The settlement is a good
development, to be sure, but it fails to go far enough.

 

The court reports that tell the checkered history of settlements of
class-action prison lawsuits - those, for example, that revealed the
fate of Inmate A - will not, under this new settlement, be made public.
So who will know if the state reneges?

 

It's an urgent question, as New York's prisons, like those in other
states, have become de facto mental institutions in an era of shuttered
mental hospitals and inadequate community care. While the prison
population has expanded by about 9 percent since 1991, the number of
inmates with mental illness - currently estimated at 8,400 - has nearly
doubled. The system has its own 189-bed psychiatric hospital and
specialized units for mentally ill inmates, but its resources are
dwarfed by the need. 

 

Unable to conform and offered few treatment alternatives, mentally ill
inmates often are isolated in cells as small as 50 square feet for an
average of three years. The most recalcitrant are fed cold loaves of
flour, milk, potato and carrot - with a side of raw cabbage - a punitive
practice frowned upon by the accrediting American Correctional
Association.

 

The lawsuit settlement places limits on use of the "loaf" and on
punishment of mentally ill inmates who hurt themselves in violation of
prison rules. It also provides two hours of therapy a week for inmates
in isolation. What it will not do, however, is exclude schizophrenic and
other intensely ill inmates from the dehumanizing, psychologically
battering rigors of isolated confinement.

 

Prisons in at least seven other states now ban isolated confinement for
inmates with serious mental illness. Under a bill pending in the State
Legislature - vetoed last August by then-Gov. George Pataki but
reintroduced and now in committee - New York would follow suit.
Crucially, the bill would let a state commission monitor mental health
care behind prison walls, providing badly needed, and permanent,
oversight.

 

Settlements in federal lawsuits undoubtedly have improved prison
conditions. But the path to change has been tortuous and long. After a
settlement involving the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess
County, a frustrated court monitor wrote 13 reports from 1992 to 2000 in
which he described care as "wretched," "callous" and "dangerous." Five
inmates died needlessly, including one from a staph infection that
wasn't treated for six months; others were transferred under the
monitor's nose to prisons not covered by the settlement.

 

In 1999, after the suicide of another Attica inmate under conditions
almost identical to those involving Inmate A, a court expert reported
that "no substantively meaningful improvement" had occurred. This was
about 19 years after the filing of the suit pertaining to inmate care at
Attica. By 2002, when advocates decided to take their case against
corrections officials systemwide, half of prison suicides were occurring
in isolated confinement - and Attica's count was among the highest.

 

Given a cooperative state bureaucracy with an enlightened view of mental
health care, advocates believe that the outcome in the most recent case
- Disability Advocates Inc. v. Office of Mental Health - will be
different from the outcome in other cases. Maybe. Maybe not. The track
record isn't good. 

 

Without legislation, I fear that someone else may be writing this very
article in a decade or two. Or - denied progress reports under a
confidentiality clause that keeps them under wraps - maybe she won't. 

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppfe065201084may06,0,3547153,pri
nt.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines 

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