Post Office Advocacy Piece?

Disability Rights Network Challenges DOC Mental Health Practices

A lawsuit filed by the Disability Rights Network (DRN) on March 11, 2013 challenges current practices of solitary confinement in PA prisons for people with serious mental illness and argues that the PA Department of Corrections has caused undue suffering by upholding policies and procedures that are deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ constitutional rights. The lawsuit outlines current conditions of confinement, highlighting 23 to 24 hour lock down in cells with constant lights on, denial of adequate mental health care, lack of rehabilitative or therapeutic programming and lack of constructive pathways to parole. It summarizes DOC violations as the following: enforcement of a disciplinary system that does not factor mental illness; a known failure to provide even minimal mental health treatment or make treatment available; confinement conditions that exacerbate mental health problems; a refusal to take steps to correct known systemic violations.

Hundreds of prisoners and many ranking staff members were interviewed and visited by the DRN to understand mental health practices in the prison system. 800 prisoners, who are currently held in solitary, have been classified as having a “serious” mental illness on the DOC mental health scale and are obliged at least 1 “drive-by” visit by a mental health person at their cell slot every 90 days. Robert Meek of the DRN argues that prisoners with mental health needs are in a “Dickensian” punishment nightmare, where they cannot receive treatment, but do receive disciplinary infractions for behaviors related to their mental health issues. Once a person receives an infraction, they are put in solitary confinement in conditions that further deteriorate mental health. While in solitary, prisoners may display symptoms of their mental illness or behaviors resulting from their isolated conditions, such as using obscene language, acting paranoid, inflicting self harm, throwing bodily waste, hearing voices, refusing to eat, etc. These behaviors are then punished with more and more time in isolation.

The DRN found that in cases where mental illness was identified and where housing a person in solitary was not recommended, the DOC failed to follow its own recommendations, or those of judges or the court system to keep a person out of isolation or get a person into therapy. 2/3 of the 800 people classified as having a mental illness in solitary also reported being double celled in their housing units, often as a staff orchestrated suicide watch system.  The DRN found double celling prisoners with mental illness in solitary conditions led to violence and decreased stability.

Twelve specific case studies were outlined in the complaint, demonstrating experiences of people with mental health needs who are cycling in and out of solitary confinement or failing the DOC step down programs they cannot conform to. One person was assessed as having borderline personality disorder, found incompetent to stand trial, and in need of structured and supervised psychiatric care. Instead he was placed in solitary (RHU). He received rule infractions for acting out, smearing feces, masturbating for a female staff person, refusing to provide a urine sample, and self mutilation. He reported that auditory hallucinations caused him to do things. He requested mental health assistance at hearings and filed grievances to no change. He has acquired RHU disciplinary custody time for 10 years past his maximum prison sentencedate.

Another prisoner, a woman who has a long history of mental illness, has been cycling in and out of solitary for 11 years and has accumulated 115 misconduct reports for symptoms of her mental illness, including self harm and flooding her cell. The DOC has her listed as being in a mental health unit, though no unit exists at the women’s prison. She cannot get paroled because of misconducts stemming from her mental illness.

For all twelve case studies, an outside psychiatrist concluded that the prisoner should get psychosocial rehabilitation and individual counseling, which is not available to most prisoners.

After 27

Trigger Warning*** This post contains content about state violence in prisons and sexual violence

I saw the man cry on the witness stand, for his family and for himself.  He pointed out his wife and neighbors in the courtroom.  All sitting by.  All emotional in their suffering.  Just wanting it to be over.  The man's father had died 11 days ago.  He was having a hard time.  The victims' fathers were there too.  All I could think was, "Well, who gets to be human, and who gets to grieve?"

Twenty people testified for the jury.  And what about those teens in the front row? the day Shoemaker said that the man came to his cell and dangled his testicles a few inches from his face.  "Yeah.  I think it was a few inches."  I wondered if they should be spared?  Or was it good for them to hear that?  To consider that possibility?  Was he their father figure?  Did they go on vacations together? Is this their idea of a normal kind of man? Who cried on the witness stand?

It doesn't matter that his daughter's got a good job for someone her age.  It doesn't matter that he got a medal for helping the women in the parking lot.  If you rape someone at the prison and the jury decides that you did, they will send you to prison.  It's another dead end kind of day.

Questions from the lawyers.

"Have you ever committed sexual assault?  Have you ever raped an inmate?"

He is having comprehension problems.  He is having trouble hearing.  But he knows what he did not do.

Except,  he didn't say no.  He said, "Your questions make me sick."  He said, "I'm a father.  I'm a son." I could never do something like that.

Cough.  Someone is being paid to make sure there are no outbursts in the courtroom.  No facial expressions. No gesturing.  I squirm in my skin.

But, but, but, Mr. Nicoletti, you must know that most people in prison are fathers and sons.  You must know that most abusers are fathers and sons.  But, but, well, who gets to be human, and who gets to grieve?

Questions from the lawyers.

There were no cameras.  There isn't any truth to get to.  All we got is what everyone says and it's hard to remember when the days run together, and it's hard to speak when you haven't trusted anyone ever.  (Not since the genocide.)  And everything that could possibly have happened could probably have been perceived as normal to everyone involved because this normal is a different kind of normal.  Although I could argue that this normal is not that far off from most kinds of normal.  Marcus is on the walkie-talkie.  A transwomen is being groped.  There is a hierarchy called prey on the most vulnerable.  There is a hierarchy called you don't have a choice, but we are gonna make them think that you do.

If you rape someone when you work at the prison and the jury decides that you did, you will go to prison.  It's another prison-loving kind of day.  So it's complicated.  Having the ability to see an individual as an individual within a group and it's perilous ascribing a tone to an entire group of people.  But the lawyer was right to argue that there's a pattern here.  That every aspect is controlled.  That there are two sides, the prisoners and the guards.  And it's not like on the street.  There are no vocal chords in prison.  You can see how the deck is stacked.  You can see how this could go.

Exception.  How this did go.

Exception. The lawyer took it all back in the papers.  He said, "I don't mean this to be a reflection on the hardworking people in the Department of Corrections."  He didn't mean shit about a pattern.  He just constructed the right lines.  He was just a white man, doing a white man's job on another white kind of day in a courtroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Where quote* "legal ideas are manipulable and the law serves to legitimate existing maldistributions of wealth and power. Where for example quote#, "many people believe that theft, murder, violent assault, and rape are clear examples of criminal conduct.  Yet, state-sponsored violence is seldom named and prosecuted as criminal, though it may involve killing large numbers of people and its effects are no less harmful than when those acts are performed by individuals or small groups."  Where a white prison guard was found guilty of 27 counts of official oppression, indecent exposure, simple assault, criminal solicitation and terroristic threats (the lesser charges), before a mostly white jury.  Nicoletti didn't stand for an entire group of people.  He was an individual among his peers and his race.

After 27 counts,  I heard Fred Ho say, "We have to move beyond this paradigm.  That whiteness is inevitable."  I squirm in my skin.  But, but, but who gets to be human Mr. Ho? Who gets to grieve?  I haven't got enough whimsy to argue that.  I mean enough privilege.  I mean enough liberation.  I mean, I'm just here in this courtroom, and I'm not feeling that connected to that depth of future looking.

*Mari Matsuda
#authors of Queer Injustice