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Lisa Clifford

Are We Finally Talking About The Prison Thing That Nobody Wants To Talk About?



California has been slammed in recent years for its prison overcrowding and inhumane conditions but until now the issue of prisoners’ mental health has been largely swept under the rug.

The month of October, however, has brought two actions that could help us address the longstanding problems associated with mental illness in prisons.

The first is a class action lawsuit being held at a U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The lawsuit, filed by legal advocates for prisoners, alleges that California prisons are more concerned with keeping inmates under tight control than helping treat the almost 30 percent who suffer from mental illness. The Sacramento Bee describes the second day of the hearing:

“Experts hired by the inmates’ attorneys described what they said are widespread shortcomings inside California prisons: understaffed psychiatric units; blasts of pepper spray directed at inmates for sometimes minor violations; and a reliance on tactics that one expert described as “quite brutal” and “inhuman.”

The courtroom not only heard gruesome accounts of brutality against mentally ill inmates, the prosecution also played heart-wrenching videos:

“Much of the testimony Wednesday focused on two videos played in court Tuesday that showed guards using pepper spray and force to extract two mentally ill inmates from their cells; once extracted, they were chained down naked in corridors, their screams and futile protestations bouncing off the wood-paneled walls of the courtroom. They were identified in court only as “inmate A” and “inmate B.”

While the state flatly denies the accusations brought against it, the hope is that the proceedings will bring about a federal mandate that compels the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to "revise its policies regarding treatment of its mentally ill inmates."

While the lawsuit has been placed on hold until October 16th, assembly members in Sacramento held a hearing yesterday to address issues that were raised by the 2- month inmate hunger strike that ended last month. In the hearing, state legislators interrogated prison officials about the controversial isolation units and stated that long term sentences in solitary confinement were “beyond the pale.” The LA Times recounts the information presented at the hearing, including that on the more than 4,000 inmates now in isolation at 4 California prisons:

“The average stay in solitary is four years, according to state officials, but there are currently 23 inmates who have been isolated for at least 25 years. Some in those units

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have cellmates, but all have limited contact with others and may be allowed outside their cells for only an hour a day.”

A former inmate, Steven Czifra described solitary as “a torture chamber,” adding that before he went in, "I was a whole human being. When I left, I was a deeply fractured human being."

Czifa’s testimony brings to light the fact that brutal treatment in prisons, especially solitary confinement, often exacerbates inmates’ mental illness and can even create it where it may not have existed before.

While no action was explicitly taken at this meeting:

“Another legislative hearing on prison policies is scheduled for Oct. 21. Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) said lawmakers will examine possible changes in sentencing laws and prison educational programs. ‘The committee's goal will be real data-based, long-term solutions that will help us stop spending excessive money on prisons,’ he said in a statement.”

The accounts of solitary confinement detailed in both the lawsuit and the hearing are chilling, to be sure, but the fact that this issue has taken precedence in California’s judicial and legislative bodies signals hope for this longstanding human rights abuse.


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