The authenticity of this exit interview has been confirmed by Commissioner Martin Magnusson, but he won’t discuss it. Mele, who now works for Magnusson’s probation and parole wing, won’t return phone calls. This information has been put in my file marked “The Guards’ Side of the Story,” for a future article, but you can read the interview at http://www.penbay.org/WRFR/prisonproject/gmeleexit.html.
A hard line from the outset
The stonewalling behavior of corrections officials is not just a reaction to what I have written. When I began my research last year, I immediately encountered barriers. The intervention of the governor’s office, which is always more sensitive to public opinion than any other part of state government, was necessary to get a significant response from the corrections bureaucracy to my requests to obtain basic facts about the Supermax and to arrange interviews with prisoners.
Officials at the Maine State Prison itself have a very hard approach to the press: almost total lack of cooperation, unless you are a reporter who rewrites their press releases. The Corrections Department headquarters in Augusta had a softer approach, at first. Magnusson and Lord gave me lengthy interviews at the beginning of what would become this series. With a thoughtful and moderate demeanor, they appeared to agree with all the criticisms of the Supermax — from Deane Brown, from other prisoners, and from critics outside the prison. (See “Reforming the Supermax,” November 18, 2005, by Lance Tapley.)
The criticisms were of conditions and practices far worse than what Brown endured recently while on suicide watch. They included “extractions” of prisoners from their cells that were indistinguishable from beatings, lengthy stays of naked prisoners in a medieval-looking “restraint” chair, mad prisoners (in both senses of the word) coating the Supermax by throwing their feces and urine at guards, frequent self-mutilations, and suicide attempts. (See “Torture in the Supermax,” November 11, 2005, by Lance Tapley.)
Magnusson and Lord promised reforms, some of which they have instituted, such as retraining some of the prison staff, opening a new psychiatric wing for some prisoners, and lessening the use of the restraint chair for disobedient inmates. (See “Pressure Rising,” March 24, by Lance Tapley.)
Recently, though, they have taken a harder line with me. They have not responded to several sets of e-mailed questions and requests for interviews. Only when I phone or e-mail Crystal Canney, Governor Baldacci’s press aide, do I get a relatively quick call back from Magnusson or Lord. Understandably, Canney tries to insulate her boss from the prison controversy by passing the buck back to the department.
Other agencies uninterested
Other branches of state government appear uneager to act in the public good to bring sunshine into the windowless cells of the prison bureaucracy. Or to do something about abused and suicidal mentally ill inmates.
E-mails among a number of Baldacci administration officials about the Supermax controversy over the past year — inspected by the Phoenix under the Freedom of Access law — reveal more concern about how to handle the press than they do about how to fix a serious, sad problem.
