LANCE TAPLEY

Lockdown

LANCE TAPLEY — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 15:12:03 GMT

What do prison officials have to hide?
If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? Lance Tapley discusses reporting the prisons

LAWYER ACTIVIST: Lynne Williams (center).

If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? It’s from an inmate at the maximum-security, solitary-confinement Supermax unit at the Maine State Prison in Warren. The “Dino” referred to is prisoner Deane Brown, 42, a burglar, dedicated human-rights activist, and the major source of information for a series of articles I have written over the past year on abuse of mentally ill and other prisoners in the Supermax, the 1000-inmate prison’s 100-cell warehouse for the most violent men, but also a place for those whom prison officials see as troublemakers.

A prison is by definition a totalitarian kind of place, where control is a way of life. Still . . .

“Dino was brought down here more than a week ago . . . and ever since then Mental Health has cleared him off this [suicide] watch at least three times that I know of. Every time he’s cleared either the Chief of Security or the Deputy Warden put him back on. While he’s on this watch he cannot have visits, phone calls, mail, or write letters out. He’s completely stripped out except for a security dress to cover himself. He’s not allowed his reading glasses or a book to pass the time. Officers won’t let him sleep more than 15 minutes at a time before they bang on his door to make sure he’s ok. Dino has stopped eating and taking his medication because of this treatment.

“Dino is not suicidal! This is the Prison’s way of restricting his access to the outside world and especially the media. Just last week all newspapers in the entire prison were confiscated, and no newspapers were allowed back into the prison for about five days. . . .

“[The Supermax officers] have perfected the art of what I call ‘No Touch Torture.’ Noise is the weapon of choice, and unless an inmate breaks down and gets placed on medication he’s not getting more than 30 minutes of sleep at a time.”

“If this is true, it is deeply disturbing,” says Shenna Bellows, the Maine Civil Liberties Union director. “Courts have found sleep deprivation to be an Eighth Amendment violation.” The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.”

Hunger strike at Maine's Supermax Prison

LANCE TAPLEY — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:01:03 GMT

Suicide attempts reported
Inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren have been on a hunger strike since Saturday night. Death in the Supermax. By Lance Tapley

Inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren have been on a hunger strike since Saturday night. The protest is connected to an October 5 suicide in the unit, said corrections commissioner Martin Magnusson after reports on the strike began leaking out of the prison.

Magnusson also confirmed Wednesday that two Supermax inmates had recently been taken to the hospital after they had “cut up” themselves with razors.

Two prisoners had recently told friends, who then contacted the Phoenix, that these individuals had tried to commit suicide but had been saved by guards. The prisoners have since returned to the prison, Magnusson said. He would not name them, citing privacy concerns.

Because of what these inmates had done to themselves, and because “we had information that other people were going to” cut themselves, Magnusson said, razor blades for shaving have been taken from the prisoners — a ban that helped precipitate the hunger strike, he said, adding that some prisoners are now being permitted to shave, but only outside their cells and under supervision.

Magnusson said eight prisoners on Wednesday were participating in the strike, down from 14 at its outset.

The commissioner said three additional correctional officers had been sent into the Supermax (officially, the Special Management Unit) after the suicide and the disruptions associated with it. Instead of most Supermax prisoners being checked every 30 minutes, he said, about 50 of the roughly 100 prisoners in the unit were now checked every 15 minutes. Originally, three prisoners considered to be of particular suicide risk were under constant watch, with a guard outside each of their cells, he said, but now only one is under this watch.

“We are monitoring the people on hunger strike from a medical perspective,” he said, and psychiatric social workers are talking with them.

“We had a suicide,” Magnusson said, to explain the strike’s basic cause, adding that there were also “personal issues” for some prisoners. Ryan Rideout, 24, of Augusta, had hung himself from a showerhead.

Deane Brown, a former Supermax inmate and longtime protestor of prison conditions now in the prison's general population, had left a message Tuesday on the answering machine of Rockland radio producer Ron Huber, saying the hunger strikers were in their fifth day. Early Wednesday, Huber played over the phone for the Phoenix the tape of Brown’s message.

“Twelve people are protesting conditions,” Brown said, because authorities “have taken away a lot of things.”

Arbitrary imprisonment

LANCE TAPLEY — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:36:18 GMT

In a mysterious Guantánamo-like move, the state refuses to follow a judge’s order committing a mentally ill prisoner to Riverview
Joseph Steinberger thought he had won one of the most important trials of his legal career.

Michael James

Joseph Steinberger thought he had won one of the most important trials of his legal career. His client, Michael James, an inmate of the Maine State Prison’s “Supermax” maximum-security solitary confinement unit, had been charged with ten assaults on guards. James is one of the most disturbed of what the prison system admits are hundreds of mentally ill inmates. After five days of testimony from four psychologists and psychiatrists and the accused himself, a Knox County jury on June 27 found James “not criminally responsible” by reason of insanity.

As a court-appointed Rockland attorney who represents many mentally ill prisoners, Steinberger felt this verdict might be a landmark because it put in question the state’s practice of keeping many such prisoners in solitary confinement, where advocates for the mentally ill say they receive minimal psychiatric care. Advocates in Maine and nationally say this practice creates a vicious cycle that drives prisoners into suicidal or aggressive behavior — the latter bringing additional sentences for assault and more Supermax time.

But the Knox County jury broke the cycle — or so it seemed.

On the day of the verdict, Superior Court Justice Donald Marden ordered James into the custody of the commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) “to be placed in an appropriate institution for the mentally ill . . . for care and treatment.” In Maine, that institution is the state’s Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, which has a 48-bed unit for people charged with, or convicted of, crimes.

The next day, however, Katherine Greason and Diane Sleek, the assistant attorneys general representing respectively DHHS and the Department of Corrections, wrote the judge that they had advised their departments that James “should remain in prison to serve his current sentence, and then be placed with DHHS.” They gave no reason for this decision, citing vaguely “the statutes and available case law,” though mentioning the state had the right to move any prisoner on an emergency basis to the mental hospital.

Steinberger was stunned. As he wrote Governor John Baldacci on July 4, “the prison intends, despite [the judge’s] order, to keep Mike in solitary confinement for ten more years before sending him to the mental hospital.” He asked Baldacci to step in and under “basic principles of human decency . . . insist that Mike James be treated humanely and be placed in the state mental hospital as the judge has ordered.” He also published the letter in his column in the weekly Rockland Free Press.

Pressure rising

LANCE TAPLEY — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 18:56:02 GMT

Supermax torture revisited
Four months ago, a Phoenix investigative series revealed abuses of inmates at the “Supermax,” a 100-bed, solitary-confinement, maximum-security facility inside the Maine State Prison in Warren; since our articles were published, several important developments have taken place.

Four months ago, a Phoenix investigative series revealed abuses of inmates at the “Supermax,” a 100-bed, solitary-confinement, maximum-security facility inside the Maine State Prison in Warren. The most dramatic abuses, according to critics who include prisoner advocates, occur when guards brutally “extract” disobedient, often mentally ill prisoners from their cells to force them into restraint chairs, where they may be tied down for hours. The Phoenix posted on its Web site excerpts from a prison videotape that recorded an extraction.

Since our articles were published, several important developments related to the Supermax have taken place:

__ In December, the prison released Deane Brown into the general inmate population. He was one of six Supermax prisoners interviewed for the November articles. But he is continuing a “medicine strike” — refusing take drugs for his diabetes and other health problems — until Supermax conditions are improved. He says he is willing to die to bring attention to its abusive environment.

__ In February, the Maine Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the state to force improvement in the treatment of the mentally ill prisoners in the Supermax (officially, the Special Management Unit or SMU).

__ State Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson recently told the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee that he soon would take specific steps to reform the SMU. When interviewed last fall, Magnusson had promised sweeping reforms.

__ The midcoast district attorney charged a former prison guard with assault on a prisoner being extracted from his Supermax cell. This was the first time in at least 25 years that a Maine State Prison guard was charged with using illegal force.

__ Public reaction to our two articles, while generally positive, included protests that our presentation neglected the prison guards’ viewpoint as well as pleas from prisoners and their advocates for us to look into other cases of injustice involving inmates.

Deane Brown’s protest
Although free from solitary confinement for three months, Deane Brown looks thinner and paler than when interviewed in October. His voice is weaker, he is less animated, and his loose teeth look worse.