“Several states have enacted laws that prohibit placing inmates with mental illness in 23-hour lockdown because it exacerbates the illness and generally leads to increased time in prison,” she said in an accompanying letter. (The prisoners have an hour for outdoor exercise five days a week, weather permitting.)

On February 9, representatives of the civil liberties union met with Magnusson, following up with a letter threatening a lawsuit if the Department of Corrections doesn’t stop keeping mentally ill people in solitary confinement. “We are all hopeful that a satisfactory solution can be found that will not require litigation,” the MCLU wrote.

The letter also stated: “The continued presence of any individuals with serious mental illness in the detention unit ... is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society. We are prepared to do whatever we can to help you bring this practice to an end, but end it must.” The group’s parent organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, has successfully sued to improve supermax conditions in other states.

On March 10, NAMI’s Carothers met with the legislative committee and, in Magnusson’s presence, asked the department for data on solitary confinement, on the use of the restraint chair, and on the extent these practices involve mentally ill prisoners.

“We need some good thinking about what is a better way” than present Supermax practices, she told the committee. She felt the data would dictate what actions need to be taken. Magnusson said he would comply with her request.

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The department already has said that, compared to other states, Maine has a high number of mentally ill people in the prison system. At the committee meeting, Magnusson estimated it was 40 percent. And the department has figures on restraint chair use. In 2003, 164 uses occurred; there were 205 in 2004 and 178 in 2005. In the first two months of 2006, however, the chair was used only five times, and only once in February (four of those five times by two prisoners).

Hovering in the background in the committee room was the MCLU’s lawyer, Zachary Heiden. In an interview, he said his group believes solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the United States Constitution. The prisoners should be “in an environment where their civil rights and dignity as human beings are respected,” he said.

At this time the MCLU isn’t in a “High Noon” showdown with the department, he said, and he was hopeful officials would be cooperative. Often, advocacy groups use the threat of a lawsuit to drive policy changes, reserving its filing as a last resort.

After the meeting, Senator John Nutting, a Democrat from Leeds, said the department’s treatment of mentally ill people is “inexcusable. They’ve balanced their budget on the backs of the mentally ill” by not providing enough services for inmates with mental problems. (But legislators for years have provided the Department of Corrections with tight budgets.)

“I and other legislators will keep intense pressure on them to try to keep them from being sued by the MCLU,” Nutting said, referring to the department.

Specific reforms promised
Magnusson appears eager to be cooperative with Supermax critics. He was when interviewed in October, and he appeared especially eager when he took the seat, immediately after Carothers, before the Criminal Justice Committee.

He told the legislators that, at a prison meeting on the preceding day, he had set up committees to report in 30 days on how to reform the Supermax by:

- Developing “progressive” rewards to obtain modifications of prisoner behavior, to move away from the present punitive approach. Magnusson mentioned the possible use of closed-circuit-television therapy programs in cells to help inmates become cooperative. If they complete a course, they could be allowed, for example, to watch some sports programs.

- Training the staff in verbal ways to de-escalate confrontations with prisoners in an effort to reduce use of the restraint chair.

- Avoiding forced extractions from cells. He said this has been accomplished in Colorado through talk with prisoners and the threat of an irritant gas, OC, which he says is stronger than the pepper spray now used in the Supermax.

In an interview, Magnusson says he also is having a committee “look at the current culture in the Supermax” — to improve the working environment for the staff, their teamwork, and their communication with inmates.

A big step that could be taken, he says, sounds a lot like prisoner Deane Brown’s idea: open up a 16-cell Supermax “pod” now vacant and turn it into a treatment unit for some mentally ill prisoners. In it, they would not have to be kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. But “we’re very tight on money,” Magnusson notes.