Hard time in 'supermax' jails - Brief Article

SOMERS, CT-Bilton Road winds through the dreary fields browned with late-winter stubble before dead-ending at the cutting edge of American prisons, a squat, grey building topped with gleaming coils of razor wire.

Northern Correctional Institute is a super-maximum security prison-supermax is the grim nickname-one of more than three dozen similar prisons built around the United States in the last decade to store the toughest and most predatory members of the country's exploding prison population.

Inside, 423 prisoners spend up to 23 hours a day locked into their cells.

When it's time for their one hour of exercise a day, they slide their arms through a narrow slot in the heavy steel doors. Guards slap on handcuffs and the inmates shuffle forward to be placed in leg irons.

Each inmate is then walked by at least two guards to a pie-shaped concrete yard with a small glimpse of the sky.

The exercise routine is just one part of a regime geared toward keeping problem prisoners isolated. Most inmates are not allowed to watch television. Their meal trays are passed through their door slots. They sit on bolted-down furniture, yelling to other inmates they never see.

The lights burn 24 hours a day and 161 video cameras peer into every cell, every shower, corridor and exercise yard.

Northern is part of a prison revolution in the United States. More than 20,000 inmates are locked into similar prisons run by the federal government and dozens of states.

Human rights groups denounce supermaxes for dehumanizing inmates, leaving them warped and unable to return to normal society.

In many prisons the only human touch comes from a guard. Even family visits take place by video hook-up. Medical inspections are performed through cell doors and in one case, psychoanalysis was done while the inmate was chained to a pole.

Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against Ohio's supermax prison in Youngstown.

"The inhumane conditions at the supermax are not something that just happened because of bad management or neglect: They were part of the state's plan from the start," said Ray Vasvari, legal director of the Ohio ACLU.

"A prison like that belongs in the history of the Soviet gulag, not in present-day America."

Prison officials respond that removing problem inmates-rapists, abusers, drug smugglers, and guard beaters-from lower-security prisons make the rest of the system safer and more manageable.

Violence has increased

"This facility is reserved for the worst of the worst," said Larry Myers, Northern's warden. "I'm sure this facility is a deterrent. Nobody wants to come to Northern."

When the jail was built, the idea was to keep inmates alone in their cells until they had, in Mr. Myers's words, "settled down." Then they would be slowly reintroduced to group activities. But the flood of inmates soon made that impossible and now prisoners are doubled up.

While there are fewer gripes from inmates about loneliness, this means they spend months and years locked in the same tiny space with one other man.

Even Mr. Myers acknowledges inmate-on-inmate violence has ratcheted up since double bunking was brought in. Despite the elaborate security provisions, the threat of violence never lifts.

Inmates who refuse to clear their cells must be hauled out by force. Guards also get doused by noxious cocktails of urine and feces hurled out of door slots.

Even in shackles and handcuffs, prisoners try to kick and bite or head-butt, said Captain Bill Faneuff.

"The smallest thing can just trigger these guys," he said.

When they can't get at the guards, inmates often turn on themselves. Supermaxes have reported inmates smearing their cells with feces and mutilating themselves. Some have even manged to commit suicide and in Arizona one prisoner castrated himself with a eating instrument called a spork.

The few scientists who have studied long-term incarceration and supermaxes say the violence is a symptom of mental breakdown under extreme stress.

Even prison officials are unsure of the long-term impact of being locked up in a tiny cell for years.

"That's always an issue with maximum security prisons-the isolation, the deprivation," said Mr. Myers as he strolled down a corridor made of unadorned cinderblocks toward a semicircular pod lined with two levels of cells.

A study of supermax prisons for the National Institute of Corrections found, "Little is known about the impact of locking an inmate in an isolated cell for an average of 23 hours per day with limited human interaction."

There is also little agreement over what proportion of a prison population needs to be locked up in this way. Some jurisdictions say only 1% of their inmates, while others go as high as 20%. Some states toss in the mentally ill and moderate discipline cases, while others restrict supermaxes to the most violent prisoners.

Most inmates earn their supermax sentence by how they behave in other parts of the prison system. Docile murderers can serve their time in peace and quiet among other prisoners, while a belligerent convict with a minor assault or drug conviction can end up in a supermax.

Prisoners who behave will eventually work their way back into regular prisons--at Northern it takes about two years--but some unco-operative inmates can be released from a solitary cell straight back to the street.

Political motivation

Because of the high staffing levels needed in supermaxes, they are much more expensive to operate than conventional prisons. But there is no sign of satiation in the appetite for building new ones.

"They have become political symbols of how 'tough' a jurisdiction has become, the supermax study found. "In some places, the motivation to build a supermax has come not from corrections officials, but from the legislature and, in at least one instance the governor.

The first supermax was Alcatraz, in San Francisco Bay, which for decades housed escape artists and high-profile hoods like Al Capone. The jail closed in 1963, when corrections theory began stressing rehabilitation, and problem inmates were dispersed throughout the federal system.

That solution became untenable as the war on drugs intensified in the early 1980s and legislatures toughened sentencing laws. The United States now has the highest proportion of its citizens behind bars in the world.

In 1993, the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, was converted to permanent lockdown and filled with problem cases from around the country. In 1994, the first custom-built supermax opened in Florence, Colorado.

Stuck with their own exploding prison populations, states took notice and began building their own supermaxes.

Other countries have been influenced by the U.S. model.

Since 1997, Canada has an 80-bed "special handling unit" north of Montreal, the only one of its type in the country.

Crime-plagued South Africa studied the U.S. version before deciding to build a super max, while Britain rejected the idea.

While human rights groups and academics worry about the human cost, prison officials insist supermaxes reform problem inmates. Mr. Myers said only 5% of inmates who have been through Northern come back.

Sitting at a table in the wing of Northern reserved for co-operative inmates who are almost ready to be returned to the general prison population, a heavyset black man in a bright green jumpsuit explained what he thought of the four years he had spent there.

"It teaches you patience. It gives you time to think, to deal with problems better," said the man who was not allowed to give his name. "I'm never coming back. Never again!"

COPYRIGHT 2001 Intertribal Christian Communications
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group