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Families, formerly incarcerated call for ending the ‘torture’ of solitary confinement

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Families, formerly incarcerated call for ending the ‘torture’ of solitary confinement

Feb 10, 2022 | 9:15 am ET
By Dan Neumann
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Families, formerly incarcerated call for ending the ‘torture’ of solitary confinement

Advocates, families and formerly incarcerated Mainers testified to lawmakers on Wednesday in favor of a bill that would ban solitary confinement in Maine’s prison and jails.  

They said that prolonged isolation deliberately used as punishment can cause permanent damage to anyone who experiences it, and it is especially dangerous for people with serious mental illness.

“Solitary confinement almost killed my son,” Cape Elizabeth resident Lori Swain told members of the Maine Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. 

Swain’s son, Zachary, has high-functioning autism and suffers from various mental health diagnoses, including bipolar disorder and anxiety. He went to Maine State Prison in 2015 at age 19 and spent much of his time confined in isolation. 

Zachary has attempted suicide multiple times; the last attempt last year left him with a colostomy bag after requiring surgery to recover.

“He hasn’t had a single write-up since June. He’s sitting in solitary confinement,” Swain said. “They changed the name to Administrative Control Unit and categorized it as general population, but it’s still the same solitary confinement pod where he served 21 to 24 hours a day with almost no human contact for most of six years.”

Brandon Brown, the first person in the state prison system to enroll into a PhD program, also urged committee members to ban solitary confinement. 

“We isolate people, treat them less than human, offer them little to no therapy, programming or treatment, and cut them off from physical movement that the body needs to function as well as community that the heart needs to flourish,” he said, “and we ask them to behave or be better when we release them from these harsh practices.”

LD 696, a bill by Rep. Grayson Lookner (D-Portland), would completely ban the solitary confinement of inmates in the custody of the Maine Department of Corrections (MDOC) and regulate what the department calls “segregated confinement.”

Lookner’s bill defines solitary confinement as being locked in isolation for 20 hours or more per day and segregated confinement as 17 to 20 hours per day. The bill mandates that no resident should spend more than three consecutive days in segregated confinement and not more than nine days in a 60-day period. 

The legislation would ban segregated confinement for certain populations, such as those under 21, over 65, people with disabilities and those who are pregnant. The bill would also create an ombudsman independent of MDOC to investigate and report on the use of the practice.

“Ultimately, we must find ways to reduce our state’s over-reliance on incarceration to deal with issues of mental health and housing instability,” Lookner said. “In the meantime, nobody, nobody should be subjected to the horror and psychological damage that is created by prolonged isolation.”

MDOC Commissioner Randall Liberty opposed the proposal claiming the Maine prison system does not use solitary confinement. 

“This bill is an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist in the state of Maine,” Liberty told the committee. 

Based on reforms made in the last decade, he explained that other states now look to Maine as an example of how to reduce the use of solitary confinement.

However, advocates and lawmakers said MDOC now uses terms like placing inmates in “segregation” or “Administrative Control Units,” raising questions about the extent to which solitary confinement is used in the prison system.

“One of the things that we do know is that there have been frequent changes of the name,” said Rep. Charlotte Warren (D-Hallowell), House chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “We asked questions about solitary confinement, they change it to ‘restrictive housing.’ We ask questions about ‘restrictive housing,’ then it has a new name. That’s something we’re aware of.”

The Maine ACLU credited MDOC officials for taking it upon themselves to adopt new policies and change its practices over the last decade, but said other states have now surpassed Maine. Last year, the New York state legislature adopted the most sweeping legislative reform of the use of solitary confinement in the country, the HALT Solitary Act. 

“Human beings were not meant to be alone,” said Maine ACLU policy director Meagan Sway in support of LD 696. “Whether you approach this issue from a perspective of the law and the Constitution, international human rights conventions, medicine and psychology, philosophy or religion, the conclusion is clear that solitary confinement is wrong and we all have an obligation to end its use.”

Photo via Maine Department of Corrections.