“Reassessing Solitary Confinement:
The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences”
Senate Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
June 19, 2012
Written Testimony of
Jennifer J. Parish, Director of Criminal Justice Advocacy
Urban Justice Center / Mental Health Project
Dear Chairman Durbin and Members of the Subcommittee:
I commend you for convening this hearing and urge you to take action to end the overuse of
solitary confinement in the United States. For the last decade, the Urban Justice Center’s Mental
Health Project has collaborated with other organizations, family members, and formerly
incarcerated individuals in opposing the placement of people with mental illness in solitary
confinement in the New York State prisons. We recently began organizing a similar effort in
response to the expanded use of solitary confinement in New York City jails.
We submit this testimony to highlight the particularly noxious effects of punishing people with
mental illness by isolating them in a barren cell without social contact and meaningful activity
for 22 to 24 hours a day. While we support restricting the use of solitary confinement generally
because of its damaging psychological effects, we are particularly opposed to the placement of
people with mental illness in such a toxic environment.
I am confident that you will receive persuasive testimony from academics, attorneys, and
physicians documenting the horrendous consequences of placing people in solitary confinement.
But the personal accounts of the effects of solitary confinement from those who have
experienced it and their family members establish beyond question the immediate need for
Congressional action. To relate these experiences, we have enclosed excerpts from “Faces of the
SHU,” a collection of testimonials about the “Special Housing Units” (“SHU”) in New York
State prisons.
The Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project has advocated on behalf of people with mental
illness in the criminal justice system since 1998. Our work includes successful class action
litigation to require New York City to provide discharge planning to individuals receiving mental
health treatment in the city jails, legislative advocacy in support of a law limiting the placement
of people with serious mental illness in solitary confinement (known as the SHU Exclusion
Law), and grassroots organizing in support of alternatives to incarceration for people with mental
illness. Through this work, we are deeply familiar with the difficulties people with mental

illness experience within correctional facilities and in accessing services upon release.
We currently have a public health crisis in the U.S. – jails and prisons have become the insane
asylums of the 21st century. Our jails and prisons treat more people with serious mental illness
than hospitals. Rikers Island in New York City and the Los Angeles County jail are the two
largest psychiatric facilities in the country. According to a 2010 study by the Treatment
Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association, there are more than three times as
many people with serious mental illness in jails and prisons than in hospitals. As many as 40
percent of people with serious mental illnesses have been in jail or prison at some point in their
lives.
Fundamentally jails and prisons are not designed to provide for the needs of people with
psychiatric disabilities. They are strict, militaristic, closed systems which are designed to punish
and control. And people with mental illness face enormous difficulties while incarcerated there.
Many are unable to conform to the rigid requirements of prison life. Untreated mental illness
leads to behavior that violates prison rules and results in disciplinary charges. For instance, a
person with schizophrenia may hear voices demanding that he respond, making it difficult or
impossible for him to remain silent or stand still when ordered to do so by a correction officer.
The punishment for violating prison rules is often placement in solitary confinement, where the
person is locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, deprived of social contact and basic amenities.
This isolation further exacerbates symptoms of mental illness and makes people with mental
illness extremely vulnerable to psychiatric decompensation. In turn their symptomatic behavior
can lead to additional disciplinary charges and greatly prolong their period of solitary
confinement. People with psychiatric disabilities spend disproportionately longer periods in
solitary confinement than the general prison population. According to the Correctional
Association of New York’s 2004 report, the average disciplinary confinement sentence of
individuals with mental illness was 38 months – six-and-a-half times longer than prisoners
generally.
Moreover, in New York there is no limit to the amount of time that a person can spend in solitary
confinement. Before the enactment of the SHU Exclusion Law, people with mental illness could
accumulate years of disciplinary confinement. In fact, some individuals received solitary
confinement sentences that lasted beyond their maximum release date from prison. In these
cases, the person could be released directly from solitary confinement to the community.
Individuals who continue to act out while in solitary confinement are subjected to further
punishments. For example, in New York State prisons, such punishment can include the
imposition of a restricted diet, known as “the loaf,” a dense mixture of flour, potatoes, and
carrots served three times a day along with a portion of raw cabbage. Although the SHU
Exclusion Law limits when a person with mental illness can be placed on a restricted diet, it still
allows the diet to be imposed in exceptional circumstances.
In solitary confinement, people with mental illness are at increased risk of suicide. Between
2007 and 2010, about one-third of the suicides in New York State prisons occurred in solitary
confinement units although only about six percent of the prison population was housed there.

Inadequate mental health treatment in prison is one reason that people with mental illness end up
in solitary confinement. Upon admission to prison, many people do not receive thorough
psychiatric assessments, so their mental illness goes untreated. Other people receive inadequate
mental health treatment – psychiatric medications are changed or discontinued and little to no
therapeutic interventions are provided other than medication.
In addition, the stigma of mental illness leads some incarcerated people to refuse psychiatric
treatment. Being identified as a person with mental illness can make someone a target of abuse
from other prisoners and correction officers. Generally psychiatric medication is distributed in a
public manner, so receiving mental health treatment confidentially is not an option for most
incarcerated people.
The detrimental effects of being in solitary confinement do not end when the person walks out
through the prison gates. Many people report lasting psychological damage as a result of the
time spent in isolation. People with mental illness face enormous obstacles rejoining the
community upon release. For those even further traumatized by periods of solitary confinement,
the possibility of reintegration is slim indeed.
As a society, we should strive to ensure that people with mental illness receive adequate mental
health treatment and supportive services in the community so that they avoid the criminal justice
system all together. But to the extent that people with mental illness are incarcerated in jails and
prisons, they should be categorically excluded from placement in solitary confinement.
The faces on the following pages reveal the humanity of those labeled “prisoner.” I encourage
you to look at them and hear their stories. We must not countenance correctional policies which
we know to inflict emotional distress on people who have mental disabilities.
I urge you to take action to end this practice in the United States.
Sincerely,
Jennifer J. Parish
Director of Criminal Justice Advocacy
Mental Health Project
Enclosure

Robert

My godson Robert was diagnosed with
bipolar disorder at age twenty-one and
hospitalized many times. He had to drop out
of college because his disability made him too
unstable to continue. He fell through the cracks of
the mental health system and ended up in prison
with a very severe sentence for minor acts.

Prison is the last place on this earth that
a person with a psychiatric disability needs
to be. If you want to do the worst possible thing to
a person with a bipolar condition put them in SHU
when they're in a state of mania (which is usually
the case when they go in to SHU) without treatment and without human contact. In SHU

they are cut off in a nine-by-six-foot cell all alone with a racing mind. This is
the ultimate abuse for someone who is suffering.
Robert has been in Central New York Psychiatric Center four times. More than
once, he was sent back to prison, still unwell, and immediately his symptomatic behavior
led to SHU tickets. I was crying on the phone, pleading with them to keep him
in the hospital. They still sent him back to prison. Almost immediately a counselor
noticed that he was "racing" and he was placed in the mental health observation unit for
ten hellish days until he was sent back to the hospital.

Robert's depression was extreme after
his second SHU time. He didn't want to see
anyone any longer and he didn't write me or call and
.~• • • he lost a lot of weight. Robert told me, "When I

went in to SHU I knew it was all over for me.
Don't think about me as the person that you
knew, because I'll never be the same man
again." These words were painful for me to
hear because I knew what a fun-loving free
spirit Robert use to be. He has trophies from
his dirt bike-racing days, he was in Ripley's Believe
It or Not, and he was such a good dancer that as a
teenager he starred in a Burger King ad.
Prison is a nightmare for Robert. He was moved from facility to facility, experiencing
abuse from guards and other inmates and he was given inadequate mental health care. As
often happens, this led to attacks by the guards. Robert has experienced three major
assaults, resulting in severe pain and trauma. I was always calling ,the prison to
tell them how ill Robert was. Nobody understood what I was trying to convey about the
patterns of his illness and the constant changes in his condition and how he was in need of
consistent treatment. As a family member it's so painful to see the suffering that

you're powerless to prevent. You're just watching your loved one deteriorate
and experience violence and brutality that is unimaginable.
-Leah, Robert's godmother

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Alberto

My brother Alberto has been diagnosed with
schizophrenia and an anxiety disorder. I

.-..;J_._...

want to make palpable the grave inhumanity and
suffering inflicted on individuals and families who
have experienced what it means to do time in the
SHU.

Alberto has been a victim of excessive
physical violence used as a safety measure or
protection for the prison officials. He has been
denied phone calls home, monthly care packages,
access to recreational and educational programs,
and a television and radio. He has lost significant
amounts of weight. He has to hold up his pants to prevent them from falling down. He
has been denied a transfer to a facility with a residential treatment center.
My mother, cousins, and I are devastated by the deterioration of my brother's mental
state. His affect is flat. He has a glazed look in his eyes. He has lost touch with
reality. He can no longer engage in a coherent or relevant conversation or even playa
simple game of cards. His letters are incoherent. Every letter is the same, with the same
twenty sentences.
Alberto becomes easily agitated during our visits. He comes in shackled. I can't even
give him a hug. They treat him like he is a caged animal. It's like he is a dog on a leash
being restrained. He's behind bars already, there's
~~~~--~~~--~--~~~
no need to shackle him too. When we were entering
the facility to visit Alberto, an officer asked me who
I was going to visit and when I told him he said,
"Oh, my God, why are you going to visit him?"
He was at Central New York Psychiatric
Center for about six months. Right from CNYPC
he went to keeplock before he was transferred to
Upstate. During our last visit he asked to go to the
bathroom and the officer said no and he had to
wait for the entire visit to use the bathroom. He got
beaten after we left on that visit.
He is no longer making plans for what his
life will be outside of prison. Instead-with only four months left until his releasehe is talking about appealing his case. This wish of his shows his irrational state. The
psychologists have said, "He seems fine, at least when I speak with him."

Of the nine years that he's been in prison, he has spent seven years in the
SHU.
I am very fearful for what life outside of prison will be like for Alberto. He has not
been rehabilitated to function in society. He's been set up to fail. He's coming
back needing to be resocialized.
-Lissette, Alberto's sister

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Mark

My brother Mark was officially diagnosed
with depression when he was a teenager.
He hears voices, is paranoid, and shakes a
lot. He wasn't getting adequate treatment in the
community prior to his incarcerations. He's been
in and out of jails and prisons since he was twelve
years old. He's been incarcerated for the past eight
years.
His demeanor is very quiet and isolated. On the
street people tested him because he is withdrawn.
The same thing has happened to him in prison.
He told me he couldn't be in general population
because people continuously bother him. In prison, if you seem like a person who

can be beaten up or bothered, then the guards and inmates target you.
For the first years of this incarceration he wasn't connected to any mental health
treatment. That's when he would run in to problems. On this bid he has been hospitalized
five to ten times.
He'll either respond to threats or try to hurt himself. He has recently tried to put a
sheet around his neck to choke himself He has tried to starve himself to death on other
occasions. He's lost a lot of weight because of this and also because he thinks that the
COs are poisoning his food. He has told me that he didn't want to live anymore.
The COs have been taunting him, trying to
get him riled up to do something. They continually
frisk him and touch him inappropriately. They do
this in an attempt to demean him and break him.
They hit him with sticks when he went out
, for rec, but he is too afraid to file a grievance. He's

too afraid to take his one hour of out of the
box per day because he's afraid that the
guards would hurt him, so he stays in his cell
for twenty-four hours a day. The only time he
comes out of his cell is to see mental health staff
once every two weeks.
He's been in SHU for two years. He's going to
be there for almost another year still to come. Since he's been transferred to a new

facility he's already tried to kill himself, and it's been less than a month. The
prison staff won't tell me anything. This is inhumane.
-Karen, Mark's sister

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Dennis
My son Dennis was diagnosed with attention deficit
and hyperactivity disorder at seventeen years old.
His doctors have said that he may also have a
mood disorder. His symptoms have definitely

gotten worse since he was locked up-he's

incredibly hyperactive.

He was first locked up
at fifteen years old, and since them he has been in
and out of jails and prisons. He is now thirty years
old, and he has at least another two years on this
bid. He feels trapped, and is only getting more and
more agitated.
I know him as a caring and sweet person. He
always use to be very generous. He used to buy me
flowers and mail me cards, but now he holds on to things as if they could be taken away
from him. When he last came out of prison, he was very angry and frustrated.

He told me the other day, "They're going to keep locking me up, Mom." He

is getting more and more agitated, and Iam afraid for him. He yells and screams
and punches the bars even though it hurts his hands, to dispel some of his agitation.

This is not the place for him to be rehabilitated. He is not given adequate
treatment for his disability. I just feel like they're going to make an animal out of a
person that they treat like an animal. He's never going to be normal again.

He has been in and out of SHU and
keeplock for many insignificant, nonviolent
reasons. He is frequently tormented by guards,
who threaten to plant weapons on him. He was
given three months in keeplock for not having his
sweater tucked in enough.
Dennis has suffered from sexual abuse, and
from being tormented by guards.
On his last bid they would humiliate him when
they would take him to shower. He was forced to
walk in compromising positions. The guards went
out of their way to humiliate him.

Iwas just cleaning the house today and I .............,;;:looked up and there was his picture, and it breaks my heart-I just don't know
what to do, Ijust worry so much, and know that he is only getting worse in
there.
-Sue, Dennis's mother

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Seth
My son Seth was fifteen when he was diagnosed
with depression. He was put on medication and
hospitalized four times in three years. Just after his

nineteenth birthday he became very, very sick.
He was diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder with
"psychotic and paranoid features." Instead of being
hospitalized, he was incarcerated. At first he was taken
to Central New York Psychiatric Hospital, very manic.
All I wanted to do was to just hold him. They allowed a
hug at the beginning, but it was timed and they pulled
us apart after a few seconds. After a few weeks, Seth
was moved to another facility.

Seth spent the first eight months of his
incarceration in solitary confinement. He was placed in SHU because he asked
a guard, "Why are you being so mean?" At another time, he was given SHU time for
defending himself against a rapist in the shower. I visited him every week. He was suicidal,
talking about killing himself, saying that he couldn't stand it. All this time the staff
refused to give him his medication. Seth wanted to see a psychiatrist. He asked, but they refused.
He was still in SHU. He was only nineteen years old.
Seth was classified as Mental Health Level II and given only a low dose of antidepressant.

The guards who escorted him to where he was given his medication made fun
of the mentally ill inmates. They would say,
"You buggy people, you're all insane." Seth
seemed agitated when I would visit. He was in solitary
confinement.
Then he was in a mental health observation
room, and no one would tell me why. He was in
~~m solitary confinement for twenty-four hours a day, no

recreation time, no letters, and no phone calls for two
weeks. DUling this time he had no water for fifty-two
hours. He had to pound on the glass to get someone's
attention because he needed water. Finally someone
threw in a bag of ice. The toilet didn't flush. He found
a plastic bag in his cell to cover up the stench. He had
nothing to do, nothing to read.
He said, "I am one thread away from being insane, Mom, I can't hold on much longer."

After I inquired about his placement in SHU, the superintendent told me, "I don't
know what to do with your son-he slipped through the cracks." He also told
me, "Your son's going to be disciplined, because he has a Mental Health Level II
classification."
Seth is a good musician and loves to play the guitar. But he refuses to be given a guitar
because he says the guards will simply break it, especially when they put him in the SHU. He
says he is practicing for SHU life by just sitting and doing nothing.
-Jennifer, Seth's mother

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Carlos

I've suffered from mental illness all my life.
Not understanding my condition led me to prison
on several occasions and while in prison, due to
my condition not being understood, I always was
subjected to being placed in solitary confinement.

Being in SHU always caused my condition
to get worse, with hatred and frustration ...t-t.....'
for not being understood and not being
assisted with the services that could've been
.A~il'
provided.
While in SHU, treatment is rarely administered.
The environment itself is not structured to assist

L&..&..Ia..&._1:U.-

people like me, being overwhelmed with mental illness. Oftentimes, I sought to escape the
tormenting thoughts that ran through my mind, but couldn't. At times visions came to me
so real that I thought there was no gaining any vestige of sanity back.

I felt hopeless, I was made to believe I had nothing to lose, no one is
helping me, no one understands what I'm going through, and no one wants
to stop the punishment I was receiving due to being mentally ill and leading
to my placement in solitary confinement. I was so tired of going through the same
routine over and over again, not being heard, understood, assisted in getting well. I was
just getting worse, every time I was placed in solitary confinement. Being in solitary
confinement with a mental illness, with nothing to do, receiving inadequate treatment,
wanting to get better, not being allowed, being subjected to that punishment, that hostile
environment, that disregard.
My hopes were diminished and I wanted to end it all. Suicide was my only
option and I failed at that due to officers not letting the last breath escape from out of
my lungs. Forced to continue life in torture, carrying that anger and frustration from not
being understood and helped, foreseeing the cycle of my life, I always thought, "What do
I have to live for?"

I've been made worse than I ever was before I entered prison, through being
subjected to continuous placement in special housing unit as punishment. I
am always searching and carrying the burden of what I've been made to become.
No one should be subjected to such a tormenting situation.lfonlythe opportunity

was afforded to others while in prison, the opportunity to actually receive the
help they need in understanding their mental illness. If only an environment
other than "special housing unit" was available.
-Carlos

.

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Ron
My son Ron suffered from a traumatic brain
injury. He has alotof difficultyfollowingcommands.
It takes him time to process information. He can be
extremely paranoid. His affect is mostly withdrawn.
Much of his mood swings have to do with his being
in SHU for years and years. Prison isn't a suitable
place for him. He isn't getting any therapy or
cognitive stimulation. He just gets tickets and SHU
time. The Department of Correctional Services
isn't prepared to take care of his condition.
Ron wasn't capable of testifying at his trial.
When I first started to visit him I would have to
repeat my questions to him. He would ask me the same questions over and over. He has
trouble concentrating. I can tell that he is overwhelmed just by talking to him. He looks
frightened after all this time in prison. Ron has been incarcerated for twelve years.

Because of Ron's psychiatric disability he is frequently abused by the
correction officers. They pick on him and give him SHU tickets. They give him tickets
for walking slowly-he is partly paralyzed and has a metal plate in his leg. The COs call
him "stupid," "dumb," or "slow." This hurts him deeply. He's not dumb, he has a brain
injury. Ron would have gotten better treatment if he hadn't been sent to prison.

Ron has been in SHU for almost his entire incarceration. He has been sent
there for fictitious charges. He is targeted for his
disability. While he's been in SHU he's experienced
beatings, starvation, being called mentally "sick,"
and being ignored. He tells me he's very sad, very
cold, and is not given changes of clothing. The COs
steal his blankets. The staff says he is "bad."
Ron was transferred to a facility where he
went straight to SHU. I wasn't getting any letters
from him. I would call and they were telling me he
was OK and meanwhile they were starving him to
death. They were threatening to kill him. He said,

"Mom, they're starving me. I'm not eating."
He was so hungry he ate paint chips off the
wall. He looked like he was dying.
I kept begging them to send him to Central New York Psychiatric Center. He was
decompensating more and more.
I can't begin to count the number of times that Ron has been sent to CNYPC. If I
was to make an estimate I would say 30 to 40 times.
-Kathy, Ron's mother

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