The easiest and most comfortable way to deal with a problem is to put it in a cubby hole where it will keep without attention or the expending of energy to deal with it.
My local county sheriff uses solitary confinement to remove troublesome inmates from the general population, not necessarily because they have done anything major to deserve it, but because it is a convenience. Problem is, there have been times where out of sight out of mind gas resulted in suicides.
Solitary often means locked alone in a cell with no one to talk to, and nothing to distract a person from increasingly dark thoughts 23 hours a day. People with mental illness or who have shown a predisposition to suicide should never be placed in solitary for the sake of the jailers’ convenience.
The United Nations assessment on torture has said that solitary confinement should be banned except in “very exceptional circumstances” and isolation for more than 15 days constitutes “inhuman and degrading treatment.”
When it comes to my local sheriff and the ICE program he loves, isolation is used, not as a last resort, but as a preferred tool to manage and punish even vulnerable detainees for weeks at a time.
On investigating more than 8,400 reports on ICE detainees in solitary, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists over a five month period found that the ICE has used isolation cells to punish immigrants for offenses as minor as consensual kissing, and for segregating hunger strikers, GLBT detainees, and people with disabilities.
Nearly a third of the isolation cases were described as having a mental illness, a population especially vulnerable to breakdown if locked up alone in a small cell. And, they have found that actions of self destruction from mutilation to suicide attempted are common. The crime for which isolation is used and does not meet the reasons to employ it is coming to this country to seek asylum.
The review found that while held in isolation cells, immigrants had suffered hallucinations, fits of anger, and suicidal impulses. Former detainees told ICIJ they experienced sleeplessness, flashbacks, depression, and memory loss long after release.
A supervisor within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ellen Gallagher, has tried for years to sound the alarm within the federal government about abusive use of solitary confinement by ICE, a DHS agency, which she describes as,
“People were being brutalized.”
Trump’s tough talk and image enhancing stance has resulted in more immigrants waiting behind bars as their cases languish in heavily backlogged immigration courts.
ICIJ found that ICE does not keep records of every solitary confinement placement, just those cases where detainees were held in isolation for more than 14 days, and where immigrants with a “special vulnerability” such as mental illness, victims of abuse, and those who might be at risk in a facility’s general population due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Protection in the latter cases becomes punishment.
More than half of the detainees are from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
Some detainees spend weeks or months in isolation.
More than half of the 8,488 incident reports ICIJ reviewed described stays in solitary confinement that lasted longer than 15 days. ICIJ identified 187 cases in which a detainee was held for more than six months. In 32 of those cases, the detainee was confined in solitary for a year or more.
A review of ICE detainee death reports found that at least 13 detainees who died in ICE custody had spent time in solitary, and of those deaths it was determined in the majority of cases both the rules for putting detainees in isolation and the procedures for caring for them were not followed.
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The investigation found dozens of cases of detainees placed in solitary confinement due to a disability like needing a wheelchair, cane, crutches, or some other aid. Many years ago, Fox news reporter Geraldo Rivera made a name for himself as a good reporter on a local New York City station and got away from covering the good feeling stories like children’s birthday parties when he exposed Bellevue Hospital’s practice of putting patients with disabilities in canvas laundry bags so while they we squirming to get out, they did not need supervision.
Isolation in solitary confinement is ICE’s laundry bags.
By the time President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009 there were large private-sector prison companies competing for multimillion-dollar federal contracts to help detain tens of thousands of immigrants. Over the previous 20 years it was found there was money to be made from incarcerating people, and beyond low level drug offenders, immigrants were a good source of supply. It was so lucrative that along with for profit prisons, county sheriffs saw a source of revenue in agreeing to detain immigrant’s for ICE.
ICE’s internal guidelines explicitly require detention officials to document what alternatives to isolation were considered in certain cases, but it has been found that ICE has actually not done this.
The agency ignores its own policies and procedures, and being self-regulating, they let themselves get away with this
During Obama’s presidency the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties examined ICE’s use of isolation through complaint investigations, working groups, and other advice and feedback in an attempt to “improve policy and reduce unnecessary use of segregated housing for ICE detainees,” and in 2016, it worked with ICE to implement Obama-era recommendations issued by the Justice Department on improving solitary confinement.
In June 2015 the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman, Senator Grassley, and Senator Franken sent a letter to homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson saying,
“Recent information obtained by the Committee suggests that ICE continues to place many detainees with mental health concerns in administrative or disciplinary segregation — also known as solitary confinement — contrary to agency directives that limit the use of segregation for the mentally ill.”
ICIJ has also found that there is a revolving door between solitary confinement and medical isolation cells for people deemed at high risk of self-harm.
They are sent to their room to think about what they did.
When it comes to the treatment of Transgender detainees, ICE said it weighs housing options for such individuals with a multidisciplinary approach that can include mental health staff with placement in isolation only as a last resort and when no other housing options are available. I leaned years ago in California that when Drag Queens were scooped up in bar raids, they were put in a special group cell or “tank” away from the general jail population for their safety as they could be vulnerable to assault, but not in isolation. They might not have been in the general population, but they were in a populated cell. They were able to socialize. Placing Transgender people in isolation and not in a group tank for safety is cruelty in the name of protection.
But, ICE favors solitary confinement,
ICIJ fond that “disciplinary segregation” for breaking the rules, like fighting, was often the reason given for putting a detainee in solitary confinement.
However, they found solitary being used often for other reasons, such as the case of one detainee giving haircuts, another consensually kissing another detainee, and, despite having a mental illness, another remaining in solitary for 41 days for encouraging other detainees to go on a hunger strike, passed off as fighting.
A 2017 audit by the inspector general’s office for the Homeland Security Department found detainees were punished with solitary because they were only suspected of having committed an infraction that officials needed time to investigate.
In recent years, some state prison systems in the U.S. have taken steps to limit the use of solitary confinement to discipline inmates for violating facility rules because isolation causes long term trauma like insomnia, vivid flashbacks of isolation, and dealing with depression and memory loss.
Perhaps ICE should follow its own policies and procedures as well, as should those sheriffs who want to play tough and play along with ICE.