Stories of the Broken

revealing that more than half of all inmates possess some type of mental health problem. 64% of jail inmates are mentall ill, 45% of those are inmates of federal prisons, 56% are inmates of state prisons, and a US department of Justice study done in 1999 revealed that 16% of all inmates have a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia. Overall, there are around 283,000 persons with major mental illnesses locked up in the prisons and jails of America. When paired up with a $ 2 billion dollar drop in state budgets for mental health since 2008, things look bleak for individuals suffering with mental illness considering the extremely high cost of treating and caring for their needs (Rembis 139-149).

 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) claims that as a result of the poor treatment mental patients are receiving, afflicted individuals are more commonly “running into” the carceral system. This has become quite the urban tragedy, as the conditions of prison are not adept at helping the mentally ill cope with their varying needs. In fact, most prisoners will only become even more aggressive and socially impaired after their release from the prison system. Many government agencies realize the damaging effects of incarceration on the mentally impaired, but are struggling to come up with effective alternatives. This leaves prisons scrambling to try and fully embrace their role as the new “unofficial” psychiatric facilities (Rembis 148-151).

Unfortunately, prisons are not, and were never meant to be, recovery places for those suffering with mental illnesses. As a result, the practices, conditions, and processes of prison life wreak havoc on the mentally disabled.

 

Supermax solitary confinement is the worst possible way to detain someone with a mental disability. Believe it or not, in spite of the horrible damage it does to the mentally ill, supermax solitary confinement is on the rise for inmates with mental illnesses. The restrictions solitary confinement places on these individuals often times greatly increases their mental health issues and can even cause them in otherwise healthy individuals (Hafemeister 1).

 

Ian Manuel, from the novel Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, exists as the perfect example of the damage solitary confinement has on your mental health state. Ian was only thirteen years old when he shot, but did not kill Debbie Biagre during an attempted robbery. Ian’s lawyer made a major mistake by leading Ian to plead guilty with the assumption that he would get a fifteen-year prison sentence. Instead, Ian’s judge sentenced him to life in prison. Only thirteen at the time of his conviction, Ian could not safely walk the same halls as the other prisoners at the Apalachee Correctional Institution. The prison staff had no other choice but to place Ian in solitary confinement. His entire cell was the size of a walk-in closet. Ian had virtually no human contact. His meals were pushed through a small slot in his door, and he was forced to eat them in complete isolation. Eventually, this horrific lifestyle began to crack Ian. He started cutting himself and even became suicidal. Ian attempted suicide not just once, but numerous times. Since the rules of solitary confinement are configured to extend your time inside as punishment; if inmates yell, complain, or hurt themselves, they can wind up in solitary confinement indefinitely. Ian’s cutting habits continuously increased his time in solitary. Ian spent eighteen straight uninterrupted years in solitary confinement. Way too long for anyone, let alone a young child, that made a mistake at the young age of thirteen (Stevenson 151-153).

 

Ian Manuel turns out to be quite the intelligent individual. While in solitary he read hundreds of books and wrote stories and poems. His deep regret over his crime was conveyed when he used one of his extremely precious phone calls to call Debbie Biagre, the woman he shot, and apologize. They ended up developing an unusual, but powerful relationship and after witnessing what Ian went through on a daily basis in solitary, she quickly begged the courts to readjust his sentence. The courts denied her request (Stevenson 153).

 

The mere fact that, even as the victim of Ian’s crime, Debbie Biagre felt bad for Ian even after what he did to her is a testament of just how brutal solitary confinement can be. Many individuals are fighting this “legal” torture in the courts of law. They are arguing that prolonged supermax solitary confinement constitutes as cruel and unusual punishment and is thus in direct violation of the eighth amendment. In order to effectively argue that keeping individuals with mental disorders in solitary confinement should be unconstitutional. One must show how it deprives of a minimum necessity of human life, the inmates basic mental health, and constitutes indifference to the prisoners’ necessities by putting mentally ill inmates in a position of known risk to their mental conditions. This would effectively give an objective and subjective element to their argument against this practice’s legality and solitary confinement clearly does violate both of those standards. In states like New York, progress has been made ever since the 2007, Disability Advocates Inc. v. New York State Office of Mental Health, trial. The final settlement led to an improvement of mental health programs in the state as well as a mandatory two-hour per day treatment out of the confines of solitary for those with serious mental illnesses (Hafemeister 2-54).

 

This case gives great hope that one day justice can fully be achieved and solitary confinement will come to an end. This legal torture has negatively affected our mentally disabled prisoners for far too long and it’s time that we put this unethical embarrassment behind us and tread towards a future void of such horrid practices.

 

Citation

 

Rembis, Michael. “The New Asylums: Madness and Mass Incarceration in the Neoliberal Era.” Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada. Ed. Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, and Allison Carey. Paperback ed. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 139-151. Print.

 

Stevenson, Bryan. “All God’s Children.” Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Hardback Edition ed. Spiegel & Grau, 2014. 151-153. Print.90 Denv. U. L. Rev. 54 (2012-2013)

 

Ninth Circle of Hell: An Eighth Amendment Analysis of Imposing Prolonged Supermax Solitary Confinement on Inmates with a Mental Illness, The; Hafemeister, Thomas L.; George, Jeff