There's no way you can know what it's like for us in here.

Prisoner, the Maximum Control Facility

If you have an animal in a cage, and you're constantly provoking him and hurting him and one day you let him out, you'll have a dangerous animal.

Prisoner, the Secured Housing Unit, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings.

Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners

In Indiana, as in many states, single cell confinement in harsh conditions in super-maximum security facilities is justified as necessary for certain inmates for reasons of "security." Security, however, cannot excuse conditions that are so harmful or repugnant as to constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. As federal district Judge Thelton Henderson trenchantly observed, "Sedating all inmates with a powerful medication that leaves them in a continual stupor would arguably reduce security risks; however, such a condition of confinement would clearly fail constitutional muster."⁽¹⁾

Prisoners in the MCF and SHU, many of whom are severely mentally ill, are confined twenty-two or more hours a day in solitary isolation in small cells, spend each day utterly idle, are placed in restraints whenever they are escorted from their cells, exercise alone, and remain shackled in front of their families during non-contact visits conducted behind clear partitions. At both facilities--but particularly at the MCF during its early years of operation--prisoners have faced physical abuse, including beatings and unnecessary and excessive use of cell extractions carried out by five-member teams of guards, macings and placement in four-point restraints as punishment.

While cognizant of the Indiana DOC's legitimate security concerns, we conclude that subjecting prisoners to long periods of confinement in the MCF and the SHU is inconsistent with respect for the inherent dignity of each person. The conditions at these facilities are so extraordinarily harsh and potentially harmful that no person should be subjected to them for unduly lengthy periods of time. Many aspects of the conditions exceed what is required to meet reasonable security goals and are simply punitive. No prisoner, of course, should ever be subjected to physical abuse.

The Indiana DOC is responsible for securely and humanely housing even its most disruptive and dangerous prisoners. It may be that some prisoners are so extraordinarily dangerous that they can only be safely confined in extremely restrictive conditions. The DOC, however, uses procedures and criteria for assigning prisoners to these facilities that do not necessarily identify the extraordinarily dangerous. There is a natural tendency, once super-maximum security facilities are built, to fill them; standards for selecting prisoners for whom harsh conditions are warranted get diluted in practice. There is also a tendency to keep difficult prisoners in super-maximum security facilities longer than is required in the interests of security and longer than is wise for the prisoners' well-being. In our judgment, conditions at the MCF and the SHU do nothing to encourage the prisoners' ability to reintegrate successfully into the general prison population or society. To the contrary, lengthy confinement at these facilities threatens prisoners' physical and mental health and may well enhance the likelihood of repeated criminal or disruptive behavior.

By choosing to subject hundreds of prisoners to prolonged periods in extremely harsh and potentially harmful conditions that cannot be justified as reasonably necessary to ensure security or to serve the legitimate goals of punishment, the Indiana DOC has violated the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment contained in the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

The confinement of persons who are mentally ill in these facilities is particularly reprehensible. In Indiana, as throughout the United States, increasing numbers of mentally ill people are ending up in prisons that are not equipped to meet their mental health needs. Mentally ill people often have difficulty complying with rules, especially in prison settings where the rules are very restrictive and the stresses are intense. Many are aggressive or disruptive and, as a result, accumulate disciplinary records that land them in segregated confinement in super-maximum security facilities. While 5 percent of the general prison population have a serious mental illness, over half of the inmates at the SHU are mentally ill. For some mentally ill inmates, placement in super-maximum security conditions is a horror: the social isolation and restricted activities aggravate their illness and immeasurably increase their pain and suffering. In a tragic vicious cycle, their worsened mental condition leads to more rule infractions, such as self-mutilation, for which they receive the additional punishment of even more time in segregation. Compounding the tragedy of confinement in these conditions, Indiana's super-maximum security facilities are not equipped to provide appropriate mental health treatment for the mentally ill confined within them.

Warehousing severely ill and psychotic individuals under conditions that increase their suffering by exacerbating their symptoms, and in facilities that lack adequate mental health services, can only be characterized as cruel. In some cases the suffering that results is so great that the treatment must be condemned as torture under international human rights law. We do not believe the Indiana DOC has the specific intent of tormenting mentally ill prisoners. But it places them in the MCF and the SHU because it has failed to create secure psychiatric facilities in which they can be safely confined and treated. That failure must be remedied.

As this report was being prepared for publication, we received word of a particularly egregious situation at the SHU that exemplifies the dangers of placing mentally ill prisoners in such facilities. Edgar Hughes is a thirty-five-year-old confined at the SHU who had been repeatedly hospitalized for psychiatric problems since his youth. When we interviewed Hughes in July 1997, the psychiatrists on our team concluded that he was actively psychotic, very depressed, and extremely paranoid. He felt persecuted by the guards and apparently had a history of "bombing" them with excrement. He reported to his family that he had had physical altercations with guards. In the early morning of September 11, 1997, he suffered a mysterious head trauma that caused severe brain damage. The current prognosis is that he will remain in a vegetative state. An official inquiry into the tragedy has been launched.⁽²⁾ Based on the currently available facts, it appears Hughes was the victim of one of two situations: either he suffered severe physical abuse at the hands of correctional officers, or he underwent a severe psychiatric breakdown in which he injured himself. Either way, his confinement at the SHU caused a terrible and seemingly irreversible tragedy. We call on the State of Indiana to ensure that the inquiry into this incident is thorough and that anyone responsible is held accountable.

Pressed by inmate litigation and persistent scrutiny from local, national, and international groups concerned about the treatment of prisoners at the MCF and the SHU, the Indiana DOC has acknowledged that the egregiously harsh conditions at the MCF and the SHU are not necessary for all inmates there and that conditions can be ameliorated without jeopardizing the goals of security and discipline. By changing the facility's management, the Indiana DOC secured a dramatic reduction in the use of excessive force at the MCF. It has initiated group recreation at the MCF and at the end of September, 1997 stated its intention to permit prisoners at the SHU with good behavior records to share out-of-cell recreation time in groups of two or three. It has committed to reviewing the length of confinement in supermax conditions and the proportionality of punishment for disciplinary infractions, and has agreed that many mentally ill prisoners do not belong in supermax units and that it needs to develop facilities geared to their psychiatric needs.

Human Rights Watch welcomes these limited steps and announced intentions. We hope that the Indiana legislature, the executive branch, and the public will support efforts by the Indiana DOC to improve conditions in the MCF and SHU. Some of the needed changes will not entail additional expenditures of any significance; others will be costly. We urge the State of Indiana to provide the financial resources necessary to bring its super-maximum security facilities into line with international human rights standards. Based on three years of observing conditions at these facilities, we offer the following recommendations:

1. Offer Treatment and Conditions of Confinement Appropriate for Mentally Ill Prisoners

The Indiana legislature should:

• Enact legislation that bars the administrative or disciplinary segregation in conditions of extreme social isolation and reduced environmental stimulus of seriously mentally ill inmates or of inmates who are at significant risk of suffering a serious injury to their mental health if confined in such conditions.



• Provide the Indiana DOC and/or the Department of Mental Health with the necessary financial resources to properly house and treat inmates who should not be confined at the MCF or SHU because of their mental health condition or histories.

The Indiana Department of Correction should:

• Develop, or collaborate with the Department of Mental Health to develop, secure facilities to house and treat mentally ill inmates who cannot be confined in the general prison population because of the safety and security risks they pose, but who do not meet the existing criteria for in-patient hospitalization. These facilities should provide physical conditions and social interaction conducive to mental health and rehabilitation, and should be staffed by qualified mental health professionals.



• Undertake a comprehensive mental health evaluation of all inmates currently confined at the MCF and the SHU to identify those who should be excluded from segregated confinement because they are currently suffering from a serious mental disorder, have a history of severe mental illness or whose mental condition (e.g., brain damage, mental retardation, chronic depression) makes them vulnerable to deterioration if they remain in those facilities.



• Develop procedures to ensure that no prisoner sent to the MCF or to the SHU remains there for more than a brief period if they are persons for whom the risk is high that confinement in such facilities will cause serious mental health injury.



• Provide frequent monitoring by qualified health professionals of inmates at the SHU and MCF to identify those who need mental health services.



• Expand the range of mental health services available to inmates at the SHU and MCF, and grant inmates prompt access to such services.



• Provide sufficient staff to meet prisoners' mental health needs. It should also provide adequate custodial staff to enable prisoners to be escorted as needed to meetings in private with mental health staff, medical visits, meetings with visitors, and other activities conducive to their mental well-being and rehabilitation.

2. Reduce Periods of Solitary Confinement

The Indiana Department of Correction should:

• Discontinue the policy of indefinite administrative segregation. Inmates should be assigned to administrative segregation for a fixed term that is not excessively long. Inmates should be able to reduce their time in administrative segregation through good behavior. No inmate should be assigned to an additional period of administrative segregation within three months of a prior period of segregation. Exceptions to this rule should only be permitted upon a finding, following a hearing, that the inmate constitutes a serious danger to prison safety and security and cannot be safely confined in a less restrictive setting. Such an inmate should also receive a mental health evaluation by an independent psychiatrist who must certify that the inmate is not suffering from severe mental disorders that would be exacerbated by continued segregation.



• Refrain from sentencing prisoners to disciplinary segregation at the MCF or the SHU for more than short periods of time unless they are guilty of extremely dangerous or violent actions, such as assaults against staff or prisoners causing bodily injury. Inmates should be able to reduce the period of disciplinary segregation through good behavior.



• Review disciplinary policies with the goal of instituting greater proportionality between sanctions for rules infractions and the type of infraction and, in particular, to reduce the amount of disciplinary time awarded for nonviolent infractions.



• Reduce the use of additional time in segregation as a punishment for violation of rules by segregated inmates. Explore alternatives that would serve the goal of promoting rule-abiding behavior by inmates without prolonging their time in segregation (e.g., use of increased privileges contingent on good behavior, training in anger and impulse control, and increased mental health services).



• Establish equivalent policies governing transfer to, release from, and privileges for disciplinary segregation inmates at the MCF and at the SHU.

3. Improve Physical Conditions

The Indiana legislature should:

• Provide sufficient resources to the Indiana DOC to finance the modification of the physical plant at MCF and the SHU to eliminate egregiously harsh and harmful conditions.

The Indiana Department of Correction should:

• Renovate the MCF and the SHU to create genuine outdoor recreation areas in which inmates are exposed to sunlight and can see outside of the facility, and indoor or outdoor recreation areas large enough to allow inmates to run at a reasonably high speed and to exercise with another person comfortably.



• Construct sufficient windows in cells at the SHU so that no prisoner is confined in a windowless cell for more than a very brief period.



• Replace the solid steel cell doors in use at the MCF with doors, such as those in use at the SHU, that allow prisoners greater opportunities for social interaction.

4. Eliminate Unnecessarily Harsh and Counterproductive Practices

The Indiana Department of Correction should:

• Establish a program of increased privileges, including enhanced access to congregate activities and educational and vocational activities, to reward and encourage infraction-free and responsible behavior by inmates confined in administrative and disciplinary segregation.



• Encourage increased contact between inmates and their families and communities. The department should end the routine shackling of all inmates during visits and permit selected inmates to have contact visits with their families. It should also increase access of inmates at the SHU to telephones.



• Discontinue its practice of releasing inmates into society directly from segregated confinement. Prior to release from the MCF or SHU, all inmates should be provided effective transition programming to facilitate social readjustment.



• Reduce racial tensions in the MCF and the SHU by, among other things, undertaking aggressive efforts to recruit and train African-Americans as correctional staff, providing increased racial sensitivity training to staff, and emphasizing to staff through the use of internal disciplinary mechanisms that racial harassment and discrimination will not be tolerated.



• Enhance monitoring and supervision of correctional staff and utilize disciplinary mechanisms to prevent and punish the inappropriate, unnecessary, or excessive use of physical force.

The Indiana legislature should:

• Instruct the Indiana DOC to review conditions and practices at the MCF and the SHU to identify measures needed to better promote the rehabilitation of inmates and their ability to lead law-abiding lives upon release. The review should be undertaken with the participation of outside professionals with correctional, mental health and other relevant experience and with input from inmates and should result in a public report that includes findings and suggested reforms.

5. Monitor Conditions at the MCF and the SHU

The Indiana legislature should:

• Create a permanent independent ombudsman with the authority and adequate staff to monitor conditions in the MCF and the SHU; report its findings to the Indiana DOC, the legislature, and the public; and make recommendations for reform.



• Create a permanent independent review committee composed of qualified mental health professionals who are not employed by the Indiana DOC to monitor mental health care in the Indiana prison system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

Access and Methodology

International Human Rights Standards Governing the Treatment of Prisoners

II. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations

III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUPER-MAXIMUM SECURITY CONFINEMENT IN INDIANA

The National Trend Toward Super-Maximum Security Prisons

Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Indiana

IV. THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Layout

Cells

Recreation Areas

Air, Light, and Climate

V. THE INMATE POPULATION

Criteria and Procedures for Assignment

Administrative Segregation at the MCF

Disciplinary Segregation at the MCF

Disciplinary Segregation at the SHU

Confinement of Mentally Ill Prisoners

VI. A DAY IN THE LIFE

Social Isolation

Contacts with the Outside

Other Sources of Stimulation

VII. SECURITY, FORCE, HARASSMENT, AND ABUSE

Staff-Prisoner Relations

Security and Control of Prisoners

Use of Force

Cell Extractions

Four-Point Restraints

Racial Harassment

Preventing Abuse

VIII. PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF CONDITIONS

Disciplinary Infractions by the Mentally Ill

IX. MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

Staffing

Screening and Monitoring

Treatment and Care

X. RELEASE FROM THE MCF AND THE SHU

1. Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146, 1263 (N.D. Cal. 1995).

2. James Patterson, "Mentally Ill Prisoner Near Death," Indianapolis Star, October 4, 1997; Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Veronica Hughes, October 14, 1997.