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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:39 am
Time: 11:39 am
Results for solitary confinement (arizona)
2 results foundAuthor: Lowen, Matthew Title: Lifetime Lockdown: How Isolation Conditions Impact Prisoner Reentry Summary: Imagine living completely alone 23 hours a day for several months or years, then being placed in a three-person cell in an overcrowded, noisy dormitory, or worse, released directly into society with no chance to adjust. This is the reality faced by many people in Arizona state prisons. In recent years, prisoner reentry has emerged as an area of concern for social service agencies, prisoner advocates, religious congregations, neighborhoods, and advocacy organizations across the country. Much of the discourse about prisoner reentry and recidivism has focused on what are referred to as “collateral consequences”: the structural barriers erected by institutions that bar people with criminal convictions from voting, housing, employment, welfare assistance, and other factors critical to ensuring success upon release. Rarely is there discussion of the direct impact that prison conditions have on a person’s cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral functioning and therefore, on that person’s ability to function as a member of society post-incarceration. Yet, a growing body of research clearly demonstrates the deleterious mental health impacts of incarceration in super maximum-security—or “supermax”—environments, commonly referred to as “lockdown,” the “SHU,” or “Ad-Seg.” While there is some variation, these units generally employ long-term solitary confinement—prisoners are housed alone in small cells for 23-24 hours per day with no activities with other inmates (meals, recreation, etc.), for years at a time. These conditions amount to sensory deprivation and have been widely documented to produce a set of mental health symptoms that can be extremely debilitating to prisoners, including visual and auditory hallucinations, hypersensitivity to noise and touch, paranoia, uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear, and massive distortions of time and perception. Studies have found that supermax confinement increases the risk of prisoner suicides, and this research is borne out here in Arizona. A recent investigation found that Arizona's official prison-suicide rate is 60 percent higher than the national average, and that the majority of suicides took place in supermax units.1 Combining these crippling symptoms with the extensive legal and structural barriers to successful reentry is a recipe for failure. Prisoners in supermax are deeply traumatized and essentially socially disabled. When their sentence ends, they are given little or no preparation for release, and then return to their communities where they are expected to obtain housing and employment. This report represents the first effort to directly link conditions in Arizona’s supermax prisons with the state’s high recidivism rate. Because the statistical evidence of this link is already available, the basis of this report is qualitative research conducted by an anthropologist, Dr. Brackette F. Williams. Dr. Williams interviewed newly released individuals who had spent a significant portion of their time in prison in supermax facilities. This research demonstrates the “why” and “how” of this causal relationship, illustrating the impacts of long-term solitary confinement on actual re-entry experiences. The findings are a wake-up call to corrections officials, state leaders, and social service agencies, who are often completely unaware of the prison experiences of their clients or how to assist them in this transition. The American Friends Service Committee hopes that this research will add to the growing body of evidence that the practice of long-term solitary confinement in supermax units creates more problems than it is purported to solve and should be abolished. Details: Tucson, AZ: American Friends Service Committee, Arizona Office, 2012. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 11, 2012 at: http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/AFSC-Lifetime-Lockdown-Report_0.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/AFSC-Lifetime-Lockdown-Report_0.pdf Shelf Number: 125981 Keywords: Maximum Security PrisonsPrisoner ReentryPrisonersSolitary Confinement (Arizona)Supermax Prisons |
Author: Lowen, Matthew Title: Still Buried Alive: Arizona Prisoner Testimonies on Isolation in Maximum-Security Summary: Still Buried Alive: Arizona Prisoner Testimonies on Isolation in Maximum Security (2014) highlights the voices of maximum-security prisoners and catalogues their testimonies describing those experiences. The report, a critical follow-up to Buried Alive (2007) and Lifetime Lockdown (2012), was released on the same day that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) opened 500 newly constructed maximum-security prison beds in ASPC Lewis in Buckeye, Arizona. Details: Tucson, AZ: American Friends Service Committee, Arizona, 2014. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 15, 2015 at: http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/Still%20Buried%20Alive%20FINAL%2011.30.14.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/Still%20Buried%20Alive%20FINAL%2011.30.14.pdf Shelf Number: 134314 Keywords: Maximum Security PrisonsPrisoner ReentryPrisonersSolitary Confinement (Arizona)Supermax Prisons |