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New York Advocates Urge Governor to Support SHU Legislation
Read the article
Fallen Judge Copes With Mental Illness
Read the article
After The Fall, A Lesson Imparted
Former Chief Judge Who Lost All In Scandal Now Working To Help Others
Read the article
Mentally Ill Inmates Face A Cruel System
Will The State End Long Solitary Confinement And Other Prison Abuses,
Or Go On As Usual?
Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Read the editorial
Prison Horrors for the Mentally Ill
Read the editorial
Close The Box
Mentally Ill Inmates Should Not Be Placed In Solitary Confinement
Read the editorial
MHASC April 17 lobby day a success
Read the press release
Number of Mentally Ill Inmates Rises in the New York City Prison System
ABC News investigative report, Part 1
View the video
Read the transcript (Treatment for Prisoners with Mental Illness)
One Man's Time Inside the SHU
ABC News investigative report, Part 2
View the video
Florida Adopts Plan for Mentally Ill Inmates
Read the article
Aid For Mentally Ill Inmates: Service Planning Program
Aims to Keep Them From Returning To Prison
Read the article
The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars
Read the article
Solitary Confinement Called "Inappropriate"
for Mentally Ill Prisoners in Indiana
Read the article
Manhattan: Ruling for Aid to Mentally Ill Inmates
Read the article
Spitzer Plan Aids Mentally Ill Inmates
Read the article
The Death Of Timothy Souders
60 Minutes Investigates Restraint Death of Prisoner
with Psychiatric Disability
Scott Pelley on the Plight of the Mentally Ill Behind Bars
Read the transcript
View the video
Human Rights Watch
Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates
Amnesty International
United States of America: Execution of Mentally Ill Prisoners
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Developing a Stigma Reduction Initiative
Text of SHU Bill (S.333/A4870) (2007)
Disability Advocates vs. Office of Mental Health et al.
Text of lawsuit
Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004
In the News
New York Times
Florida Adopts Plan for Mentally Ill Inmate
By CHRISTINE JORDAN SEXTON
Published: January 11, 2007
TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Jan. 10 — About 300 mentally ill inmates in county jails throughout Florida will eventually be moved to psychiatric hospitals and residential centers for treatment after state lawmakers agreed on Wednesday to an emergency spending measure.
The Legislative Budget Commission, a panel of the Florida Legislature meeting in an emergency session, voted unanimously to spend nearly $19 million before July 1 to provide 373 more psychiatric beds for mentally ill inmates and more community services for mentally ill people at risk of being jailed.
The decision comes after a state circuit judge charged Lucy Hadi, the former secretary of the Department of Children and Families, with indirect criminal contempt for keeping mentally ill inmates in jail longer than state law allows. Ms. Hadi, who resigned last month, was fined $80,000.
State law requires the department to move inmates found incompetent to stand trial from county jails to psychiatric hospitals within 15 days of receiving a commitment order. The number of inmates found incompetent has increased by 16 percent over the last two fiscal years. As of Tuesday, nearly 250 mentally ill inmates had waited more than 15 days for treatment. In all, nearly 300 inmates are waiting for treatment.
“The state has not sat idly by,” said Bob Butterworth, the new secretary of the Department of Children and Families, a Democrat chosen by Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, to head the beleaguered agency. “We’ve taken action. That’s all we can do.”
The extra beds will cost $16.6 million and be scattered across the state at private centers and state-run hospitals. One hundred secure beds, where patients are constantly supervised, will be available in South Florida by May, said Don Winstead, deputy secretary of the Department of Children and Families. The state plans to have a total of 1,822 secure and residential beds by June.
Lawmakers also approved spending $3.1 million more to provide other services for the mentally ill, like housing, medication stipends and outpatient mental health services.
To continue to provide the additional beds and support services beyond June, however, the Legislature will need to appropriate an additional $54.5 million, state budget analysts say. Mr. Crist said the Legislature had a duty to provide the additional money.
State Senator Stephen R. Wise, Republican of Jacksonville, said the state should try to save money by providing more residential treatment beds, which are less expensive than the secure beds.
“I don’t want to be able to buy a Ferrari,” Mr. Wise said, “but I want to have the option of being able to buy a Prius or a Buick or something less expensive than a Ferrari.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11florida.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Tulsa World
Aid For Mentally Ill Inmates
Service Planning Program Aims To Keep Them From Returning To Prison
By ANGEL RIGGS World Capitol Bureau 1/8/2007
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A statewide effort to curb the increasing number of mentally ill inmates who end up back in prison is set to launch within a few weeks.
Through the new Integrated Treatment Discharge Planning program, the state's prisons agency and Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services will work together to provide inmates with serious mental illness a comprehensive plan for release that includes access to support services and medications.
The Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas will each receive two of the program's "intensive care coordination teams," which are to begin work around Feb. 1. Lawmakers provided about $97,500 last year for each team.
"This is not a program for giving criminals an easy way out or excusing their behavior," said Robert Powitzky, the Department of Corrections' chief mental health officer.
"We know that more and more people with serious mental illness are finding themselves in jail or prisons, and if we don't implement this kind of program it's going to cost taxpayers three to four times more money."
Such offenders are most likely to end up back in prison within 90 days of their release, he said.
Through the coordination teams, certain inmates near their release date will work with professionals to develop a discharge plan, which addresses a variety of common reintegration problems.
For example, offenders with serious mental illness cannot apply for Social Security benefits until they leave prison. The new plan, however, will allow them to work with a specialist before their release so those services will be ready for them.
"For someone discharging who has those benefits, there are a lot more doors open to them," Powitzky said.
Access to community mental health centers, housing and family services also will be addressed.
"Housing is the No. 1 huge issue for these individuals; second is employment," said Randy May, the director of assertive community treatment for the mental health department.
"When you can't get those two things, what's left for you to do?"
The program will provide discharge planning for mentally ill inmates at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester; Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Lexington; and Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, a prison for women, in McLoud.
Bob Mann, the Corrections Department's coordinator of clinical social work services, said the majority of the effort is intended to ensure a "continuity of mental health care."
It's important that the offenders will be part of the process and "it's not something that's happening to them,." he said.
The program is expected to begin with about 20 to 30 inmates.
Of 8,000 offenders who were discharged in fiscal year 2006, an estimated 1,000 -- or 12.5 percent -- needed treatment for serious mental illnesses, Corrections Department data show.
However, fewer than 20 percent of those inmates had any formal discharge plans other than receiving a two-week supply of their medication.
The number of inmates who need medications for mental illness has surged in the past decade.
"It's a nationwide phenomenon," Powitzky said. He attributed much of the problem to the closing of mental health hospitals.
"They've de-institutionalized the mental health hospitals, but they've re-institutionalized people with serious mental illness into jails and prisons," Powitzky said.
"Statistics show that once a person with serious mental illness gets into the criminal justice system, it's very difficult for them not to cycle in and out," he said.
Prisoners and mental health
A total of 56 percent of state prisoners across the country have a mental health problem.
Among those state inmates with mental illnesses, 13 percent said they were homeless during the year before they were sent to prison.
An estimated 73 percent of women in state prisons have mental illness, compared with 55 percent of men.
Source: Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics
http://www.tulsaworld.com/NewsStory.asp?ID=070108_To_A1_Aidfo18599
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars
By BERNARD E. HARCOURT
Published: January 15, 2007
Chicago
LAST August, a prison inmate in Jackson, Mich. — someone the authorities described as “floridly psychotic” — died in his segregation cell, naked, shackled to a concrete slab, lying in his own urine, scheduled for a mental health transfer that never happened. Last month in Florida, the head of the state’s social services department resigned abruptly after having been fined $80,000 and is facing criminal contempt charges for failing to transfer severely mentally ill jail inmates to state hospitals.
Ten days ago, the Supreme Court agreed to determine when mentally ill death row inmates should be considered so deranged that their execution would be constitutionally impermissible. The case involves a 48-year-old Navy veteran who is a diagnosed schizophrenic. In the decade leading up to the crime he was hospitalized 14 times for severe mental illness.
According to a study released by the Justice Department in September, 56 percent of jail inmates in state prisons and 64 percent of inmates across the country reported mental health problems within the past year.
Though troubling, none of this should come as a surprise. Over the past 40 years, the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex and rebuilt — bed by bed — an enormous prison. During the 20th century we exhibited a schizophrenic relationship to deviance.
After more than 50 years of stability, federal and state prison populations skyrocketed from under 200,000 persons in 1970 to more than 1.3 million in 2002. That year, our imprisonment rate rose above 600 inmates per 100,000 adults. With the inclusion of an additional 700,000 inmates in jail, we now incarcerate more than two million people — resulting in the highest incarceration number and rate in the world, five times that of Britain and 12 times that of Japan.
What few people realize, though, is that in the 1940s and ’50s we institutionalized people at even higher rates — only it was in mental hospitals and asylums. Simply put, when the data on state and county mental hospitalization rates are combined with the data on prison rates for 1928 through 2000, the imprisonment revolution of the late 20th century barely reaches the level we experienced at mid-century. Our current culture of control is by no means new.
The graph on the left — based on statistics from the federal Census Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services and Bureau of Justice Statistics — shows the aggregate rate of institutionalization per 100,000 adults in the United States from 1928 to 2000, as well as the disaggregated trend lines for mental hospitalization on the one hand and state and federal prisons on the other.
The numbers include only state and county mental hospitals. There were many more kinds of mental institutions at mid-century, ones for “mental defectives and epileptics” and the mentally retarded, psychiatric wards in veterans hospitals, as well as “psychopathic” and private mental hospitals. If we include residents of those facilities, from 1935 to 1963 the United States consistently institutionalized at rates well above 700 per 100,000 adults — with highs of 778 in 1939 and 786 in 1955. It should be clear why there is such a large proportion of mentally ill persons in our prisons: individuals who used to be tracked for mental health treatment are now getting a one-way ticket to jail.
Of course, there are important demographic differences between the two populations. In 1937, women represented 48 percent of residents in state mental hospitals. In contrast, new prison admissions have consistently been 95 percent male. Also, the mental health patients from the 1930s to the 1960s were older and whiter than prison inmates of the 1990s.
But the graph poses a number of troubling questions: Why did we diagnose deviance in such radically different ways over the course of the 20th century? Do we need to be imprisoning at such high rates, or were we right, 50 years ago, to hospitalize instead? Why were so many women hospitalized? Why have they been replaced by young black men? Have both prisons and mental hospitals included large numbers of unnecessarily incarcerated individuals?
Whatever the answers, the pendulum has swung too far — possibly off its hinges.
It would be naïve, today, to address any of these questions without also considering the impact of imprisonment on crime. One of the most reliable studies estimates that the increased prison population over the 1990s accounted for about a third of the overall drop in crime that decade.
However, prisons are not the only institutions that seem to have this effect. In a recent study, I demonstrated that the rate of institutionalization — including mental hospitals — was a far better predictor of serious violent crime from 1926 to 2000 than just prison populations. The data reveal a robust negative relationship between overall institutionalization (prisons and asylums) and homicide. Preliminary findings based on state-level panel data confirm these results.
The effect on crime may not depend on whether the institution is a mental hospital or a prison. Even from a crime-fighting perspective, then, it is time to rethink our prison and mental health policies. A lot more work must be done before proposing answers to those troubling questions. But the first step is to realize that we have been wildly erratic in our approach to deviance, mental health and the prison.
Bernard E. Harcourt, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing and Punishing in an Actuarial Age.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15harcourt.html?
_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin#secondParagraph
From the American Civil Liberties Union
January 30, 2007
Solitary Confinement Called "Inappropriate" for Mentally Ill Prisoners in Indiana
In Court Settlement with ACLU, Indiana Corrections Officials Agree Not to Keep Mentally Ill Prisoners in Extreme Isolation
INDIANAPOLIS-The American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project and the ACLU of Indiana announced today that, as a result of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the Indiana Department of Correction has agreed to move all mentally ill prisoners out of the Secured Housing Unit (SHU), a "Supermax" unit where prisoners are forced to live in extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for months or even years.
Indiana prison officials signed a settlement agreement with the ACLU today, promising to avoid housing seriously mentally ill prisoners in long-term isolation and to provide additional mental health services for all prisoners housed in the SHU.
"No one should be subjected to the brutal conditions of these isolation units, but for the mentally ill to live in them is truly a form of domestic torture," said Kenneth J. Falk, Legal Director of the ACLU of Indiana. "We are pleased that the Indiana Department of Correction has made the right decision to remove mentally ill prisoners from the SHU." Falk and David C. Fathi, senior staff counsel of the ACLU National Prison Project, represented the prisoners in the lawsuit.
The "Supermax" unit, located at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, Indiana, is used to house prisoners in disciplinary or administrative segregation. Every prisoner in the unit is forced to live in solitary confinement where cells remain illuminated throughout the day and night and prisoners are only allowed to leave the cells for showers once a day and for solitary recreation, weather permitting. While housed in the unit, prisoners have had very limited contact with the outside world. Calls and visits with family and friends have been restricted, and there have also been limitations on prisoners' ability to keep personal items in their cells, such as family photographs, letters from loved ones, newspapers, or books. Prisoners may spend years in these conditions.
In February 2005, the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of housing mentally ill prisoners in the SHU after a series of four suicides and numerous self-mutilations took place there in a two-year span. In the lawsuit, Mast v. Donahue, the ACLU cited research by mental health experts showing that prisoners who are forced to live in extreme isolation are likely to experience intense pain, suffering, and mental deterioration. According to experts, the impact on mentally ill prisoners is even more severe, often leading to self-mutilation or suicide.
Until the ACLU lawsuit, little had changed at the "Supermax" unit since 1997, when Human Rights Watch and a team of psychiatrists inspected the facility, finding that severely mentally ill and psychotic prisoners were held under conditions that exacerbated their conditions. In its report, Cold Storage: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Indiana, Human Rights Watch stated that, "in some cases, the suffering that results is so great that the treatment must be condemned as torture."
The ACLU also raised concerns about the high number of mentally ill prisoners who end up in the secure unit because of behavioral problems frequently related to their mental illness. A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics study looked at the rates of disciplinary charges against mentally ill prisoners compared to those against other prisoners. The September 2006 report revealed that of those state prisoners charged with violating prison policy, 58 percent had mental health problems.
"A disproportionate number of mentally ill prisoners are sent to the "Supermax" unit for disciplinary reasons that are often directly related to their illnesses," said Fathi. "We expect that our recent settlement agreement will eliminate the practice of simply punishing mentally ill prisoners for their illness and will bring needed treatment to these prisoners instead."
In addition to today's case, the ACLU has brought lawsuits challenging "Supermax" prisons in Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut, and New Mexico. All of these cases have resulted in court orders or settlement agreements providing that seriously mentally ill prisoners will not be held in these facilities.
The Mast v. Donahue settlement agreement can be found online at: www.aclu.org/prison/mentalhealth/28160lgl20070130.html
The Mast v. Donahue complaint filed in February 2005 can be found online at: www.aclu.org/prison/conditions/14789lgl20050203.html
The Human Rights Watch report, Cold Storage: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Indiana, can be found online at: www.hrw.org/reports/1997/usind/
The Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates, can be found online at: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/mhppji.pdf
Manhattan: Ruling for Aid to Mentally Ill Inmates
October 4, 2006
RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
appellate court ruled yesterday that New York City must help mentally ill inmates find psychiatric and other services when it releases them from jail wards in city hospitals. Three in settling a lawsuit, the city agreed that when it released mentally ill prisoners from jails, would help arrange their medical care, psychotherapy, insurance and housing, rather than them to fend for themselves. But the city argued that the settlement did not apply to prisoners discharged from city hospitals. The plaintiffs reopened the case, and a State Supreme Court ruled that the city’s policy violated the settlement. Yesterday, a panel of the Appellate Division Supreme Court in Manhattan upheld that decision unanimously.
Albany
Spitzer Plan Aids Mentally Ill Inmates
Governor Proposes Adding $60 Million For Improved,
More Humane Services
by PAUL GRONDAH
February 10, 2007
ALBANY -- In response to long-standing calls for better treatment for the most vulnerable segment of the prison population, Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposes to increase state spending by $60 million over three years on services for mentally ill inmates.
The proposal was praised by advocacy groups that say it signals a heightened commitment toward humane care of prisoners with severe psychiatric needs.
"This is a long-awaited, very encouraging initiative," said Harvey Rosenthal, who heads the New York Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services.
"It's very refreshing for the governor to take such a clear position on behalf of inmates with serious mental illness," said Bob Corliss, associate director of NAMI-New York, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Spitzer's budget includes $2.3 million this year in Office of Mental Health funding to screen all prisoners for mental illness and enhance treatment. He proposed increasing that allocation to $6 million next year and $9 million in 2009.
In addition, Spitzer is seeking $50 million in capital funds in the Department of Correctional Services budget to overhaul prison design to create more therapeutic spaces to house mentally ill inmates. It would also improve training for correction officers and pay for additional services, such as help in preparing mentally ill inmates for the transition to life after incarceration.
Linda Foglia, a DOCS spokeswoman, declined to comment on Spitzer's budget proposal.
About 8,000 of the state's 63,000 inmates have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, according to studies by the Correctional Association of New York, a watchdog group.
Such inmates are often confined for acting out to special housing units, known as "The Box," sometimes for months or years. Once in The Box, they purposely injure themselves and commit suicide at a rate three times higher than other prisoners in solitary, data has shown.
Mentally ill inmates also face exceptionally high rates of recidivism because they commonly are released straight from the solitary confinement of The Box into the community with little preparation.
"The additional funding the governor proposed is certainly a very welcome first step," said Bob Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.
Gangi and other advocates called on Spitzer to support a bill that passed both houses of the state Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. George Pataki. That landmark legislation would prohibit placing mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement for any reason.
The advocacy groups have joined an ongoing lawsuit in federal court to ban the practice in New York.
"We are still pushing for that bill to pass both houses again and to be signed this time by the governor in order to provide the proper structure to carry out needed reforms," Corliss said.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=562100
The Death Of Timothy Souders
Scott Pelley on the Plight of the Mentally Ill Behind Bars
February 11, 2007
(CBS) You wouldn't imagine these days that a mental patient could be chained to a concrete slab by prison guards until he died of thirst, but that’s how Timothy Souders died and he is not the only one.
Souders suffered from manic depression. And like a lot of mental patients in this country, he got into trouble and ended up not in a hospital, but in jail. It was a shoplifting case and he paid with his life.
As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, no one would have been the wiser, but a medical investigator working for a federal judge caught wind of Souders' death and discovered his torturous end was recorded on videotape. The tapes, which are hard to watch, open a horrifying window on mental illness behind bars.
Six months ago, Tim Souders was in solitary at the Southern Michigan Correctional Center. He was 21, serving three to five years. Though an investigation would show he needed urgent psychiatric care, Souders was chained down, hands, feet and waist, up to 17 hours at a time. By prison rules, all of it was recorded on a 24-hour surveillance camera and by the guards themselves.
The tape records a rapid descent: he started apparently healthy, but in four days Souders could barely walk. In the shower, he fell over. The guards brought him back in a wheelchair, but then chained him down again. On Aug. 6th, he was released from restraints and fell for the last time. Souders had died of dehydration and only the surveillance camera took notice.
His short life began in Adrian, Mich. Souders was a kid whose troubles didn’t start until late in his teenage years. It was then, his mother, Theresa Vaughn, told 60 Minutes that he began acting strangely.
"It was January in the wintertime. And you know, he was running around outside with his clothes off, thinking he was a knight, fighting dragons. You know, it's…you lose touch with reality," Vaughn remembers.
"So, he went to the hospital and what did the doctors tell you?" Pelley asks.
"They then diagnosed him with bipolar, and put him on several different medications," Vaughn says.
Still, he was troubled by anxiety and depression, often in and out of the hospital. After one hospital stay, he was caught shoplifting two paintball guns. He grabbed a pocket knife, threatened employees, and then begged a cop to shoot him. Instead, he was stunned with a Taser.
No one was hurt.
"He was trying to get money to pay his rent, so that he would not be evicted from his apartment," says Vaughn. "He had gotten to the point where his thinking wasn't straight, and he was suicidal. And he should've never went to jail."
In jail, Souders tried to kill himself three times. He pled to resisting arrest and assault, for waving the pocketknife, and ended up in a Jackson County prison complex, with 5,000 inmates. It’s a troubled place—prisoners filed suit there in the 1980's and since then, their welfare has been monitored by a federal judge.
When Souders arrived he was part of a national trend: there are 300,000 mental patients behind bars nationwide. That’s because starting in the 1960’s many mental hospitals have been closing. And as patients ended up in jail, prisons became the new asylums.
"They became de facto mental hospitals and the prisons are ill equipped to handle it," says Robert Walsh, a clinical psychologist working inside Michigan prisons for the past 25 years.
Walsh is an insider. He was a deputy warden and director of psychological services at the prison where Souders died. He retired six years before Souders arrived.
"Given what you see in the Souders videotape, what should have been happening?" Pelley asks.
"What should have been happening was right away, mental health staff should have been consulted and reported to the scene, and they should have intervened. Given that he wasn't assaultive against anybody," says Walsh.
But there was no mental health staff to consult—the psychiatrist was on a seven-week leave.
"Then he should have been replaced. It's too critical a situation," Walsh remarks.
This situation started when Souders took a shower without permission. That landed him in solitary. When he broke a stool and used his sink to flood his cell, the chains came out—what the prison calls "top of bed" restraints.
"Approximately 15 minutes ago, the prisoner began flooding his cell. His water is being shut off even as we speak. And we’re going to place the prisoner in top-of-bed restraints," an officer could be heard on the videotape.
Walsh did an extensive study of Michigan prisons and found that the staff often tries to punish psychotic inmates into better behavior.
Incredibly, he found in a number of cases, the staff insists inmates are not mentally ill, despite profound insanity.
"One man, he enucleated his eyes, cut 'em out, because he felt they were offending God. These were men that were, claimed to be manipulative, malingerers and non-mentally ill," says Walsh.
"Wait a minute. Did I just understand you to say that the department of corrections declared those men not mentally ill?" Pelley asks.
"The staff did. That's correct. The psychiatric and psychological staff considered, considered them to be malingerers and manipulators that went to extremes," Walsh says.
"Now can that be? You have a man who gouges his eyes out?" Pelley asks.
"Exactly," Walsh says.
"And he's not mentally ill?" Pelley asks.
"Or a man that disembowels himself," says Walsh. "Yes. Yeah. He's manipulating."
After his arrest, a state psychologist said Souders was trying to manipulate the staff when he stabbed himself seven times in the stomach in a suicide attempt. Months later, in solitary, there was no psychiatric intervention, even when Souders was raving.
A social worker wanted him transferred to a hospital, but the paperwork never got done. The guards resorted again to chains, which the federal judge overseeing the prison criticized as “punitive restraints.”
"We do not actually use punitive restraints. We use restraints," says Patricia Caruso, the director of Michigan's prison system. "Punitive implies restraints for punishment. Restraints are never used for punishment. Restraints are used for protection. They are used for the protection of the prisoner of harming himself, or for the protection of others who are being harmed by the prisoner."
But Tim Souders wasn’t harming anyone and a prison report shows it was his attempt to break the stool and flood his cell that led to the authorization to put him in top-of-bed restraints.
"It depends on you how long you’re in these, okay? Can’t flood your cell, can’t do that type of stuff. We put you in restraints to kind of control your behavior," an officer told Tim.
"We've seen cases where people have been in restraints on and off, day after day after day. And I have not found a mental health expert who has told me that that's a good idea," Pelley tells Caruso.
"It is on and off. People are removed from restraints. Even prior to that, people [are] removed from restraints at a maximum of every two hours. And would get up and walk around," she replies.
Two hours? 60 Minutes checked the surveillance tape. Souders was up some of the time, but 60 Minutes found he was restrained for stretches of 12 hours, 16 hours, and 17 hours.
Tim Souders had bed sores and on the third day in restraints, he resisted for the first and only time, complaining bitterly about the hours in chains.
"I'm tired of this. Eighteen hours is not justified," Souders could be heard saying on the videotape.
Recently, Michigan's corrections director Patricia Caruso suggested limiting the total time in restraints to six hours.
"Federal judge describe that as trading six hours of evil for unlimited evil. Evil is evil, he’s saying. You're smiling," Pelley remarks.
"No. I'm…I don't—," says Caruso.
"Surely you take that seriously," Pelley asks.
"I absolutely take that seriously. Prison is a difficult environment. I have correctional officers, who become accustomed to having urine and feces thrown on them by prisoners, who have prisoners who are so injurious that they will open their bodies to remove organs from others. And so we have to rely on our responsibility to keep people safe," says Caruso.
But Michigan prisons have not been safe for mentally ill prisoners who have died needlessly. At least one starved to death, and others died of dehydration like Souders. Jeffrey Clark, a paranoid schizophrenic serving time for robbery, died of thirst in solitary. His sister, Bonita Clark-Murphy, pored over investigative reports of his death.
"There are reports that he had his mouth up against the plexiglas window, begging and pleading for water and air, and for someone again, to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to that, that's why I say Jeffrey was tortured," she says.
Clark-Murphy filed suit against the state; she claims the warden told the family that her brother died of an infection.
"We buried Jeff, not even knowing what happened," says Clark Murphy.
"It seems that the prison officials expected to tell you that this was natural causes, and that you'd just leave it alone," Pelley asks.
"Absolutely. And they were so wrong," she replies.
Jeffrey Clark was locked in solitary in the heat of the summer with his water turned off. And four years later, the heat index in solitary was over 100. Souder's was also water turned off.
"That is steam, I’m afraid," one officer said. "Oh yeah, because it’s so hot in here," another officer remarked.
He became delusional, refusing water when offered. But not even that was a medical emergency to the staff. "Souders has refused. Officer asked him if he needed water. He replied, ‘No,’" an officer could be heard on the tape.
After Souders' death, federal Judge Richard Enslen, who oversees the prison, wrote that inmates are exposed to an "unauthorized death penalty at the hands of a callous and dysfunctional health care system that regularly fails to treat life- threatening illness."
"I understand that it's easy to take individual cases and to sensationalize them, and you know, relentlessly replay the facts of an individual case. But I also think it's unfair," argues Caruso.
"But director, fair to say, people starve to death and die of thirst in your prisons?" Pelley asks.
"Any death, any incident like that in our custody is a tragedy. I will not deny that. It is not…that certainly isn't something that, you know, we set out…I mean, we have people come to us dying," she replies.
"They don't come to you dying of thirst and dying of starvation. How can that happen under your custody?" Pelley asks.
"I'm not gonna address cases that are under litigation. I cannot do that," the prison system director replies.
The Souders case is under litigation. His mother, Theresa Vaughn, is suing. She says the prison never told her how her son died. She found out in the "Detroit Free Press."
Vaughn has seen the videotapes of her son's last days and says they give her nightmares. "I cannot believe anyone would treat another human being that way at all. That they can watch over a four day period, slowly declining, slowly dying before their eyes," she says.
Asked if she things the guards meant to kill her son, Vaughn tells Pelley, "I don't believe anybody meant to kill Tim. I don't believe that they meant to hurt Tim. But they did. They did hurt him. And he did die. He's not comin' home. He's not comin' back. And he is gone. And he was only 21 years old."
After Souders died, a prison nurse was fired for failing to recognize his condition was becoming critical. In November, Judge Enslen used the word "torture" to describe those restraints and banned them. The state is appealing his decision.
In part because of the death of Timothy Souders, a federal judge in the case of Hadix v. Caruso ordered wide-ranging reforms in the prison mental health care, including an end to the in-cell use of mechanical restraints in most circumstances. Hadix is a federal civil rights class action involving the medical care, mental health care, fire safety and protection from excessive heat at three prisons in Jackson, Mich., the Egeler Correctional Facility, the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility (JMF), and the Parnall Correctional Facility. These three prisons contain thousands of prisoners, including a concentrated population of medically fragile prisoners at JMF.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/08/60minutes/main2448074.shtml
WABC Eyewitness News
Treatment for Prisoners with Mental Illness
(New York - WABC, April 9, 2007) - The figures are staggering. In the past 15 years, the number of inmates with mental illnesses in New York state prisons has grown by 71 percent.
An equally staggering number of them end up in disciplinary lockdown, often 23 hours a day. Now there is a growing call to address the crisis amid one family's heartbreaking story.
The Investigators' Sarah Wallace has more.
It's easy to dismiss prison inmates as someone else's problem, but in New York alone, it's estimated more than 3,000 inmates with mental illness are released every year into our communities. Many of them have spent months, even years in total isolation, with virtually no therapy.
"I'm afraid of them killing my son, that's what I'm afraid of," Barbara Smalls said. "Because he doesn't know when to back down."
Barbara Smalls has good reason to worry. For the past year and a half, her mentally ill son, Wayne, has been hit with a series of disciplinary charges after being involved in escalating confrontations with prison correction officers upstate. He's now in isolation at Southport Correctional facility, in what's called the SHU, special housing unit.
"He's confined 23 hours a day in a cell, and he's let out one hour for recreation," Barbara Smalls said. "They had him shackled from his wrist down to his feet, to his ankles, in the cell."
The family has documented a history of mental and emotional problems that date back to Wayne's childhood.
"He was diagnosed by several doctors, bi-polarism, ADHD, manic depressive, anxiety, panic, schizophrenia," Barbara said.
"You'll look a him and say, 'This guy's a nice guy, when he's on his medication.' When he's off of it? Freddie Kruger," father James Smalls said.
Wayne Smalls was first sent to prison in 2002 on a weapons charge, and was supposed to come home this June. But then he was accused of trying to assault staff and given four months in isolation. Smalls asked for help in a prison class and was accused of interfering and violating orders.
He's back in isolation at Southport. Jack Beck, an attorney for a prison watchdog group says Smalls' experience is typical.
"Often people with mentally illness start their SHU sentence not because they've done some terrible act, but they've done some smaller act," Beck said. "But then, once their in this environment, that is so difficult for them to cope with, they start yelling and screaming and just being non-cooperative."
Last month, Mrs. Smalls received a letter from a fellow SHU inmate who claimed he'd seen Wayne beaten by officers who "broke him up real badly."
That inmate's parents, who live in Brooklyn, say they've heard repeated horror stories from their son about the SHU.
"And I keep asking what's going on, and he says, 'Ma, it's like being in hell,'" the inmate's mother, Grace Banton said.
"What concerned him about Wayne is that he would have died and nobody would have known nothing," father Gilmore Banton said.
The Superintendent at Southport told the Smalls family an investigation showed use of force was necessary when Wayne refused to comply, that he wasn't seriously injured by staff.
"They're taking his frustrations as a sign of him being violent and not him having a mental illness," Smalls' brother, William, said. "They're taking his sickness as an act of violence."
"Instead of having mental health beds, we have prisons and jails for the mentally ill," Beck said. "And that is the story."
Advocates are now pushing for a state law that would prohibit mentally ill inmates from being placed in the SHU. But Wayne Smalls has been ordered to stay for at least six more months.
"They don't know Wayne like I know him, and I just can't let this matter, go," Mrs. Smalls said. "I can't."
Incredibly, there is no limit on time in the SHU, so inmates are racking up years and years in isolation.
Tuesday at 6 p.m., we'll meet one of them. He is a former inmate who spent 10 years on and off in 23-hour lockdown. He'll talk about his attempts at suicide and his downward spiral locked in a box.
It is a disturbing portrait that certainly raises an issue of cruel and unusual punishment.
Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement
N E W S R E L E A S E
Advocates Seek Final Passage of Legislation
Ending State’s Practice
of Solitary Confinement of Prisoners with Psychiatric Disabilities
CONTACT:
Vuka Stricevic, Community Access, 646-872-0666
Jennifer Parish, Urban Justice Center, 646-872-1686
Harvey Rosenthal, NYAPRS, 518-527-0564
ALBANY, NEW YORK - Capping 4 years of efforts that achieved overwhelming bi-partisan and public support last year, a coalition of family members, religious leaders, mental health and legal rights advocacy groups return to Albany today seeking final passage of legislation (S.333A/A.4870B) to end the state’s practice of solitary confinement of prisoners with acute psychiatric disabilities.
During a 12:30pm press conference, advocates were joined by the legislation’s sponsors Assembly Correctional Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry and Senate Crime and Corrections Committee Chairman Michael Nozzolio, along with Assembly Mental Health Committee Chairman Peter Rivera and Senator Thomas Duane.
Last year, the NYS Legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation to improve prison safety conditions by requiring alternate residential and treatment for severely mentally disabled prisoners while boosting mental health training for correctional officers.
The measure received broad editorial support from leading newspapers across New York, including the Albany Times Union, the New York Times, the Journal News, Newsday, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the Syracuse Post Standard, the Poughkeepsie Journal, the Auburn Citizen, El Diario, the Staten Island Advance, the Plattsburgh Press Republican and the Elmira Star Gazette. Nonetheless, then-Governor George Pataki vetoed the measure.
Advocates are now calling for legislators to go ‘the last mile’ and make this policy permanent and the law of New York State.
“This landmark legislation will improve safety conditions for both correction officers and mentally disabled prisoners alike,” said Jack Beck, Director of the Prison Visiting Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It is a win-win measure that will also save taxpayers by reducing unnecessarily extended prison sentences, avoidable prison inpatient mental health care stays and reduced injuries to correctional personnel.”
While this year’s state budget provided funds to improve prison mental health services over the next 3 years, the advocates are looking for New York to commit to a complete end of the policy of using solitary confinement for prisoners with severe psychiatric disabilities by passing permanent legislation.
“While the recent proposals are a welcome first step in addressing the significant mental health care deficiencies within our prisons, they must be accompanied with a policy that excludes those with disabilities from solitary confinement. We hope the Legislature will lead us to this end this year,” said Vuka Stricevic, Director of Public Policy with Community Access.
A mother whose son’s “horrific” confinement was profiled last week on New York City’s WABC, Barbara Smalls urged the legislature to pass and Governor Eliot Spitzer to sign the bill so that “others will not face the fate that befell my son, Wayne. Four year have come and gone and there is still no light at the end. My son is still in the dark in the SHU.”
According to Mary Beth Pfeiffer, a former reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal and author of Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill, “People with mental illness should never be put there, and the use of such psychologically punishing housing for anyone should be kept to an absolute minimum.”
Jim Murphy, a representative of the New York State Catholic Conference said, “The Bishops of New York State have long been concerned about the disciplinary confinement and treatment of prison inmates with serious mental illnesses. Treatment alternatives designed to restore mentally ill inmates to wholeness is of benefit to the individual and to society, and is respectful of the dignity due all of God’s creation.”
“With the Governor’s leadership, New York State will become a national leader in prison mental health reform, joining a handful of states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin – who have taken similar action,” said Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services.
“This bill cannot wait. As we speak, there are young men and women in these cells right now. Some will kill themselves - others will cut themselves - each of them hearing voices and going deeper into the darkness,” stated Ray Ortiz, Brad H. Advocate from the Urban Justice Center. “Putting people with mental illness into solitary confinement is not effective law enforcement. It is torture and it can come to an end if the legislature re-passes and the Governor signs this bill.”
www.boottheshu.org
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Close The Box
Mentally Ill Inmates Should Not Be Placed In Solitary Confinement
April 19, 2007
The settlement by the Spitzer administration of a lawsuit against the solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners is a welcome step away from previous state policy, which was to resist any change to this inhumane practice.
But New York still is a long way from the right place on this issue, which is to prohibit the use of such confinement for anyone with a serious mental infirmity.
The settlement for the most part only alleviates the effect of such confinement with more out-of-cell time and more treatment. Sen. Mike Nozzolio of Seneca County is sponsoring a bill to end the practice, and there's a companion bill in the Assembly. Both houses passed an identical bill last year, but Gov. Pataki inexplicably vetoed it. Spitzer must not repeat that mistake.
There is a good argument to be made that the sort of solitary confinement now used in state prisons, and similar to what's in use around the country, comes too close to torture to be allowed for any prisoner, no matter his or her mental state.
These so-called special housing units, or "boxes," are tiny, stripped-down, one-person cells in which prisoners are placed for up to 23 hours a day.
Dangerous prisoners should be separated from the general population. But punishment need not equal extreme isolation. That only worsens the behavior, the attitude, the anger that led to the confinement in the first place.
And to inflict such punitive measures on the mentally ill is doubly wrong and counterproductive. It deepens the illness and makes the individual more dangerous both in and out of prison.
Fixing this problem will take money. Gov. Spitzer and the Legislature have approved spending $57 million to improve treatment for the mentally ill and to begin the construction of special housing for the imprisoned mentally ill.
These costs surely will rise unless the state and localities do more on the community end to help the mentally ill before they commit crimes and enter the prison system.
Failure to invest adequately in community-based care after state psychiatric hospitals closed in the 1990s has had a damaging ripple effect the governor and lawmakers must, finally, address.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070419/OPINION04/704190335/1041/OPINION
Editorial
Prison Horrors for the Mentally Ill
April 23, 2007
The State of New York took a step toward basic human decency when it agreed to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of mentally ill prisoners, who often endure horrific neglect and mistreatment. The settlement, which must be approved by the courts, provides for a range of welcome changes, including better care and monitoring for the severely ill people being held in solitary confinement or disciplinary lockdown, typically for 23 hours a day.
It still falls far short of what’s needed and is not a substitute for the sweeping reforms vetoed by former Gov. George Pataki last year. The Legislature should pass that bill again and Gov. Eliot Spitzer should promptly sign it. Maltreatment of mentally ill prisoners is a national shame. People who suffer from delusions and hallucinations are far more likely than non-disabled prisoners to break rules. When they are confined in their cells, their symptoms worsen. All too often they harm themselves.
A 2003 study found that nearly a quarter of the inmates in lockdown were mentally ill. Of those, nearly 45 percent reported that they had tried suicide and nearly a third reported self-mutilation. The settlement provides slightly better treatment and better suicide prevention in lockdown. But the basic problem is that severely ill inmates should not be held in lockdown at all.
The mental health bill would ban disciplinary confinement for the seriously mentally ill. It would also require the prison system to expand treatment programs and give mental health professionals more influence in deciding treatment options. The measure would more than pay for itself by reducing danger and disorder behind bars, shortening prison stays for the mentally ill and increasing the likelihood that they would manage to stay out once they are released.
Editorial
Mentally Ill Inmates Face A Cruel System
Will The State End Long Solitary Confinement And Other Prison Abuses, Or Go On As Usual?
BY MARY BETH PFEIFFER
May 6, 2007
In 1998, 11 years after a federal judge ordered improved mental health care for prisoners at New York State's Attica Correctional Facility, a psychotic 28-year-old man identified as Inmate A hanged himself in an Attica solitary confinement unit.
The inmate had tried suicide several times before and was experiencing delusions and hallucinations - clear signs of mental illness - but this did not affect how his keepers viewed him: as a "malingerer," according to court documents, who deserved round-the-clock lockup in a veritable closet for his prison misdeeds. Nor did it matter that the prison was operating under the watchful eye of a federal court that had sought to avoid this kind of outcome.
Now, nine years later, such abusive long-term isolated confinement of mentally ill inmates is at the center of another, more far-reaching federal lawsuit recently settled by New York State, alleging dismal inmate mental health care across its 71 prisons. With the state's pledge to add 400 treatment beds and curbs on how mentally ill inmates are disciplined, the settlement has the potential to lift hundreds of prisoners out of miserably punitive conditions. Nonetheless, caution is advised.
One need only look at Inmate A and others who died long after the state had agreed to improve their lot - even as court monitors kept a regular vigil - to know the limits of judicial reach. The settlement is a good development, to be sure, but it fails to go far enough.
The court reports that tell the checkered history of settlements of class-action prison lawsuits - those, for example, that revealed the fate of Inmate A - will not, under this new settlement, be made public. So who will know if the state reneges?
It's an urgent question, as New York's prisons, like those in other states, have become de facto mental institutions in an era of shuttered mental hospitals and inadequate community care. While the prison population has expanded by about 9 percent since 1991, the number of inmates with mental illness - currently estimated at 8,400 - has nearly doubled. The system has its own 189-bed psychiatric hospital and specialized units for mentally ill inmates, but its resources are dwarfed by the need.
Unable to conform and offered few treatment alternatives, mentally ill inmates often are isolated in cells as small as 50 square feet for an average of three years. The most recalcitrant are fed cold loaves of flour, milk, potato and carrot - with a side of raw cabbage - a punitive practice frowned upon by the accrediting American Correctional Association.
The lawsuit settlement places limits on use of the "loaf" and on punishment of mentally ill inmates who hurt themselves in violation of prison rules. It also provides two hours of therapy a week for inmates in isolation. What it will not do, however, is exclude schizophrenic and other intensely ill inmates from the dehumanizing, psychologically battering rigors of isolated confinement.
Prisons in at least seven other states now ban isolated confinement for inmates with serious mental illness. Under a bill pending in the State Legislature - vetoed last August by then-Gov. George Pataki but reintroduced and now in committee - New York would follow suit. Crucially, the bill would let a state commission monitor mental health care behind prison walls, providing badly needed, and permanent, oversight.
Settlements in federal lawsuits undoubtedly have improved prison conditions. But the path to change has been tortuous and long. After a settlement involving the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, a frustrated court monitor wrote 13 reports from 1992 to 2000 in which he described care as "wretched," "callous" and "dangerous." Five inmates died needlessly, including one from a staph infection that wasn't treated for six months; others were transferred under the monitor's nose to prisons not covered by the settlement.
In 1999, after the suicide of another Attica inmate under conditions almost identical to those involving Inmate A, a court expert reported that "no substantively meaningful improvement" had occurred. This was about 19 years after the filing of the suit pertaining to inmate care at Attica. By 2002, when advocates decided to take their case against corrections officials systemwide, half of prison suicides were occurring in isolated confinement - and Attica's count was among the highest.
Given a cooperative state bureaucracy with an enlightened view of mental health care, advocates believe that the outcome in the most recent case - Disability Advocates Inc. v. Office of Mental Health - will be different from the outcome in other cases. Maybe. Maybe not. The track record isn't good.
Without legislation, I fear that someone else may be writing this very article in a decade or two. Or - denied progress reports under a confidentiality clause that keeps them under wraps - maybe she won't.
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oppfe065201084may06,0,3547153,print.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Fallen Judge Copes With Mental Illness
By Paula Voell
May 8, 2007
The official title for Sol Wachtler’s talk is “From the Asylum into the Cell.” But Wachtler thinks of it as “Hell in the Hallway.”
He explains: “You know how people say that when one door closes, another opens,” said the former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. “Well, that might be true, but it’s hell while you’re in the hallway.”
His “hallway” began when he was arrested in 1993 for harassment of his then-mistress and her 14-yearold daughter. He was disbarred and served 13 months in a federal penitentiary, including time in solitary confinement.
Wachtler, who has bipolar disorder, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker for the 46th annual meeting of the Mental Health Association of Erie County next Tuesday at the Buffalo Convention Center, an event co-sponsored by the Erie County Bar Association.
During a phone interview from his New York City home, he said: “I have only one caveat. I don’t blame my crime on my mental illness. My crime was committed because I was too politically ambitious and narcissistic to get help.”
“I could have listened to my wife and sought help,” said Wachtler, whose wife of 55 years is a social worker. “When people don’t get help, they attempt to self medicate. One of the big problems is what we call ‘co-occurring disorder’ which means that to escape your illness or to self cure, you go into drugs and alcohol, which now becomes a disorder, and that’s what brings you into the criminal justice system.”
Asked why he’s willing to speak publicly, knowing that his past will be replayed, Wachtler said: “I really, really, don’t enjoy these engagements, but I take them because I think I can reach some people and some families and it makes me feel I’m doing something decent ... but it comes at a cost.”
The Mental Health Association invited Wachtler because his experiences are relevant to its clients, said Rose Argenio, director of communications/ community relations.
“He will talk about his ongoing crusade to rise from the ashes of disgrace and shame, redeem his reputation and once again make a positive contribution to society,” said Argenio. “And he really has redeemed himself.”
Wachtler, who is 77, is remembered for his groundbreaking work for the broadening of protections for the disabled and racial minorities and as a key figure in making rape, in the context of a marriage, a criminal offense.
Since his release, he has become an advocate for humane treatment of the mentally ill, particularly those incarcerated.
“We closed mental institutions in this state, a great many of them, so now we put people in prison and call it ‘trans-institutionalization,’ ” he said. “And that means that between 16 and 20 percent of the prison population is seriously mentally ill.”
In an Op Ed piece written for the New York Times, Wachtler described being in solitary confinement (called the Special Housing Unit) after he was stabbed by another inmate and placed there for his own safety for 40 days.
Shackled from head to foot, he was placed in a small cell; his bed was a metal rack covered by a thin pad, he writes.
“The door is solid steel with a verticalslot that allows for a guard to peerin. A small, knee-high horizontal slot isused to deliver and return food trays.
“The walls are made of concrete cementblocks. Light comes in from avery small barred window and a largefluorescent light that is on all day andpart of the night. When you are in thebox, you are confined for 23 hours aday, and although you are allowed onehour in the daylight, that hour is spentin an outdoor zoolike cage where youare often taunted by other prisoners.”
Ironically, when Wachtler was on the Court of Appeals, he wrote a decision in which he observed: “Merely confining an inmate in a segregated cell does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. There are, of course, some cells that are so subhuman as to constitute such punishment even for a very brief confinement. One day in some cells might be constitutionally intolerable.”
“When I wrote those words I never dreamed that I would discover such a cell by living in one,” he said.
Wachtler continues to press for legislation, which was vetoed by Gov. Pataki, to ban such treatment through a campaign called Boot the SHU (Secure Housing Unit.) “New York State is in the backwater with this issue,” he said. “Even Texas doesn’t allow it.”
A variety of interests, including his “terrific family and friends,” keeps Wachtler busy — he teaches law, he oversees the Judge Sol Wachtler Chair in Legal Aid at Israel’s Bar Ilam University and recently he worked on the documentary “Hitler’s Courts: The Betrayal of the Rule of Law in Nazi Germany.”
What he’s learned, Wachtler said, is that his illness needs to be monitored and treated. “I’ve learned how to treat my illness,” he said. “And I’ve learned that mental illness, or even a fall from grace, is not the end of your life.
“The other thing I can say is that if it happened to me, it can happen to you. You have to be very careful and take care of yourself.
“I was scared to death, and I still am,” he said, “that every day I could go back into the abyss.”
http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/71032.html
After The Fall, A Lesson Imparted
Former Chief Judge Who Lost All In Scandal Now Working To Help Others
By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON
May 8, 2007
ALBANY -- It's been 15 years, but no matter how hard he tries, former Chief Judge Sol Wachtler can't escape the court of public opinion in his extraordinary fall from grace.
"There really never is full redemption in the eyes of the community," said Wachtler, who was once a potential Republican candidate for governor.
Wachtler's documented descent into mental illness culminated in 1992 when the FBI arrested him. He later pleaded guilty to harassing his former mistress, socialite Joy Silverman, and her teenage daughter.
In the resulting backlash, the judge known for his powerful advocacy of freedom of the press, women's rights and minority rights stepped down from the bench, resigned from the bar and served a year in the mental health unit of a federal prison, often in solitary confinement.
If there's a lesson to be learned, it's this, said the now-77-year-old: "If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. And I want to get it out of the closet or it will never be destigmatized. Get help."
Wachtler has worked steadily to regain his reputation.
He is involved with Alternative Dispute Resolution, a way of resolving conflicts with the help of specially trained or neutral third parties without a formal trial or hearing. He penned a prison memoir in 1993 called "After the Madness," and also co-wrote the legal thriller, "Blood Brothers," with former federal prosecutor Dan Gould.
But mostly he takes on speaking engagements, without a fee, to help others understand the darkness of bipolar disorder and depression. It's his duty, Wachtler said.
He is also the subject of the authorized biography, "King of the Mountain," by John Caher, spokesman for the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. It details the illicit affair with Silverman that brought down Wachtler's career as well as his struggle with mental illness, his misuse of prescription drugs and his irrational fear of brain tumors.
"I never in any context tried to blame my conduct on mental illness," Wachtler said. "That would have been using it. I said I did it. I apologized."
But before his downfall, Wachtler already saw that he was spiraling out of control.
He wept at the slightest provocation and lived off of handfuls of amphetamines and sleeping pills. "That only kicked my depression into a clinical state," he said. "And then mania. Whew. That's when I started those crazy things.
"My wife urged me to see a psychiatrist," he said. "And my deepest regret was I was so narcissistic, so egotistical that I ruined my life and humiliated my wife, my children, my family, my profession and my court. All because of that narcissism. My ego. My ambitions."
"No, I don't blame my mental illness," he said. "I blame my weaknesses."
Wachtler makes himself available to young lawyers who suffer similar emotional struggles. "I can tell them, 'keep going like this and you'll destroy your life, or you'll end your life.' " He thinks his bipolarity was likely hereditary.
"I didn't know until after my arrest that my grandmother had cut her throat with a knife," he said. "I was always told she died of a broken heart."
But she committed suicide, he said, "and if I hadn't been arrested when I was, I would have, too." Wachtler said he had a plan to asphyxiate himself in his garage by turning on his car and handcuffing himself to a plastic strap in the back seat.
"I didn't have the courage to go through with it," he said. "So I took a couple of pills instead."
What now hurts the most, he says, is that his downfall has prevented him from working in the law.
"I'm cut out of that world and I'll never get back into it," he said. "And it's one thing that I know more about than almost anyone. The makeup of the judiciary. While I'm so much smarter now than I was, no one is interested in what I have to say."
Unless, of course, it's related to mental illness. He said his story has been told and retold and each time he hears it -- or retells it himself -- it takes a little bit more of his spirit.
But if even one person chooses to seek help instead of ruining his or her life, dredging up old hurts is worth it, he said.
Mental Health Weekly
June 18, 2007
As New York legislators approach an end to their current session this week, mental health and disability rights advocates are pressing hard for Gov. Eliot Spitzer to support legislation to prevent people with psychiatric disabilities from being placed in solitary confinement in New York State prisons.
Advocates said they were encouraged by the recent settlement to increase treatment and housing programs for prisoners with mental illness in New York State prisons, but said much more is needed. The settlement followed a 2002 lawsuit, Disability Advocates, Inc. v. New York State Office of Mental Health and Department of Correctional Services, filed in federal court in New York City.
The settlement in April requires that prisoners with serious illness confined in a Special Housing Unit (SHU) will receive a minimum of two hours
per day of out-of-cell treatment. It also provides improved suicide prevention assessments, which are now required upon admission to SHU.
Meanwhile, both the state Assembly and the Senate have passed legislation (S.333/A.4870) to ban the use of solitary confinement for state prisoners with psychiatric disabilities. The bills also provide for residential mental health treatment programs and rehabilitation for inmates.
Additionally, the legislation establishes oversight responsibilities of the New York State commission on quality care and advocacy for people with disabilities.
Although the legislation has passed both the state Assembly and overwhelmingly in the Senate, the legislation has been sent back for revisions to clarify language regarding the scope and cost of initiatives outlined in the legislation, said Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (NYAPRS).
“We expect the amended bills to pass,” Rosenthal told MHW. Rosenthal said he is also encouraged by the editorials by New York media on behalf of the legislation. The Times Union in its editorial called for a stop to this ‘inhumane practice,’ he said. Advocates had also planned a rally last week in New York City outside the governor’s office.
Spitzer has added about $60 million in its mental health and corrections budget, said Rosenthal. “We appreciate the steps the governor has taken so far,” Rosenthal said. “However, we still have to go one more very important mile,” to ban the ‘SHU box,’ as it otherwise referred to, he noted.
The settlement does provide some advances in the way prisoners are treated, but it is not enough, said Rosenthal. It reduces the number of hours prisoner serve in solitary confinement, from 23 hours to 21, he said. “It still doesn’t end the practice we are dedicated to end,” said Rosenthal.
If the SHU bill is passed, New York will join many other states, including California, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas in keeping people with serious mental illness out of solitary confinement.
Pressuring the Governor
“We’ve been doing everything in our power to get legislators to pass a strong bill and put pressure on the governor to sign it into law,” Glenn Liebman, chief executive of the Mental Health Association in New York State, told MHW. “We think the settlement is a good first step, but it does not address oversight or training issues,” he noted. “We wouldn’t be satisfied until SHU was completely eliminated for people with psychiatric disabilities.
According to the New York State Office of Mental Health, people with mental illness account for 12 percent of the overall state correctional facility population, said Liebman. Not all of them are in SHU, however, he noted.
“We need to take much more comprehensive approach to this issue,” said Liebman. The legislation calls for more training of correctional staff, he said. “The key component is to reform the system,” Liebman said. “We’re looking for a comprehensive response and this legislation provides that response to this issue.”
“Solitary confinement for persons with SMI is tantamount to torture,” Jeff Keller, deputy director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-New York State (NAMI-NYS), told MHW. “This is something you can’t do halfway,” he noted. “While the recent settlement allows for a lot more accountability in how people are treated, they [prisoners with mental illness] are still being tortured. We do not support torture with counseling.”
“Going forward, we support legislation than bans people with mental illness from being put in solitary confinement,” he said.
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