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64 Fed. Probation 33 (2000)
Who Lives in Super-Maximum Custody - A Washington State Study

handle is hein.journals/fedpro64 and id is 115 raw text is: December 2000 C soy A Wahngo Stt Sd David Lovell, University of Washington Kristin Cloyes, University of Washington David Allen, University of Washington Lorna Rhodes, University of Washington THE GROWTH OF super-maximum facilities in the United States can be traced to the experience of the Marion Federal Peni- tentiary in the early 1980s, when a series of assaults and murders led authorities to insti- tute a lockdown regime characterized by single-cell housing, an absence of congregate activity, confinement for 23 hours per day, restrictions on commissary and other ameni- ties, and the use of handcuffs and leg restraints when inmates are escorted to enclosed exer- cise areas, showers, or no-contact visits. These restrictions dramatically reduced the inci- dence of violence at Marion. With some lo- cal variations, they have been replicated in the new or retrofitted units that, as of 1995, had been established in 36 states. The pervasive- ness of control in such units is established not only by security protocols, which are designed to minimize opportunities for assault, but by architectural and surveillance technologies that permit constant monitoring of what in- mates are doing in their cells. It is perhaps no coincidence that the rapid growth in prison populations since the 1980s has been accompanied by proliferating super- maximum facilities within prison systems, for both trends express the logic of incapacita- tion: To make the community safer, we lock away the dangerous and predatory in a place where they cannot harm us. Ward and Carlson describe the corresponding policy in prison management as consolidation-the intentional concentration of the most aggres- sive, escape-prone, and disruptive prisoners in a single facility where the level of security and the overall regime is specifically designed to accommodate them. The authors go on to comment that the consolidation strategy can positively impact the quality and life of other prisons in the system.1 Though the logic of incapacitation is intu- itively appealing, the policy raises troubling issues. Perhaps the most salient problem from a prison management perspective is the difficulty of releasing an inmate who has been deemed dangerous back into a general popu- lation setting. If risks are avoided by transfer- ring an inmate to an IMU, they are incurred anew when he is returned: the restrictions that prevent him from harming others while in soli- tary confinement also prevent his keepers from assessing confidently what he would do when restrictions are lifted. This concern is exacer- bated by the possibility that the subject will have been embittered or debilitated by the ex- perience, and more prone to lash out once re- leased. Thus, recidivism by those returned to general population or the community, and fear of releasing others, may create rising demand for super-maximum capacity. Not all super-maximum residents may raise the tiger-by-the-tail problem, but then ques- tions arise about whether all inmates in them are there for good reason, and truly merit the degree of restriction these facilities impose. Such con- cerns are heightened by evidence that a dispro- portionate number of super-maximum custody prisoners have problems coping with prison due to mental illness, brain damage, or other factors; that needed treatment is not provided in such settings; and that vulnerable inmates are further damaged by sensory deprivation and other dis- orienting features of the environment. Finally, some studies of inmates in isolation indicate that even those who start out healthy can become withdrawn, incapable of initiating or governing behavior, suicidal, or paranoid.2 Because of these concerns, the use of super-maximum confinement has given rise to litigation and has attracted a determined group of critics.3 Because these issues hinge on differing views of the purposes of corrections and the rights of inmates, there will remain issues of interpretation and grounds for disagreement that cannot be resolved by purely empirical methods. Defenders and critics of super- maximum facilities may agree, however, that it is important to devise methods of working inmates out of isolation, reducing repeated super-maximum placements, and preventing long-term solitary confinement of those whose ability to manage themselves is limited by mental illness or brain damage. To that end, systematic studies are needed of who lives in super-maximum custody, how they got there, and what effects it has on them. To address the first of these questions- who lives in super-maximum custody-we conducted a study of all residents of Inten- sive Management Units (IMUs) in Washing- ton state prisons. We used the Department of Corrections Offender-Based Tracking Sys- tem (OBTS), the Department's electronic da- tabase for managing the classification and This work is sponsored by the University of Washington-Department of Corrections Mental Health collaboration and is supported by contract with the Department of Corrections. The authors wish to thank officials and staff at our study sites for their cooperation with this research, and to acknowledge the helpful comments of Hans Toch on earlier versions of this paper.

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