Troy Anderson lawsuit: Supermax conditions draw criticism from judge

By Alan Prendergast Mon., May 7 2012 Denver Westword

Anderson.

After nearly five days of testimony in a lawsuit brought by Troy Anderson, a prisoner who's been in solitary confinement for twelve years, a Denver federal judge was strongly urging Colorado Department of Corrections officials to fix the harshest conditions at the state's supermax prison -- before he has to do it for them. "It shouldn't take a federal judge to write an opinion and embarrass the department in the public eye to get this accomplished," U.S. District Brooke Jackson said. Jackson's remarks, suggesting that there might have to be some drastic changes in the way the Colorado State Penitentiary operates, came midway through testimony in the case brought by Anderson, a state inmate serving what amounts to a life sentence for charges from two shootouts with police in the late 1990s. Anderson, who's been diagnosed with mental illnesses ranging from ADHD to "intermittent explosive disorder," has been confined at CSP since 2000 -- deprived of direct sunlight or outdoor recreation, books (he's allowed two a year), and, he claims, the medications that might actually help him control his behavior, reduce his sentence and get him placed back int the general prison population.

His lawsuit, filed with the aid of student lawyers from the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law, contends that the state prison policies that keep him locked down 23 hours a day and and denied mental health treatment are unconstitutional.

Nicknamed "Evil," Anderson has a long history of erratic behavior, suicide attempts and violence going back to an early age, a voluminous psychiatric record explored in my 2006 feature "Head Games." He's one of ten state inmates who have been kept at the supermax for more than a decade. Prison officials maintain that's because he poses a threat to himself and other inmates as well as staff.
On Friday, former CSP warden Susan Jones, who reviewed Anderson's placement last year, testified that "he told me he can't control his anger. He was real clear that he had a lawsuit filed and that unless he was properly medicated, he shouldn't be moved.... I was really concerned about his ability to go out of CSP and hurt somebody."

But Anderson's attorneys contend that the supermax fails to provide adequate treatment for mentally ill inmates -- who, deprived of medication, exercise and socialization, deteriorate in solitary confinement. Inmates can also receive negative write-ups, or "chrons," from guards that help keep them in segregation, even though they have no opportunity to contest the information. Under direct questioning from Jackson, Jones conceded that the situation needed some "fixing."

Jackson also heard testimony, delivered remotely by video, from other supermax prisoners. David Bueno complained of unhealthy conditions in the closet-like exercise room, equipped with a pull-up bar, that substitutes for outdoor recreation; he described the effort of turning his body around, trying to get "fresh air" from a grate that allows air from outside the prison to enter the exercise room, as similar to that of a chicken turning on a spit.

Inmate Carlos Mondragon said the last time he'd breathed real fresh air was in 2004, when a transport team briefly let him enjoy the snow outside CSP. "It felt real good [to play in the snow]," Mondragon testified, "even though I was all chained up and the escort officers were laughing at me." He's since had frequent suicidal thoughts, he added: "I go to bed crying sometimes because I feel I have no hope of being outside of that cell any more."

Former CSP warden Jones disputed Bueno's claims about "filthy" floors at CSP. Jackson lamented that he couldn't conduct a surprise inspection of the prison himself.

Breaking into an unusual colloquy with Jones when she was on the stand, Jackson said he was troubled by the lack of meaningful administrative review and the absence of due process in the use of negative "chrons" to keep inmates in solitary for years. "It doesn't seem fair to me," he declared. And some of the other conditions described by inmates, if true, were clearly "inhumane" in his view.
"I understand the difficulties of running a prison," the judge said. "Some of your customers at CSP, I put them there. How do we get this fixed?"

The trial is expected to conclude early next week. Jackson's ruling on the constitutional issues raised by Anderson isn't anticipated for several weeks.

More from our Prison Life archive: "Jeffrey Wells, parole officer, accused of forgery to keep arrestees in jail longer."

After Years in Solitary, a Mentally Ill Prisoner’s Day in Court

Testing a new legal strategy, Troy Anderson's lawyers will argue that his isolation violates federal disability law.

—By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

  Mon Apr. 30, 2012 Mother Jones

 

Colorado Department of Corrections

Troy Anderson lives in Cañon City, a high-desert town in a dramatic setting at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. But for more than a decade he has neither seen those mountains nor felt the sun on his skin. He spends 23 hours out of each day confined to an 8-by-12 isolation cell at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP)—one of the state's supermax prisons—and the remaining hour in a bare exercise room. Well over half of his 42 years have been spent behind bars, most of them in what prison authorities euphemistically call "administrative segregation." In practice, this means Anderson will remain in solitary confinement until prison officials feel it's time to let him out.

Anderson has been in and out of jail since he was a juvenile on account of his erratic and sometimes violent behavior. In 2000, he was sentenced to 75 years for myriad charges stemming from two incidents in which he shot at police, the second time in an attempt to escape custody. Offenses committed in prison have landed him in "ad seg" at CSP. (His last disciplinary infraction was in 2005, when he was written up for somehow managing to get envelopes to another prisoner.)

But there's more to the story. Anderson, like hundreds of other prisoners confined in isolation in Colorado—and thousands held in solitary across the nation—is seriously mentally ill. His diagnoses include bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, cognitive disorders, and a seizure disorder. He has attempted suicide many times, starting at age 10. He is seen periodically by prison psychiatrists, all of whom seem to concur that he needs therapy and medication. At CSP, however, his treatment has consisted of a fiasco of intermittent and inappropriate meds and scant therapy, typically conducted through a slot in his solid steel cell door.

Yet unlike most of those other prisoners languishing in solitary, Anderson is about to get his day in federal court. Beginning today, in a trial that could have broad implications for how states handle inmates with mental illness, Anderson's lawyers will argue before the District Court in Denver that their client's predicament violates his civil rights, under both the Constitution and federal law.

The popular notion is that the people who end up in solitary "are the most ruthless,"  notes one expert.  In fact, "they are very often the wretched."

It was his untreated mental illness that first landed him at CSP, Anderson contends, and now the same symptoms are keeping him there indefinitely. Without proper treatment, he is unable to convince corrections officials that he's fit for the general prison population. This catch-22, his lawyers say, condemns him to an effective life sentence under conditions that are increasingly being denounced as a form of torture—particularly when applied to mentally ill prisoners.

In recent decades, jails and prisons, their solitary confinement units in particular, have become de facto asylums. According to a 2003 report from Human Rights Watch based on available state data, one-third to one-half of prisoners then held in isolation exhibited some form of mental illness. In 2005, by Colorado's calculations, the figure in that state was 37 percent, up from 15 percent five years earlier. This sharp increase, according to a state report, followed "a dramatic decline in mental health providers and rehab programs that were casualties of budget cuts."

"There is a notion in the popular mind that the people who end up in solitary confinement are the most ruthless kind of James Cagneys of the prison system," observes Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist and expert on the mental health effects of isolation. " In fact, what you often see there is exactly the antithesis: They are very often the wretched of the earth, people who are mentally ill, illiterate, and cognitively impaired, people with neurological difficulties, people who just really can't manage to contain their behavior at times."

Since solitary confinement is likely to make their conditions worse, Grassian explains, inmates with mental illness "get into these vicious cycles where they continue to commit this disruptive behavior and they continue to go deeper and deeper into the belly of the prison system and get sicker and sicker."

Anderson's trial stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law. Under the leadership of attorney Laura Rovner, the clinic has established a reputation for challenging the use of long-term isolation. In addition to representing Anderson, it has mounted two suits against ADX Florence, the federal supermax outside Cañon City—one involving the notorious murderer of a prison guard; the other, four convicted terrorists. "Laura and her students are on the front lines," says David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. "They take on the toughest cases with the most unpopular clients."

Practices initially justified for only the worst offenders have a way of "creeping into everyday prison practice," says David Fathi of the National Prison Project.

Fathi adds, "Oppressive conditions and practices that are initially justified as just for [the worst offenders] have a way of becoming normalized and creeping into everyday prison practice."
That is certainly the case with solitary. An estimated 80,000 inmates are currently locked up in some form of isolated confinement in state and federal prisons. Until recently, Colorado had 2,100 inmates, nearly 10 percent of its total prisoners, held in isolation—far surpassing the national average of between 2 and 4 percent. Indeed, the Cañon City area, which hosts 11 state and federal prisons (including three supermax facilities), may well qualify as the solitary confinement capital of the Western world.

Thus far, the courts have beaten back the Civil Rights Clinic's twin lawsuits against ADX Florence. But Anderson's case tests a new approach. In addition to the usual constitutional claims—violations of due process and of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment—his lawyers are claiming violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. By failing to treat his illness and then effectively punishing him for it, they argue, the Department of Corrections (DOC) is discriminating against Anderson based on his disability.

There is "not much precedent to predict how the court will decide," says DU visiting professor Brittany Glidden, who leads a team of law students on the case. But so far, the suit has survived the state's efforts to have it dismissed.

The trial comes at a time when solitary is coming under fresh scrutiny in Colorado, thanks in part to years of effort by grassroots criminal-justice reformers. Early in 2011, Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to restrict the use of administrative segregation, especially for prisoners with mental illness. The bill was drastically scaled back, but it did end up requiring the DOC to commission an annual independent review of the classification of its isolated prisoners.

The resulting report, released last October, concluded that far too many prisoners were on round-the-clock lockdown. Relatively modest changes in classification, review, and mental-health policies, it said, would "significantly reduce" their numbers. Colorado inmates are sent to CSP not only for violence or escape attempts, but for "compromising" or "intimidating" staff, possessing contraband ranging from weapons to cigarettes, refusing a work assignment, "advocating facility disruption," or posing a "serious management problem"—all on the say-so of prison officials. Their terms last an average of two years, but some stretch to a decade or more.

Price of keeping a prisoner in solitary: $14,000 to $21,000 extra per year, says the ACLU of Colorado.

The state's heavy reliance on solitary is a management issue that has little, if anything, to do with improving behavior or reducing prison violence or recidivism, since studies have generally shown that the opposite is true. It is also expensive (another reason broke states are giving it a second look): The ACLU of Colorado calculates that it costs $14,000 to $21,000 extra per year to keep a single prisoner in ad seg. Prompted by the state report, Colorado corrections officials announced in January that they had reviewed the cases of 870 supermax prisoners and reclassified 321, allowing them to rejoin the general population. While the reclassifications accounted for only about 15 percent of those being held in ad seg or "punitive segregation," reformers hailed it as a significant step.

The real surprise, however, came last month, when the DOC announced it would close Colorado's second state supermax, CSP II, which just opened in 2010. Gov. John Hickenlooper cited a declining prison population as the reason for shuttering the costly facility championed by his predecessor, Bill Ritter. The ACLU of Colorado hailed the news as "earth-shaking."

None of these reforms, however, affect Troy Anderson. In fact, his case may highlight weaknesses in the efforts of a handful of reform-minded states, which aim to decrease "overuse" of solitary without conceding its fundamental inhumanity. For Anderson, and others like him, the current trial represents the last, best hope for relief from a life of near-total isolation.

The suit, in fact, does not demand that Anderson be instantly sprung from solitary. Rather, it focuses on changes that would make his confinement less torturous and enable him to "earn" his way back into less restrictive conditions—time out of his cell, fresh air, sunlight, and meaningful treatment for his psychiatric disability. "I like the idea of systemic changes, but it's really about Troy," says Matthew Court, one of the law students who has been involved in the case. "We are doing everything we can to get him the treatment he needs, so that he has a fair shot." 

Request for information on cases/complaints

To: marschall.smith@dora.state.co.us
From: kthimmes@aol.com
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2011

Ref: 2012-001413 B
Perotti v. Pa. Brod. Cink PA2568
Perotti v. R. Gupta and M. Andreis

Dear Sir,
I am making the following inquiry on behalf of John W. Perotti, inmate #39656-060 at
USP Florence:

1) What are the case numbers for the complaints Perotti filed against
a) Dr. R. Gupta, physician, USP Florence
b) RN M. Andreis, nurse at USP Florence
c) Nurse's Aide M. Scamardo, HIT office at USP Florence?
These complaints were filed with the Colorado Medical Board over 30 days ago. No
notification of receipt nor case number has been been issued to Perotti.

2) What is the present status of Perotti v. P.A. Brad Cink, Case no 2012-001413 B?
Why hasn't Perotti received a copy of the medical license of Mr. Cink (lic no. PA
2568), nor any disciplinary recommendations or reports per Public Records Act on Dr.
Gupta, nurse Andreis or M. Scarmado?

3) Can any physician work on federal land for the BOP and NOT be subject to
Colorado Medical Board Rules, law or statute? Does this mean that ANYONE can
practice medicine on federal land and NOT be subject to Colorado law?

Kindly see that Mr. Perotti receives the responses to which he is entitled, and
please send me an email reply so I am apprised as well.
Thank you.

Karen G. Thimmes
Columbus, Ohio

New Study: Solitary Confinement Overused in Colorado

November 18, 2011 Solitary Watch

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

A new report on solitary confinement in Colorado’s state prisons concluded that there are far too many inmates in round-the-clock lockdown. A series of relatively modest changes in its classification, review, and mental health treatment practices would “significantly reduce” the number of prisoners in administrative segregation, the report found. The report was funded by the National Institute of Corrections, and its authors, James Austin and Emmitt Sparkman, were involved in the dramatic reduction of solitary confinement in Mississippi’s prisons.

Alan Prendergast, who has spent more than a decade reporting on Colorado prisons for Denver’s weekly Westword, reviewed the report and provided the following summary:

A study by researchers at the National Institute of Corrections has found that Colorado’s approach to locking down its most unruly prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation is “basically sound” — but could be used a lot less. Instead, even as the state’s prison population is declining slightly, the use of “administrative segregation,” or solitary confinement, continues to increase.

The Colorado Department of Corrections houses close to 1,500 prisoners in “ad-seg,” about 7 percent of the entire state prison population. That’s significantly above the national average of 2 percent or less — and if you factor in the additional 670 prisoners who are in “punitive segregation” as a result of disciplinary actions, the CDOC figure is closer to 10 percent. And four out of ten of the prisoners in solitary have a diagnosed mental illness, roughly double the proportion in 1999. The state’s heavy reliance on ad-seg, including building a second supermax prison to house the overload, has put Colorado in the center of a growing national controversy over whether isolating prisoners creates more problems in the long run.

NIC researchers James Austin and Emmitt Sparkman were invited by DOC to prepare an external review of its ad-seg policies and classification system. Among other points, the pair found that the decision to send prisoners to lockdown has little review by headquarters; that “there is considerable confusion in the operational memorandums and regulations on how the administrative segregation units are to function;” that the average length of stay in isolation is about two years; and that 40 percent of the ad-seg prisoners are released directly to the community from lockdown, with no time spent in general population first.

Austin and Sparkman urge the DOC to require a mental health review before a prisoner is placed in ad-seg and to simplify the programs and phases inmates are required to complete before returning to a less restrictive prison. Even modest administrative changes would “significantly reduce” the state’s lockdown population, they claim, freeing up cells for other uses and saving the state money, since supermax prisons are more costly to operate than lower-security facilities.

For more on solitary confinement in Colorado, read our article Fortresses of Solitude.

Voices from Solitary: Colorado Department of Corrections in Need of Correction

April 30, 2011 Solitary Watch

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

For seven years, Clair L. Beazer has been an inmate in the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City–which, as we’ve written before, qualifies as the solitary confinement capital of the Western World. In this essay, Beazer describes the effects of years of solitary confinement, pointing out that while it is particularly torturous for inmates already suffering from mental illness, this “interminable, indefinite” isolation also causes lasting psychological and physical damage to all prisoners who endure it.

Beazer notes that “at long last,” some hope is offered by the bill introduced in the Colorado state legislature to limit the use of solitary confinement. In an instance of grim irony, we received his essay, written last month, just a day before lawmakers chose to back away from most meaningful portions of the bill.

In most instances the law is a simple matter of doing what you should rather than what you want. One consequence of continuing to do what you want regardless is that a conscientious legislator someplace may find it necessary to propose a law to compel you to do what you should do.

Just such a circumstance has come about in the state of Colorado’s Department of Corrections (C.D.O.C.), of whom some are known to say the reason they’re called the “Department of Corrections” is because they’re always getting it wrong.

The C.D.O.C’s execrable practice of warehousing the mentally ill in lockdown 24/7 is unconscionable. To sentence men without due process to a solitary existence in a lonely cell with only the company of their psychoses and personal demons for interminable, indefinite periods, some lasting decades would and does appear on the surface alone indefensible. To further exacerbate their evil usage by holding them thus until their mandatory release date only serves to discharge infinitely more dangerous parolees into the public.

Enduring this type of incarceration has many debilitating effects, the most common being depression with accompanying apathy and lethargy. The minimal activity and lack of meaningful exercise can atrophy their legs and some can barely walk after years of inactivity, and you can bet that there is little market for ex-cons who can’t even walk a quarter mile after release.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, motivated, active, angry inmates that compulsively work out 2, 4, 8 hours a day in the fashion of the hardened vengeful convict portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the movie “Cape Fear.” For months, then years, then decades, driven by their isolation, not even allowed IN PRISON to walk out of a cell without a two or three-man escort. In restrains, handcuffs, shackles, bellychains, lock-boxes. Surrounded by thick concrete walls, high fences, barbed wire, razor wire, armed tower and perimeter guards, electrified kill fences.

Ominously and inevitably their long-awaited day arrives, and when it does the C.D.O.C. dutifully, imprisoned in full restraints, escorts them to the prison gates, where and when they unleash them upon the public. Not surprisingly, their recidivism rate is exponentially and in some cases horrifyingly higher, as is their toll on society…you know, the public the C.D.O.C. ostensibly exists to defend.

The public may want to consider if perhaps the Prison Industrial Complex (of which the C.D.O.C. is definitely a part with its Incarceration Capitol of the World designation and proud title) finds it more profitable to release their home-made monsters. After all, we all know that high-profile horrific crimes can and often do drive news cycles, and have for years. Surely after all these years of high-profile horrific crimes that lead the news cycles somebody, anybody, everybody must have noticed that they drive incarceration rates.

Even so, no one is surprised that the C.D.O.C. has come out in fierce opposition to the Senate Bill 176 (introduced by Sen. Morgan Carroll, if passed the C.D.O.C would need to limit the solitary confinement of mentally ill prisoners –Denver Post, March 14, 2011) , as they claim it is because they say there is no indication officials are abusing the use of solitary confinement. Please allow me, from my true insider perspective, to disabuse you of that notion because for those of us actually in solitary confinement, we say they are abusing the over-use of solitary confinement.

They also make the preposterous claim that the average stay is 18 months. Let me tell you that those numbers are about as an off the books as C.D.O. (Collateralized Debt Obligation) at AIG. I personally have been in Ad Seg for 7 years. Let me to a survey, to my immediate right 7 years, to my left 8 years, next to him 4 years and under me 10 years. In my 7 years, I’ve only witnessed 2 men get of Ad Seg. 2!

The C.D.O.C. is in need of correction and the honorable Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire Levy are the conscientious lawmakers trying to write another C.D.O.C. with Senate Bill 176, which is a start, a good start, at least, at long last.

I (we) don’t have much hope up here in the shameless incarceration capital of the world, and maybe, just maybe these venerable legislators can compel the C.D.O.C to stop doing what it wants and force it to begin doing what it should.

You can read an earlier essay by Clair Beazer here, and write to him at the following address: Mr. Clair L. Beazer, CSP #49801, C.C.F., Box Number 600, Canon City, CO 81215-0600.