Dead Men Walking in Ohio

By Paul Kopp

Most debates about capital punishment are narrowed to a choice between an approach from either the Old Testament or the New Testament: Do we take an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek?

Last month Sister Helen Prejean, a notable advocate for the abolition of the death penalty spoke at Xavier University. Prejean is best known for her book, Dead Man Walking, which inspired the Oscar-winning film of the same name. The book was an account of her experience in Louisiana as spiritual advisor to Death Row inmate Elmo Patrick Sonnier, whom she accompanied to his execution in the electric chair in 1984.

Prejean, 70, is a Roman Catholic sister of the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. She began her work with Death Row inmates in 1981. She is now working for the Death Penalty Discourse Network in New Orleans, and travels the world meeting with prisoners and speaking out against capital punishment. She talks about her intimate experiences dealing with Death Row inmates and their families, as well as the families of murder victims, in the hope of furthering the public’s knowledge of the process of capital punishment.

“The journey that I try to help people with is first to stand with others in outrage when innocents have been ripped out of our lives by these very violent crimes,” Prejean says.

A link to slavery

Most people haven’t thought deeply about the issue because it’s something that doesn’t concern most people, she says. She also finds that, in general, once people have a more profound understanding of how the death penalty actually works, they are more perceptive to its shortcomings.

When Prejean talks about the death penalty in the United States, she is quick to note that understanding the context of the society which it came from is very important.

“You have to connect it directly with homelessness in America, people without health care,” she says. “You have to connect it with all the systemic things that are wrong, that don’t allow so many people to participate fully in American life.”

No One Could Wake Adam; No One Ever Will

By Marilyn Schirmer

Drug addiction and its devastating consequences can occur anywhere, even in the pastoral setting and safety of my country home. I’ve changed some names and omitted others to protect privacy.

The next to last time I saw Adam was on my living room floor. A team of paramedics was working over him. I watched helplessly as they repeatedly injected his heart while alternately trying to shock him back to life.

My daughter had known Adam since high school. And while their life paths often led them apart, when they reconnected, it was absolute. They were kindred spirits.

Adam had a keen sense of humor, was adorably cute, musically talented and had an unshakeable addiction to heroin. I knew of all his attributes except the last.

Suicide Donuts and TV Stereotypes

Stigma about mental illness is killing people

By C.A. MacConnell

(C.A. MacConnell is a Cincinnati freelance journalist.)

Each time I tell my story, here’s what happens: I lose friends, jobs and acquaintances. Throw dating out the window, too. After I lose a job, some others won’t want to hire me. Not because of my job performance, stability, personality or education, but because of my diagnosis alone – the two words – bipolar disorder. As if, through writing and speaking about brain disorders, I have committed a crime. Which I haven’t. My record is clean. And I am clean. I’ve been sober for almost 12 years. People have doubted that, too.

As I write this, I know that I face the possibility of overwhelming judgment. Soon. Anxiety sets in, then insomnia, then exhaustion. Not symptoms from my illness, but from the effects of stigma. I know the reality – that being open about my diagnosis and my honest experience with societal stigma will soon dramatically affect my life. It has happened in the past. And I know it could happen again.

Is 3CDC About to Strike Again?

Hotel Plan Could Force out Hundreds of Poor People

By Mark Payne

More than 200 residents of the Metropole Apartments, many of them reliant on federal housing assistance, could soon be forced out to make way for a new hotel in downtown Cincinnati’s entertainment block.

The apartment building at 609 Walnut St. has been put up for a transfer of physical assets by Showe Management.

“All that means is the building would have a new owner,” says James Cunningham, Cincinnati field office director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

But it means more than that. The building sits between the Contemporary Arts Center and Bootsy’s, Jeff Ruby’s new restaurant, making it attractive real estate for developers. The group interested in buying the building is Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC), according to Rob Goeller, civil rights outreach coordinator for the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.

Goeller says he spoke with Adam Gelter, development manager for 3CDC, who said he was leading the Metropole project. Gelter said 3CDC wants to buy the Metropole, turn it into a commercial hotel, then hand it over to a company called Model Management, according to Goeller.

Fired Up Again, Ready to Go

By Jeni Jenkins

I have to admit that in recent months I have been feeling a bit politically jaded. People are talking, and frankly the conversation is quite sour, particularly when it comes to President Barack Obama. Name calling; back-stabbing; political snowballing. Obama has been referred to as a Nazi, a socialist, and a communist czar. Among other criticism he is accused of deceiving the public with his health-care plan. This persistent negative dialogue has had me feeling disillusioned, and I’ve been losing hope.

Last weekend I attended the largest Labor Day Picnic in the country. I’d never been to a Labor Day Picnic put on by the AFL-CIO or any event organized by a labor union, so I didn’t know what to expect. But more than anything I was surprised during the days prior that more people weren’t talking about the fact that Obama was going to be speaking.

Slavery Exists in Cincinnati Today

Ignorance about human trafficking leaves victims in bondage

By Margo Pierce
Contributing Writer

Media and law enforcement can miss human trafficking when they see prostitution. Photo by Kay Chernush.

A critical stop on the Underground Railroad during the time of plantation slavery, Cincinnati boasts a storied past as a gateway to freedom for thousands of Africans held in bondage. But today Cincinnati – the home of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, an institution designed to teach the lessons from the past about slavery and other violations of individual freedom – is “relatively unprepared to deal effectively with human trafficking in the Midwest.”

This assessment comes from the center’s Greater Cincinnati Human Trafficking Report.

“Based on the findings from this report, it is evident that human trafficking is an issue that needs to be further addressed in Greater Cincinnati through public awareness and technical training for first responders, through the organization and advancement of efforts to criminalize human trafficking in Ohio and by learning from the programs that other cities and states have effectively implemented to address human trafficking,” the report says.

Volunteers interviewed 137 people from Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana between July 2007 and February 2008. Attorneys, government officials, health-care providers, interpreters, judges, law enforcement, pastors, reporters, social workers and victims’ advocates responded to a series of questions about slavery in Cincinnati, and 41 percent said they or their organizations have encountered victims of trafficking in the past five years.

“Law enforcement officers, judges, attorneys and social-service providers all acknowledge that human trafficking exists, but there is little specific law they can draw upon to stop the crime locally, and even less public knowledge of the issue,” the report says.

Cops don’t know

The report breaks down the penalties and elements of anti-trafficking laws in the Tri-State and summarizes the federal Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act (TVPA). The report then considers how only 40 percent of the professional respondents could be aware of anti-trafficking laws at the federal level and only 20 percent could identify the existence of state laws against modern day slavery, given that 91 percent said that they or their organizations have heard of human-trafficking cases.

“The survey results showed a surprising lack of awareness and knowledge of the issue of human trafficking, even among those most likely to encounter it,” the report says. “The general population in Cincinnati, therefore, is very likely to be even less aware. Although many survey respondents stated that they did not know the level of public awareness, a vast majority (77 percent) said that the general public’s knowledge of trafficking is only poor or fair. This comports with other studies that have shown that the general public lacks awareness of the issue.”

The ignorance of “first responders,” the people in professions most likely to respond to an incident involving a victim of human trafficking, underscores why, according to the U.S. government, less than 1 percent of trafficking cases are solved, compared to a 70 percent success rate in solving murder cases.

“While training on the law is important for all groups, it is particularly important for those groups most likely to encounter trafficking victims first,” the report says. “A majority of respondents (57 percent) said they believed that law enforcement is most likely to be the first to encounter trafficking victims. If law enforcement is indeed a first-responder, they must be knowledgeable and well-trained on the issue.

“Yet 48 percent of law-enforcement respondents said that local law enforcement in the Greater Cincinnati area has only a poor or fair knowledge of human trafficking. …In fact, 68 percent of law enforcement survey participants rated their own knowledge of trafficking as poor or fair.”

Despite this data, the report appears to capitulate to the social norm of not criticizing cops.

“In Cincinnati, law enforcement has a unique difficulty when it comes to fighting human trafficking due to the city’s geographic location,” the report says. “Cincinnati abuts Kentucky and Indiana, allowing traffickers to easily move across state and city borders where the laws and regulations on human trafficking differ.”

The report’s authors missed an opportunity to encourage strong leadership on this issue and build collaborative relationships that can lead to ending slavery in Ohio. The report instead gives local cops an excuse for not doing more to utilize local and federal resources.

The authors go on to wring their hands over the state of awareness in the medical community.

“The group just behind law enforcement considered to encounter trafficking first is medical professionals. … This is troubling because 77 percent of medical professionals surveyed said they had only a poor or fair knowledge of trafficking,” the report says. “Clearly, training on human trafficking is necessary for all groups surveyed and acutely necessary for potential first-responders such as law enforcement and medical professionals.”

Prosecutors get a pass

The study makes two recommendations encouraging community leaders to “support necessary training for law enforcement and medical professionals” and urges “state, city and community officials to enact comprehensive laws so that local law enforcement officials can prosecute, prevent and protect victims of human trafficking.” But the authors fail to make the strong argument necessary to back up these recommendations. A case in point is their assessment of the Ohio human-trafficking legislation enacted earlier this year.

The original legislation proposed in Ohio was based on the “model law” drafted for states to use in support of the TPVA – per the report’s recommendation – but the report fails to make the point that this would be a second attempt at passage because “the executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association (OPAA), when asked about the previously proposed anti-trafficking laws, commented that, ‘We have all the laws we need.’ The Department of Justice has reported, however, that since 2000, ‘prosecutions under the TVPA have increased six-fold.’ ”

What the report doesn’t include is the fact that the OPAA proposed the new law because it opposed the more comprehensive legislation that the report says is needed.

“Due to its recent passage, Ohio’s new anti-trafficking law has yet to be applied,” the report says. “However, its convoluted definition of human trafficking, requirement of a pattern of corrupt activity and lack of labor trafficking provisions suggest the Ohio law will be somewhat more limited than the TVPA or laws passed by other states. Just as importantly, the new law does not provide for law-enforcement training, agency reporting or services for victims.”

Glossing over the fact that the prosecutors who claim to need effective legislation are the same people who effectively killed that same legislation is a disservice to the report’s own stated goals.

The report includes a resource list, a thoughtful analysis of news reports on incidents of human trafficking that aren’t identified as modern day slavery and a rather comprehensive summary of legislation at the national and state level. The report proves what many in the field have been saying for years: People don’t know that slavery is alive and well in the United States. But this important data can’t be allowed to override the facts that this is a complicated issue that calls into question the effectiveness of the institutions supposedly designed to help the most vulnerable in our society.

Slavery – the buying, selling and owning of human beings – is a despicable act, according to our history and our laws. Unfortunately, the Freedom Center’s report lacks the fortitude required to acknowledge that humanity has failed to eradicate this practice and the sense of urgency required to change that fact. The Greater Cincinnati Human Trafficking Report is an important step forward that can be seen as a springboard for further action, or its meaning can be lost to the complacency of “better than nothing” before turning our attention elsewhere.

Knocking Down Doors

Literacy Center West helps dropouts find jobs

By Ranjit Rege

Contributing Writer

The stone walls of Literacy Center West, tucked away in Price Hill, are somewhat deceiving, looking as though they keep people out. But in fact the agency’s mission is to include people in “a community in which citizens improve their lives through education and economic opportunity.”

The agency offers individualized preparation for high-school dropouts who want to take Ohio’s General Educational Development (G.E.D.) test but also provides literacy and job-readiness training, all free of charge. Instead of large classes, Literacy Center West (LCW) uses one-on-one lessons tailored to students’ needs.

To pass a G.E.D. test, a student must score higher than 60 percent of graduating high-school seniors in five subject areas: science, mathematics, social studies, reading and writing. Most employers and colleges recognize the G.E.D. as an equivalent to a high school diploma.

Next Level, an LCW program for people ages 19 to 21 who have acquired their G.E.D. certificates, offers job-readiness training and job placement. The program has been successful in spite of the recession, according to Stephanie Dunlap, assistant director of Literacy Center West.

“There has been no downturn in hiring for our students,” she says.

But the recession has meant “a lot more people coming through,” including many “who didn’t need help in the past,” Dunlap says. Advancement opportunities have been affected by the recession, but the program’s goal is to get a student’s “foot in the door,” she says.

Dunlap says the students “teach me so much” and that the environment is “a lot of fun. We’re always laughing and joking around with each other.”

That doesn’t mean the work is endlessly upbeat, however.

“There are a lot of sad stories, some of which don’t end,” Dunlap says. “There’s only so much we can do. … We can provide a positive atmosphere for three hours a day, but then (some students) return to a negative atmosphere.”

Two recurring issues the center’s students face are homelessness and child care. Some young adults are transients – sleeping on other people’s couches – and roughly 75 percent are parents. Others face more subtle but equally powerful hindrances.

“What do you do when your own family is saying, ‘Why are you trying to be better than us?’ ” Dunlap says.

Another issue the teachers face is convincing some students that the path offered by the center is beneficial, “particularly drug offenders. There’s a lot of money to be made out there, but it’s illegal and very dangerous,” Dunlap says.

Convincing disadvantaged students to take an entry-level job to work up to a higher paying one when it seems employers are turning them away isn’t easy.

“We’re here to show them it isn’t difficult to find work – we’ll knock down the doors for them,” Dunlap says.

Nor does failing the G.E.D. test the first time mean students can’t be helped.

“The students will get worn out before we will,” Dunlap says.

She cites a Camp Washington student who didn’t pass until his fifth try.

“There isn’t really anyone LCW can’t help,” she says.” Well, they just can’t be rich.”

The center serves people who live at or below the poverty level who read at the fourth-grade reading level or above. Those below that level are referred to the Literacy Network of Greater Cincinnati.

Literacy Center West serves over 400 people a year. The agency is funded by a mix of government contracts, grants, fundraisers and private donations.

Literacy Center West is at 3015 Phillips Ave. and also offers programs at Camp Washington Community School and downtown for people on probation and under court orders to attend. For more information, call 513-244-5062.

StreetSense

Roofied: There is nothing funny about date rape

By Larry Gross
Contributing Writer

Are you enjoying the new “Dear Maija” column in CityBeat?

I don’t know if this is truly an advice column, satire or something tongue-in-cheek. In the July 1 column, a letter to Maija caught my attention. The letter was from “Rock and a Burny Place,” asking advice about living with herpes and how to get a date.

Maija did a lot of joking about STDs and thought all of them were funny, except for AIDS. I’m glad she didn’t think that was funny, because my twin brother died from it.

Toward the end of her advice, Maija had this to say: “Even if you don’t find the right guy with herpes, there’s a 50 percent chance you’ll get roofied. Either way you get laid.”

Roofied: It’s been many years since I’ve heard this word. I’m going to tell you a story that happened over 20 years ago. Names, places and some facts have been changed to protect innocent people.

This was back in my accounting-manager days for a Cincinnati manufacturing firm. One of those I was supervising was the receptionist, who had given her two-week notice. I asked the people in human resources to put an ad in the paper for the position, but it turned out someone inside the company who was interested.

Ellen was looking to leave the inventory department. When I interviewed her for the job, she said she liked greeting people and answering the phone and no longer wanted to deal with numbers, which was a big part of her job in working with her boss, Don. She came across friendly and likeable and I needed a receptionist. I hired her.

A couple weeks after Ellen started the job, a female friend of mine, a co-worker, came into my office and closed the door. She told me a rumor she’d heard about Ellen. My friend talked to Ellen about it and confirmed it to be true.

On a date with her then-boss Don, Ellen had gone to his place and had drinks. Don apparently put something in her drink – a sedative, a date-rape drug. After Don roofied Ellen and took her clothes off, he took advantage of her. Then, with a Polaroid camera, he took photos of her naked body.

These photos, four in total, were copied then distributed to the men working in the inventory department.

My female co-worker, telling me this nightmarish story, was outraged. She wanted me, as Ellen’s new boss, to do something about it.

A day later, in a closed-door discussion, Ellen, in tears, said it was true. This was the real reason she wanted to leave the inventory job. She had been humiliated and embarrassed.

I went to human resources with this story, but they could do nothing without proof. I went to Don, the cockroach in the inventory department. He denied everything. I went to the three guys who worked for him. They didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want to get in trouble or fired by Don.

The only thing I knew to do was play on their decency and professionalism. I also wasn’t above making them feel guilty for their silence about such a repulsive act. Ellen was going through a divorce. She had two small children she was trying to raise by herself. How could they look at nude photos of a young mother and think it’s funny? How could they not see how wrong this was?

Finally, after five weeks of badgering, one of the guys folded. We went to the human resources department. Don’s employee had copies of those Polaroid photos. Within one hour, the inventory manager was fired and escorted out of the building.

Ellen could have prosecuted Don, but because of her children, didn’t want to press charges and have her name in the papers. She wanted to move on. Others at the company wouldn’t let that happen.

Like Maija’s column, some treated this as a joke. Others thought of Ellen as “loose” or someone to look down on. One idiot told me she thought Ellen had wanted it to happen.

Finally, in an effort to put it behind her, Ellen left the company and the city. Looking for a new beginning, she and her kids packed up everything and moved to Virginia.

That’s where they still are. We talk a few times a year. Ellen and her family are doing fine. She lived through her nightmare – and that’s exactly what it was. That’s why the “flip” approach in Maija’s CityBeat column about being roofied leaves me a bit cold.

I’m not trying to rip apart my colleague, Maija You see, I write for CityBeat, too. It’s her column, and she can write whatever she wants. She’s young. I’m not. Maybe I’m being uptight on this subject, but I can’t forget.

Being roofied happened to someone I know. 20 years ago. This almost destroyed a friend’s life. I still can’t bring myself to think this is funny.

Trapped: Solitary Confinement

Instead of treatment, it’s torture

By Eli Braun
Contributing Writer

During his 70 days of solitary confinement at Toledo Correctional Institution, Sean Swain spent 23 hours a day locked in his cell. He spent the 24th hour, his only opportunity for social interaction and “recreation,” being strip-searched, including a “visual body-cavity search.”

By comparison, inmates in “general population” spend 11 hours a day locked in their cells.

Solitary confinement cripples prisoners’ capacity for social interaction and can exacerbate or even cause mental-health crises. The rise of solitary-confinement units at U.S. prisons indicates a disturbing trend, especially for prisoners suffering from mental illness or drug abuse. Studies find that solitary confinement is not just ineffective at promoting good behavior, but is a full-fledged form of torture, breaking down the healthy and further enfeebling the ill.

Since 1991, Swain, now 49, has been sent to solitary confinement “seven or eight times,” including a 144-day stint from May to October 2003. Most recently, he violated rules by “encourage(ing) prisoners to partake in a 30-day work stoppage,” according to the official conduct report.

During his 70 days in isolation, Swain didn’t know when he would be returned to general population. He remains in prison.

‘Captive’ by Todd (Hyung-Rae) Tarselli. Photo courtesy of American Journal of Public Health.

“Cage without a curtain”

Swain details the conditions in solitary confinement, also known as “segregation.”

“The tube lighting in segregation cells is never shut off,” Swain says. “Insects were breeding in the mops, which had not been exchanged for months. Those same insect-infested mops were provided to us for cell-cleaning.”

As he cleaned, insects would swarm around the cell’s lighting fixture. Prisoners in solitary confinement had access to showers and recreation only Monday to Friday. Weekends were spent entirely locked in, though Swain believes that policy might have changed. At times he lacked soap and toothpaste. In his final week in segregation, as solitary confinement is known, the cellblock ran out of toilet paper, he says.

Reports from Ohio’s Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC) and correspondence with other prisoners confirm unsanitary conditions at some prisons. The CIIC is authorized by the Ohio Legislature to regularly inspect prisons and provide oversight.

For showers, “I was issued a single state towel upon entering segregation” and never had the opportunity “to exchange it for clean,” Swain says. But he considered himself fortunate to have been issued a towel at all, as some inmates in segregation never got one.

“Or maybe I wasn’t so lucky, since I ended up with bacteria and fungus on my feet,” he says.

Prisoners who didn’t receive towels instead used bed sheets.

The shower stall was “a cage without a curtain,” Swain says. Even though prisoners tried to arrange their clothing across the shower bars for privacy, prisoners were subject to public view. Some mentally disturbed prisoners, informally labeled “serial jackers,” would watch through the bars of their cells “as if enjoying a personal peep-show.”

The water would last approximately five to 10 minutes, then stop without warning for 10 minutes.

“If someone has soap on his face or in her eyes, he must stand naked and wet for 10 minutes. … In some of the showers, hitting the button before the 10-minute waiting duration resets the timer and causes the 10-minute duration to start over,” Swain says.

Isolation cells might no longer be strictly isolated. Due to overcrowding, some prisons now double-bunk their segregation cells. Some prisoners spend 23 hours a day locked in with another person, in a cell designed for single occupancy.

System-wide, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections operates at 134 percent of capacity, with 11 of the 32 institutions operating above 150 percent capacity. According to one CIIC report, “One had to stand sideways to walk through the rows of bunk beds.” Overcrowding might also result in long waits “for those in segregation who are being transferred to other prisons, all due to the need to wait for an open bed,” the CIIC reported.

The result, it appears, is extended periods of isolation. Swain attributes the length of his 144-day-term in isolation in 2003 not to the severity of his infraction but to the wait for an open bed.

‘The hole’ by any other name

Although he spent 23 hours a day alone in his cell, in another sense, Swain wasn’t alone.

Some 25,000 U.S. prisoners reside in solitary confinement at “supermax prisons.” An additional 50,000 to 80,000 prisoners reside in restrictive and isolated “segregation” or “special housing” units at non-supermax prisons, according to a recent New Yorker article.

In Ohio at mid-year 2007, 1,869 men and 90 women lived in isolation, whether through formal segregation or security levels 4 or 5, according to the American Correctional Association. It’s not known how many prisoners reside in solitary confinement at some point during their stay.

Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville and Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown can hold prisoners in lockdown for years at a time, including for their entire sentences.

Prison administrators and correctional officers refer to the various forms of these 23-hour-a-day cells as “administrative segregation.” Prisoners prefer a less euphemistic name: “the hole” or “the box.” Besides those names, there are several bureaucratic others. After an alleged infraction, an inmate might first be placed in “security control” for one to 15 days while an investigation unfolds. If deemed guilty, the inmate might spend an additional one to 15 days in “disciplinary control,” which can be extended to 30 days for subsequent infractions. An inmate can be referred to “local control” for up to six months if his presence in general population is a security threat or if he’s “failed to adjust to population.”

“Those criteria are “broad and subject to wide interpretation,” says Shirley Pope, executive director of the CIIC. If an inmate’s own security is threatened, he can be kept in solitary confinement in local control even though he might not be the cause of the potential disturbance.

After “local control,” an inmate can be transferred to 4B, a long-term lockdown where some people spend years in extreme isolation. These lockdown units aren’t technically considered “segregation,” as prisoners in 4B aren’t being punished for particular infractions. But it’s “segregation under a different name, the same conditions, the same lockdown,” Pope says.

Unlike segregation units, 4B units don’t have regular mental-health rounds. Pope is concerned that mentally ill prisoners in 4B aren’t properly cared for. The CIIC recently identified 218 mentally ill prisoners in 4B at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, “in spite of the known mental-health deterioration stemming from long-term isolation.”

A solitary confinement cell in Alcatraz Prison. Photo by Laura Padgett.

‘Psychological warfare’

“It is widely accepted among mental-health professionals that long-term isolation of the mentally ill results in deterioration, not recovery,” the CIIC noted in a 2008 report.

Nevertheless, the mentally ill seem propelled toward solitary confinement.

Swain says he was surrounded by people “who attempted suicide, some multiple times; who threw feces and food; who engaged in rattling their doors and pounding; who yelled from cell to cell or screamed incoherently at all hours.”

Prisoners suffered sleep deprivation from the constant noise.

Many suicide attempts happen in segregation units. Inmates attempt to hang themselves with sheets, overdose with stockpiled medications or cut themselves with blades from safety razors.

Cruelly, segregation disproportionately houses those prisoners least able to endure the psychological impact of isolation. Advocates point out that the mentally ill rarely belong in prison in the first place, much less in solitary confinement.

The mentally ill might be targeted under the “failure to adjust” criterion and then sent to punitive solitary units for behavioral problems related to their illness. Mentally ill state prisoners are nearly twice as likely to physically or verbally assault staff or other prisoners, according to a 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The solution is not to stiffen penalties. For mentally ill “feces throwers” at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, the CIIC reported that “prosecution for harassment does little if anything in deterrence.” Instead, state prisons should improve mental-health services. The bipartisan Council of State Governments found that inadequacies in mental-health services “can lead to inmate-on-staff assaults, inmate-on-inmate assaults and other use-of-force incidents.”

Meanwhile, for the mentally ill in solitary confinement, their health deteriorates, their behavior worsens and their security level rises. They might be transferred to higher-security institutions.

“If they had a mental health advocate, that wouldn’t happen,” Pope says. “They require therapeutic interventions before they’re “bumped up in security status and end up at Lucasville.”

In a sense, the mentally ill are trapped.

“Their behavior is destined to deteriorate under those conditions,” Pope says. “Then their poor behavior is used to justify why they should be there.”

Unsurprisingly, many drug offenders continue to abuse substances during their incarceration. They can be sent to segregation after they’re caught with illegal substances. But solitary confinement does nothing to mitigate or heal their addiction. A report by Human Rights Watch held that New York State was inflicting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by isolating drug offenders while also denying them treatment during lock-up.

“I’ve had 15, 16 drug tickets, no assaults or anything like that,” said Peter G., a prisoner quoted in the report. “I’ve never been in a treatment program. Now I’m in the box till 2012. I’m a drug addict. If you know I’m a drug addict, why are you putting me in a box?”

Ohio offers some substance-abuse treatment to those in isolation, with programs varying by institution, according to CIIC.

Advocates question the segregation of drug offenders in the first place. To the extent their infraction stems from an underlying addiction, they should be treated instead of punished.

Some administrators, say solitary confinement reduces violence and helps maintain order. But the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons found the very opposite.

“The increasing use of high-security segregation is counter-productive, often causing violence inside facilities and contributing to recidivism after release,” the commission said.

The commission called for ending long-term isolation in U.S. prisons. It determined that after 10 days, solitary confinement was seriously detrimental to prisoners’ well-being.

Some administrators maintain that they have no alternative to locking dangerous prisoners in solitary units. But correctional policies in other nations undermine that claim. The British provide their most dangerous prisoners with opportunities for work, education and programming intended to increase social skills, according to The New Yorker.

“The use of isolation not only escalates the inmate’s sense of alienation, but also further serves to remove the individual from proper staff supervision,” the CIIC found.

Experts and observers agree that long-term isolation undermines safety. It drives even the healthy insane. In Ohio’s prison, it’s past time to end this practice and choose therapy over torture.

Homeless Families Finish First

New report shows startling trend in growth of homelessness

By Jeremy Flannery
Contributing Writer

Families are the rising demographic falling into homelessness in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The agency’s 2008 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress, released in July, says that between 2007 and 2008 “the number of homeless individuals was fairly stable,” with a decrease of about 7,500, “while homelessness among persons in families increased by about 43,000, or 9 percent.”

HUD defines families as consisting of at least one parent 18 years or older and one child under 18. Women under 30 years of age without male partners and with a child 5 years or younger make up the majority of homeless families, the report says.

The assessment acknowledges that its reporting period ended “just as the economic recession was accelerating,” so estimates of the number of homeless families might be more dismal today.

Georgine Getty, the executive director of the Interfaith Hospitality Network, which assists homeless families, says the recession has created more first-time homeless people.

“We are starting to notice more and more first-time homeless people because of the economy and people losing their jobs and having to foreclose on their homes,” she says. “I spoke to one guy, and he said at first his hours were cut and then he was laid off, and so he lost his home. We are experiencing greater lengths of stays in shelters because no one is able to find work because of the economy.”

The Interfaith Hospitality Network assists about 110 homeless families per year, and two-thirds of the people assisted by the organization are children, Getty says.

HUD’s homelessness assessment says 1.6 million people nationwide, or 1 out of 190 people, used homeless shelters or transitional housing programs between October 2007 and September, 2008. Twenty percent of them were children, the report says.

While suburban and rural areas are facing dramatic increases in homelessness among individuals and families, homelessness continues to disproportionately impact metropolitan areas. One out of five homeless persons in the United States were in Los Angeles, New York City or Detroit during the point-in-time count on Jan. 1, 2008. The report shows that homelessness is concentrated in major cities such as Las Vegas, where 91 percent of Nevada’s homeless population live; Phoenix, with 60 percent of Arizona’s homeless population; and Philadelphia, with 50 percent of Pennsylvania’s homeless population.

The most common demographic of sheltered homeless people are individual male members of racial minorities older than 31 years, and two-fifths of them suffer from a disability, the report says. About 124,135 homeless persons were chronically homeless, or homeless for at least one year, according to the report’s January 2008 point-in-time estimate. The number remained relatively unchanged from the 2007 estimate, the report says.

The 2008 assessment says more homeless individuals now are people with relatively high needs. The number of people entering homeless shelters in 2008 increasingly came from prisons or hospitals or reported suffering disabilities, the report says. Such people are either physically restricted from the type of labor they can perform or denied employment due to their criminal records. Also, about 13 percent of the sheltered homeless during the 2008 count were U.S. military veterans, and their numbers are expected to increase during the 2009 count, the report says.

HUD is adding new counts to assess chronic homelessness among former prisoners and the disabled, along with the Iraq War and Afghanistan War veterans returning without a home. The 2009 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report will also measure the success of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which allocated $1.5 billion for a Homelessness Prevention Fund.