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Experience is the answer

Addict, convict, lawyer.  Those three words define who I have been, in that order.

My addiction began with cigarettes at the age of 7 and ended with shooting cocaine and morphine at the age of 20. In between, I abused cough medicine, gasoline, chemicals, pills and marijuana.  And,  of course, alcohol. Lots of alcohol, including what we called electrified wine. By the end of my drug run the veins in my arms and feet had collapsed. I was a world-class junkie, and had hepatitis from a dirty needle to prove it.

My first documented encounter with the police was at the age of 7. Malicious destruction of property is how it is listed in my juvenile record. It took the police 5 more years before I was rearrested. I was 12 years old. My police run-ins continued until I went to prison, St. Cloud Reformatory for Men.  Before finishing out at St. Cloud, I had passed through Woodview Detention Home numerous times, Boys Totem Town twice, Lino Lakes Diagnostic and Reception Center, Red Wing State Training School for Boys and the St. Paul City Jail. By the time I went to St. Cloud to serve 5 years for burglary of a nightclub, it felt like old-home week. Of the five cell halls at St. Cloud, there wasn’t a cell hall in which I didn’t know a few inmates, including the segregation and isolation units. And it wasn’t long before I was able to track down some shoot-dope and an outfit. But it was in a prison cell-a taste of cold steel- where I finally found redemption, and the ability to conquer the demons that had nearly consumed and destroyed me.

During the past 35 years I have been a criminal defense attorney. However, before I became a member of the bar, I obtained an undergraduate degree in political science  and a law degree. I processed an application for, and obtained, a pardon.  I also completed group therapy and became a counselor and then group leader at Project Newgate.

My approach to addressing clients’ problems, whether as a counselor, group leader or attorney, has been to draw on personal experiences and insight earned the hard way, not from a book. This is also reflected in the posts on my blog.

Simply put, experience is the answer.

 

Teenagers in Criminal Justice System’s Solitary Confinement not a Secret, Dark or Otherwise

Brian Williams of NBC’s Rock Center featured a disturbing “expose’ ” on Friday, Mar. 22, 2013,  regarding teenagers being isolated from adult inmates while in custody by placing them in solitary confinement.  This occurs when a juvenile is certified to stand trial as an adult. If the juvenile is unable to post bond,  (s)he remains in custody.  As such, (s)he must be kept from adult inmates. Consequently, solitary confinement.

The problem  juveniles pose in pretrial detention is not new. It is endemic when you mix juvenile and adult inmates. This  “problem”  is becoming more prevalent due to the proliferation of certifying juveniles to stand trial as adults. But isolating juveniles, even in juvenile institutions, has been commonplace for those who work in these facilities or had the misfortune of doing time as an inmate.

This is not simply my opinion; it is my experience as a juvenile who bounced from institution  to institution and as a criminal defense attorney for the past thirty-five  years.

From  13 years old  until  20, I was in and out of  lock-up facilities. Beginning in Woodview Detention Home, I was confined a week or more during each stay. Each confinement was in a small room  with a bed and toilet. The rooms were not cells; rather, they had metal doors. Interaction with others was severely limited. If I was not having a meal, I was confined to my room. The lack of interaction with others was stressful; it was meant to be.

I progressed to Boys Totem Town, confined a minimum of  seven  months each of the  three times I was there.  Although BTT did not have isolation rooms during my first two stays, if a juvenile was out of control he was returned to Woodview Detention Home and placed in a secure room, isolated from all  inmates.  During my last trip to BTT the institution had created an isolation room  segregated from the main part of the facility, two floors above where most inmates congregated.  After BTT I was next confined at  Lino Lakes Diagnostic and Reception Center for two months.  If you could not function in the main population, you were placed in isolation in B Building. Once I was “diagnosed” at Lino, I was transferred to Red Wing State Training School for Boys where I spent the next eight months,  the first forty-five  days in Brown lock-up cottage. My room only had a bed. No sink or toilet; no magazines or books. No conversation, no television.   It became a daily struggle to cope with the isolation. I was deteriorating emotionally, psychologically. Two years later I was sentenced to St. Cloud Reformatory for Men for five years. Upon admission  I was placed in B Hall,  a segregated unit where I could see inmates at the far end of the cell block as I peered out through the bars. There was no contact with inmates for the first six weeks.  Out of segregation for approximately thirty  days, I got  drugs, a needle and a fight with a couple of guards. I was confined in segregation for thirty days. The well-used isolation unit was on the top floor of the segregation unit in D Hall.

My experiences as a juvenile and adult inmate  occurred over forty  years ago.  Everybody in the juvenile  and  adult systems knew of the isolation units. There were inmates at Woodview and Red Wing that  I spent time with in isolation  who could not cope with the debilitating, psychological effects  of  confinement. They came out of isolation worse off, more unstable than they were before  isolation.

Segregation,  particularly for high-strung inmates,  is bad. It is one step removed from inmate contact. Isolation is two steps removed from inmate contact. That is, the inmate is segregated from other inmates in isolation.  No conversations.  You can’t even see other inmates.  The atmosphere is subdued; eerily quiet. You feel buried alive.

As an attorney for the past thirty-five  years, I have been aware of isolation units in different facilities. Minnesota’s  Oak Park Heights Prison comes to mind.  Before I became an attorney I was a paralegal representing inmates at disciplinary hearings at Stillwater Prison.  This program, the Legal Advocacy Project, grew out of a consent decree entered into by the Minnesota Department of Corrections after  United States District Court Judge Edward Devitt issued an order condemning the isolation unit in the back-end of C Hall as  cruel and inhumane.

Isolation is draconian when applied to  inmates; it is devastatingly cruel when applied to juveniles, regardless of the reason. There is no justification for it. And it is the height of ignorance to respond to arguments against isolation with the pithy cliche’ “Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

These “corrections”   institutions correct virtually nothing. Isolation corrects nothing.  It is the inmate- not the institution- that corrects the  problem, be it chemical dependency,  lack of  job skills or education.   Teenagers in the criminal justice system’s solitary confinement is a deliberate, calculated  policy decision based on efficiency and indifference. It’s that simple.

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