Taken and The Mortgage Crisis

I was sitting at home this evening and watching TV - something that I do a little too frequently these days - when I noticed that Taken, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen's utterly satisfying film, was playing on FX. Let me pause and admit that I have become, over the last few years, an unashamed fan of action movies. For whatever mysterious reason I find that predictable plot lines and gratuitous pyrotechnics soothe me, no matter how badly executed they may be (perhaps this is an appropriate time to admit that I have seen Prince of Persia: Sands of Time...and didn't really regret it). I generally don't pay close attention to action movies while watching them, and yet, they heavily reward my periodic glances. That being said, among the general category of action movies there are those that do actually deserve close attention, and I think that Taken is an example of this small subset.

The first time that I had the pleasure of watching Liam Neeson tear Paris apart in the search for his daughter, I was sitting in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park. Admittedly, my recollection of that viewing is a little clouded thanks to the brandy fortified red wine that was, inexplicably, my summer drink of choice (ah, 2009...), but subsequent opportunities afforded by cable television have allowed me to fill in the blanks. To summarize: in the film, Liam Neeson plays a retired CIA operative who is utterly devoted to his daughter. Patriotic, self-reliant, ruggedly handsome and a family man - how can you not root for this guy?! Liam's daughter goes on a vacation to Paris with a friend, and they end up being kidnapped and shuttled into a hellish underworld of drugs, prostitution and cliched eastern European villains. Liam jets to Paris and uses what appears to be the stamina and skill of a UFC champion combined with an uncanny ability to dodge bullets to ensure that the baddies reap what they have sown. I hardly need to point out that Taken's moral universe verges on the Manichean, which is exactly what makes it so gratifying. There is no nuance to good and bad, which is why things that might appear brutal in other films (e.g. a jerry-rigged electric chair where the current is conducted through a pair of nails that also serve to secure the victim) seem like prudent justice, and why the (do I even need to write spoiler alert here?) absolutely predictable ending is still so, so excellent.

To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the ethical world presented in Taken is precisely who falls on the wrong side of the tracks, and why they've landed there. Aside from the stock Euro peons and an Arab sheikh who represents the ultimate source of mammon, there are two notable villains. The first is Jean-Claude, Liam's French counterpart and an old friend from the Cold War. No longer a field agent, he now collects bribes and lets the Albanians do what they want. The second is Saint-Clair, the organizer of a high class auction - one that traffics in beautiful young women. These men are not simply thugs, nor are they evil in the same banal way as Arendt's Eichmann. They recognize that what they do is wrong; they're simply able to justify it to themselves with a higher purpose: a perverted form of pietas (familial devotion). Jean-Claude rationalizes his corruption by arguing that he uses his ill-gotten cash to care for his family. In fact, the only way in which Neeson is finally able to bend Jean-Claude to his will is by threatening Mrs. Jean-Claude's life. The audience's view of Saint-Clair's motivation is not so clear, as he is only alive for approximately 227 seconds, but within that brief time we are informed that he has two children, and that he views his auction as a business, nothing more. Ironically, pietas is the same value that fuels Liam's bonfire of retribution. Really, the flaw that marks Jean-Claude and Saint-Clair as evil is their selfish inability to consider the consequences of their actions (and hence, alter their behavior) in the course of their pursuit of money.

I think that to anyone who hasn't lived underground for the last three years this sounds very familiar. It serves as an analogy (intended or not) with financial professionals who, while angling for a slice of the good life (the good life being a Rolls Royce, yacht, helicopter, Learjet, hoverboat, etc.), sunk the economy. My best evidence for this comparison is an exchange between Saint-Clair and Neeson:

SAINT-CLAIR : You must understand, it was just business!

NEESON : It was all personal to me.

What two line dialogue could better encapsulate the economic turmoil of the last few years?! As many accounts have detailed (I am largely indebted to Michael Lewis' The Big Short and Charles Ferguson's Inside Job) the mortgage crisis was built upon irresponsible and foolish financial behavior - behavior that was incentivized by the unholy amount of cash that the people working mortgage desks could make. Before it became clear that many of the mortgages were rotten, traders at large banks bought billions of dollars worth of them. After it became clear, those same traders started hedging and salesmen at the same banks began to push the mortgages onto less savvy consumers. Not only did the mere whiff of lucre associated with mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations repackaging those securities and credit default swaps betting against those CDOs blind people to the responsibility that they had to assess the real value of financial instruments, it obfuscated the deeper implications of the market’s movements: the effect that business had on the personal lives of millions of Americans. Despite the fact that many of us never chose to invest in mortgages or decided to take out NINJA ("no income, no job, no assets" - a short hand description of the borrower) loans for ourselves, we have all felt the effects of the economic downturn, whether they are manifested through the job market, diminished government programs, poor stock performance or frozen salaries and cut hours.

It would be nice if we could watch the demise of financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide Financial and MF Global[1] with the same glee that Taken inspires in me, or at least some measure of schadenfreude. The truth is though, that, like it or not, our lives are all dramatically affected by what happens on the floors of stock markets across the world, on the desks of analysts in midtown Manhattan, on the screens of traders in bright, fluorescent offices.

If I may simultaneously paraphrase John Donne, and twist his words to my own ends: next time you walk by the NYSE, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

[1] Not of the same set, I know, but, in my opinion, just as blameworthy for being lax with customers' money and taking a highly leveraged, risky position.

Americorps Speech

A version of the speech I gave at my "graduation" this August:

Congratulations! How y'all doing this morning?

It's funny to be back in this same room, 11 months later, having finished our
year of service. To be honest, I thought that our last "graduation" - the
swearing in and pin ceremony - was a little premature. It didn't seem that
there was too much to celebrate, aside from us surviving orientation, which
had consisted mostly of awkward ice breakers and justifying where we were
standing with respect to post-it notes on the walls. That being said, I was
very grateful for all the free lunches.

This graduation feels more deserved. Sometimes, it seems like only
yesterday we were drawing pigs that revealed how good our sex lives were.
But when I remember all the things we’ve done since August – the retreat,
the conference in Pittsburgh, the service projects and, most importantly, the
work we’ve done at our sites, I’m filled with a tremendous sense of
accomplishment. We’ve spent almost an entire year in service of others, and
that is worth being proud of.

Y’all will have to excuse me, I'm about to do something obnoxious. Before
I do it, I ask you to please remember that this is literally the only thing that
my high school Latin is good for.

Graduation comes from gradus, the Latin word for step. When you consider
that graduations can also be called commencements - that is, the start of
something - it is hard not to imagine yourself clambering up a sort of endless
staircase - definitely a depressing image. The interesting thing about the
etymologies of those two words is the focus that they imply. Graduations
and commencements, in the context of school, are all about the graduating
individuals. They’re obsessively concerned with two things, what the
people receiving degrees have done at school - the skills they’ve learned, the
grades they’ve earned, the extracurricular achievements they’ve racked up –
and what the graduates will do once they’ve been released into the world.

As we’re all well aware of by now, Americorps is very different from any
college or high school. We’ve had some member development, but the
organization’s focus is on serving. And so, I, too, would like to focus on the
idea of service – specifically, what we’ve done for others over the course of
these 11 months.

I’d also like to emphasize the best of this year. There are many unpleasant
things that I could speak about: adjusting to two different supervisors,
weathering an audit, switching sites, and the difficulty of holding down two
jobs.

I could speak about those things, but I won’t. The good we’ve done this
year far outweighs the difficulties we’ve encountered and surmounted.

As a secular Jew – a concept that, as I learned the hard way, you should not
try to explain to a proselytizing student – I’m not normally one to quote
religious texts, but I thought it was appropriate here. One of the Talmud’s
most famous passages reads: "Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he
saved an entire world."

I won’t go so far as to say that we’ve saved lives through our work, but I do
think it’s possible, and maybe even probable, that we’ve changed them.

Brandon, Britni, Catherine, Adrienne and Abby have all provided students
with the knowledge and skills they need to pass the GED test. While
mastering fractions may not help people in their day to day lives, having a
GED can make all the difference when it comes to employment or a
promotion.

Toiling at New Orleans’ public libraries, Gail, Heather and Amy have taught
students how to use computers and the Internet. It’s hard to imagine a more
essential and empowering tool in this age of information.

Meanwhile, at YES in Orleans Parish and Even Start on the Westbank,
Rebekah, Julia, Kimberly, Michelle and Annie have worked to give their
students basic literacy and math skills - abilities that are indispensable in day
to day life.

Finally, there is Anthony, who, while stationed at Urban League College
Track helped to develop the character of the students in his care by
coordinating service projects and teaching a workshop entitled
“Brotherhood.”

Beyond these concrete accomplishments there is something else, which is
just as important. There is value in the act of serving itself, outside of any
quantifiable results. All of our students, even those who haven’t passed the

GED yet, or mastered a Google search, or learned how to sound out two-
syllable words, gained something from our service.

To explain exactly what I mean, I’ll need to tell a short story. During the
summer of 2003, I went on a four-week backpacking trip in Wyoming. One
day, about half-way through the trip, a boy named Chandler started having
difficulty breathing, and our instructors decided that he needed to be
evacuated. Stacy, the lead instructor, took him, along with two other
students (Braden and me) down a dry riverbed to the nearest campsite. Even
with our lightened packs, it was a long 8 mile hike through falling snow.
We reached the campsite by nightfall, and Stacy left to find a phone.
Braden, Chandler and I were sitting miserably by our tent, contemplating our
empty stomachs, when a man approached us. He was the leader of a group
of older teenagers who were camped a few hundred yards away, and he
invited us to come eat dinner with them.

It was such a small thing – black bean soup, twizzlers and companionship –
but it meant the world that night. We were complete strangers without
anything to offer, and yet this man freely gave what hospitality he could. I
cannot remember his name or anything about him, yet I doubt that I’ll ever
forget what he did. On that evening I felt valued simply because I was
another human being, and I also caught a glimpse of the incredible altruistic
kindness that men and women are capable of.

Clearly, feeding a few hungry teenagers one dinner and spending a whole 11
months teaching adults are two very different things, but I think that both
actions carry the same message. Through the act of serving we
communicate to our students that they are worthy of our efforts, and we also
demonstrate the best in human nature.

There is one more thing that I’d like to point out about service. Though
Americorps may have decided to call us ‘volunteers’ in order to justify our
meager living stipend, there is some wisdom in separating what we do from
normal employment. Service can certainly be a career, but at its base it is
action inspired by kindness and empathy. As corny as it may sound, I think
that service is more a way of life than type of work.

So, for those of you who have decided to spend another year with
Americorps, I commend you, and hope that you find it as rewarding as this

one. For those of us who are moving on, I hope that we retain our desire to
serve, and find fruitful outlets for it in the future.

Once again, congratulations.

Fingerprints and the Facade of Science

While perusing the internet today, I stumbled upon an incredible article in The New Yorker entitled "The Mark of a Masterpiece." Over the course of the piece, a tale unfolds that centers on a man named Peter Paul Biro, who has made a reputation and fortune for himself by authenticating paintings and drawings as the works of famous artists through the analysis of fingerprints that he finds on the work.

More than anything, this story brought to mind the blind reliance that many of us place on science. Biro himself is a sketchy character and his work appears to have little validity, but it is also worth noting that the discipline of fingerprinting itself is not entirely reliable. For one thing, it has never been definitively proven that every human being has a unique fingerprint. No two identical ones have ever been found, but that is a far cry from making the fundamental assumption that every fingerprint is one of a kind (Zabell, 164). Additionally, most fingerprints taken from crime scenes are 'latent prints,' meaning that they are accidental impressions left by friction ridge skin (I'm not entirely sure exactly what that means, I copied it from Wikipedia). The import of this is that most fingerprints are partial, overlapping, smudged or distorted, and that all of these transformations greatly increase the chance of error on the part of the analyst. And indeed, analysts do make mistakes. In a proficiency test designed by the IAI (International Association for Identification) and administered in 1995, 22% of the participants made 'erroneous identifications' (i.e. identified a latent print incorrectly as matching a finger that it did not come from) and only 44% correctly identified every latent print (Zabell, 167 - more reports on the proficiency of fingerprinting analysts can be found here).

Over the course of the article, it becomes clear that Biro's operation is really a simple scam, cloaked in the authenticity of science. Very few of his clients (or critics) have taken the time to actually examine the science of fingerprinting and how he employs it. David Grann, the reporter, writes, "Biro told me that he was now “pushing into the gray areas.” When he first revealed his findings on “La Bella Principessa,” Biro did not use the term “match,” as is standard among law-enforcement analysts, and as he had done in his reports on the paintings owned by Horton and the Parkers; rather, he said that the fingerprint on “La Bella Principessa” and the print on Leonardo’s “St. Jerome” were “highly comparable.”" This stands in stark contrast to how Biro has characterized his work elsewhere ("Biro asserted that he had uncovered the painting’s “forensic provenance,” telling a reporter, “The science of fingerprint identification is a true science. There are no gray areas.”") as well as what the science of fingerprinting aims at: "Science is not just one of several competing, equally valid forms of knowledge. Scientific procedures have evolved, and science is accorded great respect precisely because it is recognized that one can only obtain truly reliable knowledge by using its protocols and practices (Zabell, 152)." At this point, I must take a step back and point out that if some of the world's wealthiest people and most storied cultural institutions cannot take the time or expend the capital to identify bad science and simple fraud, then I don't see what hope there is for the valid use of fingerprint evidence in our criminal justice system, and (even more disturbingly) the sound use of any technology in the future. Admittedly, I must qualify this last statement. It seems to me that fingerprinting is a prime example of a science that promises the truth, particularly in arenas where that truth is hotly contested because of the substantial individual interests that are tied up in it (i.e. in a courtroom life and death hang in the balance, and in the world of international art sums of money that might suffice to purchase small tropical islands are at stake).

Ironically, it seems that science, initially meant as a method and procedure for observing the world and divining its underlying mechanisms, lends itself easily to deception in our modern era. The acronym DNA and other forensic fireworks (all of which we have become accustomed to in the course of watching CSI or Law and Order) appear not as tools for discovery, but instead as magical words that conjure our credulity. One need only conduct a simple Google search in order to find that the same charlatans and snake-oil salesmen who litter human history still exist, only now they mask their miracle panaceas behind the opaque facade of science.

Toy Story 3

It's been a long time since I last posted - longer than I would like - but between interning with the Michigan State Bar, attempting to tackle my summer reading list (I have finished Insectopedia, and am now working on Memoirs of Hadrian) exploring the UP with Mara and paying a visit to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival I've been quite busy. Beyond that, my mode of living seems to have shifted this summer. Usually I find myself unable to not reflect on my life. At the very least (and I think this is somewhat related - mostly because my tools for self-analysis are directly transported from what I've learned about analyzing texts; a notion that, as I write it, strikes me as slightly disturbing, all the more so because "analysis" derives from the Greek ανα-λυειν, meaning to take up and destroy, which is sometimes what I find my analysis doing to my experience), I'm always looking forward and impatiently anticipating what's coming next. It's the same force that compels a reader in the grip of a thrilling novel to continue reading, no matter how many hours past their bedtime it is (I don't mean to imply that my life is thrilling). This summer has been entirely different though. I find myself much more content to live in the moment and enjoy events simply, without reflecting on them afterwards. None of this is to say that I'm not looking forward to events over the summer (or even in the fall), or that I've been intellectually unengaged. It is tempting to conclude that I'm so content right now that I feel no desire for the future, or need to reflect, but I don't think that's it either. And, as this post itself attests to, that state of mind may be gone already, and so I will never quite suss out what inspired it. Fittingly enough, this current fit of self-examination was brought on by a narrative text (and a masterful one at that): Toy Story 3.

I sat down to watch Toy Story 3 last night with Mara and her mother Janet, a tub of popcorn and box of Junior Mints at the ready (both remained untouched for longer than usual; we had all just consumed generous portions of Italian food). Having read the laudatory Times review and noted what people were saying on Rotten Tomatoes, my expectations were high. And the movie didn't disappoint. I found it whimsical, hilarious, poignant and profound. I won't delve too much into the plot of the film, because that wasn't the interesting part. This movie, more so than the previous two (It's been a while since I've seen them), confronted the question of why toys are meaningful to us. Of course, through a sort of categorical metonymy, toys can be understood to stand in for a certain type of material object: those that had much value in the past, but are no longer quite as loved (I actually think that the film-makers try to cast an even wider net - there is an interesting scene to this effect near the end of the movie where Woody watches on while Andy's mother bids him farewell before he drives off to college).

Almost everyone experiences reluctance when asked to throw out objects from their past, and on the surface it seems a logical response. But I think that it's actually a bizarre reaction. Why do these objects hold value for us? Objectively, old toys have very little value. They're usually beat up and outdated. They have little functional value to older children, who (probably) don't play with toys at all. The meaning, I think, lies in the relationship that these objects have with the past, and the access that they give us to earlier stages of our life. Objects from the past definitely have value as aids to memory. Much in the same way that photos provide us with a portal to the past, even in a physical sense (the light captured through the aperture creates a chemical reaction - a physical process), objects from our past allow us access to what has already happened. While photographs document, old toys strike me much more as totems (I would almost call them magical items) that can be used to summon lost memories and mental states. I think that this status, as an aid to memory, is the basis of our ongoing relationship with old objects that have "personal value." Toy Story 3 presents a picture of our relationship with toys that is much more closely modeled on human relationships and, I would argue, not quite accurate (though certainly necessary in a movie that personifies toys).

One of the greatest anxieties in the film - one that, in real life, is not limited only to toys - is the notion of being replaced. During a noir-style flashback, one toy recalls how, having been accidentally left along the side of the road, he and and his compatriots struggled back to their original owner and found that she had replaced one of them with an exact replica. The toy turns away, disillusioned and heartbroken. I don't think that it's too much of a stretch to read into this scene the concerns of a self-aware consumer culture. How much meaning can objects, and our relationships with them, have if it is all replaceable? Beyond that, if we cede that we define ourselves (partially or totally) through what we buy, what does it say about our conceptions of our own identities if they are constructed out of identical parts? I think that the notion of these objects as aids to memory and physical connections with our past provides a satisfying answer. If that toy had returned to its owner it still would have had value and meaning for her. In that same vein, it is important to note that initially we are the ones who imbue objects with meaning, not vice versa. A purchased object, particularly a toy, seems to me to be always already a subjective object, one that is unique from all others because of what its owner attributes to or connects with it (and the memories and emotions that attach to an object accumulate over time).

Tangentially: having lost my favorite pair of sunglasses, I found them under the pilates machine in Mara's room, and am very happy about it.

A New Summer

Much like this entire blog, this post is as much self-directed as it is targeted at any hypothetical audience.

Though I've absolutely ignored this blog over the course of the past academic year, I feel that it is essential that I rediscover and utilize it over the course of this coming summer, and through next year. In the pursuit of that ambition, this post serves as an ice-breaker, and a signal of my commitment (on top of all that, I can't sleep).

For my entire life, a prescribed path has been set out before me. Elementary school, high school, college...I was blissfully free to choose what I wanted to do with my summers, but never as free as I am now to choose my direction and occupation in life. To inaugurate this new phase of my life, I've decided to make a renewed commitment to living consciously and actually doing what I tell myself I want to do. This blog is essential in both of those endeavors. The former I feel is self-evident. As for the latter, I've always identified myself as a writer to some extent, though I think that in many ways my tendency to write for pleasure was stifled at Yale. As the year progresses, I hope to use this space as a place where I can entertain any thoughts I have (no matter how outlandish). Perhaps I'll return to fiction or academic writing at some future point, but at this moment I hope to write essays (in Montaigne's sense); delving deep into my own experiences and thoughts in the process.

July 14th - Section 2

This section of the report is nowhere near complete (I still need to draw parallels with Madrid v. Gomez, Ruiz v. Johnson and Jones 'El v. Berge) but I felt that the sections that I've excerpted from the letters I've received from inmates ought to be put up as soon as possible.

In this section, I’ve decided to let the letters that I’ve received from prisoners speak for themselves. While reading, it is important to keep in mind that the majority, if not all of these reports are credible (if only because of the frequency with which these sorts of things are reported, as well as the fact that conditions like these have been verified as endemic in the correctional institutions of a number of other states[1]), that inmates have a tendency to downplay their own mental health issues,[2] and also that the type of inmate that decisions in Madrid v. Gomez, Ruiz v. Johnson, and Jones 'El v. Berge were primarily concerned with (i.e. inmates with serious mental illness) are the least likely to be able to formulate a coherent response to a mailed questionnaire.[3] Because there is no actual court case, it was impossible to visit any specific prison and interview the inmates within that prison’s RHU or SMU. These letters come from a number of Pennsylvania’s correctional institutions, and it is my hope that they will provide an accurate picture of Pennsylvania’s correctional practices as well as clearly parallel the types of abuses that prompted judicial action in Madrid, Ruiz and Jones 'El.

Conditions of confinement

Inmate 1: “The cell I was housed in was filthy with urine and feces on the walls, the sink wasn’t hygienic enough to drink out or bathe in. The light stayed on 24 hours a day…”

Inmate 2: “Conditions vary from cell to cell…usually dirty sink, toilet, floor. Peeling paint, leaking water, too cold or too hot…out of cell for 1 hour Monday – Friday for yard. Only access to the outside world is through the mail. DC [Disciplinary Custody] no phone calls. AC [Administrative Custody] one call per month if you beg for it. [What was the lighting in the cell like?] Bright, and night light is on 24/7… I’ve spent many nights naked without mattress or blanket and sheets for days in ant infested cells without heat.”

Inmate 5: “The cell is bare, with a bed, desk, toilet with sink. You are allowed 1 hour exercise period, but you might sign up for that 1 hour period in the morning with your light on. You can write and receive mail and reading [sic] books. The lights stay on all day and night. The inmates make noises all night long. Also you now have a bad case of throwing feces around…this is what troubles me the most I never seen anything like this before where’s another man throws feces and urine on another. This takes place often, so you can imagin [sic] what the unit smells like.”

Inmate 6: “I am sleeping on a mattress that has the cover ripped completely down the side exposing all of the filling which is essentially the same as using the same sheets unlaundered that every other inmate has used that slept on this mattress. Once a week we get to so call [sic] ‘clean our cells.’ We get offered the use of a toilet brush and a small round tub with some diluted disinfectant. That’s it! No broom, no mop, no cleanser, no rags, no paper towels…When they pass this toilet brush…out they use a black milk crate…this milk crate is placed on top of a rolling cart…I noticed…that the guards that serve us our food are using all of the carts for all of the various uses including using the same bacteria infested cart that is used to transport the used dripping toilet brushes on.”

“I have been infected by bacteria…I have been getting…bleeding, pussing sores about my body for no apparent reason other than the poor sanitary conditions…I have no trash container in my cell to place my garbage so I have been just stacking it in the corner by the door. Now there are bugs and mold growing in the corner. I have asked…guards repeatedly for a garbage bag and have been told that there are none.”[4]

Inmate 8: “The cells are about the size of a bathroom. There’s a metal bunk welded into the side wall. Across from the bunk is a desk and stool and a few feet away from that is the toilet and sink. There’s a long skinny window on the back wall which gives you a glimpse of the outside…I actually lived under these conditions for 23 months straight 24 hours a day. This is where I ate at, went to the bathroom at, exercised at and slept at, 24 hours a day and 23 months straight…the lighting fixture is welded to the wall and stays on 24 hours a day. It can definitely cause one sleep deprivation…there’s loud noises around the clock. In solitary confinement no one sleeps it seems. All day and night there’s loud banging, hollering, kicking on doors, fussing and just about every rowdy thing imaginable…”

Inmate 9: Picture staying in a cell and a bunch of insects lives [sic] with you and have no problem crawling on your bed, up your nose etc. And when you complain the exterminator comes around and spray [sic] the insect killer outside your door only…so what happens next is I get…more insects in my cell because the spray chases them from outside to the inside (my cell)…I’m now in a cell…that’s infested with ants, mices [sic] and rats…I’m sleeping on a concrete slab along with a thin mattress. There’s no kind of ventilation except for when the guards chose to open the window outside my cell…the light gives me a headache all the time because of the 24 hour brightness. There’s only a broken toilet that water leaks out of onto the floor. A sink that only cold water comes out of a little bit and the drain is stopped up. A small desk and stool that I place my personal property on because there’s no shelves…”

Mental Stress and Illness

Inmate 1: “My sleep patterns were different…in solitary confinement, due to constant noises and leaving the lights on all day and night, which deprived me of sleep. My mind couldn’t distinguish the difference between night and day! Plus, the guards would every half hour rattle the doors acting like they were making security door checks, but in reality it was done to keep us awake and off balance.”

Inmate 2: “[While in solitary did you ever have an impulse to hurt yourself? Did you act on this impulse?] Yes. I ate my eye-glasses and needed emergency removal… I could not sleep for months.”

Inmate 3: “I have LITERALLY cut open my wrist requiring 8 stitches so that I would go to the SSNU where there was a radio and not to the hole…my night terrors become so intense that I try not to sleep at all…I get no counseling besides someone coming to my door expecting our interaction to be over with in under 5 minutes and for me to share my condition with them and be ridiculed the rest of my days by the inmates within earshot…If I write to the psychiatrist it takes at least two weeks to be seen…by the time I get out of the hole my nerves are so shot that for weeks I can’t sleep, experience motor tics and heart palpitations.”

Inmate 4: “I suffer from paranoia schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, I have had these diagnoses since an adolescent [sic]. Now the Department [of Corrections] has decided to change them to the following: Anti-social and borderline personality disorder, borderline intellectual functioning level, adjustment disorder, depressed mood, impulsive disorder. Being in the RHU has caused me major problems because of C/Os [Correctional Officers] and psychologist [sic]…disclosing my issues on the door where other inmates hear and harass me.”[5]

Inmate 8: “Not once did I entertain the thought of doing harm to myself…I have witnessed those type of instances…some [inmates] would slash their wrists, some swallowed large amounts of pills, a couple dudes even hung nooses around their necks. It was like a norm for some…there’s nothing to see a literally mentally ill inmate playing in his feces. Yet they’re quick to say there’s no mentally ill inmates [sic] in solitary confinement. There are guys who keep toilets full of feces. They are the ones who play chemical warfare games…they’ll wait until the guard open [sic] their tray slots and then splash him with feces. These type of things [sic] occur daily…I haven’t been in a general population since ’06…the 3 months I was in population was strange. I would walk with my back to the wall from my block to wherever I was going. I would always position myself so that I could see everything within my proximity.”

Inmate 9: “I’ve gotten bitter over this obvious mental torture…I only gets [sic]…2 hours of sleep a day. I’m losing my vision, can’t stop shaking and I got the jumps. I’ve truly turned into an animal man…”

Inmate 10: “I am going through a crisis involving staff members and unknown rituals upon my person that are alien to me, but believed to be either Santeria, Voodoo-Hoodoo or Black Magic that’s unexplainable, and the only way for me to explain it is to say, there are/is the presence of unforeseen-visible persons in my cell space. I can hear them communicating daily, and they’ve even made threats upon my person. They have entered and exited my body and performed illegal surgical procedures upon my person, both external and internally, i.e., my neck, throat, stomach, lower torso and legs. I have visible surgical incisions all over my neck, arms and legs that are unexplainable and a close examination of facility’s medical files will reveal that I have not had any surgical procedures done upon my person…”[6]

---

[1] See, for example, Pugh v. Locke 406 F.Supp 318

[2] Grassian, Stuart. “Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement.” In The American Journal of Psychiatry, 140:11, November 1983, p. 1451.

[3] The questionnaire I used has been attached as an appendix.

[4] This inmate was not replying to the questionnaire.

[5] This inmate attempted suicide.

[6] This inmate was not replying to the questionnaire. It seems clear that he was hallucinating.

Not Much Going On: July 7 - 13

The title says a lot of what I want to say. Things are quiet around here. I had a great stout last Tuesday (East End Brewery Blackstrap Stout). Went out Friday evening with Ian and some people from his lab to the Harris Grill, which has a great happy hour deal (half priced draft beers from 4:30-6:30) as well as really tasty pierogis. This weekend summer league games were rescheduled, so we had two Saturday and two Sunday. It was pretty exhausting. I only sat three points all weekend and played pretty well for being exhausted. Found out that Ian and I didn't make Forge, which makes sense (seeing as the only other time we could play with them would be sectionals and regionals). I also read Newjack by Ted Conover in about three days. It's about his experiences as a corrections officer at Sing-Sing. Really intense and really good. Aside from all that I've started my report for HRC, and I've decided to post sections of it as I finish them. Hopefully I won't bore whoever is still reading my blog to death. At any rate, here's the first one. It's hot off the press (read: unedited) and is just a quick overview of the history of solitary confinement in America.

Solitary confinement is a penal practice that has a long and complex history in America. In the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries the United States’ system of punishment for criminals was largely inherited from Europe. The system was based upon corporal and capital punishment: “Before independence, Americans generally flogged, branded or mutilated those felons they did not hang. Except for debtors and such minor miscreants as vagrants and drunkards, people were held behind bars only to await trial or punishment, and not as punishment.”[1] The use of incarceration as a form punishment began in 1682, when William Penn founded the province of Pennsylvania.[2] Penn instituted a criminal code that featured imprisonment, labor, fines and forfeiture in the place of punishments like branding, the stocks and death. In the years after independence prisons gained much support. In theory, they were meant to deter criminals, as well as rehabilitate them by allowing “prisoners to engage in penitent reflection.”[3] By the early 19^th century, two dominant methods of imprisonment had arisen: the Pennsylvania system and the Auburn system.

The Pennsylvania system originated in 1790 at the Walnut Street prison in Philadelphia, and was later instituted throughout Pennsylvania, notably in the large Western and Eastern State Penitentiaries. Prisoners were locked into single cells alone with a Bible, and were allowed to engage in manual labor (e.g. carpentry, weaving, shoemaking and tailoring) within their cells.[4] The Auburn system was developed at its eponymous prison in New York. The new system came about after Auburn prison had attempted to institute a modified version of the Pennsylvania system, where inmates were not allowed to work.[5] The results were disastrous. Gershom Powers, the superintendent of the prison, observed that, “a number of the convicts became insane while in solitude; one was so desperate that he…threw himself from the gallery upon the pavement, which nearly killed him…another beat and mangled his head against the walls of his cell until he destroyed one of his eyes.”[6] In contrast to the Pennsylvania system, the Auburn system allowed prisoners to work and eat together during the day, though silence was strictly enforced. The Auburn system soon became the dominant form of incarceration in the United States; it drove less men mad than the Pennsylvania system and produced more goods that states could sell.

By the late 19^th century though, the Auburn system had fallen out of favor. The system entailed the liberal use of flogging, and was marked by other ignominious practices, like forcing inmates to march in lockstep (with their arms locked to the inmate in front of them). These inhumane aspects led to its unpopularity and eventual reform. America’s distaste for the Auburn system and solitary confinement in general is powerfully demonstrated by In re Medley, a case that the Supreme Court decided in 1890. In Medley, a man convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death challenged the legality of his punishment. Colorado had passed a new law governing the treatment of people who were about to be executed after Medley had murdered his wife, but Medley was still punished according to the new law. The new statute differed from the older one in a number of ways, most notably in that the criminal was held in solitary confinement before the execution. The Supreme Court found that this constituted substantial additional punishment, hence Medley had been subjected to an ex post facto law, and they set him free. In the majority opinion, Samuel Miller reflects briefly on the use of solitary confinement in America:

But experience demonstrated that there were serious objections to it [solitary confinement]. A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.[7]

In Medley, the Supreme Court recognized solitary confinement for what it is: an incredibly harsh punishment that causes dramatic mental suffering and damage, and serves almost no penological purpose.

From the late 19^th century until the 1970s solitary confinement was not used as widely or constantly as it is today. This all changed in the mid-70s with the passage of harsh laws concerning the possession and use of drugs and mandatory sentencing statutes, as well as a distinct shift in penal philosophy away from rehabilitation towards retribution and warehousing.[8] These changes led to overcrowded prisons and a lack of positive incentives (i.e. educational and vocational programming) with which to influence inmates’ behavior. Craig Haney observes, “In systems whose raison d’etre was punishment, it was not surprising that correctional officials turned to punitive mechanisms in the hope of buttressing increasingly tenuous institutional controls.”[9] Solitary confinement became one of administrators’ main tools for influencing and controlling inmate behavior. Isolation is certainly a punishment that can deter infractions, but beyond that it has become a behavior management strategy. Instead of working to rehabilitate inmates and attempting to change them, penitentiaries can now simply lock up troublesome prisoners and forget about them.

This trend is most clearly illustrated by the appearance of a new penal institution: the supermax prison. The supermax system began in October 1983, when two guards were killed at Illinois’ Marion Penitentiary and the entire prison was put on lockdown. Inmates were simply shut in their cells and all communal activities were abolished. The lockdown was never lifted. The growth of supermax prisons has been staggering. As of 2006, there are “at least 57 supermax prisons that house approximately 20,000 inmates.”[10] It is important to note that the vast majority of maximum-security prisons have their own segregation units where inmates are subjected to much the same treatment that a prisoner in a supermax prison would experience.

The circumstances of incarceration in modern supermax prisons and segregation units are shocking. Peter Smith writes,

[C]onditions typically include solitary confinement twenty-three hours each day in a barren environment, under constant high-tech surveillance. Inmates are sometimes able to shout to each other but otherwise have no social contact…Communication with the outside world is minimal. Visits and phone calls are infrequent and are severely restricted if allowed at all…The physical contact available to an inmate…may for several years ‘be limited to being touched through a security door by a correctional officer while being placed in restraints or having restraints removed.’ These facilities typically claim to operate a regime of behavior modification, but most provide few program activities such as work or education.[11]

Later in this article I will expound more fully on the physical conditions of solitary confinement, as well as its psychological effects. Suffice it to say here that this sort of isolation, experienced over a long period of time, cannot fail to produce mental distress, resulting in neurosis and even psychosis. It is also important to bear in mind that isolation is often not the only ordeal that prisoners must weather while in solitary confinement. Verbal and physical abuse, cleanliness of the facilities and inadequate medical care are only a few of the other hardships of prison.

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[1] Kunen, James S. “Teaching Prisoners a Lesson.” In The New Yorker, July 10, 1995, p.35.

[2] Lewis, Orlando Faulkland. The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs. P.10

[3] Conover, Ted. Newjack. New York: Random House, 2000. P. 173

[4] Lewis, 30

[5] Conover, 173

[6] From Powers, Gershom. General Description of Auburn Prison, 83. Found in Lewis, 82.

[7] In re Medley, http://supreme.vlex.com/vid/in-re-medley-20057606

[8] Haney, Craig. “Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement.” In Crime Delinquency, 2003, 128

[9] Ibid, 128

[10] Mears, Daniel P. and Watson, Jamie. “Towards a Fair and Balanced Assessment of Supermax Prisons.” In Justice Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 2, June 2006. P. 232.

[11] Smith, Peter Scharff, “The Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature.” In Crime and Justice, 2.