Ah yes, the silly season. Reporter claiming to be writing about solitary confinement jumps right into equating solitary confinement with “hard-line criminal justice polic[y]” instead. According to this view, solitary confinement is not, as one might think, a rational response to the dangers created by extremely violent offenders. Nor is it a way to protect prisoners who might be vulnerable to harm because of their appearance, orientation, or gang status. Nor even a response (one that ought to be appreciated) to the endless lawsuits filed against corrections facilities demanding protections for prisoners — protection from themselves, or others.
Nope, in the eyes of the media, every issue relating to incarceration and crime is just another opportunity to lash out at allegedly “draconian” sentencing policies. In this view, using less solitary confinement to address budget constraints isn’t a sign that prisons are having to deal with the financial downturn like everyone else. Using less solitary confinement is:
a dramatic acknowledgement, analysts say, that states can no longer sustain the costs of hard-line criminal justice policies.
Hmmm, which analysts? And what’s so “hard-line” about using solitary? Don’t prisoner activists want maximum safety for inmates? If corrections officers didn’t care about prisoner safety, they wouldn’t bother spending more of their budgets to separate prisoners from each other, right?
What’s really being protested (I mean reported) here is incarceration itself. What the activists want is nobody going to prison, ever. Thus, this even more incoherent comment on the use of solitary confinement, dialed in to fill the article’s next slot:
“The whole philosophy of being just tough — locking people up and throwing away the key — has not solved the problem,” said Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, Democratic chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
Well, luckily, nobody does that key thing. And “solved” which “problem”? The problem of crime? According to Sen. Whitmire, incarceration doesn’t solve the problem of crime. So . . . what does this have to do with solitary confinement? Are we supposed to stop putting criminals in solitary confinement or stop putting them in prison? Or are we just supposed to sit here listening to meaningless claptrap, nodding our heads?
Unsurprisingly, unlike Whitmire, corrections spokespeople aren’t in the mood to play politics with what is, for them, a life-or-death issue:
Decisions to return dangerous inmates to the general prison population anger some prison officials, who say the changes could threaten the safety of corrections officers and other inmates. “The departments of correction are rolling the dice with public safety. … This is going to blow up,” said Brian Dawe of the American Correctional Officer Intelligence Network, an association of officers.
Elsewhere, here’s the guy whose picture appears in the yellow pages under “Solitary Confinement: Arguments For”
Robert Gleason
For seven days, Robert Gleason Jr. begged correctional officers and counselors at Wallens Ridge State Prison to move his new cellmate. The constant singing, screaming and obnoxious behavior were too much, and Gleason knew he was ready to snap. On the eighth day — May 8, 2009 — correctional officers found 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr. bound, gagged, beaten and strangled. His death went unnoticed for 15 hours because correctional officers had not followed proper procedure for inmate head counts at the high-security prison in southwestern Virginia. Now, Gleason says he’ll kill again if he isn’t put to death for killing Watson, who had a history of mental illness. And he says his next victim won’t be an inmate. “I murdered that man cold-bloodedly. I planned it, and I’m gonna do it again,” the 40-year-old Gleason told The Associated Press. “Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row.”
This is a much more direct discussion of solitary confinement.
Gleason already is serving a life sentence for killing another man. He fired his lawyers last month — they were trying to work out a deal to keep him from getting the death penalty — so he could plead guilty to capital murder. He’s vowed not to appeal his sentence if the judge sentences him to death Aug. 31. “I did this. I deserve it,” he said. “That man, he didn’t deserve to die.”
There are no innocents here. The victim had a pretty ugly record, too:
Watson was serving a 100-year sentence for killing a man and wounding two others in 1983 when he shot into his neighbor’s house in Lynchburg with a 10-gauge shotgun. According to prison records, Watson suffered from “mild” mental impairment and was frequently cited for his disruptive and combative behavior. Watson was sent to Wallens Ridge on April 23, 2009, a day after he set fire to his cell at Sussex II State Prison. Gleason and Watson became cellmates on May 1, 2009.
This is the reality of prison — scores of violent men locked up for our safety, and their safety, while activists circle outside, trying to come up with any reason whatsoever to get them free again, as we foot the bill.
In the days the two spent locked in an 8-by-10-foot cell, Watson would talk about how he had “drowned” two television sets because they “had voodoo in them,” Gleason said. He would also belt out “I wish I was in the land of cotton” from the song “Dixie” and other songs at all hours, scream profanities and masturbate. In the chow hall and in the recreation yard, Watson would get inmates to give him cigarettes for drinking his urine and clabbered milk. “You can’t be upset with someone like that,” Gleason said. “He needed help.” Gleason said his requests to separate the two were met with mockery and indifference by correctional officers and prison counselors. He said he knew what he’d do once officials refused to put Watson in protective custody. “That day I knew I was going to kill him,” he said. “Wallens Ridge [prison] forced my hand.” It was after midnight when Gleason used slivers of bed sheets to tie Watson’s hands and arms to his body and fashioned a gag out of two socks. He later removed the gag and gave Watson a cigarette, telling him it would be his last. Gleason said Watson spit in his face when he went to take the cigarette out of Watson’s mouth, so he jumped on his cellmate’s back and beat and strangled the man.
Interestingly, the D.A. immediately offered Robert Gleason a plea deal in Watson’s murder. Gleason demanded death row instead:
[Attorney Ron] Elkins had offered to let Gleason plead to second-degree murder. He also offered to drop the capital murder charges and come back with a charge that didn’t carry a death sentence. Elkins wouldn’t say why he made those offers. However, capital murder cases are typically lengthy and expensive, especially as appeals wind through the courts. Even though Gleason confessed, Elkins said he proceeded cautiously to ensure the case couldn’t be overturned on appeal.
Here is the real financial crisis in the justice system: a defense bar that has undermined our ability to afford prosecutions to such an extreme degree that prosecutors actually have second thoughts about trying a murder case . . . when they’re not busy being worried about affording the endless, frivolous appeals that will inevitably follow.
Just think about how many thousands of lesser crimes get dismissed every day because it “costs too much” to try them.
Think about how many prosecutions never go forward because of the high price of endlessly re-trying every conviction.
But that — that’s not the type of thing you read about in the paper.