Stan Moody

POB 240Manchester, ME 04351207/626-0594www.stanmoody.com

Prison Myth No. 5: “You Don’t Understand WhatWe Are Up Against!”

January 23, 2010Maximum security prisons are designed for three purposes – to keepprisoners safe, to protect the public and to carry out a strategy of “Corrections.” The problem arises when administrators and staff cross thatvery thin line of adding punishment to their responsibilities and makepersonal judgments on the basis of a person’s crime. Punishment is the roleof the courts; safekeeping and rehabilitation are the roles of prisons.Who could object to the sparkling, antiseptic Maine State Prison (MSP)in Warren, ME, where prisoners queue up and respond in brisk fashion andthose who fail to do so disappear down to segregation for an attitudeadjustment along with the more incorrigible? It has all the appearance of order and efficiency. It speaks volumes, however, that the numbers of inmates in segregation at any one time are roughly the same as are in thePrison Industries program designed to teach job skills.It looks so great, with flowers and fresh-mowed grass in the summerand fresh paint everywhere, it is almost impossible to understand whyanyone would think otherwise. It has, however, shifted much of the humanelement over to process and procedure – rats in a maze. It diminisheshumanity. Splitting hairs over semantics allows for all sorts of variations onthe ugliness of solitary confinement. The Department of Corrections asserts that less than 20 inmates are insolitary confinement at any one time within the Special Management Unit(SMU). The remaining 110 are in “segregation” there, implying that 23 hoursof daily lockup anywhere for months at a time with no official end in sightcan be anything other than callous abuse. Segregation offers the ability tobe heard through the cell next door or through an electrical outlet racewayup through the cell wall. There are 3, 2-story wings in the SMU. The A wing is the mental healthwing, divided into A1 and A2, one housing the most severely mentally illprisoners and the other the less severely ill. The B wing is for the mostincorrigible offenders. B1corridor is reserved for the worst offenders in the Bwing. The B1 corridor (B117) was where they found Sheldon Weinstein, a64-yr old wheelchair-bound inmate, on April 24, 2009, bled out from abeating and being housed there “for his own protection.”C wing is for the last of the stretch in segregation before going backout into general population for another whack at the system. C wing also1

houses Protective Custody inmates (sex offenders and marked prisoners)who are in segregation for discipline purposes.Every attempt to advocate for prison reform or pass legislationintended to correct some perceived human rights violation runs into 4objections. First, if the information comes from a prisoner or prisoner’sfamily member, it is presumed to be suspect, and reasonably so. Second,Department of Corrections officials are quick to say that whatever they dothere, it is “consistent with widely accepted practice.” Weinstein’s widow,having been told that her husband died of “natural causes” will, I suspect,take serious issue with the notion that her treatment was “consistent withwidely accepted practice.” She buried his ashes, only to find out 6 weeksafter the autopsy that his death had been a homicide. Nobody had botheredto tell her anything other than how to retrieve his ashes.Third, Corrections officials point out that whatever is happening inMaine is different from prisons everywhere else because MSP is a “countryclub” by comparison. Last, and the subject of this article, “You do notunderstand what we are up against,” popularly characterized in song as,“Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen!”It is a great defense; it works; it cuts the legs out from under anyabstract idea put forward by citizens and legislators, and it maintains thestatus quo by building a fear-based culture that keeps the public nervousand detached. I have been there during a sanitized legislative tour, and Ican say without reservation that legislators have no idea of the humaninteraction encountered within the system on a daily basis. Yet they arecharged with passing laws that impact tens-of-thousands of lives and arerapidly building corrections toward the largest budget item in the State.Some of the most brilliant people it has been my pleasure to know areprisoners there. On the other hand, some 40% are illiterate, and some 80%have substance abuse problemsWhat the Department of Corrections is up against has far less to dowith the danger it likes to talk about and more to do with fear on the part of staff – job insecurity and too little focus on the pubic good that can be had byreducing the 58% rate of repeat offenses and probation violations in Maine.Corrections has been saddled with the leftovers from a mental health systemin Maine that has broken down, it is true. In order to fix these problems,however, they need the public input that they will never get so long as theyare committed to stonewalling every effort to understand and improve thesystem.Is it possible that it is the Maine Department of Corrections itself thatdoes not realize what they are up against? The winds of change are blowing. The public has had enough of paying enormous sums of money to hide awaythe failures of Education and Human Services. Legislative leaders are fastbecoming yesterday’s news, thanks to term limits and public disdain of bigegos. There is little to fear at MSP so long as everyone – staff and prisonersalike – are treated as fellow human beings, firmly and fairly but consistently.I invite the Department of Corrections to join this growing movementtoward prison reform in Maine, admit where it has failed and keep itsfingerprints off every attempt to initiate change.2