Inmate released from solitary confinement after 22 years

christiefan915

christiefan915

Catalyst
Contributor
Should there be guidelines on how long a prisoner can be held in solitary?

"The state will pay $99,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by an inmate held in solitary confinement for 22 years, according to an agreement announced Monday.

Russell Maroon Shoatz, 72, of Philadelphia, will use his portion of the money to start a foundation to help prisoners to re-enter society, according to his son, Russell Shoatz III. The state has also pledged to stop punishing Shoatz with isolation for his past acts and to give him a one-man cell for the rest of his life. The Abolitionist Law Center, which represented Shoatz, wrote in its press release that it’s important that he have his own cell so that “he will not have to experience the extreme hardship of being forced to share a cell following decades of enforced isolation.”

Shoatz sued the state in 2013 and was removed from restricted housing — which involves 23 hours a day alone in a cell — in February 2014. One big change was being allowed to touch visitors.

“He was unable to do physical contact with people” at first, said Mr. Shoatz, the son. “Now he hugs people, and it’s a lot easier.”

Shoatz is serving a life sentence for the 1970 slaying in Philadelphia of Fairmount Park police Sgt. Frank Von Colln.

He was in solitary confinement from 1992 to 2014, constituting cruel and unusual punishment, his attorneys have alleged."

shoatz002.jpg

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/st...for-22-years-in-solitary/stories/201607110123
 
22 years is a long time. I would go crazy. Gangland had an episode on a gang leader in prison for murder who ordered additional murders from prison. They had him in solitary for years. That I can understand more from a public security sense.
 
cawacko said:
22 years is a long time. I would go crazy. Gangland had an episode on a gang leader in prison for murder who ordered additional murders from prison. They had him in solitary for years. That I can understand more from a public security sense.
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[Solitary confinement] units are virtual incubators of psychoses, seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities.”
—
Ruiz v. Johnson (2001)

Solitary Confinement and Mental Health
It’s a standard psychiatric concept, if you put people in isolation, they will go insane.... It’s a big problem in the California system, putting large numbers in the [Security Housing Units]... Most people in isolation will fall apart.”
—
Sandra Schank, staff psychiatrist, Mule Creek Prison

In 2005, forty-four prisoners in the California prison system committed suicide, 70% of whom were in solitary confinement.

http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fact-sheet-psychological-effects-final.pdf

 
christiefan915 said:
[Solitary confinement] units are virtual incubators of psychoses, seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities.”
—
Ruiz v. Johnson (2001)

Solitary Confinement and Mental Health
It’s a standard psychiatric concept, if you put people in isolation, they will go insane.... It’s a big problem in the California system, putting large numbers in the [Security Housing Units]... Most people in isolation will fall apart.”
—
Sandra Schank, staff psychiatrist, Mule Creek Prison

In 2005, forty-four prisoners in the California prison system committed suicide, 70% of whom were in solitary confinement.

http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fact-sheet-psychological-effects-final.pdf
Click to expand...

If a guy is ordering murders on the outside through other inmates what should they do with him?
 
That is an outrage, to be locked up in solitary confinement for 22 years? He should have gotten much more money than $99,000? We need laws on the books against state prisons doing sh*t like this! It is cruel and unusually punishment!!! It's a form of torture too?
jac-demo-big-11.jpg

 
signalmankenneth said:
That is an outrage, to be locked up in solitary confinement for 22 years? He should have gotten much more money than $99,000? We need laws on the books against state prisons doing sh*t like this! It is cruel and unusually punishment!!! It's a form of torture too?
jac-demo-big-11.jpg

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It is torture, psychological torture. If Saddam or Gaddafi did it everybody would be outraged.
 
cawacko said:
In this case he was a gang member.

I do not disagree at all about how torturous solitary confinement is. What should we do though with people like the guy ordering murders from prison?
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They do get occasional phone calls and family visits even if in solitary, don't they?
 
Far from being a last-resort measure reserved for the “worst of the worst,” solitary confinement has become a control strategy of first resort in many prisons and jails. Today, incarcerated men and women can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts but for possessing contraband, testing positive for drug use, ignoring orders, or using profanity. Others have ended up in solitary because they have untreated mental illnesses, are children in need of “protection,” are gay or transgender, are Muslim, have unsavory political beliefs, or report rape or abuse by prison officials.

In Virginia, a group of Rastafarian men were placed in solitary–some for more than a decade–because they refused to cut their hair on religious grounds. In South Carolina, 400 prisoners have been disciplined for using social networks like Facebook — 40 of whom received at least two years of solitary confinement as punishment, including 16 ordered to serve at least a decade in solitary.

Individuals receive terms in solitary based on charges that are levied, adjudicated, and enforced by prison officials with little or no outside oversight. Many prison systems have a hearing process, but these are seldom more than perfunctory. Prison officials serve as prosecutors, judges, and juries, and prisoners are rarely permitted representation by defense attorneys. Unsurprisingly, in most prison systems, they are nearly always found guilty.
 
cawacko said:
I don't think so. My understanding is your interaction with the people who work at the jail is it
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I found this.

Dr. Craig Haney, in testimony submitted to the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, described the isolation of the men in these cells: “They have no contact with the normal social world either. Indeed, the only regular physical contact they have with another human being is the incidental brushing up against the guards who must first place them in handcuffs and chains before they escort them out of their cells and housing units. They visit loved ones through thick glass and over phones, and are thus denied the opportunity to ever touch another human being with affection. This has gone on unabated, for years and years, for some of these men for several decades now.”
 
cawacko said:
22 years is a long time. I would go crazy. Gangland had an episode on a gang leader in prison for murder who ordered additional murders from prison. They had him in solitary for years. That I can understand more from a public security sense.
Click to expand...


Another Cawacky story with no corroboration?
 
wrote in its press release that it’s important that he have his own cell so that “he will not have to experience the extreme hardship of being forced to share a cell following decades of enforced isolation.”
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.......:palm:
 
^whoops..I misread that ( and I can not edit still)

He was in solitary confinement from 1992 to 2014, constituting cruel and unusual punishment, his attorneys have alleged."
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clear and consice. 30 days in the hole is more then enough to bring on psychosis
 
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