News Analysis

JUSTICE

Prison treatment of notorious convicts questioned

Church says society has right to protection but must respect offenders human dignity
By Stephen James

Isolation can cause prisoners harm

Zacarias Moussaoui arrived at the maximumsecurity federal prison in Florence, Colo. at 3:17 p.m. on May 13. The convicted al-Qaida conspirator is being housed adjacent to some of the most notorious prisoners in the country, including Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and former FBI agent and convicted spy Robert P. Hanssen. Like all other inmates in the special housing unit, Moussaoui will live, eat and sleep in a concrete cell specifically designed so that he cannot speak or make eye contact with other prisoners. Whenever Moussaoui leaves his cell to make the walk to the exercise yard, where he is allowed for one hour per day, he undergoes a body cavity search and is shackled with chains. For some time, judges have ruled that similar conditions in state facilities virtually ensure that an inmate will eventually suffer psychological effects. The record shows, what anyway seems pretty obvious, that isolating a human being from other human beings year after year or even month after month can cause substantial psychological damage, even if the isolation is not total, said a federal court judge in a 1998 New York case.

onvicted al-Qaida operative Zacarias

Moussaoui is serving his life sentence at the notorious, sterile and stringent U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum in Florence,Colo., or Admax as its commonly known.
Known informally as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, the federal prison subjects inmates to some of the harshest conditions of any facility in the country, and the publicity surrounding its latest resident has reignited the debate over how the government and society treats criminals considered the worst of the worst. For the rest of his life, Moussaoui will spend at least 23 hours a day in a 7-foot-by-11foot concrete cell, where he will live, sleep and eat with virtually no contact with other humans, prisoners or staff. Except for his attorneys, Moussaoui likely will not be permitted visits and will receive just one hour per day to exercise outside of his cell, alone, in a small exercise yard. These maximum-security units subject prisoners to a really unprecedented level of social isolation and sensory deprivation and inflict serious psychological damage on many people, particularly those who are already mentally ill,said David Fathi,seniorstaff counsel of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

from schizophrenia or paranoia. But there was apparently no dispute that Moussaoui grew up in an extremely violent home where his father, who has a history of mental illness, beat his mother, broke her jaw and teeth and once tried to run her over with a car, according to trial testimony.The father was eventually treated in a French psychiatric hospital. In many states,successful court challenges to the conditions Moussaoui is enduring in Florence have forced state correctional departments to move mentally-ill inmates from solitary confinement to less restrictive housing that doesnt exacerbate pre-existing psychological problems. A federal judge in California ruled that putting mentally-ill people in these conditions was like putting a prisoner with asthma in a room with no air to breath, explained Fathi. But the Colorado Admax has so far been immune from court oversight, and Fathi doesnt expect any judicial intervention for prisoners like Moussaoui. Due to the perceived threat that they pose, a relatively small class of prisoners is considered an exception to even the minimal standards of humane treatment established by a series of court rulings. The reality is that courts are going to make exceptions,he said. If they regard someone as extremely dangerous,I think they are going to make exceptions to the general proposition that the mentally ill may not be held in these facilities.

Federal corrections officer William Brown stands in the doorway of a typical cell in a general population unit at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Security facility in Florence, Colo. KRT PHOTO BY MARK REIS

Living with dignity

Catholic social teaching on crime and punishment emphasizes that the discussion about prisoner treatment begins with the defense of human dignity [A]ny system of penal justice must provide those necessities that enable inmates to live in dignity: food, clothing, shelter, personal safety,timely medical care, education and meaningful work adequate to the conditions of hu m a n d i g n i t y, t h e U. S . Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in their 2000 statement Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice. The U.S. bishops policy

Paranoid or not?
Moussaoui may be especially susceptible to the mental trauma that the conditions of his new environment can inflict on some inmates.During his trial,two psychologists brought in by his defense attorneys testified that the defendant was a paranoid schizophrenic. Prosecutors countered with their own expert who said the alQaida conspirator had deep personality flaws but did not suffer

adviser on criminal justice issues, Andrew Rivas,said that the bishops understand that certain prisons must have higher levels of security because of the dangers presented by the inmates housed there,but we know that there is a value and dignity to the human person no matter what theyve done, and they deserve to be treated with value and dignity, he said. So, there are great concerns that the bishops have for maximum-security facilities that isolate and seclude prisoners from one another, he said

Fair treatment
Kevin Miller,assistant professor of theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville,agreed that all prisoners are entitled to hu m a n e t re a t m e n t . T h i s doesnt mean that prisons should

be luxury hotels, or that prisoners have a right to cable TV, he said.I dont think there is a problem with prisons being fairly Spartan,in fact I think they probably should be. Offenders deserve to be punished, and society has the right and the need to punish them for its own preservation, Miller explained. But I suspect there is a fair amount of brutality thats imposed by the prison regime itself, not as a result of prisoneron-prisoner violence,but simply as a result of how prisons are run the conditions that are put in place by the people running the prisons, he said. The solution isnt to keep prisoners secured in their cells nearly all day to make the jobs of prison administrators easier,Miller said. Im not an expert on crimi-

nology, but I do have the sense from what Ive heard and read that typically conditions are pretty bad, such that I would question whether they would be consistent with Catholic teaching regarding human dignity, he said. It sounds to me like theres a lot of work to be done to bring conditions in typical prisons into conformity with the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human person,including the dignity of the convicted criminal.
Stephen James writes from California.

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR l JUNE 25, 2006