The impact of the COVID pandemic on our mental health and emotional life is a constant source of media attention. We read that children are suffering, that anxiety and depression are skyrocketing, and that despair and malaise are the new normal. We are only just beginning to gauge the personal and communal costs of extended social isolation, fear, and rupture wrought by the pandemic.
But consider the impact of the pandemic on our incarcerated community members. They have endured months without any in-person visitation, while managing the hopelessness caused by COVID-related lockdowns.
Now consider the experience of isolated segregation, or administrative housing units. Segregation is used by Maine’s prisons and jails to isolate people in response to actual or anticipated behavioral infractions. It involves confining a person indefinitely in a cell for 17 hours a day and severely limiting human contact.
The normal impact of even just a few days of isolated segregation is widely recognized: extreme mental distress, disassociation, hypersensitivity, paranoia, hallucinations, obsessive thoughts, an inability to focus, memory loss. People emerge from segregation far more damaged — angrier, more defiant, impulsive, violent, and suicidal, and less able to cope — than when they went in.
Some people are released directly from segregation to the outside world at the end of their sentences, virtually guaranteeing they will fail at reentering society.
The Maine Legislature is currently considering a bill to adopt less inhumane protocols for segregation that are already employed in other states. L.D. 696 limits the use of segregation for more than three consecutive days and forbids the use of segregation for children, the elderly, and those with disabilities or who are pregnant. It mandates oversight by an external expert to ensure that segregation is only used as a short-term response to immediate safety concerns and not as a long-term, catch-all solution for managing severe mental health breakdowns or for imposing extraordinary forms of punishment.
It holds prisons and jails accountable for the treatment of those under their control, ensuring that their treatment is in the best interests of society and oriented toward rehabilitation. By limiting the use of segregation and supporting forms of ‘segregation without isolation’ used in other states, the bill ensures safety inside the facilities while finally providing necessary therapeutic supports for emotionally and psychologically troubled inmates.
L.D. 696 has a wide and diverse base of support. Those with lived experience are joined by the Maine Public Health Association, the Maine Medical Association, the Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians, the Behavioral Health Community Collaborative, the Alliance for Addiction and Mental Health Services, Disability Rights Maine, the Maine Chapters of the American Academy of Pediatricians and the National Association of Social Workers, the Maine Council of Churches, GLAD, and over a dozen other organizations.
Hundreds of Mainers signed a petition in favor of the bill. Against this outpouring of professional and personal expertise, only two people testified in opposition to the bill: the commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections and the Maine Sheriffs’ Association. Corrections administrators claim that they must be allowed to use segregation at their discretion, with no oversight or limitations, to protect other prison residents and staff from violent inmates who are dangerous.
The Department of Corrections has rightly banned the use of solitary confinement, which was by all accounts horrific, violent, and intentionally punitive. But the devastating testimonies by those currently in segregation and with recent lived experience provide clear evidence that that the evils of the past are not yet behind us. Joseph Jackson, who as the executive director of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition visits the segregation unit, testified that the same conditions he experienced while incarcerated years ago still persist: extended lockups, filthy conditions, poor access to hygiene and rehabilitative programming, and retributive staff behavior.
The testimonies reveal that many in segregation suffer from extreme mental illness for which they are not receiving meaningful or adequate therapeutic interventions, that their living conditions are inhumane, and that Black and Indigenous residents are disproportionately subjected to segregation.
Public money funds prisons. Yet their internal operations are kept almost entirely invisible. Prisons are perhaps the starkest representation of our society’s values. If we genuinely value rehabilitation and human dignity, we should all stand in support of L.D. 696.
Catherine Besteman is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Colby College, and the coordinator at Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative launched to bring a humanities perspective to the issues surrounding incarceration.
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