The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The often-invisible populations of incarcerated people have families, children and friends who must also survive the imprisonment of their loved ones. While for much of society, people in prison are locked up and easily forgotten, for their families, the added potential for suicide is another fear they grapple with daily. When people are imprisoned with no outside oversight, alarming things can happen, as Mr. Gustafson pointed out in his compelling series.

The Statesman Journal's series identified one very significant common theme running through many of the suicides: extreme isolation, often in Intensive Management Units.

IMUs are prisons within prisons where some inmates are sent for long periods of time. IMUs are places where the sun never shines, the lights never go completely out, any real human contact is forbidden and more than 23 hours a day are spent completely alone in a tiny box. Leaving the box means shackles, cuffs and being led by a leash.

IMUs create such dehumanizing and degrading conditions that a U.N. report described incarceration in these units as torture. Yet some Oregon prisoners can spend months or even years in IMUs, even if they have identified mental illnesses that are greatly exacerbated by the extreme isolation and dehumanization of the units.

While the Oregon Department of Corrections suggests it is taking steps to curb suicides in prison, never do they discuss ending the damaging isolation of the segregation units. In fact, Mr. Gustafson's article states that the Department of Corrections is moving the Disciplinary Segregation Unit into the Intensive Management Unit. This will only lead to more isolation, illness and deaths of people confined in that space.

While separating some people from the general prison population might at times be justified, the extreme isolation of the Intensive Management Units is never justifiable. Never does the Department of Corrections explain how such disturbing conditions serve a rehabilitative function because they don't. And because they don't help rehabilitate, Oregonians should be concerned.

We're not alone in suggesting that Oregon put an end to the dangerous conditions in the Intensive Management Units. The bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons calls for limiting the use of segregation and ending the conditions of isolation in segregation.

We encourage the Department of Corrections to develop less dehumanizing and more rehabilitative ways of separating prisoners from the general population when needed.

Most people eventually get out of prison, and what happens to them while they are imprisoned can either positively or negatively shape what happens when they return to the community. Oregonians should end the isolating and disturbing conditions in segregation units. This will save lives, and it's in everyone's best interest.

Caylor Roling of Portland is the prison program director of the Partnership for Safety and Justice, a statewide advocacy organization that promotes safe and sensible solutions to public-safety issues. She can be reached at Caylor@safetyandjustice.org.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070727/OPINION/707270310/1049