News & Commentary

The Secure Mental Health Unit - A look at addressing cruel and unusual punishment of Maine prisoners

Precursing current attempts to reform use of solitary confinement of Maine prisoners, in the from 2006 to 2007, the ACLU of MAINE worked with mental health community, prison reform advocates and the administration at the Maine State Prison to create concrete, reliable regulations for the operation of the MSP's Secure Mental Health Unit.

December 29, 2009

Precursing current attempts to reform use of solitary confinement of Maine prisoners, in the from 2006 to 2007, the ACLU of MAINE worked with mental health community, prison reform advocates and the administration at the Maine State Prison to create concrete,
reliable regulations for the operation of the MSP's Secure Mental Health Unit.

At the time, we
were concerned about 10-12 individuals with
serious mental illness being held in the detention unit, constituting a full 20% of the
entire detention unit population. For these mentally ill prisoners, this sort of isolated confinement was unconstitutional. As described in

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Madrid v. Gomez, "[f]or these inmates, placing them in the SHU is the mental equivalent of
putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe."

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In fact, every court that has considered the issue has found that holding
individuals with serious mental illness or developmental disabilities in prolonged solitary confinement with limited social interaction amounts to cruel and
unusual punishment, which is prohibited under the Eighth Amendment. (See, for example, Jones ‘ El v. Berge, 164 F. Supp.
2d 1096 (W.D. Wis. 2001), where a Federal Judge ordered the prison to
remove all individuals with serious mental illness from the Supermax and,
further, to monitor the mental health status of inmates sent to the Supermax to
prevent future violations).

The Secure Mental Health Unit was created to address the needs of inmates with serious mental illness deemed too disruptive to
the general mental health unit and to the general population to be housed in either. This intermediate detention
area allows prisoners with serious mental illness who pose a threat to
themselves or others to be isolated from the general population without subjecting them to conditions which are unconstitutional, inhumane, potentially
devastating, and likely to cause deterioration.

Even in the couple of years since the creation of the SMHU, we have a clearer and deeper understanding of the extent and permanence of damage caused by prolonged isolation even for prisoners without serious mental illness. It is our hope that the bill currently before the Maine legislature will address some of these concerns - acknowleding both the human and civil rights implications of these practices, as well as the practical implications, both for those who suffer the practice directly, and for those who welcome these individuals back to their homes, cell blocs and communties.

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However, for certain
categories of mentally ill prisoners, SHU confinement was unconstitutional;
"[f]or these inmates, placing them in the SHU is the mental equivalent of
putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe." [FN8]

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