“Three Old Farts”

Guest Post by Lane Nelson

Editor’s note: One of the fastest growing subcultures in American life is that of old people struggling through their last years in prison: The old lady who in her twenties  shot and killed  an abusive husband. The parapalegic bank robber who once tried to escape. The 78 year old, who can barely walk and seems a goner ever since the prison guards pulled his meds. The mentally ill man who hasn’t seen sunlight in 10 years. All spend out their lives–20-40-60 year stretches–behind bars.

Their sole desire is to die in the free world, and though they are rendered utterly harmless by age, few states have program to release aging inmates. And so, at great financial cost to society, they must live out their lives in prison. If they are the lucky ones, the end may come in a prison hospice where they are carred for by fellow inmates, whose sole rehabilitation to society has been their education as gentle, caring nurses–behind bars.

As for the judges who banished them to their fate, they for the most part  ignore them, as do the politicians who introduced their draconian sentences. Bills to let them out wander through the state legislatures, succeeding in one court, being thrown back in another, year after year.

All this by way of introducing the work of Lane Nelson. While serving time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Lane Nelson spent 18 years as a staff writer and later managing editor for the nation’s most renowned prison magazine, The Angolite. He covered a wide range of subjects, including Angola’s longtermer population and hepatitis-C behind bars, and he interviewed and profiled several men just days before their executions. Nelson himself spent two years on death row–at one point coming within five days of being executed–before a judge overturned his death sentence citing inadequate counsel.

Lane Nelson eventually received a pardon based on good behavior and his volunteer work at Angola. In January he rejoined the free world after 29 1/2 years behind bars. Nelson has opened his own business, Capital Punishment Consulting Agency (CPCA), offering services that extend outside the area of the death penalty to general matters concerning criminal justice and prison life, and he is available for speaking engagements.

He also writes fiction, much of it based on personal experiences from his years at Angola. The story that follows is one of the best depictions of  the life of the old, inside prison or out, that I have ever read.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The orange ball inched over the Tunica Hills that border Mississippi and Louisiana, turning the expansive wheat fields into a glazing golden hue.  Frency sat on a bent up plastic coke crate in back of the wood-framed clothing room, cup of black coffee in hand and a crimped hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his cracked lips.  He wiped the sweat bead rolling down and aged crease in his cheek.  Another dog-day of summer.   Staring through the razor-wire topped chainlink fence separating him from the fields of wheat, Frenchy thought about the dazzling sparkle the sun gave the deadly razor wire; how it symbolized the external beauty of this 18,000-acre maximum-security prison set in the Mississippi River basin of east-central Louisiana, while depicting the despair among its 5,102 inhabitants.  After 27 years chained to this beauty and unable to taste its pleasures, Frenchy was neither sad nor angry at the irony.   He had long ago grown numb.

            The sound of work whistle jarred Frenchy from his trance and signaled an end to the quiet morning and beginning of another monotonous work day.  Nearly all the 150 trustee prisoners filed out of the three dormitories headed for their work assignment.  He watch “Hog Head” bounce out of dorm 2, leading the other inmate tractor drivers on the  half-mile walk to the tractor shed.  Tractor drivers put in 10 hours of kidney-shaking work in the crop fields six days a week, while nearly 2,000 nontrustee convicts from the bigger camps within the prison picked vegetables and cotton under the careful eyes of rifle-totting guards on horseback.

            “Dem Saints, theys ready this year, dog!”  Hog Head’s voice amplified over the conversations of other prisoners.  “Ya heard what that white boy said on the news?  My team, theys together.  All you Saint haters bring your smokes to Hog Head, ‘cause he’s putting down on every game.”  For his 18 years in prison for aggravated rape, driving his tractor and sports consumed Hog Head’s life.  Every season he bet packs of cigarettes on the Saints.  At the end of every season he was broke.

            Frenchy flicked his butt at the guard’s fence in front of him and pushed himself up from the coke crate.  He eased his weight onto his right side before taking a step.  The bullet he took in the hip while robbing his first bank in 1960 hurt him more now than when it happened.  “Son of a bitch cop couldn’t shoot straight enough to kill me and put me out of my misery,” he often recited.  He grabbed a small empty clothing cart and maneuvered it down a cement walkway, headed for Dormitory 3.

            His 1960 bank heist sent him to Raiford Prison in Florida for his first adult jolst at the age of 18.  The four years at Raiford started him on the road to the only successful skill he ever learned—professional convict.  After Raiford it was Holman, Alabama, Tucker, Arkansas, Parchman in Mississippi, Huntsville, Texas, and his final destination Louisiana’s infamous Angola to serve life-without-parole for a jewelry store heist in the Garden District of New Orleans (while on escape from Hunstville).  The prosecution had no problem citing Frenchy as a habitual offender and the judge had no problem giving him life.  “Mr. Mancini, you’re through,” said the judge in ending his lecture during the sentencing hearing.  Frenchy being Frenchy had to have the last word, “So was your momma when she had your dumpy-headed self,” and he grabbed his crouch as the guards yanked him out of the courtroom.     

            He parked the clothing cart in front of the dormitory and walked inside, where he found Whit hunkered over the edge of his bunk sucking air.  “Hey ya old fart, said Whit.  “Rough night?,” replied Frenchy.

            “Naw.  Slept like a baby in a bank vault.”  Frenchy knew Whit was lying like a dog, but didn’t press the issue.  “Your carriage waits, Princess, so get your sexy ass up and lets go.

            “Fuck you too early this morning,” Whit said and started one of his coughing fits.  Frenchy reached over and rubbed his back.  “Wow old fart, relax.  Be the Buddah.”  That only made it worse, with Whit laughing and coughing at the same time.  It took several minutes before the heavy heaves and cough subsided.  Having gained a little strength, Whit allowed Frenchy to help him across the dormitory and onto the cart.  His serious emphysema and weak heart begged for a wheelchair, but Whit refused.  He wanted to die without help.

            By the time they rolled into the clothing room Cupid had another pot of strong coffee brewing, and black market bacon inside the 15-year-old microwave that sparked every time in use.  “Happy, happy morning,” sing-songed Cupid.  “Bacon sandwiches and steaming coffee is on the menu.  And for you ladies it’s half price.”

            “Just make sure you put enough mayo on mine,” said Whit.  “Last time we had this crappy breakfast you almost choked me to death.”

            “Shut your pie hole and get in your chair,” countered Cupid.  Frenchy helped Whit out of the cart and into the ragged recliner.  The chair had been in the Captain’s office before it mysteriously disappeared two months ago and took on a rough reupholster job to change its appearance.   Every time the captain paid the three old farts a visit he commented, “Just like my ole chair.  If I ever catch the son of a bitches who stole it I’ll hang them by his heels from the razor wire.”  The three old farts always grumbled how their chair cost them an arm and a leg from an unnamed prisoner who picked it out of the prison dump.  A little game they played.  Captain Fontenot knew his missing chair the first time he saw it, and they knew he knew it.”

            Cupid distributed the bacon sandwiches and turned on the small portable fan, leveling it in Whit’s direction.  The heat was already close to unbearable at 8 in the morning.  Gonna be another hot one on the farm,” commented Cupid.  “I’d rather be fishing under a shade tree,” added Whit, who struggled with each small bite of his sandwich.  “I’d rather be drinking a cold brew in an air conditioned strip joint in Dallas,” said Frenchy.  They finished their breakfast in silence.

            At 69, Whit was the oldest of the three, but only by a couple years.  He also had the least criminal experience, with no prior brushes with the law before he was sent to prison 18 years ago for killing his cheating wife.  Before that he had been a full bird Colonel.  His terminal emphysema and bad ticker was a result of his hard drinking and chain smoking lifestyle in the Air Force.  He found Frenchy and Cupid here and they showed him the ropes of being a standup convict.  More important, they taught him how not to let his yearning for freedom drive him crazy.  Walk slow and drink a lot of water was their edict for doing time.

            Cupid was the trio’s true gangster, serving life for a murder he didn’t commit.  The cops hooked him up to get him off the streets once and for all.  Until he came to Angola for good in 1980, he was part of a loosely-fit criminal organization in North Louisiana that delved into gambling, enforcement, prostitution and gun smuggling.  He didn’t hate of the police for giving him a bum murder charge.  Just part of the outlaw game, he would say, and just deserts.  He had killed his share of like deviants over the years and either never got caught or beat the charge in court.  Only once he couldn’t finagle his way out of a criminal act—back in the mid-60s, when he used a baseball bat on a bar owner.  That put him in Angola for five years, in the days when Angola was rough and tumble and Sears Catalogues carried their weight in gold (prisoners would tape them to their chests when they slept to protect against middle of the night knife attacks).  Compared to that violent era, Angola is now a lamb.  Elderly prisoners make up half the prisoner population, due to life meaning life in Louisiana since 1972, and the young guns coming to Angola are crack heads who think this is just an extension of the projects they left.  So a balance of peace exists; one that is rarely thrown off kilter.

            A soft knock on the closed wooden window interrupted the reflective silence.  “Hey studs, open up.”

            The three old farts said in unison:  “Read the sign, asshole.”  Today is Tuesday.  No clothing handouts on Tuesday.  Leave your request in the box.  No bikini underwear in stock.

            “Fuck your sign.  And don’t be calling me that dirty word.  It’s Precious.”  The size of all three farts put together, Precious had not an ounce of fat on his well-chiseled body.  He also wore bikini underwear, tight shorts and low-cut tank tops.  “Come on, hurry up or I’m a gone pecan.”

            The three looked at each other and said, “Yeast!”  Cupid jumped from his chair to the window.  As he pushed the wood flat opened Precious slipped his hand down the front of his shorts and pulled a half-filled baggie from inside his flowery underwear.  He shoved it at Cupid as he looked nervously around the courtyard.  “I gotta go.  Pay me later.  Remember pink.  And it better be a thong and have a heart on the front like you promised, ‘cause it’s what my man wants.”  Precious’s man was Needle Dick Slim—6’ 2” and 135 pounds.  How Needle Dick could order and slap Precious around was just one of many mysteries of prison life.  “Yeah right,” said Cupid.  “I’ll bring them to the dorm tomorrow.”  And he closed the window.

            Turning around he held the bag of yeast in front of him like a diploma.  Frenchy got up, took the yeast and walked to the back room.  Seasoned convicts can get their hands on any anything from an x-rated video to an ounce of heroin, but yeast was one of the hardest contraband items to score.  It came from the kitchen where it was kept under lock and key and inventoried on a daily basis.  Security often overlooked a joint now and then, but when it came to making hooch they were serious.  A group of prisoners drunk on home brew always meant trouble.  Yet, for the most seasoned convicts, they always find a way.

            In the back room, where their small, rusted refrigerator sat among stacked boxes of state-issued clothing, Frenchy knelt down and lifted a floor board.  He tapped the yeast to the bottom of the board and snugged it back into place.  Reserve stock.  In the back corner of the room, under a barred window and behind a dilapidated shelf used to store rubber boots and brogans sat the covered bucket of fermenting wine.  Frenchy opened the sealed top, took a quick sniff and hurriedly closed it back.  Ready.  He then reached his hand into a size 13 rubber boot and pulled out a woman’s pink thong underwear, brought to him by a guard in exchange doing the guard’s application for divorce.  Tit for tat.

            Frenchy heard the front door open and stuffed the thong back into its hiding place.  Captain Fontenot walked in with his new Lieutenant trailing behind like a police dog.  “How ya old fart doin’ this morning?”

            “Like shit, and you?” answered Cupid. “Want some coffee, Cap?” asked Frenchy as he stepped from the back room.

            “Just had a cup.  Wanted to stop by to see how were doing, Whit.  How ya feeling?”

            “Okay,” wheezed Whit.  Captain Fontenot smiled, but lines of concern etched his face.  Cupid, let me see ya outside for a minute.”  The two walked out leaving the green Lieutenant to browse around the room.  He didn’t like what he saw.  And old color TV with rabbit ears, a deck of cards with poker chips and a shelf underneath the still smoking microwave.  “Ya’ll are laying out on this farm,” he said with stern sarcasm while bending over to look at a brand new VCR.

            “Laying out?” responded Frenchy as he moved across the room and into the Lieutenant’s face.  “Were in for life.  Gonna die in this stinking piss hole.  How the fuck are we laying out!?”  Frenchy’s abruptness caught the Lieutenant off guard.  He quickly regained his composure, moved closer to Frenchy with a scowl.  Captain Fontenot walked back in and saw the two squaring off.  “Let’s go Smith.  We need to make our rounds.  From now on stay out of here.  The clothing room is off limits to you.  These old convicts, they know how to do time and they don’t give us no trouble.  So we don’t give them none, understand?”  Without saying a word, Lieutenant Smith turned on his heels and walked out, tail between his legs.

            “He come from one of the non-trustee outercamps,” Fontenot told the trio.  “You know how they play it in those camps, everything by the book.  He don’t know no better about this camp, and I don’t expect he’ll make it here.  Fontenot knelt in front of Whit.  “You’re not look so good, my man.”  Whit struggled to hold off a coughing spell as he told the Captain, “I’m okay, really.  Fontenot stood up and headed to the door.  “If you need anything let me know.”

            “Three whores and a case of beer,” said Frenchy.  Fontenot smiled and shut the door.

            “What he want when he took you outside,” asked Frenchy.  Cupid looked at Whit.  “He wants to send you to the infirmary.  Says he’s worried about you.”  Whit’s eyes grew moist and big as silver dollars.  “No way!  I ain’t going to that butcher shop!  I don’t want to leave you guys and have to die alone in a locked room.”  His anxiety caused him to miss every other breath.  “Calm down ya old fart.  I talked him out of it.  Told him I’d let him know if you got any worse.  So just be sure to die before you get any worse.”  Whit chuckled with relief.

            The day drug on, like every day does in prison.  They tried to play three-handed poker, but Whit kept fading out, and sweat kept dripping on the cards.  So they turned on a baseball game.  Whit’s favorite team, Atlanta Braves, were playing.

            An hour before supper, just as everyone returned from their job assignments, all hell broke loose.  From inside the seclusion of the clothing room the three old farts were jarred by security radios blaring and hard shoes beating the pathway outside.  Before Frenchy and Cupid could get to their feet and race to the window, Knucklehead, the yard orderly, came crashing through the door.  “Bopeep  just took out Hog Head!  Busted his head wide open with a weight bar.  Blood and brains everywhere on the walk!  Hog Head laying dead as a doornail.

            “What happened, man?” asked Frenchy.

            “Heard they been beefing all day at the tractor shed over football,” said Knucklehead.  “Hog Head called Bopeep’s mom a grizzly old linebacker.  I heard Bopeep didn’t say nothin’ after that.  Just walked away.  Now this.  Snuck ole Hog Head good.”

            Cupid looked at Frenchy and Whit.  “Wow.”

            “That’s his issue,” said Frenchy.  “You don’t beef with a psycho like Bopeep, then go about your business like nothing’ happened.  I though Hog Head had more sense.”

            “Later,” said Knucklehead.  “I gotta get back over there.  Gotta clean up the mess.”  Knucklehead seemed excited about that.  Frenchy and Cupid opened the window.  Across the courtyard Bopeep wore handcuffs and leg shackles as three guards led by Lieutenant Smith shuffled him into a prison SUV.  The sound of the prison ambulance screeched in the distance.  “Wow,” repeated Cupid.  “Thought he was smarter than that,” repeated Frenchy.  Whit was struggling to get out of the chair and to the window, but couldn’t make it.  Frenchy and Cupid helped him over.  “I’m glad I’m not going out like that,” Whit said.

            Two hours later all was quiet in the camp.  Hog Head’s body had been hauled away to the prison’s small morgue.  Bopeep went to a lockdown cell where he would stay for  at least a couple decades.  Knucklehead had cleaned up the blood and grey matter on the walk.  Shit happens in prison, then it’s over and life moves on.

            The sun set, making way for a harvest moon to rise over the wheat fields.  Whit was in his chair half asleep and laboring with every breath.  His thoughts were consumed with anxiety over the possibility of being transferred to the infirmary.  Cupid and Frenchy were looking at Whit, willing him to breath.  In the background the TV was on AMC, showing, “The Great Escape.”  “Too much excitement for me today,” said Cupid.  “Yep, me too.  I think we need something to calm our nerves,” grinned Frenchy.  Whit looked up smiling.  Frenchy got up and walked to the back.  Cupid followed with three empty water bottles.

            A few minutes later they pulled their folding chairs around Whit and handed him a half-full bottle of hooch.  “To three old farts,” said Frenchy.  “To three old farts,” agreed Cupid.  They all took a swig.  Whit’s weak hand shook as he took a gulp.  The home brew trickled down the corners of his mouth.  “Frenchy my man, you’ve out done yourself this time,” Cupid said as he readied himself for another swig.  “I believe you’re right.  I have outdone myself.  What ya say Whit?  Does it hit the spot, or does it hit the spot?”

            “Mighty good,” wheezed Whit.  “A drink with friends.”  He lifted his bottle for another drink, but before it reached his lips is slipped from his hand.  Frenchy quickly bent over to pick it up from the floor before much spilled.  “Ain’t nothing but a thing, ya old fart.  You didn’t lose any.”  Whit’s hand brushed the top of Frenchy’s head as it swung loose over the side of the recliner.  Rising, Frenchy noticed Cupid’s stunned look.  He turned to Whit, whose head lolled to the left side and he eyes  drooped with a blank stare.  “I think he just died” said Cupid.  Frenchy set the two bottles of home brew on the floor and reached the back of his hand to Whit’s neck.  “Whit?  Whit?”  No answer, and no chest movement.  Whit was indeed dead.  The two sat there of several minutes staring at their friend.

            Cupid broke he silence.  “Is that it?  Just like that?”

            “I guess so,” said Frenchy.  “The old fart is free, and he died the way he wanted to—with us, on his terms.”  Cupid nodded, bowed his head and said, “We need to tell someone.  I mean, we need to tell a guard.”

            “Later,” said Frenchy.  “He’s not going anywhere.”  For the next hour , with Whit dead in his chair, Frenchy and Cupid went back and forth to the bucket of hooch.  Somehow they ended up on the back porch, arms around one another’s shoulders, facing the wheat field shinning under a full moon.  “We still got those wire cutters underneath the floorboard?” asked Frenchy.  Cupid turned and walked in to get them.

            Taking the wire cutters, Frenchy asked, “You coming?”  Naw, Wheat fucks up my sinus.  You go, old fart.  Have fun.”

            Frenchy walked unsteadily to the fence and cut a hole at the bottom.  With his bad hip and drunken state,  it took him a while to shimmy through the hole, but once on the other side he shed his clothes, leaving on his socks and brogans.  Then he staggered across the 100-yard gravel perimeter between the camp and wheat fields.

            The guard in the tower at the back corner of the camp spotted Frenchy with the searchlight and sounded the alarm.  Frenchy walked faster, finally reaching the edge of the wheat field, where he ducked in and spun around while looking up at the shinning moon.  He sucked in the smell of wheat, of freedom, tasting it with every fiber of his body.

            Cupid stood on the back porch, tears running down his cheeks, listening to his friend holler with joy.

            Flashlights bounced in the night as a dozen guards ran to the edge of the field.  Leading the chase team was Lieutenant Smith, who volunteered to work overtime.  Smith has his rifle in hand.  “It’s only Frenchy,” hollered a longtime guard.  “He must be drunk or something.  He ain’t no problem.  I’ll get him.”  Before the guard stepped into the wheat field, a rifle shot echoed through the night.

            Feeling empty and alone, Cupid shut the back door and walked over to Whit to tell him what happened.

“Geezer in the Hole”: The Reality of Aging Behind Bars

Over the past few years there has been a growing interest in the increasing numbers of older prisoners. At times this interest has been accompanied by some piddling gestures to alleviate their miserable situation–for example, theoretically granting them leave to die “in the free world,” or perhaps showing sympathy for granny having to climb up three tiers of bunks to get a night’s sleep, or gramps asking for a cane (denied because it is a possible weapon) so he can get to the toilet without crawling.

Nonetheless, the dominant view from the corrections industry and most of the public is that these people did the crimes and now they have to do the time–even if the time reflects absurdly the long sentences instituted in the 1980s and 90s, and creates a new cohort of septuagenarian prisoners. In fact, most of the new interest in aging inmates actually has to do with money. According to a recent AP article:

The ACLU estimates that it costs about $72,000 to house an elderly inmate for a year, compared to $24,000 for a younger prisoner.The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that the number of men and women in state and federal prisons age 55 and older grew 76 percent between 1999 and 2008, the latest year available, from 43,300 to 76,400. The growth of the entire prison population grew only 18 percent in that period.

“We’re reaping the fruits of bad public policy like Three Strikes laws and other mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” said David C. Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. “One in 11 prisoners is serving a life sentence.”

With prison costs escalating and states overwhelmed with deficits, letting granny and gramps out of the clink suddenly doesn’t sound so bad to some state officials. Old prisoners are expensive, and if we must take care of them, then why should local and state government’s foot the bill. Better to let the federal government pay instead, through Medicare and Medicaid. The leading predictor of criminal behavior is age (young), so there’s little risk involved in letting the geezers go; all that’s keeping most of them behind bars in the nation’s insatiable taste for punishment.

With all this in mind, I am reprinting an article that just appeared on Solitary Watch, another blog where I am editor along with Jean Casella. It is the story of Robert Platshorn, leader of  the “Black Tuna Gang” of marijuana smugglers in the late 1970s, an experience described in his book The Black Tuna Diaries. In 1980, he received what was then an unprecedented sentence of 64 years in federal prison. 

When Platshorn was released on parole in 2008 at the age of 65, he was the longest-serving non-violent marijuana offender in America. But as he wrote in a blog post for High Times earlier this year, that distinction ”won’t be mine for long. Many sentenced after me will soon be able to claim my title. They are serving LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE and will never get to spend another minute as a free man.” When Platshorn was convicted, he writes, “no one received a life sentence for marijuana. That changed in the early 80′s as Reagan stepped up this insane failure of a drug war.” According to Platshorn, several other non-violent marijuana offenders, including  Billy Deckle, are now in their sixties and seventies, and will likely never be released.

Here is what they have to look forward to: Surviving day to day in an environment so dangerous that a slip of the tongue often ends in death. Since the elimination of parole, federal prisons are populated mainly by young, uneducated, aggressive inmates serving absurdly long sentences. They have little hope and nothing to lose. Violence has become endemic in a system that has little or no reward for good behavior. Prison gangs find older non-violent inmates easy prey.

Inadequate medical care. It costs the taxpayers billions to provide even minimal health care for older inmates. Yet these are the people least likely to commit a crime after release. An older marijuana offender serving a long sentence is likely to die in prison for lack of medical care…

An extremely unhealthy diet. It becomes an obsession, trying find enough decent food to maintain good health. Even under the best of circumstances, it’s no longer possible. When I entered prison in 1979, the budget to feed an inmate for three meals a day was $2.62. When I left prison in 2008 it had shrunk to $2.25…This has to pay, not only for food, it has to cover repairs and replacements for kitchen equipment, civilian salaries, and eating utensils…You don’t have to be an economist to figure out, that since Bush decimated the prison food budget, the cost of inmate medical care has skyrocketed. Especially for older inmates, many of whom require a special or restricted diet…Now, the Bureau [of Prisons] will say that they provide special diets for those who require them. And it’s true. Sort of! Those diet trays usually contain so little edible food that the starving sick geezer ends up eating a piece of deep fried breaded sewer trout or a hunk of fried breaded mystery meat, just to stave off the terrible never ending hunger pangs. The results, a sick geezer who now needs expensive medications and has little or no chance of surviving a long sentence. Most of those geezers would pose no threat to society if released. It’s even worse when the geezer is serving forever for marijuana, a harmless substance, and an effective medication that is now legal in many states. How would you feel if that old pot smuggler was your Uncle Billy?

Geezer in the hole! “The Hole”! Segregation!…The Federal Bureau of Prisons thinks it sounds better if they call it the SHU (Special Housing Unit). Take my word for it, it ain’t special in any way you’d like to experience. During my almost 30 years in 11 different federal prisons, about 3 ½ years were spent in segregation. They got it right in the old movies, “the hole”. Now you might ask, why would a nice non-violent old dude wind up in the hole? Lots of reason! Someone “drops a note” saying the old dude’s life is in danger. Result many months in the hole. He gets in a fight. Doesn’t matter if it’s self-defense. Into the hole! Uncle Billy gets caught coming out of the chow hall with an apple or a cookie in his pocket. The hole! The old pot smuggler has been forced to work in the prison factory because he owes a fine. A tool disappears from his work area. Everyone who works in that area is tossed in the hole. And so on and so on. Now what happens is: he has to eat whatever shows up on the meager tray that comes through the slot, or starve. Mostly he eats all the starchy crap because he’s been flat on his back all day and night, and he’s bored to death. Meals are the only break he looks forward to. Each time he leaves his cell his hands are cuffed behind his back. This is especially painful for an older inmate. He has to be cuffed while he crouches backwards with his hands pushed out through the lower food slot. This usually means Uncle Billy will forgo his three weekly showers and exercise periods. It’s no big deal when your young and supple, but for a geezer it’s a different story. The only way I can express it is, if you are over fifty, spend 90 days in the hole and you come out two years older. Fatter, slower, more depressed, and less likely to recover physically or mentally.

Its time for all the Uncle Billys to go home…

Quadriplegics and Geezers Deemed Too Dangerous to Release from Prison

A quadriplegic could be a threat to public safety if release from prison. At least, that’s what the California Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) concluded when a prisoner requested compassionate release.

Steven Martinez, convicted of several violent felonies, had served three years of a 157-year sentence when he was stabbed by another inmate. His spinal cord was severed, and he was permanently paralyzed from the neck down. Despite his physical condition, the Parole Board denied his request– citing his violent past and verbal threats he had made since he was rendered quadriplegic–and said that he must remain incarcerated indefinitely.

According to the blog Lowering the Bar (which specializes in reporting on legal absurdities) this week a California state Court of Appeals more or less agreed with the Parole Board. In Martinez v. Board of Parole Hearings, the Appeals Court decided that the case should be “returned to BPH because it did not explicitly articulate” the facts on which the Board had based its decision. Yet the Court found that such a threat was “conceivable.”

On Legal Blog Watch, Bruce Carton writes about the Court’s opinion, in which a dissenting judge faces off against the majority over what Carton dubs “the ‘dangerous quadriplegic’ doctrine.”

The majority opinion cited four cases to show that “quadriplegics can commit violent crimes.” Among these  was one case where “a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair thought his bride of two weeks was cheating on him and killed her by firing a pistol using a string in his mouth.”

The dissenting judge responded that “with the help of a good Internet search engine, you can prove anything, including that pigs can fly.” He then proceeded to cite several stories in which they did just that (with the help of a trampoline or an airplane–but still). The judge concluded:

[T]he majority’s citation of these quadriplegic crime stories actually supports my argument. Thus the majority’s four accounts are drawn from the entire country and span a period of 38 years–from 1972 to the present. I am sure that if there were more stories of this ilk, the majority would have found them.

Four stories in the country in 38 years is darn few. Indeed, the stories are written and reported because the commission of serious crimes by quadriplegics is so rare and bizarre that they are newsworthy. Thus I am willing to take the risk that petitioner Martinez will fire a pistol with a string in his mouth. Indeed, given the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Martinez is costing the State each year, it is a risk that we all must take.

California’s compassionate release program was in large part designed to save money, in a cash-strapped state that has the nation’s largest population of prisoners, and spends $8 billion a year to incarcerate them. But the Parole Board’s response–and the Court’s–show why even crippling state budget crises do not necessarily lead to more sensible corrections policies.

The same is true when it comes to the growing numbers of old inmates languishing in U.S. prisons due to longer sentences and harsher parole policies. Jonathan Turley, who founded the Project for Older Prisoners, has written that in assessing risk factors for parole or early release, “the most reliable is age. As a general rule, people become less dangerous as they age. In males, the greatest drop in recidivism occurs around age 30 and tends to continue to fall.” At the same time, “because of maintenance and medical costs, the average cost of an older prisoner is two to three times that of a younger prisoner.”

A report on the subject released earlier this week by the Vera Institute of Justice recommends more use of early release for older prisoners who present a low risk to public safety. But if a quadriplegic is deemed dangerous, can anyone ever be “low risk”? According to an article about the Vera study on The Crime Report:

At the end of 2009, 15 states and the District of Columbia had provisions for geriatric release, but jurisdictions rarely use them. Four factors help explain the difference between the stated intent and the actual impact of geriatric release laws: political considerations and public opinion; narrow eligibility criteria; procedures that discourage inmates from applying for release; and complicated and lengthy referral and review processes.

Last year, I wrote a two-part article for The Crime Report about the “Graying of America’s Prisons,” citing many cases in which states denied early release to elderly prisoners–even ones who showed ample evidence of rehabilitation. (You can read it here and here.) In many cases, these same inmates would have been out long ago had their crimes preceded the draconian sentencing boom of the last 30 years.

The fact that so many states refuse to seriously consider releasing prisoners who are rendered virtually harmless by age, sickness, or disability suggests that our prison policies have less to do with protecting public safety, and more to do with the politics of punishment and the psychology of retribution.

Profs to Design “Toolkit” to Help Old People Die Right in Prison

Over the last few months I have been posting articles on the graying of the U.S. prison population. Beyond the humanitarian implications, this is a cause of growing concern because of inflating costs due to treating people with arthritis, cancer, hip and knee replacement and so on behind bars. Older people fall more often, have trouble climbing into bunk beds because of arthritis, and suffer from depression and dementia. Unlike younger prisoners, they tend to be a fairly docile lot, and are more often the victim than the aggressor in prison assaults. They are obvious candidates for early release as prisons are eyed as targets for cuts in cash-strapped state budgets.

For years prison rights organizations and families have sought to persuade states and the federal government to free elderly  terminally ill inmates into the care of family or friends. But prisons and politicians have generally deemed such compassionate release programs too “high risk” because of the possible security threat to the general populace–in other words, they worry grandpa might get out and go berserk, and they’d be left holding the bag if he committed a new crime.

Places like Angola, the giant Louisiana state prison where most inmates have such long sentences that they are destined to die inside, have dealt with this situation by setting up their own hospices. Now, Penn State has received a $1.27 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research to develop what Susan Loeb, an assistant professor, described to the student newspaper the Daily Collegian as a “comprehensive toolkit of tailored resources for end-of-life care in prisons.” The article continues:

Leaders of the program plan to apply study findings at six different prisons state-wide in an attempt to improve care for inmates reaching the end of their lives, wrote Loeb, the principal investigator for the study.

“Since prisons are among the most restrictive, most complex organizations — prisons are the best context for this study,” Loeb wrote. “Our hope is that findings will benefit not only dying inmates but also others who spend their final days in a complex organization.”

Though the study is still in the early stages, researchers are quickly learning, said Christopher Hollenbeak, associate professor of surgery and health evaluation sciences and an investigator on the study. “The real goal of it is to come up with a tool in prisons to improve the quality-of-life care,” Hollenbeak said. “We want to provide a toolkit that would be cost-effective as well.” Current end-of-life prison programs only offer limited low-cost medications. One proposed change is the “buddy system,” where healthy inmates are paired with a terminally ill inmate to help look out for them, Hollenbeak said.

I suppose it’s a worthy effort, given the current situation. But none of it would be necessary if American society could get over its desire for punishment and revenge just enough to let these inmates die in the free world.

The Graying of America’s Prisons

The following appears as Part One of a two-part Special Report on The Crime Report (TCR), which is “a collaborative effort by two national organizations that focus on encouraging quality criminal justice reporting:  The  Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the nation’s leading practice-oriented think tank on crime and justice reporting, and Criminal Justice Journalists, the nation’s only membership organization of crime-beat journalists.” I’ll post Part Two as soon as it appears on TCR.

Frank Soffen, now 70 years old, has lived more than half his life in prison, and will likely die there.

Sentenced to life for second-degree murder, Soffen has suffered four heart attacks and is confined to a wheelchair.  He has lately been held in the assisted living wing of Massachusetts’ Norfolk prison. Because of his failing health and his exemplary record over his 37 years behind bars—which includes rescuing a guard being threatened by other inmates—Soffen has been held up as a candidate for release on medical and compassionate grounds.

He is physically incapable of committing a violent crime, has already participated in pre-release and furlough programs, and has a supportive family and a place to live with his son. One of the members of the Massachusetts state parole board spoke in favor of his release. But in 2006 the board voted to deny Soffen parole. He will not be eligible for review for another five years.

The “tough on crime” posturing and policymaking that have dominated American politics for more than three decades have left behind a grim legacy. Longer sentences and harsher parole standards have led to overcrowded prisons, overtaxed state budgets, and devastated families and communities. Now, yet another consequence is becoming visible in the nation’s prisons and jails: a huge and ever-growing numbers of geriatric inmates.

Increasingly, the cells and dormitories of the United States are filled with old, often sick men and women. They hobble around the tiers with walkers or roll in wheelchairs. They fill prison infirmaries, assisted living wings, and hospices faster than the state and federal governments can build them—and since many are dying behind bars, they are filling the mortuaries and graveyards as well.

The care these aging prisoners receive, while often grossly inadequate, is nonetheless cripplingly expensive—so much so that some recession-strapped states are for the first time seriously considering releasing older terminally ill and mentally ill prisoners rather than pay the heavy price for their warehousing. It remains to be seen what will happen when such fiscal concerns run head on into America’s taste for punitive justice. A recent report by the Vera Institute made this clear.

Politicians no doubt did not imagine this Dickensian landscape of the elderly incarcerated when they voted to lengthen sentences and impose mandatory minimums three or four decades ago. But their actions are yielding an inevitable outcome.  While the graying of the prison population to some extent reflects the changing demographics of the populace at large, it owes considerably more to changes in law and policy. And this is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

According to the Sentencing Project, the United States imprisons five times as many people as it did 30 years ago and more than seven times as many as it did 40 years ago. Our criminal justice system now keeps 2.3 million people behind bars—about half of them for drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes. Twenty-five years ago, there were 34,000 prisoners serving life sentences; today the number is more than 140,000. The fact that each person is spending a longer stretch behind bars means that the falling crime rates of the 1990s do not translate into fewer inmates. It also means that more and more people who committed offenses in their 20s or even their teens are growing old and dying in prison.

The situation is particularly stark in California, Texas and Florida, which have large prison populations with cells crammed to overflowing because of harsh sentencing laws. In California, the population of prisoners over 55 doubled in the ten years from 1997 to 2006. About 20 percent of California prisoners are serving life sentences, and over 10 percent are serving life without the possibility of parole. Louisiana’s prison system now holds more than 5,000 people over the age of 50—a three-fold increase in the last 12 years.

While 50 or 55 may not be old by conventional standards, people age faster behind bars than they do on the outside: Studies have shown that prisoners in their 50s are on average physiologically 10 to 15 years older than their chronological age. Older prisoners require substantial medical care, because of harsh life conditions as well as age. Inmates begin to have trouble climbing to upper bunks, walking, standing on line, and handling other parts of the prison routine. They suffer from early losses of hearing and eyesight, have high rates of high blood pressure and diabetes, and are susceptible to falls.

A recent study by Brie Williams and Rita Albraldes, published as a chapter in the book Growing Older: Challenges of Prison and Reentry for the Aging Population, found that in addition to the chronic diseases that increase with age, older offenders have problems such as paraplegia because of the legacy of gunshot wounds. Many have  advanced liver disease, renal disease, or hepatitis. Still others suffer from HIV-AIDS, and many more from drug and alcohol abuse. Living under prison conditions, they are more likely to get pneumonia and flu.

Many prisons are notorious for not taking their inmates’ health complaints seriously, and there is anecdotal evidence this problem may be compounded when prisoners are elderly. A doctor under contract in one southern prison told me in a recent interview how a diabetic man’s illness was misdiagnosed, resulting in months of excruciating pain and the amputation of toes and part of one foot. Back in prison, the man asked for prosthetic shoes so he could get around by walking; his request was denied.

Another elderly prisoner complained of an earache which went untreated for months.  When it became unbearably painful, the prisoner was shipped to a local hospital emergency room, under contract to the prison. There the doctors found the earache was brain cancer—by then, too advanced to treat.

The exploding prison population has further undermined the already questionable quality of inmate medical care. In California, which has the nation’s largest number of state prisoners, a panel of federal judges earlier this year found that the state of medical care was so poor that it violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and was in danger of routinely costing prisoners their lives. The only solution, the judges said, was to reduce prison overcrowding caused by the states draconian mandatory sentences. The court recommended shortening sentences and reforming parole, which they believed would have no impact on public safety; it has given California three years to comply.

To come in Part Two:  Challenging the status quo for geriatric prisoners

Appeal Denied After 37 Years in Solitary Confinement

The Louisiana State Supreme Court Friday denied an appeal from Herman Wallace, who has been held in solitary confinement for more than 37 years. Wallace and Albert Woodfox are members of what has become known as the Angola 3, whose story I have been covering for Mother Jones. Convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, both men maintain their innocence; they believe they were targeted for the crime and relegated to permanent lockdown because of their organizing work with the prison chapter of the Black Panthers. Wallace, who is now 68 years old, was recently transferred from Angola to the Hunt Correctional Center near Baton Rouge, where he continues to be held in solitary. Two days ago, Wallace descended even deeper into the hole, placed in a disciplinary unit called Beaver 5 for unknown violations of prison policy.

Herman Wallace launched the appeal of his conviction nearly a decade ago. His lawyers have introduced substantial evidence showing that the state’s star witness, a fellow prisoner named Hezekiah Brown, was offered special treatment and an eventual pardon in exchange for his testimony against Wallace and Woodfox. In 2006, a judicial commissioner assigned to study the case found that there were grounds for overturning the conviction, but Wallace’s application was subsequently denied–by the state district court, court of appeals, and now by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

While every setback comes as a blow to a man nearing 70 who has spent nearly four decades in lockdown, one of Wallace’s attorneys said tonight that this denial by the state’s highest court came as no surprise, since it has a reputation for refusing to overturn the decisions of lower courts. Today’s ruling opens the doors to a federal habeas corpus challenge, beginning with the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana at Baton Rouge. Here, if Wallace is lucky, his case will be reviewed by a fact-finding federal magistrate, and his conviction overturned by a federal judge. This is what happened to Albert Woodfox last year. Yet Woodfox, too, remains in prison–and in solitary confinement–as the state appeals the judge’s decision.

Louisiana’s Attorney General, James “Buddy” Caldwell, has stated that he opposes releasing the two men “with every fiber of my being,” while the Warden of Angola and Hunt prisons, Burl Cain, has more than once suggested that the two men must be held in solitary because they ascribe to “Black Pantherism.”

In addition to their criminal appeals, Wallace and Woodfox (along with Robert King, who was released in 2001), have a case pending on constitutional grounds. They argue that the conditions and duration of their time in solitary confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Their lawyers have submitted reports showing the effects of decades of solitary confinement on men in their sixties—including arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. The suit also argues that Wallace and Woodfox are being held in lockdown for their political beliefs, in violation of the First Amendment.

How the British Handle a Dying Prisoner

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

There is an inane debate going on in the United States about whether to allow old and dying prisoners out of jail for their final days and months. Not long ago I described the aging, sick prisoner at Angola prison who was denied his plea to be allowed to die in the “free world.” The prisoin wouldn’t release the living man, but only his dead body–which, according to his wishes, was cremated by a friend, then placed in a Viking boat he had built in the Angola hobby shop, and towed out to sea where the boat and ashes were set afire.

By way of contrast, here is the way the British handle this situation. Ronnie Biggs,79, who was convicted for the famous 1963 Great Train Robbery (and who later escaped and spent years on the lam), was freed from prison on compassionate grounds because he is unlikely to recover from pneumonia.

According to the BBC, Biggs’s son, Michael, said, “My father has served a very long time in prison…In comparison to sentences which are being handed out nowadays it’s pathetic that anyone would expect my father to serve 30 years for taking part in a train robbery…The reasons why my father didn’t get parole is, he didn’t show any repentance. My father did show remorse all through the years for having committed a crime. However, he has never regretted living the life he did, because had he done that he would never have had me as a son.”

As for the crime, here is the BBC description of what happened:

Biggs, originally from Lambeth, south London, was a member of a 15-strong gang which attacked the Glasgow to London mail train at Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, in August 1963, and made off with £2.6m in used banknotes.

The train’s driver, Jack Mills, suffered head injuries during the robbery.

Biggs was given a 30-year sentence, but after 15 months he escaped from Wandsworth prison, in south-west London, by climbing a 30ft wall and fleeing in a furniture van.

He was on the run for more than 30 years, living in Australia and Brazil, before returning to the UK voluntarily in 2001 in search of medical treatment.

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

I have written hefore about the aging population in American prisons and jails, due in large part to the draconian sentencing policies of the courts, federal, state, and local. As a result these places seem destined to become nursing homes surrounded by razor wire.  

Angola prison in Louisiana, for instance, boasts that some 90 percent of its population will die there. The prison has managed to equip itself with a hospice, and trained inmates to attend to a convict’s last days. Burl Cain, the warden, is backed up by a phalanx of Christian fundamentalist preachers who freely roam the 18,000 acre former slave plantation recruiting inmates to be preachers. The clergy instruct  prisoners their only way out is through redemption made possible by the  acceptance of Jesus Christ. When an elderly inmate, knowing his end was near, sought to be win release so as to die in the so-called “free world,” the parole board refused. The procedure is to go to your death in the Christian way–from cell to hospice to a prison cemetery where your grave will be dug by the inmates who will mark your bruial with gospel hymns

 The travesty at Angola is held up as a model  for the nation and Cain celebrated by the media  as a new corrections messiah. Elsewhere,old,sick people,piled into these living tombs by the courts, stand in line for hours to get an aspirin; arthritic old women  are made to climb into upper bunk beds.Parapalegic men are denied canes, which are ruled to be weapons, and instead must crawl to the toilets.People are locked in solitary for years. Mentally ill convicts who act out in the general population are put into solitary because they howl and scream in public.  Locked down, they go truly mad. Old sex offenders can be released into the hands of friends or family. but often noone wants them, so they are released to the county jail, reindicted, and sent back to prison.

The American public is  up in arms about  CIA jails in far away places. But it  could care less about American prisons. Now a new report by the Sentencing Project in Washington adds to the growing body of information about  prisons here at home. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America contains, among other things, the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender, and reveals “overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences”: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving  life sentences are non-white.

  The the report’s key findings:

140,610 individuals are serving life sentences, representing one of every 11 people (9.5%) in prison. Twenty-nine percent (41,095) of the individuals serving life sentences have no possibility of parole.

The number of individuals serving life without parole sentences increased by22% from 33,633 to 41,095 between 2003 and 2008. This is nearly four times the rate of growth of the parole-eligible life sentenced population.

In five states—Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York—at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.

The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences, 10.8% are life without parole.

Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life sentenced population in the state of New York.

 There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences; 1,755, or 25.8%, of whom are serving sentences of life without parole.

Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color.

There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences, 28.4% of females sentenced to life do not have the possibility of parole.

Old Prisoners Denied Their Social Security

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

From time to time, I’ve written about the growing numbers of older prisoners now filling up the country’s prisons and jails, in a series of posts called Aging Behind Bars. Many of these prisoners receive inadquate health care and are subject to special forms of cruel and inhuman punishment that have to do with age–i.e. requiring people with bad arthritis to climb to the upper bunk to sleep, or making it next to impossible for inmates in wheelchairs to access parts of prisons available to younger people, even including something as simple as handicapped showers. Among the worst incidents described to me by a medical consultant were ill women forced to get out of bed at 3 am,then stand in lines to obtain medicine in one Alabama women’s prison.

Older prisoners are also often denied the Social Security they earned for years before being convicted of a crime. Lois Ahrens, who runs the indispenable Real Cost of Prisons Project, alerted me to the situation of David Hinman, a prisoner in Iowa. Now 65, he contributed to Social Security for years while he was in the “free-world.” He is not eligible for parole for a number years. Hinman writes:

Currently the government will not pay people in prison social security. I am speaking about paying social security to those who paid into the fund. Payment is based on what they paid in. Even though I am now 65 and paid into the fund, since I am in prison I am not allowed to collect unless I am released from prison. By not paying inmates the social security to which they are entitled, I believe this is in some manner, theft.

My question to readers is: should prison inmates who paid into social security and reached 65 be allowed to collected social security while incarcerated or not.

(You can write to David Hinman, #25374, Anamosa State Penitentiary, 406 North High Street, P.O. Box 10, Anamosa, IA 52205-0010.)

Asked about this situation, Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, the excellent magazine which tracks prison issues, wrote me:

Part of the problem I have with this is that someone can work their whole life, pay into Social Security, commit a crime at a later age, and go to prison for the rest of their life and never see a penny of the money they paid into SS. The lie used to justify this is prisoners have no need for money but that is not true. I think it is a backdoor way to trim the SS rolls. I think this is the exception. To put it into context, retirees can get their pensions in prison, veterans can get their VA benefits in prison. It follows that if you earn something you are entitled to it. It is not a freebie the government can take away because it doesn’t like you and that is exactly what they do here.

Wright attached an article from a 1998 isssue of Prison Legal News, describing a federal court decision on the subject, that sets the situation into the bleakest of terms.

The court of appeals for the Ninth circuit held that a statute denying Social Security benefits to prisoners is constitutional. Robert Butler is a 77 year old Nevada state prisoner. Butler was granted social security retirement benefits in 1983. He was later incarcerated and the Social Security Administration (SSA) determined he was not entitled to benefits while he was incarcerated pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 402(X). An administrative law judge affirmed the SSA’s decision. Butler filed suit in federal court and it was dismissed for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court of appeals affirmed. The appeals court noted that every court to consider the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 402(X), this includes the Second, Fourth, Eighth, Tenth and Eleventh circuits, had upheld the law. Congress has wide discretion in administering welfare resources. The court held that § 402(X)’s ban on social security benefits to prisoners does not violate constitutional guarantees to due process, equal protection and protection against ex post facto laws and bills of attainder. The court also held that Butler was provided with ample due process before his benefits were terminated because he participated in the SSA hearing by telephone. Since the statute leaves no room for agency discretion and the only fact issue was whether or not Butler was a felon doing time in prison, the telephone hearing was sufficient to safeguard Butler’s due process interest in his social security benefits. See: Butler v. Apfel , 144 F.3d 622 (9th Cir. 1998).

Life in Lockdown

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

Note: For several months, as part of my work for Mother Jones, I have been covering the case of the Angola 3, which involves men in their sixties who have been in solitary confinement for going on four decades. You can read my earlier story on the subject here. Other Unsilent Generation posts on aging behind bars can be found here and here.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox are believed to have been held in solitary confinement for longer than any inmate in America—37 years, to be precise, nearly all of them spent in 6-by-9 cells at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. For 23 hours a day, they pass the time in their cells as best they can. For one hour, they are allowed out to take a shower or a stroll along the cell block. Three days a week, they can use that hour to exercise alone in a fenced yard, as long as the weather is good.

Wallace and Woodfox were originally sent to Angola for armed robbery offenses in the early 1970s. When a young guard named Brent Miller was stabbed to death in 1972, Wallace and Woodfox were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, although, as courts have since acknowledged, there were numerous flaws with their trials: faulty evidence, manufactured testimony, and bribed witnesses, as well as inadequate legal representation and discriminatory jury selection. Along with another prisoner, Robert King, the men became known as the Angola 3, and for three decades they protested their innocence in court, maintaining that they had been targeted because they had helped found a Black Panthers chapter at Angola and were organizing for better conditions at the prison. 

In recent years a federal judge ordered Louisiana to release Woodfox and give him a new trial; another judge recommended a new trial for Wallace. (King was released in 2001 when a judge overturned his conviction, after he had spent 29 years in solitary.) Yet the state has mounted endless appeals and procedural roadblocks to keep the pair locked away. Wallace and Woodfox are now 68 and 62, respectively.

After my requests to interview both men were denied, I began a correspondence with them. Their letters reveal a sense of resolve amid the bleakness of their situation. “I use stacks of books for exercise and thereafter I am either writing or reading. I have no time for foolishness. It’s really that serious. I am in a struggle against the state of Louisiana on two strategic fronts, and hear me when I tell you they are not fighting fair,” Wallace wrote to me recently. “The sense of hopelessness is endless and if not fought can break a person! (I bend, but don’t break!)” Woodfox wrote.

In a recent article in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande made a persuasive case that solitary confinement is a form of torture. He cited lab studies in which baby monkeys raised in isolation became “profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.” Humans, it turns out, experience similarly acute anguish when deprived of social contact. When Gawande examined the cases of prisoners who had been kept alone for prolonged periods, he found that they disintegrated, mentally and physically. They became depressed, hallucinated, were unable to remember basic facts, and in some instances became catatonic. “Without sustained social interaction,” Gawande concluded, “the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.”

The use of so-called extended lockdown has grown exponentially since the 1980s and is now an almost routine part of the American criminal justice system. The practice has been denounced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, among others. Yet it has never aroused much public opposition, even among progressives who are outraged by reports of psychological abuse from Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

For the past decade, the Angola 3 have also challenged the use of solitary confinement in a civil lawsuit in federal court, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” For years, this case went nowhere. But on April 3, a federal magistrate judge at the US District Court in Baton Rouge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. It will likely be heard in the fall, and if the court makes a broad ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, it could potentially affect the more than 25,000 prisoners who live in complete isolation in supermax prisons or lockdown units around the country.

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