“Waiting For The World To Give Us A Reason To Live”: Solitary Confinement in Utah

From: SolitaryWatch, Oct. 24th, 2012
By Sal Rodriguez

Utah State Prison’s Uinta 1 facility serves as the prison’s super-maximum security unit, where inmates are held in solitary confinement. Inmates in Uinta 1 may be there for disciplinary infractions, notoriety reasons, protective custody, or because they are security/escape risks. The unit is divided into eight sections with twelve inmates in each section, for a total of 96 maximum inmates. Currently, there are 90 inmates in Uinta 1. The Utah Department of Corrections, in response to a government records request by Solitary Watch, claims it has no records regarding its use of segregation.

Several inmates have recently written Solitary Watch about the conditions in Uinta 1.

L., who has been in Uinta 1 for five months and previously served 28 months there, reports that he is only able to leave his cell three days a week, for a shower and 1 hour alone in a concrete yard. He reports that, in being transported to a 15 minute shower, “we have to wear a spit mask over our faces and handcuffed from behind with a dog leash hooked to us.”

“The rest of the time except on the shower days we are locked down in our cells with the door window closed so you can’t see out,” he writes.

A., who has been in Uinta 1 for a year, adds that, “just the other day, the [Correctional Officers] came and shook our cells down and took away all of our hygiene. They took away shampoo, lotion, conditioner, everything…they also don’t give us anything to clean our cells with.”

A. is in Uinta 1 for his own protection, following what he says was a decision to leave gang life after much “self-study.” Despite this, he says, he is treated as if he committed a  serious offense.

Inmate Brandon Green, who has frequently written on the conditions of Uinta 1, describes the environment in Uinta 1 as reinforcing a vicious cycle in which inmates placed in solitary usually end up back not long after they are released. Green, who has been in Uinta 1 for five years, previously served 18 months in Uinta 1 before a brief period on parole before returning to Utah State Prison. He has been held in Uinta 1 following an escape attempt and refusal to take psychiatric drugs, which he says will only harm his health.

“So alone. So much internal turbulence with nothing like T.V., radio, magazines or conversation to hide [this pain] beneath,” he writes, “a man leaves this place to go to general population or to a less secure facility where you have electronics and a cellie. You can just count down the months before he will return…We learn we can do without anything. And we become content with nothing. The more they take away from us year after year, the more family disappears, the more one doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want a wife and a job and bills and an Amerikkan future…It is like waiting for the world to give us a reason to live. But the world just keeps giving us reasons to not give a shit.”

This situation leads many inmates to report severe mental health problems that are aggravated by the long-term isolation. The prison routinely responds to such crises by placing suicidal inmates in a strip cell, where they are to be alone in a cell with  and checked every fifteen minutes. Included in many of these cells are cameras.
L. writes that “if someone is gonna kill themselves they take them and out to a strip cell and you sleep on the hard floor and treated like a dog.”
A. reports that “if I lose control because of something I have no control over, they’ll punish me and put me on strip cell for three days…when a mentally ill inmate feels suicidal, they send us to the infirmary to be on suicide watch…then we get from suicide watch back to Uinta 1 and the staff put us back in the strip cell when we get back to Uinta 1.”

In Uinta 1, suicide is not an uncommon occurrence. In 2009, two prisoners in Uinta 1 committed suicide. One was Danny Gallegos, who was found hanged in his cell in June. Another was a friend of Green, Spencer “Spider” Hooper, a “Pink Floyd fan and singer on medications for schizophrenia and depression.” Months after a previous suicide attempt, Hooper was found dead in February 2009, hanging in his cell.

A. and L. also independently confirm that sandbags at the cell doors of inmates gather bugs, which enter their cells. “They got sandbags around all the cells but never pick them up and clean under them so there’s all kinds of bugs and dirt that comes right under our doors,” A. writes.

Green also writes about the declining array of services provided to Uinta 1 inmates. “Years ago indigent captives received five envelopes a week. Now its one. We had five outside contacts a week. Now one. We used to be fed enough to stay full. Now we are starved. We used to have shampoo and lotion. Now we don’t. We grumble for an hour each time something is taken from us. Then move right along to inventing the creative willpower to survive with no penpals and mail, a full stomach or clean hair. Moving right along. We expect tragedy.”

Solitary Watch will continue to report on Uinta 1 as more information becomes available.

Brandon Green welcomes letters. His mailing address is:
Brandon Green #147075, Uinta One 305, Utah State Prison, PO Box 250, Draper, Utah 84020. His blog, updated by an outside supporter, can be seen here.

Kruel Koncentration Kamp

08-13-2010

Dear kruel world,

What´s it going to take? How many more of us must die before someone steps in and stops this control unit´s moves from destroying your brothers, sons and nephews? Is there a lack of belief on everybody´s part because I came across as unstable and untrustworthy? Maybe I am nuts, maybe I am insane, I´ll grant everybody that. But maybe that´s a prerequisite for surviving this… this place. .. these walls… these words:

“So that I don´t have to drag myself to the door, I stay in front of it. All that I have sits in this hollow with me. I prop my mattress up against the door for a backrest. These officers (peterson, randall, stephens, sgt. lund), delight to kick the door, especially so when they know I´m either asleep or writing.

I´m forced by these officers to be stark naked for more than five years; enduring a triple gum abcess, broken teeth, lost filling for over eleven years; being repeatedly starved and dehydrated; have all of my possessions stole repeatedly.”

Damn huh! Those World War II holocaust victims had it bad, right? Of course they did. But would you believe me if I said these words were written only three days ago by a fifty-three year old man in Utah´s Uinta One Control Unit? Only three cells away from myself I´ve sat in witness to this man Mr John Chaney #123899 torture and starvation and sleep deprivation and sexual harrassments and even religious taunts and oppressions. These words you read are dated August 9^th 2010. These words are why the UTDOC won´t allow any of us media interviews. These words are why Mr Chaney does not receive Prison Watch´s letters mailed to him repeatedly. And why Mr Chaney´s letters he mails out do not make their destinations. These words:

Concerning food: “Officers steal it more frequently than I am given it.”

When he contacted the doctor: “Dr Tubbo came around and stated ´We don´t care and we don´t have to, I´m glad I´m not in your body.”

“Then nearly a year passed in very great discomfort and I´m stricken with scurvy. I asked for help again. The doctor looked at me and asked if my bones always stuck out like they do. I confirmed so. I was given breakfast drink. I can´t count the number of times I´ve eaten it dry” (they turn off his water, etc.).

He ends concerning his religion: “I shall not be guilty, though it cost my life. I am Yeshua´s and YHWH´s friend. I am willing and pleased to die for them. Amen.”

I don´t hear anyone laughing out there. You guys don´t find this at all funny? That´s fucking strange, because these “corrections officers” find this man´s condition and treatment hilarious. Even some of my fellow captives caper and prance around for the benefit and show of these officers. It gets to be so slap-ass happy everyone seems to forget a crippled man is lying huddled against his cell door. Unshaven and hair uncut for almost fifteen years. Unaware that maybe any day another body bag will be popped out and unfurled and unzipped. Then rezipped…

Then I suppose it´s only fair and just that we forget all about sgt fairbanks´ threats to Mr Chaney. Don´t want to get any of the upstanding good guy Mormons in hot water do we? (if you notice traces of anger you´re dead correct).

09-14-2010

One month shy of today and still nothing has been done to correct these abuses and inhumanities. On this day Mr Chaney told me that in the past sgt lund, feikert, fairbanks, scott and officers stated to him that “We´re going to kill you just real slowly so no one gets in trouble.” He came to prison weighing 190 lbs. And now is below 100lbs. He states he only gets one or two meals a week. If that. His exact words:

“I´m going to go pray. I will ask God, my heart palpitates and I become dizzy because I´m weak. I black out and I´m unable to stand. These guards will not provide me anything to stand up with. My body and legs hurt. I´ve written many organizations, etc. No responses. I don´t believe my mail´s delivered.”

This building houses 97 prisoners. Each and everyone of these captives knows about Mr Chaney´s dire straights. Hundreds of men have come and left over the years. Thousands of men know what the UT DOC has buried in its closet. All the guards know about this man´s condition. Along with medical staff and administration.

It´s time for the world to see and pass judgement on what´s occurring here in this building. You see, we Utahns are the only Americans to use the firing squad. We Utahns, and Mormons, believe in blood debts where the spilling of the guilty´s blood is the only way to pay for your sins. We Utahns have district attorneys who brag about signing death warrants on “twitter.” And a board of pardons and parole who hand out three more years for obtaining diploma´s and completing substance abuse therapy.

We Utahns support the prison policy of placing the mentally ill and legally mentally retarded in the hole for years on end. Decades on end. We Utahns have the upstanding retired executive directors Gary Deland and Lane McCotter who started and ran, after stepping down in Utah amid scandal, Iraq´s infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

I quote mr Deland in an April 2010 Deseret News article concerning our firing squad executions which the man boasts of writing the book on. Quote: “I go down about 30 minutes or so before the execution. I just feel if you claim to believe in capital punishment, and you´re not pulling the trigger (5), you need to be able to look the guy in the eye that´s going down and spend some time talking to him.”

Now this is a call to uphold such magnanimous behaviour on the part of the Utah department of corrections. I ask the modern day directors: Thomas E. Patterson, Robyn Williams, Mike Haddon, Lowell Clark, and Steven Turley to follow in Mr Deland´s footsteps.

If you, modern day directors, believe in starvation, torture, religious persecution, sleep deprivation, cruelty, sexual harassment, retaliation, prejudice for filing complaints, intimidation, etc, etc, and the keeping of a man, a fifty three year old man with scurvy and broken teeth with abcesses, so emotionally scarred and bruised he´s afraid to even ask for dental screenings or visits, after fifteen years at the hands of the cowardly public servants like sgts feikert, scott and lund, and officers ritter, fouret, bartolotti, randall, peterson, nelson and stephens; and you´re not the ones kicking his door all night as he sleeps, or refusing him water out of his sink, food or even access to a bible that´s not torn up each chance officers get; if you´re not these men, “killing (him) slowly so no one gets in trouble, ” then you need to look the guy that´s going down in the eye and spend some time talking to him!

I mean, that is, if you believe in that sort of stuff, and allow it year after year, you kind of owe it to the man to attempt to look him in the eye as he looks up from the ground at you, quivering and smelling of rot, eye twitching, with swollen jaws and cheeks and “bones sticking out.”

Because this man is right here. Today I requested of him to sing “Yesterday” by The Beatles. He barely could! Today I witnessed him not getting fed and I heard him being taunted that he doesn´t know the true god and that he is a dirty liar. I listened as officer stephens and officers peterson and randall degraded him in the most disgusting fashion. Again. For the hundredth-thousandth time. They laughed at him as he attempted to defend himself sitting in his “hollow.” Back against the door that they kick and slam the cuffport on.

I´ve got a neighbor with an IQ of 60, who isn´t allowed to move from the hole, because he keeps attempting to obtain reading materials from his friends!

We´ve got the deaf kept without hearing aids and the crippled kept without wheelchairs!

We´ve got 75 year old fed bologna for over nine years. Constantly guarding his dentures and reading glasses from retaliations.

We´ve got 19 year olds in prison for petty burglary, and 8/25/2009 parole dates, catching two 1-15 year sentences and 2012 rehearings of defending themselves from constant harrassments and abuse.

We´ve got 18 year olds with ADHD, clubfeet, deformed hands, learning disabilities (and again mental retardation) being pepper-sprayed and beat, then left to freeze on strip cell with officer Peterson opening outside recreation doors in December.

We´ve got Iraqi refugees whose deaths, so the officers say, will be a cause for celebration. Still!!!

I´m just sick of fucking seeing it and documenting it and being called a liar. Even though it is all on camera and administration has to keep backpedalling to avoid admitting it. Administration has to keep moving new guards and srgts and captains here and there, yet they leave the most sadistic rookies like stains in their coffee mugs, lingering.

So this is just a call to anyone who may consider themselves a progressive or a compassionate soul. I challenge anyone, any organization, to a little one on one face to face with Mr John Chaney. Let´s see you weigh him and look into his yellow blood-shot eyes. Let´s see UTDOC hide this man´s bones sticking out and crumbling abcess teeth.

I welcome everyone again to Utah corrupt (modern day concentration camp) control unit carnival.

In strength (step right up!) and hope,

Brandon Green

Copyright Brandon Green 2010