Prisoners locked in their cells for days on end report walls speckled with feces and blood. Birds have moved in, leaving droppings on the food trays and ice bags handed out to keep inmates cool. Blocked from visiting the law library, prisoners say they have missed court deadlines and jeopardized appeals. Unable to access toilet paper, one prisoner tore his clothing into patches to use for tissue.
One thousand inmates incarcerated at Waupun Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in southeast Wisconsin, have been confined mostly to their cells for more than four months, ever since prison officials locked down the facility and halted many programs and services.
More than two dozen inmates at Waupun, the state’s oldest prison, have revealed to The New York Times that since late March they have been forced to eat all meals in their cells, received no visits from friends or family, seen complaints of pain ignored and been allowed limited, if any, fresh air or recreation time.
The state’s Department of Corrections has offered little explanation about the lockdown or why it has lasted so long.
“There were multiple threats of disruption and assaultive behavior toward staff or other persons in our care, but there was not one specific incident that prompted the facility to go into modified movement,” said Kevin Hoffman, the department’s deputy director of communications. According to state data, nearly 100 assaults have occurred there in the past fiscal year.
Others familiar with the sprawling penitentiary suggest another reason for the restrictions: dire staffing shortages.
More than half of the prison’s 284 full-time positions for correctional officers and sergeants remain unfilled, state data shows. The shortages have severely hobbled the facility’s ability to operate safely, according to former wardens, correctional officers and members of Waupun prison’s community board.
“If I was the warden right now, I’d have that institution on lockdown, too,” said Mike Thurmer, who once ran the prison and now sits on its community relations board. “You can’t have a 40 or 50 percent vacancy rate and not have at the very minimum a modified lockdown.”
What is happening in Waupun illustrates a reality at prisons across the country: Lockdowns, once a rare action taken in a crisis, are becoming a common way to deal with chronic staffing and budget shortages.
Critics say these shutdowns became easier to justify during the pandemic, when prison officials could cite the need to control the spread of the Covid. But even as most Covid-related restrictions have been lifted, lockdowns continue to be applied.
“They are using it at the drop of a hat because it makes day to day operations easier,” said Tammie Gregg, deputy director for the A.C.L.U.’s National Prison Project.
These are still human beings, and the policies around imprisonment in this country escalate the level of violence rather than decreasing it.
If you are in favor of punitive imprisonment as a form of torture then I would understand your position. That also seems to be the commonly held position by most people within the prison industrial complex as well.
The largest problem in the prison system is its use as a housing mechanism for the mentally ill thanks to Reagan era policies that defunded mental institutions. The second largest problem is gangs, and that is a tougher problem to solve.
What I know for sure is that what we are doing is not working, and there are a plethora of examples in other industrialized countries that we could point to that have done a better job rehabilitating inmates or at the very least decreased the levels of violence between them.
I think your argument is a gross oversimplification of the issue, and comes from a place of ignorance regarding the absolutely inhumane treatment we subject incarcerated individuals to in this country. There simply is a better way on societal level to prevent people from becoming incarcerated in the first place, dealing with them once they are in the system, and providing resources once they have completed their sentences.
Prison gangs exist for the same reason street gangs exist: members were othered until taken in by gangs. This is how they started, and how they perpetuate, and now they other others. It’sa symptom of despair, directly created by economic policies. The first part is a gross oversimplification; I’m not sure the part referencing economic policies are, by any stretch.