Washington Corrections Center, a prison in Shelton, Washington. (Grace Deng/Washington State Standard)
Washington prisoners held in solitary confinement are not receiving basic quality-of-life care, such as frequent showers, health care, visitation, regular meals and enough toilet paper, according to a report from a state watchdog.
The state’s independent investigations office for the Department of Corrections also describes “dehumanizing and traumatizing” restraint practices used by the department, including spit hoods, pepper spray, tasers and shock shields.
“Oh, it’s horrible. I’ve watched people get ahold of a safety razor, slice their throats. Within days they’re unraveling, smearing feces, banging on. Some people cannot handle it,” said an incarcerated individual interviewed by investigators.
“And even those who can, there’s no way you can go through eight months of solitary confinement or longer for many people, some people decades, and not be damaged in some way,” he said.
The report is the second in a three-part series the Office of the Corrections Ombuds is releasing at the request of state lawmakers, who are considering ways to reduce or end solitary confinement. The Office of the Corrections Ombuds looked for consistent themes over the course of 13 interviews to determine report findings.
“What we were seeing in the interviews is consistent with what we’ve heard from people for years and what other people have heard even outside of our office,” said E.V. Webb, assistant corrections ombuds.
Washington pledged to eliminate solitary confinement as a punishment in 2021, but the office’s first report found isolation is still widely used across state prisons for what the Department of Corrections calls “administrative purposes.”
According to the first report released by the Office of the Corrections Ombuds, there are 3,000 currently incarcerated individuals in state prisons who had served more than 120 days in solitary confinement or were held in solitary for more than 45 days from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. About 200 of those individuals were over 60 years old, the report found. Some people are in solitary confinement for years, said Angee Schrader, a senior corrections ombuds.
Prisoners still routinely isolated in WA, despite efforts to cut solitary confinement
The Department of Corrections denied many of the statements made in the report and said that while they’ve worked hard to improve conditions in solitary confinement, more work needs to be done — and they need funding from the Legislature to make that happen.
“Our goal is to always minimize the impact of incarceration on someone,” said Sean Murphy, deputy secretary for the Department of Corrections.
Conditions in solitary confinement
In many cases, the Department of Corrections appears to disagree with the report’s definition of access to “quality-of-life” items.
According to the report, prisoners held in solitary confinement commonly reported receiving three showers a week unless the schedule is impacted by a lockdown or the person is placed on hygiene restrictions.
Three showers a week is the requirement under Department of Corrections policy, and Murphy said “folks are getting regular, traditional hygiene that is required.”
But interviewees reported that those showers involved “pressing a button that turns the water on for about five seconds at a time and sometimes staff would cut the water before people finished showering.” And several individuals told investigators that three showers a week isn’t enough to maintain basic hygiene, said Angee Schrader, a senior corrections ombuds.
Murphy said those put in restrictive housing receive medical care within 24 hours of being put there, and there are mental health and medical staff who check in on those in solitary confinement regularly.
“There may be, at times, a disagreement in whether or not, just as you or I might, with our own physician, whether or not we got the level of care that we wanted versus the care that the licensed professional believed that we should have,” Murphy said. “There’s no difference here than there is as you or I might experience in the community.”
Murphy said the care provided was “adequate.” But the report disagrees, pointing out that mental health staff, for example, conduct rounds while the staff person stands outside the person’s cell door, which means nearby prisoners and staff can overhear conversations.
“A 30-second question about how you’re doing is not mental health care,” said Rachael Seevers, an attorney at Disability Rights Washington working on criminal justice policy reform.
The Office of Corrections Ombuds says they have also “received numerous complaints and investigated cases across facilities from people in solitary confinement who reported that DOC staff did not respond to health care (medical or mental health) emergencies” and pointed to an August case where a young person died of septic shock and other life-threatening conditions while in solitary confinement.
‘Traumatizing’ environment
The report notes that some individuals in solitary confinement face even more restrictions than cell confinement, often during transport.
Some individuals are regularly put in spit hoods during interactions with employees or during transport. Some devices are full-body restraints built into a bed or a chair. There are also “strip cells,” which are cells without toilet paper, sheets, books, electronics, property and paper products.
Several interviewees described a “band-it,” an electronic stun cuff with a remote control that they said was used to escort individuals inside and outside the facility.
The agency acknowledged use of these restraint devices, but said they are often used for people who have a history of violence. The agency also said “band-it” devices are rarely used for prolonged periods and devices like shock shields are seldom used at all.
Shackles and restraints are commonly used when prisoners in solitary confinement are being moved. Some are shackled while showering. The agency also puts prisoners in “security chairs” bolted to the floor that people are shackled to in order to “safely allow folks to engage,” Murphy said.
Prisoners interviewed by the ombuds office said they often refused time out of the cell or educational programming because they did not want to be shackled. One prisoner said the “degradation” just makes people more likely to be destructive and time in solitary confinement does not deter violent behavior.
Reforms and funding issues
The Department of Corrections argues that it’s worked hard to improve solitary confinement conditions and reduce the number of people in solitary confinement, pointing to goals like increasing out-of-cell time to four hours a day and reducing solitary confinement by 90% in five years.
Murphy highlighted two facilities, Walla Walla Penitentiary and Stafford Creek Corrections Center, where he said the agency has drastically increased out-of-cell time.
But the agency says it needs more funding to make further progress on its goals. Murphy said that in the past, the department has only received a portion of the requested funding. The Department of Corrections will receive about $13 million from July 2023 to June 2025 in the state budget to reduce solitary confinement. The agency is asking for another $5.9 million from July 2025 to June 2027.
Related: WA is spending millions to reduce solitary confinement. Where are the results?
“These buildings were originally designed in a time when command and control was our primary focus,” Murphy said. “Today we still have security implications, but we have the additional focus of folks’ mental health and ability to program so that we can get them back into the community as successful neighbors.”
“We end up in a situation where the building today is not designed for what we want to achieve,” Murphy added.
But Seevers, with Disability Rights Washington, said that there are several easy policy changes that the agency can make to reduce solitary confinement without additional funding, such as raising the standard of proof for infractions, as people are often put in solitary confinement while awaiting a decision on disciplinary action.
“DOC has demonstrated that they’re not going to make changes unless there’s a legislative mandate for them to do so,” Seevers said.