- Ernest Shaifer: A mentally ill man who spent 10 years in ADX, Shaifer had been out for less than a year when he nearly beat two women to death with a shovel handle in 2015. He’s now serving a 30-year sentence in Florida’s state prison system.
- Antoine Bruce: After approximately seven years in ADX, Bruce was released to his hometown of Washington, D.C., last October. He was free for less than six months before being arrested for allegedly attacking a man with a knife outside a homeless shelter. He claims self-defense and has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge.
- Mario Holmes: A 40-year-old Kansas City man with schizophrenia, Holmes did approximately eight years in ADX after going to prison for bank robbery. He was arrested for another bank robbery in 2014, found incompetant to stand trial, and committed to a mental hospital. In July 2018, after his release from the hospital, he robbed the same bank again. His mother says the robberies were prompted by paranoid delusions exacerbated by her son’s time in solitary. Holmes was again deemed unfit to stand trial and now resides in a high-security federal mental institution.
- Dale Mitchell Lemoine: A convicted bank robber and former ADX prisoner, Lemoine was shot by an off-duty Dallas police officer in 2008 when confronted for stealing from a Walmart. Lemoine, who had a history of mental illness, was wielding a boxcutter when the cop opened fire. Lemoine’s ex-wife said he was placed on a bus from ADX with orders to take his meds and check in with a probation officer in Texas. She heard from his brother that he was killed before the first meeting.
The Bureau of Prisons doesn’t use the term solitary confinement, but everyone at ADX is housed alone, typically in a 7-by-12 concrete cell. Bureau policy officially prohibits mentally ill prisoners from being housed at ADX — except those considered to be an “extraordinary security risk.”“The way I look at it, after the ADX, what's left? It's death row. Next is death row or the graveyard.”
The ADX cases represent a dangerous paradox in the American justice system’s reliance on solitary. As Mary put it after she learned more about Currence: “If this individual is unsafe in the prison system, where there are safeguards and there are people right there all the time to be able to bring the situation back under control, how is that somebody who should be released back into society?”Without detailed records or clarification from prison officials, it’s unclear exactly how many prisoners have been let out of ADX over the years and how many of those have gone on to commit more crimes. A 2014 “review and assessment,” which used data provided by the BOP, found that roughly 60% of ADX inmates — about 250 total — were scheduled to go home eventually. Independent inspectors found last year that around 50 inmates at ADX were scheduled to be released from 2017 to 2020.“Let’s be honest, it has nothing to do with rehabilitation.”
- The 2014 report identified at least 82 cases where prisoners from ADX or solitary units at other high-security prisons had been discharged “directly from segregation to the community.”
- Over 2,000 federal inmates were due to be released in 2014 from “Restrictive Housing Units,” the federal government’s preferred euphemism for solitary confinement, according to BOP data.
- As of 2017, there were roughly 10,000 federal inmates in “Restricted Housing Units,” according to the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The office found at least 31 cases where mentally ill prisoners went “directly into the community” after an average of over two years in high-security units where solitary is the norm.
- A 2018 report from The Vera Institute of Justice found that North Carolina alone had released nearly 1,900 prisoners “directly to the community from restrictive housing” in 18 months. Oregon had released another 348 people from solitary “directly to the community” in the same span.
- Over 10,000 people were released directly from solitary in 2014, according to the Marshall Project, a tally that did not include data from 26 states, the Bureau of Prisons, and immigrant detention centers.
- An estimated 61,000 individuals were in isolation in prisons in the fall of 2017, according to a survey of the 50 states, four large metro jails, Washington, D.C., and the Bureau of Prisons. Only 26 of the 56 jurisdictions surveyed reported having strict rules “to ensure offenders are not released directly into the community.”
By the time Currence had his deposition taken in 2016, ADX had already been cajoled through litigation into improving conditions for mentally ill prisoners. Two years prior, the BOP issued new screening procedures and guidelines, stating that “seriously mentally ill” inmates would only be placed at ADX if extraordinary security needs are identified that cannot be managed elsewhere.” The BOP said it would make exceptions when it was determined that time in ADX would “be likely to exacerbate an inmate’s mental health condition.”…I know that I've got those risk factors there, that if I don't get serious counseling or whatever, that I'm susceptible to go home — and I'm an extremist. I tend to alternate either things is good or things is real bad. I have a problem seeing gray areas. So I feel as if I'm not planning anything, and my plan is to go home and try to function. But I just see that moment where things could just go wrong.
Rick Arko, president of the guards union at ADX and a 21-year veteran of the institution, said there have been multiple inmates — including Currence — who he feared would go on to harm members of the public.“When you get to know someone, you can just tell they're going to do something bad to someone, and there’s nothing we can do to help them,” Arko said.Arko had read a local news story about Currence’s attack on Mary in the park and said it was discussed among the ADX guards.“There’s no shock that Currence did that,” he said. “We all knew him.”Arko and two other guards who spoke with VICE News estimated that three or four prisoners per month are shipped out of ADX to USP Florence, a high-security penitentiary in the same federal compound as ADX, for eventual release.“I could have been sane or insane, they just let me walk out the door.”
Several ex-inmates felt like it was impossible to complete the process. Royer compared it to “Sisyphus pushing a rock up the hill” because every time he’d get close to the final stage, he’d get hit with a minor disciplinary infraction, like an out of place item in his cell.The officer in charge of ADX’s general population units testified in 2017 that transfers through the first and second stages of the step-down program were up 59% and 135%, respectively, since October 2009. But Tuttamore had a similarly frustrating experience.“I went there as a violent person, but leaving there I was 10 times more violent.”
Over the next five years, Aro got to know dozens of inmates at ADX, including several who were eventually released. Currence was always polite and friendly during their interactions, but he was among the most difficult to deal with for prison staff. He frequently exposed himself and masturbated in front of female nurses and guards at ADX. Currence estimated that he was placed on suicide watch over 45 times.“He is a profoundly lonely person who sometimes provokes confrontations with staff members because otherwise he's just by himself, and at least if he's being handcuffed or dragged out of his cell he has contact with people,” Aro said. “That sounds crazy to anybody who's not familiar with this environment, but when you have the sort of scrambled wires that Jabbar Currence has, and have lived in the incredibly deprived circumstances he's lived in for a really long time, what is not normal becomes normal.”Food was scattered all over the cell. The drawings were of naked women, with toothpaste in the shower, the word ‘heaven’ written on the wall. Ed I have seen a lot. But you are never prepared to see any human being fall into such a state of mental illness that he or she is forced to do the irreversible. Especially when you witness it play out before your eyes day by day.
“Nobody is preparing any of these people. It’s shocking. You’re too dangerous to be anywhere else but we’re going to release them to the community? Are you kidding me?”
According to the Justice Department, about a quarter of the 774 cells at Hampton Roads are 80-square foot units “designated as restrictive housing.” Prisoners are housed alone, “typically for 22 or more hours per day during the week and even longer on weekends.” The report said inmates started calling mental health treatment “crack therapy,” because staff would only speak to them “through a crack at the hinge of the solid metal door.”Jail officials have requested additional staff and funding to address the problems, but the situation at Hampton Roads is reflective of the much larger problem nationwide with solitary and the way mentally ill people are incarcerated. Some states have tackled the issue more progressively than others. In the fall of 2017, Colorado became the first — and so far only — state to comply with the UN’s Nelson Mandela rules by limiting time in “restrictive housing” to a maximum of 15 consecutive days and only for “the most serious violations” of prison rules.The Colorado reforms were prompted by a tragic crime. On the evening of March 19, 2013, Tom Clements, the director of the state’s Department of Corrections, was shot to death at his home by a former inmate who’d been released directly to the street after spending nearly six years on 23-hour-a-day lockdown. The killer, 28-year-old Evan Ebel, had previously murdered a Dominos delivery driver and stolen his uniform. He posed as if delivering a pizza, then opened fire with a 9mm pistol when Clements opened his front door. Ebel fled the state and was killed two days later in a shootout with police in Texas.Rick Raemisch, the man hired in 2013 to replace Clements and overhaul Colorado’s prison system, said he was stunned to learn that the state was still sending around 300 inmates per year from solitary to the streets, despite previous efforts by Clements to curb the practice. Raemisch banned the direct releases entirely in 2014.“My personal feeling about it is that solitary confinement is so harmful you're literally making a person worse than making them better,” said Raemisch. “Who wants to live next to that person when they get out? You’re letting a lit stick of dynamite out the door.”Raemisch retired last year, but he believes his approach in Colorado can work elsewhere. State prisoners now have access to “de-escalation rooms” that are painted in soft colors and have soothing noises piped in. Combined with other changes, Raemisch said, “the results are remarkable.” The state’s “supermax” prison is now vacant. Colorado banned solitary at its two mental health prisons and saw assaults, self-harm, and suicides decrease dramatically. Raemisch adopted the philosophy, “You can restrain, but you don’t have to isolate,” and got even the most dangerous inmates out of their cells for a minimum of four hours per day, at “restraint tables” with up to four other prisoners for classes and activities.“It’s unconscionable to put someone with serious mental illness into a segregation cell for 23 hours a day and let their demons chase them around,” Raemisch said. “When I see that happening, typically it’s because that state has not been given the resources to effectively treat those folks, and typically they’re so disruptive they don’t know what to do with them.”According to Aro and the guards, ADX is already working to get certain prisoners out of their cells more often, up to 20 hours a week in some cases. Those who do well can be rewarded with funds on their commissary accounts, a big incentive since ADX prisoners are not allowed to earn money by working at a prison job. The warden recently allowed two inmates — one a 72-year-old in his 18th year at ADX — to paint murals inside the prison.My request to visit and see some of the improvements firsthand was denied, and it appears that no interviews have been granted with prisoners since 2001. (Several letters I sent to current ADX inmates went unanswered, and the BOP would not confirm they were delivered.)“We don’t want the public to know what we do, and we justify it under the guise of security,” said Hood, the retired ADX warden.Hood noted that Marion and Alcatraz, the two previous supermax prisons, each had lifespans of about 30 years, and ADX is currently nearing that milestone. The BOP already has plans for a new supermax facility in Thomson, Illinois, though there are currently no public discussions about closing ADX. Either way, the use of extreme isolation will continue. Even Hood, who presided over hundreds of post-9/11 force-feedings that still continue today at ADX, thinks there has to be a better way.“Things change, the world changes,” Hood said. “I think you’ve done as much as you could do in that facility. It’s a different mindset now.”Currence pleaded guilty on Aug. 22 to charges of strangulation and assault for his attack on Mary, and was also convicted of two counts of indecent exposure for attempting to masturbate in front of nurses at the hospital. The verdict on a fifth charge, “abduction with intent to defile,” remains pending until October 25. If convicted, he faces 20 years to life in prison, though likely in a Virginia state facility, not ADX“It’s unconscionable to put someone with serious mental illness into a segregation cell for 23 hours a day and let their demons chase them around.”