Georgia prison officials in ‘flagrant’ violation of solitary confinement reforms, judge says
ATLANTA– Prison officials in Georgia have flagrantly violated a court order to reform conditions for inmates in the state’s most restrictive prison, showing “no desire or intent” to make required changes to solitary practices incarceration, a federal judge said.
In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell on Friday held Georgia Department of Corrections officials in contempt, threatened them with fines and ordered an independent monitor to ensure compliance with a settlement agreement for the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Special Administrative Unit. Prison in Jackson, about 50 miles south of Atlanta.
The SMU houses some of the state’s most violent offenders in solitary confinement under conditions that one expert ruled could cause psychological harm.
“Despite clear and unambiguous directives aimed at improving conditions and procedural safeguards at the SMU, the Defendants have failed to implement reforms agreed upon by the parties and ordered by the Court, thereby negating the relief required was done,” Treadwell wrote.
He accused prison officials of falsifying documents and said they routinely placed new arrivals in “strip cells,” where one inmate said he was given no clothes or mattress and could not use the toilet because it was broken and filled with human waste. .
A spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections, Joan Heath, said in an email that it will not comment on legal matters.
The plea agreement stemmed from a 2015 lawsuit by Timothy Gumm, an inmate at SMU who is serving a life sentence for rape. In the most restrictive units, inmates were confined alone to their cells 24 hours a day, five to seven days a week, and were not allowed to have books or other distractions, attorneys for Gumm and other inmates said.
A psychology professor and prison expert told the court that he had visited maximum security prisons in about 20 states, and that Georgia’s SMU unit was “one of the harshest and most draconian” he had ever seen.
Craig Haney’s report – which was presented to the court by prisoners’ lawyers in 2018 – included images of prisoners with self-inflicted lacerations, blood on the floor of one cell and the window of another, and descriptions of ‘extremely severe’ living conditions. His conclusion: “The prisoners in this facility are at significant risk of serious harm, harm that can be long-lasting and even fatal.”
The settlement agreement the court approved in 2019 required prison officials to let inmates out of their cells for at least four hours each weekday, give them access to educational programs and materials, and keep their cells clean, among other changes.
In his order Friday, Treadwell said prosecutors presented “overwhelming evidence” that inmates remained in their cells between 22 and 24 hours a day and did not receive the required minimum of at least two hours of instruction per week. They were also denied weekly access to a book cart, library or computer tablet as required, among numerous other violations, the judge said.
He called the violations “longstanding and egregious.”
Georgia’s prisons are also under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice, which announced in 2021 that it would launch a civil rights investigation into the system.