Protesters Push Prison Reform at State House

Thirty Harvard students and community members gathered in front of the State House yesterday to protest inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The event, organized by the recently-created Harvard Progressive Advocacy Group (HPAG), focused on the practice of solitary confinement, which the group says is a counterproductive violation of prisoners’ human rights.

The event was organized to sway state legislators, who are now considering three bills related to prison reform.

One bill currently before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Safety would remove regulations governing placement of prisoners in solitary confinement.

“The stated goal of the bill is to remove all existing regulations on prisoners within solitary confinement,” said HPAG Legislative Director Previn Warren. “That basically means prison guards throughout the state will be able to place prisoners at whim within solitary confinement without observing due process. It’s really dangerous and really scary.”

The group displayed a life-size confinement chamber in which a protester remained last night to simulate the experience of a day in solitary confinement.

Warren said the group is currently supporting two bills in the state House of Representatives. One bill would allow mental health rehabilitation for prisoners who attempt suicide or self-mutilation rather than extending their prison sentences, he said. The other would require the state Department of Corrections to publish statistics on how many prisoners eventually return to prison following their initial release, according to Warren.

HPAG organized the event and invited speakers from other Boston groups that have joined them in prison reform lobbying efforts.

Shep Gurwitz, an activist on Native American issues who spoke at the event, said it is more expensive to keep a prisoner in solitary confinement than to send a student to Harvard, a comment that sent a murmur through the mostly student crowd.

“Solitary confinement adds nothing to rehabilitation. It handicaps the ability of a person to function socially,” said Felix D. Arroyo, a Boston city councillor who spoke at the event.

Arroyo called solitary confinement “torture.”

“If you treat an animal that way, you go to jail,” he said.

Michael Bonds, a Boston activist who spent more than three years in solitary confinement for an armed robbery sentence, said at the protest that solitary confinement has no rehabilitative value.

Bonds said he was sentenced to two years in solitary confinement but received another year for keeping a milk carton in his room.

According to Bonds, his years in solitary confinement only made him bitter.

While Bonds has returned to school and is now the operations director for Blackout Boston, an arts group for people of color, he said most inmates show the ill effects of their confinement after leaving prison.

“Solitary confinement drives you bonkers,” he said.

Bonds and other speakers drew a bleak picture of life in solitary confinement—denied heat, phone calls and reading materials.

He said the guards had complete power and would occasionally abuse prisoners mentally or physically.

Jamie Bissonnette, with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-based social-justice group, spoke of a woman who slit her throat during her confinement and required 125 stitches in her neck.

Other speakers at the event drew connections between solitary confinement and other current issues.

Mel King, a local civil rights leader, said that Massachusetts was “exhibiting some of the same behavior we are trying to root out in other parts of the world,” and a number of other speakers also made references to the war in Iraq.

Warren, who is testifying in front of the committee tomorrow, said that though the bill was likely to emerge from committe, HPAG has already met with state Senate leadership to encourage them to block the bill after it leaves the committee.

“I have a lot of hope that this will get struck down in the Senate,” he said.

And though a large anti-war rally at Government Center may have detracted attention from HPAG’s protest, Warren said he was happy with the results.

“I think it was about the best turnout we could have expected given the current international situation,” he said.