Toward the end of my sentence in Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) custody I was a clerk in the Central State Prison law library. As part of my duties, every Tuesday I’d go over to the lockdown unit to pass out whatever case law or other legal research books had been requested by people in solitary confinement.
Every cell you’d go to, someone would be begging you for toilet paper or for water. These are “wet cells” with a sink and toilet, but the person inside can’t flush the toilet or open the faucet to get drinking water themselves; someone outside the cell has to press a button to do it. So as a fellow incarcerated person, who’d been in similar cells myself at previous facilities, I’d usually spend the next two hours walking back and forth filling up people’s cups from the mop sink, because it’s midday and there hasn’t been officer around since 5 pm yesterday.
You can land in these cells for months for talking back to an officer, or being in a fight even if you were just defending yourself. If you have a mental health episode, or report that you were sexually assaulted, they might stick you in there for a year. Purportedly for your safety, but really to shut you up. These inequities are wielded most harshly against trans women of color like myself.
In 2022, New York implemented the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, which was meant to address improper use of solitary by the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).
In a recent report on how the DOCCS has continually flouted the Act, incarcerated journalist Sara Kielly described a “relatively novel and crucial provision that granted people facing the possibility of solitary the right to representation at disciplinary hearings.” This representation could be an attorney, law student, paralegal or incarcerated peer.
You can get a disciplinary infraction yourself for helping another prisoner defend themselves to administration.
As a jailhouse lawyer, I was often behind the scenes helping someone prepare their petitions to appeal their conviction in court. There are Supreme Court rulings that if the state won’t provide incarcerated people with legal assistance, it at least can’t punish them for helping each other.
But that’s for court cases. When it comes to a prison’s internal sanctions, department policy is the only thing that matters. Even as the only certified paralegal in the prison law clinic, I wasn’t allowed to represent my peers in any type of GDC disciplinary procedure. You can actually get a disciplinary infraction yourself if you get in the middle of an issue between another prisoner and administration. You can get an infraction for asking another prisoner for advice, too. You have the right to represent yourself, and you can ask a staff member to advocate on your behalf, but that’s it.
The disciplinary response process is a sort of mock judicial process, with hearings and plea bargains and the like. Your first hearing, within your first couple of days in solitary, will last about five minutes. Staff will come stand outside your door and tell you what you’ve been accused of and the possible consequences you’re facing, and then offer you a plea. They don’t even give you the dignity of speaking face-to-face.
Often the plea deal will still involve spending time in solitary, and usually people don’t take it. Who wants to voluntarily lose their phone or commissary or library privileges?
Your second hearing, about 30 days later, will last maybe 10 minutes. Sometimes they do it through the cell door. Or maybe they’ll bring you out and shackle you to a special chair, or put you in a metal cage and have you talk to them through the grates. This is when you get to make your case, but almost every single time they’re going to find you guilty no matter what you say.
Jailhouse lawyers should be allowed to represent their peers at disciplinary hearings if requested. But unless the process involves some type of independent oversight committee or audit, it’s still meaningless.
There should be an external civilian review board that audits the process, with members who rotate out every six or 12 months and are paid for their time. There should really be multiple boards—one for general housing conditions, one for use of force, one for mental health care, etc.
Short of that, many corrections departments including the GDC will just continue to run these internal judicial proceedings how they want to. No matter if someone’s representing you or you’re on your own.
Top photograph via City of New York Board of Correction. Inset photograph (cropped) via Washington State Department of Corrections.
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