By Heather Ratcliffe
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
EAST ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Inmate Anthony Gay says that instead of medicating his anxiety problem, a psychiatrist at Illinois’ super-maximum prison had him strapped naked to a metal bed frame for up to 32 hours at a time.
Gay’s civil rights lawsuit against the doctor, being heard this week in front of a federal jury here, is part of a cascade of events focusing fresh attention on an institution the state knew would be controversial before it opened.
- Gov. Pat Quinn has ordered a review of the practices at the Tamms Correctional Center.
- His new prison director acknowledges that conditions there might make inmates suicidal.
- U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., expressed concerns in Washington this week.
- Some state lawmakers are considering a reform bill.
- Legal experts say Gay’s complaint may be the first of its kind to get this far in the courts.
The prison at Tamms, a village in deep Southern Illinois, about 110 miles southeast of St. Louis, opened in 1998 to house the state’s most dangerous or difficult prisoners. Officials designed it to meet constitutional challenges already mounted in other jurisdictions, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, that use the supermax concept of isolating troublemakers under stark conditions.
Missouri has no supermax, although nearly 40 states do.
Critics already were howling about conditions when the Post-Dispatch examined the 520-bed prison shortly after it opened. Some said then that the place might literally drive residents crazy.
That’s along the lines of the claim for damages by Gay, 35, of Rock Island, Ill. He was sentenced in 1994 to seven years for robbery but amassed 19 convictions since for battering officers and one for possession of a weapon, giving him a projected parole date in 2095.
Gay seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, claiming “cruel and unusual” punishment by Dr. Rakesh Chandra.
Gay told jurors his anxiety leads him to self-mutilate, cutting his arms, legs, neck and penis so many times that his body is badly scarred. He said he needs medication and therapy.
But mental health workers at Tamms testified that treatments didn’t work, and that Gay cuts himself to manipulate the staff members. For example, he cuts his groin to derive sexual gratification from treatment by female nurses, testified Katherine Clover, a clinical social worker. She said, “He’s been on every classification of psychotic medication ... and none have been beneficial.”
Chandra, the contract psychiatrist at Tamms from 1999-2007, said he consulted a team of experts before diagnosing Gay. “I treated each time he cut himself very seriously, as if it were a suicide attempt,” Chandra testified. “I wanted to make sure he was safe.”
Corrections officers removed Gay’s clothing so he would have nothing to use to hurt himself, and restrained him to a bed, Chandra said.
Clover said Gay often went naked by choice in his cell, and disputed his claim that he was offered no meals while restrained.
The trial continues this week.
Tamms inmates are locked alone in cells about 23 hours a day, move only when shackled, and take meals and recreation alone. They can yell to - but not see - fellow prisoners in their small cellblocks.
“Inmates approved for placement at Tamms ... have demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to conform to the requirements of a general population prison,” explained Januari Smith, of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
The most successful legal challenge so far was filed in 1999 on behalf of four prisoners. It was dismissed after both sides reached agreement in 2004 on some operational changes in mental health treatment there, said Jean Maclean Snyder, a Chicago civil rights attorney who filed the case.
At Gov. Quinn’s direction, his corrections director, Michael Randle has visited Tamms, talked to more than 50 inmates and delivered at least 10 recommendations for changes in a report not yet made public.
Randle discussed some of those reforms in testimony Tuesday before a U.S. Senate subcommittee called “Human Rights and Law.”
Its chairman, Durbin, said he is “deeply troubled” about reports of mentally ill inmates held in long-term isolation at Tamms.
Although Tamms was intended as a temporary assignment to straighten out troubled inmates, Randle said 54 prisoners have been held in isolation there since it opened.
“I think it can cause your mental health condition to worsen,” Randle told the committee. “It can cause suicidal tendencies.”
Randle said his plans would ensure that every inmate is screened for mental illness before being transferred to Tamms, and that only mental health experts could deem a prisoner appropriate for solitary confinement.
Advocates say it’s a good start but short of a solution.
“They are treating mental illness that they are creating,” said Stephan Eisenman, a professor at Northwestern University who works with a nonprofit prisoner group called “Tamms Year Ten.”
He pledged, “We’re going to continue to hold their feet to the fire.”
Copyright 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.