Records Show Excessive Use of Force at Colorado Supermax

Records Show Excessive Use of Force at Colorado Supermax by Lisa Dawson Records kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections show 61 instances from March 1, 2012 to March 1 of this year of corrections officers using force on men held at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP), where prisoners are held in administrative segregation on lockdown for 23 hours a day. The "use of force" log, obtained by Denver's Westword, documents varying levels of physical contact used in each incident, some of which required mild force, and others which prison officials deemed it necessary to use brutal control tactics, including restraint chairs and pepper spray. This story comes from Alan Prendergast, who writes for Westword and has reported on Colorado prisons for years: At Colorado's state supermax prison, inmates get into confrontations with guards over food, hygiene, privileges, a refusal to "cuff up" or whatever out of boredom, mental illness or plain orneriness. Some claim to be provoked by staff. Whatever the reason, it's a contest the prisoner is going to lose every time. Like many prisons throughout Colorado and across the nation, people with mental illness compose a large part of the population at CSP. Prendergast writes on the potential impact of solitary confinement on people with mental illness: Although proponents of supermax prisons claim that they act as a deterrent to violence elsewhere in the corrections systems, the facilities also become repositories of "problem" inmates, whose failure to follow the rules tends to prolong their stay in solitary confinement and possibly exacerbate any preexisting mental problems. (As we've previously reported, roughly a third of CSP inmates have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness.) http://solitarywatch.com/2013/06/15/records-show-excessive-use-of-force-at-colorado-supermax/