From the Editor - Prison Legal News

ADX Media Visit Staged To Dispel “Myths And Rumors”
by Bob Williams
On the sixth anniversary of the
9-11 World Trade Center attacks,
Ron Wiley, warden of the Federal
Supermax known as ADX, staged a tightly
controlled first-ever media visit at the Federal
stronghold. Its stated purpose was an
education to dispel “myths and rumors”;
its effect was media-generated banality
culled from a spoon-fed party line. “We
saw only what they wanted us to see, and
only that,” reports Andrew Cohen, an attorney
and legal affairs analyst for CBS
News. The environment was one of total
control “that extended to when we were
allowed to sit down inside the briefing
room” Cohen said.
The tour consisted of pristine concrete
corridors with “the polished tile of
a modern regional high school and the
empty stillness of summer break,” reports
Karl Vick of the Washington Post. Vick
and Cohen toured with other reporters
from local and national media such as
CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox News, the
Los Angeles Times, the Pueblo Chieftain
(Colorado), and the Canon City Daily Record
(Colorado). They passed by housing
units, a recreation pen (“dogrun”) or two,
more sterile corridors, and saw a handful
of hand-picked, docile, polite prisoners
in general population or “step down”
units preparing to eventually transfer out
of ADX. Wiley’s “Swiss-watch like tour
direction” did not allow the reporters the
necessary access to “provide information
in order to quell concerns of the secretive
federal prison,” wrote Vie Vela of the Daily
Record. When reporters complained,
Wiley retorted with the education theme.
Clearly, the tour was not about reporting
the news but controlling the news.
It speaks volumes to Wiley’s and the
Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) stated purpose
of “education” and “dispelling what we’ve
heard” that no one was allowed near the
control units where the prisoners claimed
to be the most dangerous and disruptive
are housed within the Federal prison system.
Not the tight-leashed prisoners the
media met, but infamous prisoners such
as Theodore Kaczynski, Terry Nichols,
Richard Reid, Zacharias Moussaoui,
Robert Hanssen and Ramzi Yousef—
often found at the core of the very myths
the tour failed to dispel. Wiley says these
prisoners are “the smallest part of my
population,” failing to explain why reporters
were still kept away from the bulk of
the remaining population.
Myths. The myths Wiley and the BOP
were attempting to destroy are that “It’s a
dark, dirty, dungeon. It’s all underground.
They rot in their cells.” Hence the tightly
controlled lockstep, 100-minute, no-cameras-allowed
tour of a bright, clean, above
ground facility. The controlled prisoner
contact was strictly with docile prisoners
close to leaving ADX who would not
endanger their transition out by acting up
or saying the wrong thing. One prisoner,
Daniel Graham, commented on how it’s
“just like any other place” and is “super
quiet.” Jack Stancell says “you get used
to it.” Another, Rodney Hamrick, said
“oh, you know me.” Still another, Mark
Ford, said he spends his recreation time
“not trying to do too much.” Hardly earth
shattering commentary from those in the
bowels of ADX. One unidentified talkative
prisoner said “me, personally, I like
the solitude. I’m at peace with myself.”
The “rot in their cells” includes the
prisoners’ mental health. Terry Kupers
has examined dozens of prisoners in various
supermax prisons and testified as an
expert in numerous conditions of confinement
lawsuits. The psychiatrist from the
Wright Institute in Berkeley, California,
says that these environments tend to
induce psychoses, like the 1960s studies
found using sensory deprivation environments.
Those in the depths of a supermax
such as ADX “are, on average, the most
severely psychotic people I have seen in
my entire 25 years of psychiatric practice,”
Kupers said. ADX treats these people with
two resident psychologists who perform
simple interviews at the cell doors, hardly
the confidential doctor-patient environment
that engenders genuine psychiatric
treatment. The 65 ADX prisoners on
serious psych meds have them prescribed
by video link with a BOP psychiatrist in
Springfield, Missouri.
Medical care at ADX and throughout
the Florence Correctional Complex
is hard pressed as well with only two of
five physicians and eight of 11 physician’s
assistants on staff. Without blinking an
eye, ADX health services unit Captain
Rod Bauer said no prisoner has ever been
denied medical services in the 13 years
since ADX opened.
Nothing in the tour demonstrated
the conditions that lead to increased
assaultive behavior, increased mental
health problems, and increased recidivism
demonstrated by supermax prisoners
across the country when released from
these facilities—findings gleaned from
25,000 supermax prisoners in 44 states
and reported in Evaluating the Effectiveness
of Supermax Prisons by the Justice
Police Center of the Urban Institute
(March 2006). Sterile corridors and docile
prisoners just can’t dispel the realities of
supermax prisons.
Rumors. The rumors attempting to
be countered are that ADX is not entirely
safe and secure because of inadequate
staffing and that the surrounding community
is endangered by the lack of a
perimeter fence. Wiley dismissed the need
for a fence around the complex telling
reporters that each facility has fencing
and that an additional complex fence
would be a “$20 million farce that would
do nothing but spend 20 million of the
taxpayers’ dollars.”
But Wiley became irritated when
reporters insisted on raising the issue of
chronic under staffing, quickly denying
such rumors as false and exclaiming that
“we run a safe and secure institution, and
we’re very comfortable with the staffing
levels. To think otherwise is actually to
insult me.” Yet this tour comes only two
weeks after a press conference at the Colorado
state capital where state lawmakers
and union officials called upon the federal
government to fully staff ADX to counter
dangerously low staffing levels. Wiley
claims the facility is staffed at 90 percent,
but state Representative Buffy McFayden
takes issue with these numbers and says
“there is no question there is a shortage
of staff” and worries that “someone is
going to get killed.” She said she’s “heard
the same script each time” from Wiley
and other BOP officials. “This is not a
cry wolf story,” she says, “this is serious.”
Expressing her objectivity, McFayden
went on to say that she doesn’t “have a
dog in this fight except to maintain prison
safety.” She’s called on “President Bush
and Congress to personally take note of
what’s happening at Supermax”
While union officials say staffing may
once have been at 92 percent, it’s around
75 percent now. Mike Schnobric, president
of the prison council with the American
April 2008
26
Prison Legal News