Prison Visiting Project (PVP)
Project Overview
In 1844, the New York State Legislature granted the Correctional Association the authority to inspect prisons and report its findings and recommendations to policy makers and the public. This special legislative mandate has only been granted to one other private organization in the country.
Functions of the Prison Visiting Project
The PVP monitors conditions in New York State prisons and New York City detention facilities, conducts research on specific issues related to penology, works with Department of Correction Officials to effect policy change and helps to educate the public on the need for prison reform.
Prison Monitoring
The Visiting Committee of the Prison Visiting Project monitors conditions of confinement through full-scale investigative tours of prisons and jails and regular meetings with Correction officials. Visits culminate in recommendations and reports of findings to prison superintendents, the Commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services and relevant city officials. Recent improvements as a result of PVP monitoring include: construction of a new visiting center at Greene Correctional Facility, increased physician presence at Beacon Correctional Facility, expanded visiting hours for inmates in disciplinary housing at Marcy Correctional Facility, increased reading material for inmates throughout the system, and a statewide policy that requires inmate patients to be informed of all medical test results in a timely fashion.
The Visiting Committee is comprised of criminal justice practitioners and academicians, advocates for prison reform, lawyers, ex-offenders, doctors and psychologists.
Research
The Prison Visiting Project conducts issue-specific research with policy implications at state correctional facilities and city detention centers. Currently, the Project is focusing on two areas in state prisons: the status of health care and conditions in Special Housing Units.
Special Housing Units (SHUs)
Known as "the box" or "the Hole" to prisoners, SHUs are places of segregated, additional punishment within the prison system. Ostensibly, they are reserved for the most difficult prisoners, who have violated prison rules or who have been deemed "unmanageable" by prison officials. In an SHU, inmates are confined in separate or double-bunked cells for 23 hours a day and allowed outdoors, within an enclosed cage, for one hour a day. While one New York State prison is devoted exclusively for special housing-Southport-most prisons contain their own individual units. Privileges within these units are severely restricted and are earned over time through a behavior modification system. Studies have shown that these conditions of confinement can cause severe psychological damage to inmates and are subject to abuses of power by correctional staff. Currently, of the Department's 70,000-plus inmates, approximately 5,500 are in some form of segregated disciplinary housing.
Medical Services
A majority of the growing inmate population are poor people of color who are sicker than ever before. Rates of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and Hepatitis are far higher among prisoners than free world citizens. Largely due to the difficulty of recruiting adequately trained doctors to work in correctional facilities, where salaries are not commensurate with community pay rates, health care in prisons often falls woefully short of community standards, compounding public health problems when inmates return to the community.
Over the past two years, the Project has examined health care services in 23 prisons and plans to publish a report of findings and recommendations in the spring of 1999. Preliminary recommendations include: better qualifications and accountability of correctional medial staff; wider HIV education and testing; improved access to emergency care; expanded mental health services; provision of bilingual services for Spanish-speaking inmates; and greatly improved monitoring of inmates with conditions requiring chronic care.
Recent Work of the Prison Visiting Project
Conditions in New York City Court Pens
Located in the dark and dirty basements of NYC's criminal court buildings, these facilities confine recently arrested people awaiting arraignment. For many years, deplorable conditions and official neglect characterized the pens.
Crowding is endemic to these facilities, where people are held for many hours, sometimes days, with no opportunity to wash or a decent place to rest. And until recently, despite the crowded, unventilated conditions which turn these cells into breeding grounds for tuberculosis, there was no health care anywhere in the City's court pen system. Each year over 250,000 people pass through these facilities.
The PVP has addressed these problems through an integrated set of activities: monthly visits to the holding cells; frequent meetings with high-level city officials; outreach to influential allies; and diverse public education efforts.
In direct response to the efforts of the PVP, the city greatly enhanced general conditions of confinement in the Manhattan pre-arraignment areas and made more modest improvements in the other borough facilities. The city installed accessible phones in all the pre-arraignment court pen areas so that detainees can contact people on the outside. A medical screening program was established in all major central booking facilities.
Program Cuts and Double Celling in State Prisons
The Pataki administration's "no frills" prison policy has created two issues of importance to the PVP: Program cuts and Double-Celling.
Program Cuts
Substantial cuts in vocational and educational programs over the last six years have resulted in an increasingly idle, frustrated prison population, which is difficult for correction officers to manage. Moreover, program cuts mean that fewer opportunities are available for inmates to gain the necessary skills to re-enter the community. The Correctional Association is calling for the reinstitution of productive vocational programs and the formation of a Task Force to revive and expand higher education programs throughout the prison system.
Double Celling
Cells in New York State prisons were designed to house one person. Measuring approximately 6' X 8' and containing a bed, toilet, locker and sink, this small space is barely adequate for one person, much less two people. Yet the state has recently resorted to placing two inmates to a cell (and adding another locker), thereby sharply decreasing the amount of livable space. Double-celling jeopardizes the health of inmates through increased exposure to contagious diseases and asthma-inducing conditions. Double celling increases danger and tension within the institutions, a threat for both inmates and correction officers.
The PVP observed and documented these conditions and made several recommendations. These recommendations included: institution of a screening process that would prohibit double-celling inmates who are infected with a contagious disease; the placement of non-smokers (and asthmatics) with smokers; the establishment of standards and criteria for housing inmates in double-cells -- such as limiting double-celling for any inmate to 30 days.
Publications
The Troubles They Cause: Double-Celling and Program Cuts Inside New York's Prisons (February 1998) illustrates the dangers of an austere correction strategy.
Rehabilitation that Works: Improving and Expanding Shock Incarceration and Similar Programs in New York State (April 1996)
Crisis in the Court Pens (June 1993)
In 1999, the PVP will release two major reports concluding two years of research at twenty-three prisons. One will concern the status, costs and deficiencies of health care in New York State prisons. The other will focus on the troubling trend toward greater use of punitive segregation, solitary confinement and the state's newest experiment in prisoner discipline: double-celled disciplinary housing.
For more information, contact
Jennifer R. Wynn
Program Director
The Prison Visiting Project
The Correctional Association
135 East 15th Street
New York, NY 10001
(212) 254-5700 ext. 310.
Jwynn@corrassoc.org