Juvenile Justice LWOP Kids Prison Policy Probation Uncategorized

After LWOP: The Solitary Life of Ian Manuel


THE GOOD NEWS: Monday’s Supreme court decision
declared Life Without Parole for juveniles unconstitutional in cases where no murder was involved. This will make it possible for some men and women who have served decades behind bars for crimes they committed as kids, to be up for parole.

THE BAD NEWS: Some of those grown up kids have spent most of their time in solitary confinement where they were deeply psychologically damaged by the system that was supposed to rehabilitate them.

More and more experts in the field have equated solitary confinement with torture, as physician Atul Gawande describes in his remarkable 2009 New Yorker article, Hellhole. Even John McCain wrote, in describing his 5 1/2 year experience as a prisoner of war, that prolonged isolation was far worse than physical torture. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

So if solitary confinement is tortuous and harmful to adults, how does it affect the children whom we elect to incarcerate in adult institutions and then often keep for months or years or…. decades in isolation.


SOLITARY KIDS

According to a 2005 report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch:

….teenagers in adult prisons often end up in solitary, either because they are considered disciplinary problems, because they feel compelled to join prison gangs, or because they have to be isolated from adult offenders “for their own protection.”


IAN MANUEL IN SOLITARY

Meg Laughlin of the St. Petersburg Times has a portrait of one such person. His name is Ian Manuel. When he was 13-years old he shot a woman in the face as he and two other kids attempted to rob her and the whole thing went bad. Now Ian Manual is 33 years old and he has spent most of the past 20 years in solitary confinement. He is Florida’s longest serving inmate it solitary.

As a consequence of Monday’s decision, Ian Manuel will finally be eligible for parole.

If he was given parole, in what condition would Ian Manuel be released? Due to his time in solitary, Manuel’s life has been dialed down to a tiny fraction of what even other inmates are allowed. He has spent more than half his life in a concrete cell the size of a walk-in closet. He has no windows. His food is delivered through a slot in the door. He never sees another inmate. For something to do, he has become a cutter. Watching his blood trickle is better than watching nothing. It is a common way that those in isolation relieve the boredom, say psychologists familiar with prisoners in solitary confinement.

Laughlin describes Manuel as having “no work skills, no formal education and so much psychological damage that he once set himself on fire.”

Here are some clips from her story:

When he began his sentence in a tough adult prison at age 14, he was small and defensive. Afraid to appear vulnerable, he got into trouble immediately. He’d veer into the grass instead of walking on the path in the prison yard. When guards yelled at him, he’d yell back. When they came at him, he’d make obscene gestures. In less than a year, he was in solitary.

From there, the disciplinary infractions multiplied — for storing aspirin, for sticking his hand through the food flap, for standing at his cell door, for masturbating and for cursing. He would go six months at a time lying on his bed in what he called “a state of hibernation” to stay out of trouble. But it didn’t matter. Each infraction added months and after a while the hole was so deep he couldn’t get out.

Recently, he received a visit from someone not on his legal team. It was his first in 15 years. Leaning forward toward the glass separating him from his visitor, he tried to explain what kept him there:

“I’d tell myself to keep quiet and behave. But I was so desperate I couldn’t control my impulses.”

The result has been a life stripped of life.

No programs or education. No visitors, phone calls or human touch. No books, magazines, TV or radio. No talking. No standing at the cell door and looking out. Three 10-minute showers a week. Meals pushed through a flap in the door. Enforced idleness in a concrete box, year after year.

According to corrections reports, Manuel became a cutter at 17 — slicing his arms with tiny fragments of glass and metal and watching the blood flow.

“It gave me relief from the intolerable numbness,” he said.

By the way, from the beginning, Manual has always been loaded with remorse about his crime, and demonstrated it. Laughlin explains in an earlier article about Manual when she tells about Manual’s first Christmas in prison when he was still a tiny, very skinny teenager:

On Christmas Eve 1992, he was allowed to make one phone call. He called Debbie Baigrie, the woman he had shot.

“This is Ian. I am sorry for all the suffering I’ve caused you,” she remembers him saying.

They began to correspond regularly. Baigrie said she was impressed with how well he wrote.

She asked prison officials to let him take the General Educational Development test and take college courses.

“I got a second chance in life. I recovered and went on,” Baigrie said. “I wanted Ian to have the same chance.”

But the rules of solitary forbade Manuel from participating in any kind of self-improvement or educational program. Instead, he sat in his cell day in and day out, without reading materials or human interaction, racking up more infractions for “disrespect,” which only extended his time in solitary.

After several years, Baigrie gave up.

“Not because of Ian,” she said, “but because the system made it
impossible for him to improve. What does it say when a victim tries to do more for an inmate than the very system that’s supposed to rehabilitate him?”

Please read the rest of both articles. And then tell me how this is the right and humane thing to have done to a 13-year-old—thirteen—despite the fact that he did something awful 20 years ago.

Even his victim believes we owed him something better.


Photo by Michael Spooneybarger |Special to the St. Petersburg Times

16 Comments

  • “In the past seven months, prison records show Manuel received three disciplinary writeups: one for not making his bed, another for hiding a day’s worth of prescription medicine instead of taking it, and yet another for yelling through the food flap when a correctional officer refused to take his grievance form. Those reports extended his stay on the strictest level of solitary for nine months.”

    How does this help anyone? How is this just punishment?

  • Really shocking way to treat a 13-year old like Manuel, not allowing him to read or get an education as he and his victim pleaded for him to do – nothing but petty punitiveness, like in the quote provided by Mavis. More what one would expect from a country like China whose prisons are notorious. This treatment is making it impossible for Manuel to rehabilitate and rejoin society. What a terrible financial and human cost.

    There may be cases where such treatment is merited, since as your commenters point out, SOME kids are already too hardened and show no remorse – but there clearly should have been discretion in this case.

  • Looking more closely at an article in yesterday’s LATimes, in Calif. there are only 3 juveniles serving life for non-murder related offenses. Of 249 inmates sentenced for crimes committed when they were juveniles. 77 of the 129 youths affected by the new ruling are in Florida.

    Two in CA who will “likely have their sentences amended” are Enedino Calderon, sentenced in 04 for “kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault with firearms in a masked attack on a former employer,” (pretty aggravated), and Raul Lopez, also sentenced for kidnapping in 94.

    BUT says State Sen. Leland Yee, nearly half of those sentenced for murder-related crimes (were not killers, that they acted as lookouts or accomplices,” the kind of act you have profiled here in the past. The ride-alongs. BUT then again, we have a kid who I’d probably rather not have back on the streets any time soon: Antonio Nunez, then a 14-year old L A gang member, who “used a semi-automatic weapon to kidnap an immigrant smuggler, demand $100,000 and a kilogram of cocaine as ransom, then fire on pursuing officers and passive drivers” when the deal went south. But even in his case, we should as a society certainly prefer he achieve an education and be incarcerated in as “civilizing” a way as possible, not in the counterproductive, cruel and Dickensianp petty-control-freak-rules for rules sake, authoritarian manner as was Manuel.

  • “When he was 13-years old he shot a woman in the face as he and two other kids attempted to rob her”

    Couldn’t follow the rules of society.

    “He is Florida’s longest serving inmate it solitary.”

    Moreso than anyone else incarcerated, he can’t follow the rules of the penal institution. Chance of recidivism? About 100%. Chance he will hurt or kill somebody else if released on parole, about 100%.
    Excuse me if I don’t light a candle hoping for Ian to be released on parole.
    Before you get all indignant and speak about my lack of compassion, ask yourself this question. Should Ian be released on parole, would you want one of your loved ones present when Ian loses control of his impulses?

  • Anyone who believes everything they read on these cases is nuts. The stories are almos always one sided. Not taking prescribed medication is a very serious offense in a penal institution bcause much of it is needed to lessen violent behavior that can be directed against staff, other inmates and one’s self.

    Some people have no clue as to the nature of people locked up for serious crimes regardless of their age. Should we torture kids, of course not but the word is thrown around without thinking or looking at the totality of a person’s behavior while incarcerated.

  • I blame his parents for sparing the rod. Todays youth grow up with no rules nor sense of respect.

    1. To begin with, a Christian parent must understand that a child will never learn a lesson unless they are beaten on their naked bottoms until the imprint of the rugged cross is plainly visible on both cheeks.

    2. Use a heavy object, a ruler is too light, a belt-buckle may cause bleeding and suspicion from liberal democrat schoolteachers if you are careless enough to allow your child to attend a public school. We suggest a heavy King James 1611 authentic cowhide leather bound Bible.

    3. As soon as you have the child on your lap, clench his hands so that he cannot move. Immediately flip the child over so that his stomach is across your knees. If the child struggles, give him a good whack across the back of his head and tell him to shut up. Whisper in his ear, “You’re going to get a whole lot worse from Jesus, you rebellious, hateful, kid!”

  • Rebuke the child in the sweet name of Jesus, toss them aside like a used Kleenex and let them roll to the floor to contemplate their sinful nature.

    Let the child know that the punishment he received today is nothing compared to the eternal punishment of Hell where Jesus burns and cooks all the bad little boys and girls who don’t do what their daddy tells them.

    That’s how it was done back in my day, Celeste!

  • I can’t believe that they wouldn’t at least allow him reading or educational materials. I can sort of understand the potential need to isolate him from other prisoners, and possibly even the need to further punish someone who is already in prison and not behaving. But, honestly, what is a person supposed to do with endless years stuck in a room the size of a closet and no windows or human interaction?

  • If we are to be a just and compassionate society, we must care more about the victims of crime than we do about criminals, regardless of their age. This decision will lead to the release of violent thugs who will terrorize innocent people.

  • Most of us know that Jesus Christ does not punish persons, but loves them and asks us to love them and forgive them.
    Thank God for truly caring attorneys. And for those of you who have a compassionate heart. Christ said that as you do unto the least, so you do unto Him….think about that. Ian has. Now it is my turn and your turn to forgive a truly repentant sinner, friends, as Christ would have us do.

  • Obama frees terrorists…5 of them…each one a high profile hate-filled Muslim murderer . But does anyone free a person whose done his time locked up in solitary for most of his life?, since he was a teenager, a person who was NOT a murderer?
    What’s wrong with you to think that a terrorist’s punishment in an open air prison is sufficient to trade him and 4 other killers for a deserter, and turn your back on a black man who assaulted but did not kill anybody and hasn’t had an ounce of sunshine in decades? It’s amazing you haven’t written to the governor yet, to pardon this man to the care of his aunts, that he might enjoy the fresh air as his victim has enjoyed it all these years, and the horrid system of endless punishment finally be replaced with common sense and decency. If you rather keep Mr. manuel in solitary your head is screwed on wrong, you never complained about the 5 bloodthirsty jihadists did you?!

  • I’d rather see a non violent offender like Rick Wershe released than a violent repeat offender back on the streets. -> “The Clemency Report named Richard Wershe Jr., a 44-year-old with a colorful past, as Michigan’s inmate most deserving of clemency. He was arrested for cocaine at age 17, in May 1987, and has been serving his life for this single, non-violent offense ever since.

    Richard gained fame in the Detroit area as “White Boy Rick” when the DEA and other officers used him as an informant starting at age 14. He was busted for possession with intent to distribute eight kilograms of cocaine at age 17. He has been turned down for parole three times and will be eligible again in 2017.

    His case has been detailed in many news stories and further information can be found at the FreeWhiteBoyRickWershe Facebook page.” – http://clemencyreport.org/richard-wershe-jr-named-michigans-no-1-inmate-deserving-clemency/

  • Harriet’s comments are despicable. She and all the others who wrote those terrible things should be beaten.

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