Some prisoners in the Supermax — motivated either by rage or protest — throw their feces. Brown worries that those who do not engage in this behavior may have their food contaminated by those who do. He is asking, in effect, if confinement to the Supermax means being sentenced to eating potentially contaminated food.

When Brown was confined to the Supermax his toothbrush — like that of others — was taken away. Toothbrushes, allowed in the prison’s general population, are among the everyday implements that are sometimes turned into weapons. Brown says that his inability to properly clean his teeth has given him severe periodontal disease.

The corrections department says food servers use clean gloves to protect servers and inmates alike from contamination. For prisoners’ dental hygiene, the department also supplies Supermax inmates with nubbled fingertip caps of the sort used for cleaning dogs’ teeth.

“If the commissioner is seriously committed to reform, then he can do some small steps,” Brown says.

But Brown also would like large steps to be taken. He has worked out a plan of how prisoners with challenging psychological conditions could be better separated from prisoners who are in solitary “because they have been busted for having cigarettes.”

ADVERTISEMENT

The only change in the Supermax in four months — since the commissioner publicly promised reform — is its repainting, he says. He believes this was done because an American Correctional Association accreditation team was scheduled to visit.

Brown’s descriptions of the SMU on the Maine Supermax Watch Web site sparked the Phoenix’s stories. He has taken flak from some guards because of his outspokenness, he says, but he seems well-regarded in the prison.

“Deane has been institutionalized all but three years since the age of six,” a Rockland friend, Beth Berry, writes in an e-mail. “Although he has been brutally victimized, he has never lost compassion for others being victimized . . . When the lights went out [in a prison power failure], he ran to a female guard and was struck by other inmates while he protected her. She quit and sent him a letter of thanks.”

Another inmate, Michael James, who also was interviewed in the fall and re-interviewed recently, agrees that Supermax conditions are much the same, and he has remained within the unit. He echoes Brown that the only change is the repainting. Impressing the ACA accreditation team was such a big deal for the prison, he says, that the guards “threatened us up and down” to behave when the team visited. But “people still throw feces and all that,” he says.

James, a man in his early 20s, is in the fifth year of a 12-year sentence for robbery, most of which time he has spent in the Supermax. His lawyer, Joseph Steinberger of Rockland, says, “He hasn’t been able to conform himself to their demands for behavior,” as the reason he has spent so much time in the Supermax. He is disobedient. He’s mentally ill.

By many accounts including his own, James is very mentally disturbed. Possibly, he has spent more hours in the restraint chair than anyone else, though he says he has managed to stay out of it for four months. Steinberger says he’s not sure why, but “I’d like to believe as a result of the attention he’s gotten the guards are less cruel to him.” James has cited his responses to guards’ taunts in the past as one of the reasons he has ended up in the restraint chair.

James believes he should be treated at the state’s mental hospital in Augusta — formerly called the Augusta Mental Health Institute, now Riverview Psychiatric Center. For people with mental troubles, the SMU segregation “defeats its purpose,” he says — it just makes them act up more.

He says he protested to the district attorney who handles prison cases about harassment by guards. But “nothing happened. I never heard nothing back from him.”

The district attorney’s office, however, is aware of James. He goes on trial in June in Rockland for six cases of felony assault against guards. Each conviction could result in up to five additional years in prison. His lawyer plans to present an insanity defense in an effort to have him committed to Riverview.

Of the other Supermax inmates interviewed in October, Charles Limanni and Norman Kehling are back in the regular prison, and Michael Chasse and Joseph Reeves are still “in the hole,” as the prisoners say.

MCLU threatens to sue
Meanwhile, others are pressing for change, from the outside.

On February 3, Carol Carothers, director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill: Maine, sent a copy of the Phoenix’s Supermax series to the chairmen of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee, asking for a meeting to discuss treatment of mentally ill people at the Supermax.