‘ The walls are closing in’
They haven’t been convicted of a crime. Some are juveniles, pregnant or have a mental illness. Because county jails don’t want them, they’re shipped to state prisons far from home, where they’re held in solitary confinement. These are Tennessee’s safekeep
The state of Tennessee locked Regenia Bowman in solitary confinement for more than six months because she had a skin infection. ❚ Bowman wasn’t violent, and she hadn’t threatened anyone. She was free on bond when she walked into a courtroom in Bledsoe County in April 2014 to answer charges of selling prescription painkillers, a violation of her probation on a similar charge. During the hearing, when it looked like Bowman was headed to jail, her lawyer revealed she was sick with what turned out to be MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. ❚ The judge suggested sending her to a “special needs” facility in Nashville. Bowman, now 54, assumed she would be going to a clinic or hospital. ❚ Instead, she was driven more than 120 miles to the Tennessee Prison for Women, which usually houses people convicted of a crime. There, without understanding why, she was dressed in white, the uniform of maximum security prisoners. She
was placed in solitary — locked down 23 hours a day, allowed three showers a week and fed through a slot in her cell door. The MRSA cleared up in about two months, she said, but records show she was held like this for 189 days.
“I was terrified,” Bowman said. “The first two days I was so afraid I wouldn’t even go outside because I had no idea what was going on.”
She had been declared a safekeeper. Under a state law virtually unchanged since 1858, people awaiting trial in Tennessee county jails can be shipped to state prison if a judge deems the local jail “insufficient” to handle their medical problems, mental illness or behavioral issues. State policy dictates they are kept in solitary confinement, even if they are mentally unstable or have no disciplinary infraction.
From January 2011 through 2017, more than 320 people in Tennessee were declared safekeepers. The numbers have grown in recent years. In 2013, there were 26 safekeepers; in 2017, there were 86.
The law is intended to relieve a financial burden on jails, get pretrial detainees necessary care or protect jail staff. Some safekeepers have allegedly attacked guards or fashioned crude weapons. Interviews and court records show people are sent to safekeeping because they are juveniles, pregnant, wrestling with severe mental illness or simply too notorious to remain in county lockup. They have not been convicted of a crime, but all of them are shipped far away from their families and defense lawyers and placed in cells usually reserved for the state’s most unruly, dangerous inmates.
Tennessee, one of at least eight states with a safekeeping law, has no formal review process to determine whether inmates should be returned to their original counties.
That means safekeepers have sat in isolation for months or even years as they awaited trial, even if their conditions improved. Though the state does not track precise release dates, a review of records shows safekeeping stays range from a couple of weeks to more than 41⁄ years. A snapshot from Dec. 31 shows the average stay of safekeepers was 328 days. Fifteen of the 57 people in safekeeping on that day had been held longer than a year.
“There’s extreme psychological effects on people who are subjected to solitary confinement,” said Tom Castelli, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. “So you are pouring gasoline on a fire, so to speak, if your reaction to someone who’s got mental health issues or disciplinary issues is to isolate them.”
Detrimental effects
A safekeeping designation generally happens like this: A county sheriff or jail administrator petitions the district attorney, saying a detainee has unmanageable issues. The DA applies for a court order to transfer the inmate. A judge approves.
With one exception, safekeepers have gone to one of three state prisons, all in Nashville. All female safekeepers are sent to the Tennessee Prison for Women (TPFW), where Department of Correction spokeswoman Neysa Taylor said, “Inmates, safekeepers included, have access to the full gamut of mental health and medical care.”
Ali Winters, a senior clinical therapist hired by Corizon, a private company providing mental health care to Tennessee prisons, worked with women in solitary at TPFW from June 2013 to
mid-2016. She said safekeepers had little access to treatment beyond sporadic conversations with her.
“They would be fine, and then within
30 days they wouldn’t be fine because of solitary confinement and what it does to you neurologically,” Winters said. Women experienced depression, mood changes and hallucinations, she said. Her colleague Lori De Leo, who worked with women in isolation at the prison from November 2015 to late 2016, agreed that safekeepers would “deteriorate.”
When an inmate is left in solitary for extended periods of time, he or she may become more anxious or prone to panic attacks, paranoia and other effects, according to a study in 2013 by the American Public Health Association.
Amanda Beaty spent more than three years in safekeeping after attempting suicide multiple times while awaiting trial on charges of killing her son in June
2014. In letters to the Marshall Project, she said other safekeepers she saw included two blind women, one pregnant woman and others who had stopped eating or simply screamed all day. Each name she provided matched state records of safekeepers in custody during the time period she described.
Beaty, 34, said when she was put on suicide watch, she had to sleep on a concrete cell floor. “I was already down in this dark place, and rather than helping me, they just make me feel even worse. It’s horrible,” she said.
One safekeeper, John Raymond Walz, successfully challenged his detention after he was sent to the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility on suicide watch in November 2016.
His lawyer, Jeffrey Vires, understood the local jail didn’t have the resources to keep a close eye on Walz, but he said DeBerry took him off suicide watch after a week — then held him seven months before trial, while his health deteriorated. The lawyer successfully petitioned a court to release Walz to a Veterans Affairs hospital near his home.
At least seven women have been deemed safekeepers because of issues with their pregnancies, three of them in Fentress County, according to court records. Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton, whose jurisdiction includes Fentress, said he didn’t remember signing an order for any pregnant inmates.
He said he would sign such an order to relieve a rural jail of a potentially steep cost while sending the inmate to what he thought would be a more appropriate facility. “I would not send anyone on a safekeeping order anywhere if I think where they’re going is a worse place than where they are,” Sexton said.
Cost is a major factor in keeping safekeepers in state custody. Though other safekeeping states require the sending county to cover costs, in Tennessee, the state pays the bill.
“Truth is, the county would have to agree (to take a safekeeper back), and most will not,” said Sonya Troutt, jail administrator for the Sumner County Sheriff ’s Office.
Circuit Judge Thomas Graham, who presided over Bowman’s safekeeping hearing, said he would prefer to send defendants with serious medical issues to hospitals, but counties cannot shoulder the cost.
He was surprised to hear that safe- keepers are held in solitary confinement. “The only thing we're trying to do is get them medical care,” the judge said.
A long way from home
Teriyona Winton turned 16 this year in the maximum security unit at the Tennessee Prison for Women, more than 200 miles from home. Just 15 when she was accused of murder in Memphis last May, Winton is one of three teenage girls Shelby County has sent to safekeeping since 2011, records show.
After Winton was charged as an adult and the county said it was not equipped to hold her, the hearing declaring her a safekeeper lasted about two minutes, said her attorney, Josh Spickler. There was no evidence presented, and she did not have a lawyer at the time.
Locked in solitary since October, Winton could shower three days a week and go out for recreation two days a week, Spickler said. When she left her cell, her feet and hands were shackled. Every weekday, teachers taught her for two hours through the door flap.
Her mother, Latosha Winton, 38, did not see her daughter for four months because she could not afford to make the six-hour round-trip trek. She finally did see the girl this month, when Teriyona Winton was brought to Memphis for a hearing about her status as a safekeeper. On Feb. 15, a Shelby County court judge ruled that she should be held in the county jail rather than at prison.
In his order, Shelby Criminal Court Judge W. Mark Ward commended the sheriff for sending Winton to safekeeping, saying it was the safest option. Still, he said, the law says safekeepers should be held in a sufficient jail, not prison.
Demetria Frank, an assistant professor of law at the University of Memphis, expressed disbelief that the state’s largest county had no facilities for female minors, particularly after a Justice Department report in 2012 faulted the county for failing to properly safeguard juveniles in detention.
“They’re on 23-hour lockdown; that’s just unacceptable for anyone, especially if the period is indefinitely,” Frank said. “The state of Tennessee should be ashamed of itself.”
Solitary concerns judges
In 1980, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously ruled that the intention of the safekeeping law was to send people to another jail, not state prison. A Marshall Project review of jails in seven of Tennessee’s largest counties found that none reported accepting a safekeeper in recent memory, nor had any been offered one.
Taylor, the DOC spokeswoman, said those determinations are made by judges. Graham, the judge in Bowman’s case, said it was unlikely that any county would be willing to shoulder the burden and cost of an ailing inmate from another county.
Like Graham, F. Lee Russell, a former longtime judge in East Tennessee, and Sexton, the criminal court judge, said they did not realize safekeepers were kept in solitary confinement at the state prison. “I can’t imagine solitary being good for anyone,” Sexton said.
Bowman, who was convicted and spent 18 months in prison, said she got out of safekeeping only after she and her daughter repeatedly called Bledsoe and Sequatchie Counties, where she had open cases, to pressure them into bringing her back. Her defense lawyer at the hearing did not respond to several requests for comment. Bowman said she still suffers from the effects of her time in solitary. She is out on parole and said she tries to avoid being around people.
“I start hyperventilating, I start feeling like the walls are closing in on me,” Bowman said. “The things you see there you don’t forget.”