ATLANTA — Georgia prison officials have flagrantly violated a court order to reform conditions for prisoners in the state’s most restrictive holding facility, showing “no desire or intention” to make the required changes to solitary confinement practices, a federal judge said.
The SMU houses some of the state’s most violent offenders in solitary confinement under conditions that one expert found risked causing psychological harm. He accused prison officials of falsifying documents and said they routinely placed new arrivals at the facility in “strip cells,” where one inmate said he was not given clothes or a mattress and could not use the toilet because it was broken and filled with human waste.A spokesperson for the state department of corrections, Joan Heath, said in an email it will not be commenting on legal matters.
A psychology professor and prison expert told the court he had toured maximum security prisons in roughly two dozen states, and Georgia’s SMU unit was “one of the harshest and most draconian” he had seen.by lawyers for prisoners — included images of prisoners with self-inflicted cuts, blood on the floor of one cell and the window of another, and descriptions of “extraordinarily harsh” living conditions.