On Friday, OSI Community Fellow Munib Lohrasbi will host a press conference at the office of OSI grantee Disability Rights Maryland (DRM) to announce the release of a report, “Segregation and Suicide: Confinement at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women.”
Senator Susan Lee, Delegate Jazz Lewis, and Delegate-elect Sara Love join DRM Executive Director Robin Murphy, Julie Magers of the Maryland Prisoners’ Rights Coalition, and Lohrasbi at the event.
In a press release, Lohrasbi and DRM say “the Report discloses the extreme isolation and harm or risk of harm to numerous women with significant disabilities housed in the segregation, infirmary, and mental health units at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women,” and goes to quote DRM’s Director of Litigation, Lauren Young: “The use of segregation in prison– the extreme isolation, the lack of physical and social engagement, sometimes combined with a lack of bedding, clothing, natural light or exercise, are conditions which Maryland has been shamefully slow to reject, especially as applied to individuals with serious disabilities; and compared with other states. We share this information because it is indispensable to the reforms that must come, but which will not succeed if conditions are kept from public consciousness.”