Seven Days in Solitary [4.12.13]

April 12, 2013 By 1 Comment

solitaryThe following roundup features noteworthy news, reports, and opinions on solitary confinement from the past week that have not been covered in other Solitary Watch posts.

• Developments surrounding the systemic failures in California prisons were covered heavily by the media. Most recently, the Los Angeles Times reported on California judges’ threat to find Gov. Jerry Brown in contempt of court if he and the state do not “quickly produce a plan to remove thousands of convicts from California’s packed prisons.”

• In a strongly worded editorial, Bloomberg View denounces on the inhumane practice of solitary confinement in the U.S., stating that its use in “prisons and detention centers has broken the bounds of reason and decency.”

• The Toronto Star reports on the high-profile inquest into the death of Ashley Smith, the teen who died in solitary confinement in Canada. Lawyers representing Smith’s family and advocacy groups “want to ensure the inquest leads to significant reductions in the use of segregation in Canadian prisons, and a ban on it for mentally ill offenders.”

• Susan Greene, writing in the Colorado Independent, reports on a recent statement by fellow Colorado State Penitentiary prisoner Troy Anderson, that Evan Ebel’s suicide note shows he was “‘ruined’ by solitary and ‘bent on revenge.’”

• Writing on The Hill’s Congress blog, Ian Kysel, author of Growing Up Locked Down, urges the U.S. government to ban the use of solitary confinement on children in federal custody. While solitary is harmful to adults, Kysel writes, ”the potential damage to children, who do not have the maturity and resilience of an adult and are at a particularly vulnerable, formative stage of life, is much greater.”

• The ACLU of Colorado calls on the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) to end the solitary confinement of kids in Colorado’s El Pueblo Residential Treatment Center.

• The New York World  reports on the torments experienced by Rasaun Bullock during his 49 months in solitary confinement on Rikers Island.

• The Investigative Writing Workshop reports on the government’s review of solitary confinement practices in immigration centers in the U.S. The article referenced new government data (first revealed by the New York Times) showing that “about 300 immigrant detainees are in solitary in the top centers around the country while they wait for a finding of their legal status.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, mental illness, psychological effects, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Systemic Failures Persist” in California Prison Mental Health Care, Judge Rules

April 8, 2013 By 4 Comments
California Security Housing Unit Cell

California Security Housing Unit Cell

California Governor Jerry Brown’s bid to end federal control over the state prison system’s mental health system was denied in federal court on Friday, April 5, in a sharply worded ruling by U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton. In the 68-page ruling, Judge Karlton determined that “systemic failures persist in the form of inadequate suicide prevention measures, excessive administrative segregation of the mentally ill, lack of timely access to adequate care, insufficient treatment space and access to beds, and unmet staffing needs.”

The ruling comes following months of campaigning and litigating by Governor Brown and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to end federal oversight of the California prison system. Friday’s ruling is the latest enforcement of the 1995 case Coleman v. Wilson, a federal class action suit filed against then-California Governor Pete Wilson, which resulted in  federal oversight over CDCR’s mental health and medical treatment that continues under the jurisdiction of Judge Karlton.

An additional federal class action lawsuit, Plata v. Schwarzenegger was merged with the Coleman lawsuit and in 2009, California was ordered to reduce it’s prison population to 137% capacity, as it was determined that Constitutionally acceptable medical and mental health delivery was hindered by the beyond-capacity prison population, which was deemed an 8th Amendment violation. California in turn appealed the order to reduce it’s prison population and in 2011, in Brown v. Plata, the US Supreme Court ordered California to reduce it’s prison population by 30,000 inmates. Governor Brown has an additional appeal of this order before U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson.

Governor Jerry Brown has gone on the record to claim that California  has “one of the finest prison systems in the United States,” and no longer requires federal oversight. In a January 2013 press release, Governor Brown stated: “After decades of judicial intervention in our correctional system and the expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars, the time has come to restore California’s rightful control of its prison system.” In February, CDCR announced the completion of a new mental health treatment building at the California Medical Facility, and declared that the facility “reinforces CDCR’s ongoing commitment to provide a constitutional level of mental health treatment in California’s prisons.”

Judge Karlton’s ruling, however, strongly rebukes these claims by Brown and CDCR, saying “based on defendants’ conduct to date, the court cannot rely on their averments of good faith as a basis for granting termination. There is overwhelming evidence in the record that much of defendants’ progress to date is due to the pressure of this and other litigation.”

A major factor in Judge Karlton’s ruling was the significant rate of suicides in the California prison system, which has previously been reported to be well above the national prison average.

“In summary, for over a decade a disproportionately high number of inmates have committed suicide in California’s prison system describable inadequacies in suicide prevention in the CDCR,” Judge Karlton writes,”Defendants have a constitutional obligation to take and adequately implement all reasonable steps to remedy those inadequacies. The evidence shows they have not yet done so. In addition, while defendants represent that they have fully implemented their suicide prevention program, they have not. An ongoing constitutional violation therefore remains.”

Judge Karlton cited the overuse of solitary confinement, particularly among individuals with severe mental health problems, as a continuing problem in the California prison system. The ruling states that such individuals “face substantial risk of serious harm, including exacerbation of mental illness and potential increase in suicide risk.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: California, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, mental illness, solitary confinement, suicide, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: A Sentence Worse Than Death

March 11, 2013 By 620 Comments

elmira The following essay is by William Blake, who has been held in solitary confinement for nearly 26 years. Currently he is in administrative segregation at Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security facility located in south central New York State. In 1987, Blake, then 23 and in county court on a drug charge, murdered one deputy and wounded another in a failed escape attempt. He was sentenced to 77 years to life. 

This powerful essay earned Blake an Honorable Mention in the Yale Law Journal’s Prison Law Writing Contest, chosen from more than 1,500 entries. He describes here in painstaking detail his excruciating experiences over the last quarter-century. “I’ve read of the studies done regarding the effects of long-term isolation in solitary confinement on inmates, seen how researchers say it can ruin a man’s mind, and I’ve watched with my own eyes the slow descent of sane men into madness—sometimes not so slow,” Blake writes. “What I’ve never seen the experts write about, though, is what year after year of abject isolation can do to that immaterial part in our middle where hopes survive or die and the spirit resides.” That is what Blake himself seeks to convey in his essay. —Lisa Dawson

 .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

“You deserve an eternity in hell,” Onondaga County Supreme Court judge Kevin Mulroy told me from his bench as I stood before him for sentencing on July 10, 1987. Apparently he had the idea that God was not the only one qualified to make such judgment calls.

Judge Mulroy wanted to “pump six buck’s worth of electricity into [my] body,” he also said, though I suggest that it wouldn’t have taken six cent’s worth to get me good and dead. He must have wanted to reduce me and The Chair to a pile of ashes. My “friend” Governor Mario Cuomo wouldn’t allow him to do that, though, the judge went on, bemoaning New York State’s lack of a death statute due to the then-Governor’s repeated vetoes of death penalty bills that had been approved by the state legislature. Governor Cuomo’s publicly expressed dudgeon over being called a friend of mine by Judge Mulroy was understandable, given the crimes that I had just been convicted of committing. I didn’t care much for him either, truth be told. He built too many new prisons in my opinion, and cut academic and vocational programs in the prisons already standing.

I know that Judge Mulroy was not nearly alone in wanting to see me executed for the crime I committed when I shot two Onondaga County sheriff’s deputies inside the Town of Dewitt courtroom during a failed escape attempt, killing one and critically wounding the other. There were many people in the Syracuse area who shared his sentiments, to be sure. I read the hateful letters to the editor printed in the local newspapers; I could even feel the anger of the people when I’d go to court, so palpable was it. Even by the standards of my own belief system, such as it was back then, I deserved to die for what I had done. I took the life of a man without just cause, committing an act so monumentally wrong that I could not have argued that it was unfair had I been required to pay with my own life.

What nobody knew or suspected back then, not even I, on that very day I would begin suffering a punishment that I am convinced beyond all doubt is far worse than any death sentence could possibly have been. On July 10, 2012, I finished my 25th consecutive year in solitary confinement, where at the time of this writing I remain. Though it is true that I’ve never died and so don’t know exactly what the experience would entail, for the life of me I cannot fathom how dying any death could be harder or more terrible than living through all that I have been forced to endure for the last quarter-century.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Eighth Amendment, life without parole, New York, psychological effects, solitary confinement, torture, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Voices from Solitary: What Solitary Confinement Does to the Mind

February 16, 2013 By 32 Comments

ellis_unitThe following was submitted to Solitary Watch by Michael Jewell, who was sentenced to death in Texas for capital murder in 1970 and spent three years in solitary confinement as a death row prisoner. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1973 following the 1972 Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which prohibited the death penalty nationwide until the decision was overturned in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Over the next 30 years, Jewell spent two two-year-long terms in Administrative Segregation. In Ad Seg, he would spend 23 hours a day in a 5×9 foot cell alone, allowed only a 20 minute shower and one hour of exercise in a cage. The first term was a result of his leading a work stoppage at Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in support of the Texas civil rights case Ruiz v. Estelle, which ultimately led federal courts to rule that the conditions in the Texas prison system violated 8th Amendment prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. His second term in solitary confinement was the result of an escape attempt at Ferguson Unit in Madison County.

Since his parole, he has found that life after prison is not easy. “Hell, with my criminal history, I couldn’t get a job as a speed bump at Kroger’s,” he writes. “If it were not for a loving wife with enough fixed income to support the both of us, no doubt I would have recidivated for something akin to throwing a brick through a bank window.” Jewell has become active in prison reform with Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), Amnesty International, the Texas Inmate Family Association, and  the ACLU of Texas. With his wife, Joan, he founded Con-Care Services, which assists Texas inmates with  problems prisoners routinely face, including visitation issues and appealing disciplinary cases. “We don’t move mountains but we kick the shit out of molehills,” –Sal Rodriguez

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

I served 40 consecutive years on a life sentence in the Texas Department of Corrections, from 1970 to 2010. My first 3 years were on death row, which is much like Administrative Segregation and Solitary Confinement (S.C). I also did time in Ad Seg on two separate occasions, staying over two years each time. During that time I was confined to a 5 x 9 foot cell for 23 hours per day. I was allowed a 20 minute shower and an hour for outside recreation in a cage made of cyclone fencing, which resembled a cage you’d see at the dog pound. The cage measured about 10 x 10 square feet.

S.C. is a form of sensory deprivation, in that your perception shrinks to the dimensions of the space and sensations of confinement. Visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and even the sense of taste are dramatically deprived and constricted. Almost immediately upon being tossed into isolation, though many people may not recognize it for what it is, you begin to suffer from a form of “sensory withdrawal.” Soon, you begin to crave the broader liberty you’ve lost, even the limited freedom of a prison’s environment: the ability to move about and interact with other human beings. Such a radical deprivation of sensory perceptions has a ‘numbing’ effect. You feel ‘stunned.’

Removed from the distractions and diversions of the broader context, the mind  is suddenly forced to confront itself. You begin to hear yourself think. When the mind is withdrawn from the experience of ‘perceiving’ and interacting with the complex activities of the broader environment, it is forced to switch to perceptions from within itself and draw upon self-consciousness, as well as the subconscious.

Sudden subjection to S.C. is a painful and dreaded experience. Because it is human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, we have a tendency to withdraw from the physical and take refuge into the psychological. Different people will have different reactions to this phenomenon. But most will indulge in various memories and forms of ‘fancy.’ Alongside memories of good times come those of sad and bad times. It is my opinion that all prisoners, deep inside, have a poor self-image. In S.C. that fact becomes acutely self-evident, or at least it did in my case. I suffered profound feelings of guilt and shame for past actions and inactions. Hot on the heels of regret come recrimination. Again, it is our nature to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. We tend to escape from over-awareness of our faults and foibles by turning to ‘fancy.’   Over time: days, weeks, months, and years, imagination can verge on, and in many cases, into, hallucination. The next stage is often psychosis and irreparable psychological damage. Research has shown an irrefutable link between S.C. and mental deterioration:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: death row, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “It Has Zapped Me Of My Personality”

October 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The following comes from a prisoner held at the French Robertson Unit in Abilene, Texas.  Robertson Unit is a maximum security facility that houses over 2,900 inmates. The prison houses a large number of inmates in Administrative Segregation–long-term solitary confinement units. Similarly to California and other states, Texas segregates prisoners designated as members of certain gangs (referred to as Security Threat Groups). The author of this piece has been incarcerated for two years, entirely spent in the administrative segregation unit. Despite having a non-violent record consisting exclusively of drug related offenses, he is being held in segregation as an STG member due to having been previously designated an STG member when he was first incarcerated in 1997, for another non-violent drug offense. –Sal Rodriguez

Let me sum up my experience for you in a sentence: Sensory depriving, concentration-camp style justice with dehumanizing factors on a long term, indefinite schedule, paid for by taxpayers.

I’m here for Security Threat Group purposes, as a “preventive measure” under a blanket policy over gang members. I’ve been in segregation ever since I got off the bus from county. Going on two years now.

This is my second trip through TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice]. Evidently they used evidence from my first trip down here to confirm me as a STG member. However, they have yet to provide me with and proof or evidence that they used to confirm my associated with so called STG. All my requests for information have been ignored or refused.

There is no need for me to be in segregation. Nothing in my criminal history or prison disciplinary records even remotely reflects a need for solitary housing. Only my association with a certain group of people, nothing on grounds of my actions as an individual. I have a direct need for drug treatment, but am not allowed to attend any classes. All of my felony convictions are related to my addiction. There is no positive stimulation offered here at all. There is no TV, no human contact whatsoever. We are handcuffed everywhere we go. Outside recreation twice a week, one hour per day by ourselves separated by fence from other inmates. We get inside recreation five days a week for one hour, by ourselves.

They offer us very few ways to help ourselves.

They feed us less than population inmates, no fresh fruit, very seldom fresh vegetables, mostly canned. It’s a constant battle just to get cleaning supplies for our cells. We’ve had a hand sized rag dipped in a bucket to clean our whole cell once in the past 2 1/2 months.

Where are the stats to prove that these measures actually work? As far as holding certain gang members back here in segregation for an indefinite amount of time, there are still gangs out there in population. May look good for them, but what about the stress and torture that is being done to the ones back here? I myself can tell for a fact that this cell has taken a toll on me emotionally. It has zapped me of my personality. Where is the justice in this type of treatment?

I’m put in a single cell, fed through a slot, like a ravaging animal. Expected to stare at the walls for 22-23 hours a day while dodging bogus cases, for example: don’t have anything sitting on the floor, don’t have stuff on your desk unless you are using it and don’t cover up the air vent no matter how hot or cold you may be.

So I’m expected to sit in my cell, avoid bogus cases, be ignored, entertain myself with nothing, obey the nonsense rules that are clearly only for harassment and bullying measures and come out a reformed sober individual with respect for authority and the justice system.

I’m treated like an animal for having a drug addiction.

Filed Under: psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Texas, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Texas Senate Hearing Finds Prisoners Released from Solitary Confinement Directly to the Streets

September 5, 2012 By 4 Comments

In Texas, some 8,100 prisoners are in administrative segregation, which is what the state calls solitary confinement. They are held in isolation in cells that measure 6 x 9 feet for 23 hours a day, with one hour to exercise in a small, fenced yard. More than 2,000 of them have a diagnosis of serious mental illness or a developmental disability.

Yesterday, the Criminal Justice Committee of the Texas State Senate held a hearing on solitary confinement, focusing on the state’s nonexistent reetry program for people getting out of the hole. The leading Texas criminal justice blog, Grits for Breakfast, has a detailed report on the hearing:

In FY 2011, the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee was told yesterday, 878 individuals who’d been locked up in administrative segregation (commonly referred to as “ad seg,” which is Texas’ version of solitary confinement) were released directly to the streets without parole supervision of any type after finishing out their full sentence. Most of these individuals left with $100 in their pocket and a bus voucher – usually to their county of conviction – without so much as a photo ID to help them begin the long, difficult path to reintegration into their home communities. Indeed, for mentally ill inmates in ad seg released after serving their full sentence, there is no continuity of care program to ensure they’ll continue to receive medication once they’re back in the free world. (Such a program exists for inmates released receiving HIV medications, but not for the mentally ill.)

Another 469 individuals during FY 2011 were paroled directly from ad-seg, Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) executive director Brad Livingston told the committee. As was pointed out in Texas Criminal Justice Coalition’s written testimony, “Inmates on parole have the advantage of being able to participate in a District Reentry Center, which generally offers more robust programming and resources during the transition into the community.” The greater number, though, who are released directly from ad seg, leave prison completely unsupervised…

[Read more...]

Filed Under: due process, mental illness, solitary confinement, Texas Tagged With: , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Concrete Solitaire

August 13, 2012 By 6 Comments

In 2010, the website Planet Waves began publishing the work of prisoner Enceno Macy. For his own protection against retaliation, the name is a pseudonym and the site does not name the prison in which he is held. Macy has been in prison since he was 15 years old, and has spent a good deal of time in solitary confinement. The following detailed and visceral description of life in solitary is from a recent post titled “Concrete Solitaire.” The accompanying drawing is also by Enceno Macy. Go to Planet Waves to read the full post, and to read earlier posts by Macy. Enceno Macy also submitted written testimony for the recent Senate Justice Subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement. –Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

The light is as dim as a 40 watt bulb in a basement, like you might see in a B-rated horror movie. But this light illuminates a different kind of horror.

Imagine you’re in a cube, a concrete cube six feet by ten feet max. A thick concrete slab three feet high is built into the back wall. An exercise mat lies atop the slab, three inches thick and almost as hard as the slab itself. A stainless steel combination toilet-sink is built into the side wall, and next to it is a solid steel door. There may or may not be a small, filthy window, no bigger than a VCR tape, high up in one wall. The available floor space is about the same as a standard 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. This is your entire world, 24/7.

You have two books, if you’re lucky, chosen from a very limited selection of dog-eared novels, usually with subjects of no interest to you. A couple sheets of paper, a pen the size of a golf pencil, a toothbrush and a comb complete the inventory of your property.

Three times a day, a slot in your door opens, a tray is shoved through with strictly regulated portions of alleged food the FDA may or may not have approved strewn across it. Every two days, you are restrained — put in handcuffs and leg chains — and taken to shower. The hotel-size bar soap is made with the most basic ingredients, the major one probably lye, leaving your skin instantly dry. So dry that scratching the resulting itch tears your skin.

Occasionally you will receive your mail if the guards don’t ‘lose’ it and if you are fortunate enough to have anyone care enough to write to you. Every little noise echoes. Even the silence echoes, a dry, empty silence, the kind where you can hear yourself think. As months go by, the thoughts you hear become actual voices. After years in the cube, those voices become someone else’s and you no longer have a voice of your own.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: mental illness, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , ,

Washington Prisoner Subjected to Solitary Confinement for “Involuntary Protection”

July 30, 2012 By 1 Comment

A recent News Tribune article highlighted the relatively limited use of solitary confinement in Washington state. Only 2.7 percent of the state’s 17,800 inmates, or about 400, are currently held at the maximum custody level. According to Washington Department of Corrections policy, those placed in the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) are there for either being disruptive to the institution or for protective custody purposes. In the IMU, inmates are allowed one hour of exercise time  five days a week and three 10-minute showers a week.

The total number held in isolation, however, is unclear. Aside from the 2.7 percent officially held in solitary, those placed in Administrative Segregation units are not counted. Inmates in Ad-Seg may be there for days or months.

D. has been incarcerated for twenty years in Washington State. While Washington state claims to limit it’s use of isolation, D.’s experience has consisted of spending all of 2008, 2010, 9 months of 2011 and several months in 2012 in the IMU and Ad-Seg.

Disturbingly, D. has been repeatedly held in isolation for the purposes of “involuntary protection.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: due process, race, solitary confinement, Washington Tagged With: , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Surviving the “Prison Within a Prison”

July 28, 2012 By 2 Comments

The following was submitted to Solitary Watch by Ricardo “Truth” Noble, who has spent five years in Pennsylvania’s Restrictive Housing Units. Pennsylvania’s RHU’s hold over 1,500 inmates in solitary confinement. Incarcerated for 21 years, he is serving life-without-parole. Noble  describes the experience of being in the RHU as an intense and hopeless place where he has had to learn to turn the experience of solitary into a chance for positive development. This is an excerpt from a larger series of writings by Noble, and is entitled “RHU Parallel.”– Sal Rodriguez

“Within every adversity there exists a seed (opportunity) of an equal or greater benefit.”–Napoleon Hill

RHU means Restricted Housing Unit (commonly called “the hole”). The RHU is a prison within a prison. It’s the worst (kind of condition). So, an equal potential exists to develop and bring about a better (more positive and productive) benefit, condition, or response also.When put into the worst situations you have to tap into yourself and bring about/out the best in you to be able to grow or even remain stable.

In the RHU it’s not just you versus the “Administration.” It’s you versus you. Because you are brought face-to-face with yourself. During such time of confinement the routine thinking habits that you develop daily will Really Hurt U or Really Heal U. The way you think is reflected in the way you behave. And your behavior patter will design your present and future.

In the RHU life is intense. Especially in the beginning weeks or months. As time passes your mind begins to become clouded with mixed emotions, anger, guilt, hate, paranoia, hopelessness, loneliness, and other frustrations. Some who fail to productively channel their frustrations tend to take it out on those closest to them (mainly other prisoners) or even themselves because they can’t lash out on the ones  (the Administration) who can affect change of the physical aspects of their harsh condition. To do so temporarily feels good but doesn’t really bring about a positive change because the ones who can affect change (upper level Administration) were not affected. And ones situation become even more cloudy. But with discipline and practice you can bring clarity to your life and strengthen yourself from within. Exercise and focused reading helps fight off laziness and emotional breakdown. [Read more...]

Filed Under: life without parole, Pennsylvania, psychological effects, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Isolated for Having a “Gang” Calendar

July 1, 2012 By 1 Comment

We have heard a lot about the gang “validation” in California prisons–the process by which inmates are identified as members of prison gangs. Validation can land a prisoner in solitary for five, ten, even twenty years, and was the main focus of the recent hunger strikes at Pelican Bay and other California supermaxes. We have also heard stories of prisoners who’ve been validated on the basis of tattoos or reading materials, as well as testimony by other prisoners, who are rewarded for “debriefing.” This is the first time, however, that we’ve heard of a prisoner being validated and placed in solitary because for having a calendar that was deemed to be gang-related–proving, once again, that First Amendment rights often end at the prison gates. — James Ridgeway

I am currently in the administrative segregation unit in a California prison. I was not placed in the ASU for any disciplinary reasons-I was placed here for having copies of a 10-12 year old cultural calendar. I’m basically here for having copies of other peoples’s artwork that dates back up to 20 years. Because these individuals were deemed “prison gang members” I am deemed a “threat to the safety and security of the institution’’ for simply admiring their artwork. How trivial is that?

I’ve been ion this situation for 15 months now. It is extremely mind-boggling how the state and courts allow the prison system to take all your little comforts, the things that help you feel like you are doing something positive with your time such as education (I was two classes away from getting a second college degree), AA/NA classes, a job and a few hours of recreation a day over some innocuous copies.

Now I sit here day in and day out wondering if humanity has desensitized itself to the suffering of other human beings. It is incredible when I hear about the anger and moral courage some people feel at how a chicken or any animal is caged up, but don’t bat an eyelash whena human being is treated worse. It simply amazes me.

Filed Under: California, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,
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