Voices from Solitary: Growing Old in Isolation

May 8, 2013 By 6 Comments

prison2Shawn Fisher, who is serving a life sentence at Massachusetts Correctional Institution–Shirley, has written to Solitary Watch making the argument that the treatment of many elders in prison is in fact a form of solitary confinement. An organization of lifers in Massachusetts has urged the state legislature to adopt some sort of compassionate leave act that would let the old out to die in the free world. There is no hospice in the Massachusetts corrections system. So far, nothing has happened. For more on aging prisoners in Massachusetts, read my article ”The Other Death Sentence.”  –James Ridgeway

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I would contest that the “Skilled Nursing Facility” (called the Health Services Unit [H.S.U.]) falls under solitary confinement. The cells are 4-5 man wards but they are locked in that ward for 24 hrs a day. They are not permitted to leave the HSU area for any reason. They cannot attend religious services, programs, or Law Library. There are also several single cells that house four permanent inmates. Those inmates are in their cells, alone 24 hours a day. One inmate has nothing but a mattress and a chair in the cell. NOTHING ELSE. He suffers from dementia and stands at his window, talking through the glass to no one in particular for long periods of the day.

Another inmate who suffers from the same thing, lays in his bed all day long, with no one to engage or talk with. The argument can be made that they don’t know where they are, but just the same it is the most inhumane site you will ever witness.

Here at MCI Shirley prison, the effects of the aging prisoner have already had an impact on the population at large. In the last five years several elderly inmates have died in the bowels of the hospital services unit (HSU) called the “skilled nursing facility.” Most, if not all, died alone with nothing but a bed to comfort them in their last days. What’s even more disturbing is oftentimes friends of these men who are housed in the general population do not hear of their passing for days, sometimes weeks later. For some this may seem like a trivial matter but it is indicative of a more serious issue that is slowly taking root among many of the lifer population; hopelessness, particularly the younger men serving life sentences.

Policies enacted here at MCI Shirley prohibit inmates from visiting anyone housed in HSU area, that is, unless they work in the HSU as runners. This policy further prohibits anyone who lives in the HSU from leaving the HSU to attend programs, library, and religious services; in effect punishing individuals for being sick. Many of these men have served 10, 20 and 30+ years in prison. In that time some have lost contact with family and friends who live on the outside. In most cases, they’ve been incarcerated for so long that there’s just nobody left to contact. In almost every instance these men have formed bonds with other prisoners that they’ve serve time with—creating a family unit amongst each other. Men serving long term sentences serve more time living together than the ideal family unit, and yet, when one becomes sick it’s very likely that neither of them will see each other again.

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Filed Under: life without parole, Massachusetts, older prisoners, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “You Are Solitary Confinement”

May 1, 2013 By 4 Comments

jailmanThe following poem was written by Nicholas Zimmerman, who is currently incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. He has been in prison for twelve years, and in solitary confinement for ten of those years. He writes: “Since being in The SHU [Special Housing Unit], I have had a stroke, I have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety and I have tried to commit suicide twice, and very often get these thoughts, but I fight really hard to keep my mind!…It is very hard to cope, but If I can get help on the outside…from all of you reading this! This all can change for me and for many other prisoners like me! Thank you for listening!” The poem was provided to Solitary Watch by Nicholas Zimmerman’s wife Desiray Smith, who works against solitary confinement with the New York Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement. –Jean Casella

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You are the most profound form of cruel and unusual punishment know to mankind, yet the Eighth Amendment of the United States seems to have no effect on you.

Your are only 6 feet by 8 feet in size, but your impact is devastating and long lasting.

You are a silent killer, slipping on and out of prison cells late at night to claim your next victim.

You are the Department of Corrections’ most effective weapon in inflicting mental and physical torture upon its captives.

Your existence is undeniable; you’ve been around for hundreds of years.

Numerous experts have complained about you for decades to no avail.

You are the cause of my depression, my high blood pressure, my anxiety, my sleepless nights, and my restless days.

I’ve watched you kill people with out laying a hand on them.

I’ve watched people hang themselves from your support beams with in minutes of being in your clutches.

I’ve have seen people slice and dice themselves with hopes of escaping your misery.

And I’ve also watched the Correction Officers and mental health staff enjoy every minute of it.

You’re a Bitch in my eyes, not man enough to show your face and fight me one on one, but coward enough to attack me while I’m sleeping and inject fatal thoughts of suicide into my dreams….

Through lawsuits, maintenance, funding and security, you cause taxpayers billions of dollars per year to stay afloat, yet they know very little about you and how unnecessary and counterproductive you really are.

Lately, you have been under fire by the media, however. But will this end your reign of terror? Only time will tell.

I’ve been battling you for the past 10 years and everyday I look at you and grin knowing that you are on your last leg. Your defeat is imminent, but your history will be legendary. Tomorrow you might be the thing of a thing of the past, but today at the very minute, as I write these words, you are torturing another soul and plotting your next murder.

And you legally get away with all of this simply because you are who you are!

You are…

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT!

Filed Under: Eighth Amendment, human rights, New York, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , ,

Voices from Solitary: A Sentence Worse Than Death

March 11, 2013 By 621 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

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“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.

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

Voices from Solitary: Disciplined Into Madness and Death

February 18, 2013 By 14 Comments

bedford hillsThe following essay comes from Sara Rodrigues, formerly imprisoned at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for women in Westchester, New York, and now further upstate at Albion. When Sara was sent to prison at the age of 16, she found her friend D there as well. Both Sara and D had life-long struggles with mental health, and while in prison, spent long periods of time in solitary confinement (both Keeplock, which is lockdown in one’s own cell, and SHU, which is the Special Housing Unit).

Sara writes about the difficulty D faced when she was finally released and put on parole, with no transitional assistance to move from prison to the free world. She ultimately ended up back in prison and committed suicide, shortly after giving birth to a baby girl. Sara Rodrigues wrote this piece in the hope of spreading awareness of her situation and the experience of many people around her. She writes, “Too many inmates in New York State under the age of 25 are killing themselves in prisons because they are literally being thrown away like garbage by the court systems.” (Thanks to Jennifer Parish of the Urban Justice Center for forwarding this essay to Solitary Watch.) –Rachel M. Cohen

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This essay is dedicated to D and all those who have given their minds and/or lives trying to pay their debt to society and to those who will forever be haunted and scarred from our justice system. Once self-worth and hope dies within our souls, what is left behind is a shell of life that can see no future, no redemption and no chance for a normal life. It is then that our minds realize how truly unwanted we are and how on a daily basis we are reminded that society has no use for us. Day by day life becomes very dark, some lose their minds, some will never be the same, and some just give in and take their own lives.

Many people who are sentenced to prisons are very young and have serious behavioral and mental health problems and this environment only makes their sickness worse. This is D’s story and how somehow out of the tragedy of her passing has made me resolve to open people’s eyes to the greater damage that happens to everyone by throwing the very young, mentally and emotionally ill into cages to rot under the pretense that more punishment, isolation, and deprivation will make people change for the better. This story has nothing to do with not doing your time, but doing your time in a healthy corrective facility, not the factories of misery that most of our prisons are today. D’s death had such an impact on me that she inspired me to keep fighting for my sanity, to try to never give up, and to get the word out whether people care to hear the truth or not.

In December 2008, I tripped and fell down the rabbit hole. Instead of “Alice in Wonderland,” I became Sara in Prisonland and I am still to do this day trying to wake up from my nightmare. I was 16 years old entering RCOD (reception) in a maximum-security prison, Bedford Hills. My sentence was eight, years flat and 5-post release supervision, I was scared and in definite culture shock, it was all so alien and overwhelming. Later I learned D was there, to me D was my cousin, my best friend, and a sister all rolled into one. We could talk about anything, she helped me so much to get used to this crazy way to survive my new life. We also argued a lot as young teenage girls often do, now in hindsight I regret ever getting angry and wish I had been a better friend.

Some months later, she was paroled and went home but it did not take long and here she was again. Being so young when she went into prison, the outside world was just too overwhelming for her. This and coupled with the fact that there are no transitional programs for people leaving prisons in the area we live in, which is Jefferson County, this leaves all parolees pretty much on their own. Get out of prison, go report to parole, go to Credo, (drug and alcohol counseling), go to mental health, get a job, pay your rent, don’t drive till we say you can, pay parole, pay credo, be home at curfew. You give up because it is all to stressful, can’t get a decent job because you are just out of prison and no one wants to hire you, zero job programs or training programs for parolees. One can’t even go to VESID (vocational training) until 6 months after you get out of prison and by then it is usually too late.

People need these services as soon as they come home and because of all this lack of support, every parolee is set up for failure. So she just gave in to all the temptation around her and started partying and having a good time, and even though her mother begged parole to try to live in a drug and alcohol program instead of sending her back to prison, they didn’t care and did what they do best. That is to not keep people out of prison but to make sure they end up back in. Do the math, almost zero services and supports for parolees in this country why is this and who lets this happen?

By this time she came back to Bedford Hills, she was pregnant. D’s time in the prison system was not easy, she was an outsider even in prison, she had a extensive disciplinary record which was making her mental health issues worse, and she had a long history of suicidal behavior, she had been hospitalized before incarceration and during. Making matters worse, she was always in Keeplock or SHU and this did nothing to help her problems. In coming back to prison, it was so much harder to deal with than the time before and at that point, I believe she thought nothing would ever change, she was in a cycle she could not get out of and I think she was just getting soul tired.

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Filed Under: juveniles, mental illness, New York, psychological effects, solitary confinement, suicide, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Suffering at the Hands of Other Human Beings

February 4, 2013 By 16 Comments

ELY PrisonThe following comes from Bryan Crawley, a prisoner at Ely State Prison in Ely, Nevada. Incarcerated since 2006 and convicted in 2008 for murder, he has been held in solitary confinement for his own protection since 2009 at the maximum security facility, after three years in a debriefing program. His involvement in the debriefing program, in which he was to provide information against the Aryan Warriors prison gang, became public news in 2009, leading to his transfer to ESP. ESP houses the state’s death row as well as the state of Nevada’s most violent and disruptive inmates, and reportedly a large number of prisoners with severe mental health problems.  Crawley has written elsewhere that he lives in “constant fear and anxiety” and that he must do his “best to never leave my cell” out of fear of assault by fellow prisoners. He writes here about the experience of solitary confinement and challenges the reader to imagine what its like to be in his situation. –Sal Rodriguez

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My name is Bryan Crawley and I am a life inmate within Nevada and I’m about to scare you, then have you contemplate on my words and on my years of experience here in the state of Nevada justice system, oh I mean the Nevada’s corruption system, the jails and NDOC prison systems.

Now let me first say in all my years within these systems I have seen, heard and experienced some very tragic, horrific, malicious, detestable acts by Nevada authority’s, I must also add this so you get a even clearer picture of who I am as a human being, in all my years within the Nevada’s jails and now prison system, I do not even have one single act of violence on my record while in custody, absolutely zero, no fights – no anything remotely violent but yet the authority’s still place me in isolation, maximum security, lockdown 23½ hours per day, 7 days a week, inside a 6 x 10 little concrete box.

I must listen to all the other HUMAN BEINGS around me who have gone INSANE with delusions, even though I sit here and find myself sentenced to the largest amount of time ever handed down by one of Nevada’s corrupt judges, I am one of the fortunate ones and you may ask why? It is because I come from a world of abuse, neglect and abandonment, you see I was built to take all this torture and torment because throughout my entire life I have enhanced my ability to resist, oppose and withstand all the oppression from these barbaric authority’s who have placed upon me many days of suffering for years and please do not take my words lightly, when I tell you torture that is what I really mean torture!

I must tell you that I have been violated many times by the Nevada authority’s – officers, it has become almost normal for a person known as an inmate to be completely DEGRADED while they are in custody here in Administration Segregation, Isolation in Ely maximum security prison.

I am surrounded by men, inmates, people who have in some form or the other thoroughly lost sight of reality, they are made to suffer day and night in their own torment, screaming, yelling, banging, hallucinating – THEY ARE GONE! COMPLETLY MAD! suffering in a little 6 x 10 cage, all by themselves, 24/7, year after year. It is very sad!  But this is the reality of a human being in custody in isolation in Americas so called Justice System. I must tell you that I see no purpose for this type of treatment of a human being, as inmates are treated worse than any animal I know of, except maybe test lab animals, now I ask you to please contemplate and ask yourself what true purpose could ever come from placing a human being inside a very small walled cage 24/7? Please think about my words because this is my reality today and every other day.

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

Voices from Solitary: Haunted by Memory’s Ghosts

December 30, 2012 By 19 Comments

The following account comes from our faithful reader Alan CYA #65085. He recalls time spent, more than 40 years ago, in a juvenile jail in California–and a Christmas spent in solitary.

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“To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” — Oscar Wilde, “De Profundis,” 1897

One of the biggest ironies in my life is that after years of incarceration, I opened my business a block away from two large jails and a halfway house. Since 1987, I have worked practically in the shadows of these institutions while attempting to ignore the human misery found inside. Like most people, I find that out of sight means out of mind–but unlike most people, I know firsthand the horrors that take place within such confines. My prior silence about these conditions would eat away at my soul whenever I allowed myself to ponder the purpose of these structures. Like ghosts wandering the hallways of a dwelling, the faces of the many victims of institutional violence that I have witnessed, read about, or just heard of over the years haunt the corridors of my mind.

Writing about my past has always been a difficult process for me to undertake. I liken it to ripping off a scab in order to take a closer look at the wound. But I am driven by ghosts, with my own brother’s tortured soul at the wheel.

You see, after spending over a decade in continuous isolation in about a half-dozen of California’s worse prisons, my nonviolent half-brother Victor died in Salinas Valley Prison’s SHU sometime in early 2007. The prison claims he hanged himself. “But why would he kill himself when he was about to be released?” we all asked. In fact, none of us believes that Victor killed himself. Everyone in the family believes that the guards were involved. (The Sacramento Beehas written extensively on the Green Wall of silence at Salinas, which is a reference to the color of the correctional workers’ uniforms and their coordinated cover up during investigations of alleged abuses taking place there.)

Although my own experience pales in comparison to my brother’s and countless others, I am still haunted by my own painful memories of the years I spent incarcerated in the California Youth Authority (CYA), and other such juvenile facilities. Possibly my worst memories are of the many stints I spent in solitary confinement, beginning when I was nine years old.

Recently, I found a series of photos that included shots of the Preston School of Industry in Ione, California, including its solitary confinement unit. It is a place I hadn’t seen since I was held there myself, 44 years ago, at the age of seventeen. The opportunity to take photographs of the bowels of Preston was only made available after Preston Youth Correctional Facility (it had under gone a name change in 1999) closed its doors on June 2, 2011, under pressure from the public due to claims of abuse.

Located in a pastoral setting on the western slope of the Sierras, Preston opened on July 1, 1894. It included two noteworthy landmarks. The first was an extremely high watchtower, and the second was Preston Castle, with its Romanesque Revival facade, both eerie and spectacular. Inmates were housed in this intimidating, decaying structure until 1960, when the new facilities were completed.

Preston_Castle_(Ione)

I was transferred to Preston on November 12, 1968, and I can still remember my escort taking me down the hill to my new residence. Sequoia Lodge was located a good distance away from all the other lodges in the far left hand corner of the institution from the main gate. This was because it housed the most violent prone wards in the California Youth Authority system. At Sequoia Lodge we were housed in individual cells, not dorms. Looking back on it, this was a blessing, because most of those housed with me were convicted murderers, rapist, or child molesters. I, however, was there for disturbing the peace, and my parole was suspended under section 602W&I of the penal code, which defined a “Delinquent Child” as “An individual of not more than 18 years of age who has violated criminal laws or engaged in disobedient, indecent or immoral conduct, and is in need of treatment, rehabilitation, or supervision.”

The institution’s grounds were dotted with clusters of nondescript one-story, concrete and cinderblock buildings, interconnected by narrow asphalt roads. These roads were used to march us in formation military-style to various locations. Numerous concrete walkways intersected these roads, leading to our lodges, schoolrooms, chow halls, work areas, recreational facilities, auditorium, clinic, and other administration buildings. The recreational facilities such as the football field, gym, and pool were only window dressing designed to appease visiting social activists, for we only rarely had access to any of them. School was devoid of lectures and the instructor was no more than the custodian of educational materials.

Tamarack Lodge, previously called Company G, was built in 1929 on the grounds of Preston School of Industry and was used as a solitary confinement unit when I arrived.

I have discovered that under the Penal Code of Preston School of Industry, youths could originally be held in solitary confinement for up to one year: “Every person who commits an assault upon the person of another with a deadly weapon or instrument, or by any means or force likely to produce great bodily injury, is punishable by imprisonment in Company G, or in Company F, not exceeding one year, or by fine not exceeding thirty-six dollars or by both.”

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Filed Under: California, juveniles, psychological effects, solitary confinement, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , ,

Voices from Solitary: A Man’s Strength Behind a Steel Door

September 8, 2012 By 6 Comments

The following comes from Georgia inmate Carlos Grier, also known as Mr. BigMann. Grier was convicted in 1999 for the shooting death of a girlfriend (he maintains his innocence). For over two years, he has been incarcerated at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison’s Special Management Unit, where 192 inmates are held in solitary confinement. The prison also functions as the location where executions in Georgia occur. Grier describes the SMU as a bleak world where inmates designated “the worst of the worst” are kept in prolonged isolation. Inmates are allowed out of their cells for a shower three times a week, and are allowed “yard time” twice a week for varying lengths of time. Grier has been kept in solitary following a 2010 radio interview with Macon NAACP President Al Tillman, which Tillman and Grier have speculated are the reasons for his placement in solitary. Tillman wrote a blog entry about Grier, which you can read here. –Sal Rodriguez

How would you, or, could you maintain living; in a concrete cell all day everyday? 23 hours on Georgia’s Hi:Max Special Management Unit, more likely, 24 hours lockdown. There’s no sunshine or day light beaming in certain cells, because of the dark black paint, spray painted on the outside of cell windows. Thus, the cell is pitch black with cell light off, and dimmed glared with lights on. Being engulfed in this cell, when you look forward, there it stands, and steel door with a slim window. The window centered in this steel door has a metal plate that lifts from outside, so you can be looked in on, but not look out. Therefore you’re blinded to whats on the outside of this steel door. You can only hear whats taking course outside of the steel door.

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Filed Under: Georgia, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary 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.

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

Voices from Solitary: From a Nevada Hole

June 16, 2012 By 3 Comments

David Casper is serving a long sentence for armed robbery at Nevada’s Ely State Prison. He has made two unsuccessful escape attempts, which earned him a place in solitary confinement. According to his blog, maintained by friends on the outside, “I have actually been in Solitary Confinement for this last six years (since 2007) but up till October 28th, 2010, I was in a normal Housing Unit in a cell where I could communicate with other prisoners who were also in Solitary Confinement. Plus I had my radio and T.V. But now, since October 28th, 2010, I have been stuck in an Isolation cell at the end of a hallway in the back of the Infirmary.” Casper is allowed no personal possessions. In order to write the following note to Solitary Watch, he had to persuade a CO to loan him a pencil and a small piece of paper for a few minutes.  –James Ridgeway

[They] put me in this cell [in the infirmary] where I have been locked away, and it seems they have thrown away the key. I have no shoes of any kind. No clothes except a pair of underwear and a T shirt. I have a blanket and a mattress. That’s it. They won’t even let me keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in my cell. I have to use it and give it right back to the guard. There is no window to the outside. And they painted everything in this cell Orange…It’s like I live in an orange box. It seems like I am stuck in some weird room in the Willy Wonka factory.

They posted a “No Communication’’ notice on the outside of my door. The regular COs are not allowed to talk to me or even come into the vestibule outside my cell. When they feed me a sergeant or lieutenant has to be present. And they feed me using this box that they put my food in, then they lock it. Then open the inside part, sliding it open so I can reach in and pick up my tray. They treat me like Hannibal Lector and I’ve never once acted aggressive towards any staff.

A small selection of Casper’s poetry–including the following, titled “Hatchet Man”–appears on his blog. 

An introvert by nature, solitude you were once my friend.
But now they’ve turned you against me, oh you misery with no end.
My new found enemy, it’s you I wish to shake.
I’m afraid you’re now employed by the ones who wish to take.
What will it be next? You thief inside my head.
Stocking my serenity and replacing it with dread.
Haven’t they taken enough, they’ve taken all I had.
Now they send you, Hatchet Man, to take until I’m mad.
Maybe it’s my confidence or maybe it’s my will.
I feel you in there hunting, hunting for a kill.
You go on and hunt, give it your best shot.
If you think it will be easy, I assure you it will not.
Even if you team with time and force this to end.
For you, my will, I will not break. And for them I will not bend.
Filed Under: Nevada, physical effects, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , ,

Voices from Solitary: “No Longer a Part of the World”

June 12, 2012 By 7 Comments

The following comes from an inmate currently in Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, describing the three years he spent at the United State Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. He describes the facility as exceptional in its ability to overwhelm inmates with the sense that they are no longer a part of society, and the bleak physical nature of the facility. He is currently corresponding with Solitary Watch on the conditions at Red Onion.–Sal Rodriguez

The moment you set your eyes on it it’s a mixed ball of emotions and feelings that hit you, it’s extraordinarily spectacular–the ADX facility. I have seen many prisons/penitentiaries not even Red Onion can compare to the federal supermax, it was built to be a spectacular view of  intimidation from the moment you set your eyes on it. The psychological intimidation starts without even setting one foot into the ADX and the remoteness also adds a touch that you are no longer to be a part of the world the moment you arrive you realize you’ve reached a level of solitary living that is specifically designed to keep you totally separated from human contact–it’s a chilling feeling.

The sensory deprivation starts from the moment you arrive into the intake, the deadly silence adds to the reality that you’re not in a normal prison…what was normal was the humiliating experience of becoming a new inmate. After the intake process I was shackled and box-cuffed and escorted by a number of corrections officers with black batons at hand and ready to beat me down if I made a wrong move.

I was escorted down a series of never ending, lengthy wide and tall hallways that were painted an off white and were at a downhill angle which make your ears pop as you move down them. It’s just another drop added to the emotional and psychological design and purpose of solitary life. I was then housed in the famous D-Unit…The confined space that you are housed in is a 7-by-9 foot sound proof cell that comes with a concrete slab and a thin mattress for a bed, a shower within the cell with a timer to conserve water and prevent flooding, a sink with no taps, just touch buttons…a toilet with a valve that shuts off the water after two flushes automatically for an hour, an immovable concrete desk and concrete stool, a polished steel mirror riveted to the concrete wall and a thirteen inch black and white television encased in plexiglass to prevent tampering.

I have been to many different prisons and none can compare to ADX’s conditions. Of course I’m not taking away the fact that the animalistic treatment isn’t the same when it comes down to the beatings, torture, and psychological abuses…These places are designed to drive you crazy, you can feel the madness closing in on you. You can feel it eating away at you and there is nothing you can do to stop it…you can slow it down by writing and reading but that’s all it does, slow down the process of mental madness.

Filed Under: Colorado, federal prisons, psychological effects, supermax prisons, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , , ,
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