I just received a copy of Texas Letters, which includes a collection of letters written from solitary confinement in Texas. This is an incredibly important tool in any conversation regarding those subjects – prisons in Texas, solitary confinement, or specifically, solitary confinement in Texas.
The United States is an advanced country, and the systems of incarceration have not advanced alongside advances in other areas. Prison, solitary confinement and reform are not clear cut, black and white issues and arguments from those perspectives are not overly productive.
Arguments for solitary confinement include providing protection against violent and dangerous individuals, retribution and punishment, as well as individuals who actually want to be in solitary for their own protection, among other things. Arguments against solitary confinement include various perspectives regarding inhumanity, mental health and torture.
What is clear is that change is needed. WITS is confident there is adequate education, insight and resources within the United States to work together and develop solutions that are humane, productive, and safe, systems that protect those living within prison as well as those working there. Any discussion that entertains maintaining the current state of affairs is a wasted discussion. This book, Texas Letters, is a resource in the quest for solutions regarding an issue that becomes more urgent by the day.
Inside the confines of solitary confinement’s concrete cell, you have to make abnormal adjustments in a rather abnormal situation. Otherwise, your capacity to socialize atrophies, you wither up and die a social death. In this place, you’d better adjust and find creative ways of connecting and communicating, lest your emotions become hollowed out, leaving behind only a mere shell of your social self. I’ve been isolated on federal death row for fifteen years now and have learned some deaths are more inhumane than lethal injection.
As long as there is an ounce of humanity left alive in you, a person is compelled to reach out and socialize, by any means necessary, even if you gotta yell through the solid steel door of your solitary cell. Or shoot the breeze, as I often do, with disembodied voices through the ventilation system.
In this four-storied, maximum-security building at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the ventilation system is a social lifeline. The grapevine of prison gossip and not-so-private confessions. The social network where mundane conversations go viral, carried through the vents of far-flung cells across the four floors.
Standing on my stainless steel toilet in my third-floor solitary cell, I shoot the breeze with voices from downstairs, my head close to the perforated vent on the concrete wall.
“I’m a white girl with tits and hips and ass,” a feminine voice lilts through the air ducts, cutting through the heavy male notes clogging up the airways. I would know that nasal, high-pitched tone anywhere, the way it emotes a joy uncharacteristic in this dank and dark place. It’s Bonnie.
“Call me Bonnie Grace,” she told me when we first met at the vent.
Bonnie lives on the second-floor, confined to administrative segregation, also known as the hole, which occupies the first two floors (federal death row occupies the upper two). In the hole, men who were once in general population are segregated and locked down in solitary confinement for various reasons, most of which have to do with disciplinary infractions or pending investigations. Bonnie is there for the latter. Or so she says.
I’ve been chatting with Bonnie since earlier in the day. I’d been pacing when I heard her yell up through the vent.
“Death Row!”
I ignored the voice at first, not sure who she was calling.
“Upstairs!”
Still, I paid it no mind.
“I know you hear me. Hear you movin’ round up there.”
Sounds travel through all this steel and concrete, and apparently, my footfalls were thudding upon the concrete floor, Bonnie’s ceiling.
Tugged by the voice, and ever yearning for social proximity, I stepped up on the toilet seat, put my ear to the vent, and that was the start of our social exchange. And no matter the subject, Bonnie tends to go off on tangents and promote her appearance, as if she’s taking selfies with her words. At this moment, she’s doing just that.
“I’m about five-ten, weigh about 150 pounds. Skinny. Long hair. Pretty…” She pauses, perhaps distracted or thinking, and then she says with gleeful pride, “And they say I look like the girl on Beetlejuice!”
“Beetlejuice? What?!” I reply, confused. I faintly remember that movie. I think the characters are phantoms or a version of living-dead, ghostlike, and I’m surprised that Bonnie sees this as a compliment. “WTF!” I comment.
A male voice interrupts us, “And she gotta big-ass nose too!”
“Oh my god!” Bonnie says, her signature interjection. “But I’m cute though!” She giggles, and I picture her admiring herself, her hand running through her long hair, flinging it in the air, giddy with all the social attention.
Bonnie is transgender, identifies as female, and takes hormones. “I take estrogen and anti-testosterone pills every day,” she informs us. And now she’s “a white girl with tits and hips and ass,” one of fourteen or so transgender residents at this all-male prison.
Bonnie’s legal name is Steven, out of Texas. Steven used to be part of a white supremacist gang. “I used to tear shit up,” Bonnie says, wilding out, fighting and stabbing, doing all kinds of “crazy shit” for the gang. But all along, she says, a part of her felt like a female.
Bonnie never tells me what led her to taking the prison psych evaluation, one of the first steps to transitioning inside the federal Bureau of Prisons. She just tells me about the process. She started transitioning less than a year ago, and her body has changed drastically. Or so she says. You never know what’s true at the vent. A person can be anybody, assuming whatever persona, catfishing and being catfished.
But I choose to believe Bonnie. I have to. In order to socialize. To stave off social-death.
After some time, I end the exchange, step down from the toilet, and plant my feet on the cold concrete ground. I resume pacing compulsively, one of the adverse effects of solitary confinement, and I immerse myself in the lingering warmth – the afterglow of social rapport.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Rejon is new to WITS, but determined to build on his natural ability with words, spending a good deal of his time on federal death row constructively using his creativity. I hope he continues to write, and I also hope he sends some of that writing our way. You can learn more about Rejon at his website: www.rejontaylor.art
He can also be contacted at: rejonltaylor@gmail.com
To learn more about Rejon’s case, which involved being charged at the age of eighteen years old and later sentenced to death, click here.
I find it hard to express what solitary confinement is, knowing what I explain may be totally different from another’s experience. There are situations in solitary confinement that are less harsh than other situations, where someone might have TV, an in-cell shower, better food, phone access and other means to communicate daily. Here in Texas, we don’t have shit.
I cannot begin to fathom where I would be mentally if I didn’t have the luxury of having caring family and friends to support me through this quarter-of-a-century’s incarceration. No doubt those who are committed to being in my life are the glue of stability for me, but even I know it takes me… more of me… to maintain sanity.
I’m often conflicted on whether or not to explain to my family and friends, being honest and raw, my existing conditions – if I told the nuts and bolts operations of solitary confinement, would it be mentally constructive for either of us?
Early on in my unjust prison term, not being home during traditional celebrations, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, would be an indescribable emotional pain. I used to hold myself with my own arms at night to go to sleep, craving the human comfort of another.
I’ve been stabbed by a deranged inmate while I was escorted to the shower by an officer. I’ve had roaches and insects crawling in the ‘food’ officers pass out. When I complain I am greeted with a ‘human-disconnect’ by officers who feel I should be grateful to be given anything. I’ve had to do things on my own while handcuffed behind my back, like put on my shoes or grab things to get to the shower, as if Texas DR inmates are Superhuman Inmates. I’ve had to deal with racism on all levels by officers and inmates. Yearly, we are promised additional activities to our daily existence, yet all they do is continue to take and take things from us, adding nothing. Psychological games from their playbook on how to mentally abuse us are implemented daily. In the summer time the heaters have been switched on. In the winter the A/C has been at full blast. I recall one winter putting on every piece of clothing I had, including two pairs of socks on my hands, and socks and boots on my feet.
Bad press, truthful or not, adds to the mental anxiety we go through when an appeal is denied. We have to then explain the situation to our loved ones, that we have inched closer to an execution date. It’s like being resurrected, only to be killed all over again.
Redundancy is a constant, and too much can be the asphalt one walks on into the realm of insanity. For me, doing the same thing as a way of programming myself to stay busy is a necessity, not a madness. But I still must be creative. I have a make-shift basketball goal that is nothing more than a small brown bag with its bottom cut out and taped to the top of the cell’s door. I then construct a faux-basketball out of a sheet of paper that I crumple up in a ball, then wet it, and leave it to dry for a day until it is hard. I then get encased in my own personal metaverse where I am a college star adored by screaming fans, or I will imitate NBA athletes who play games on their way to a championship. I can get lost in this act for hours, hours that I am not mentally aware of my cell’s surroundings. The draconian reality is absent for a while.
I suppose the most brutal and chaotic experience in solitary confinement on Texas Death Row is finding yourself sitting. Watching the walls. Pacing the floor back and forth, five steps forward, four steps back – for hours, unaware of time, as one tends to converse with themselves, trying to rationalize the isolation, worries and stress. People advise me not to worry, “Worrying will only lead to stress, which you do not need.”
What they don’t realize is that isolation is the creator of worry and stress. How can it not be? It’s unavoidable. You realize that – there’s no one to call. No one to share a laugh or tear with. No one who can understand what, for me, is understood.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Charles “Chucky” Mamou is a long-time WITS writer, so I couldn’t be happier to say he came in third place in our most recent writing contest regarding solitary confinement. But there is more to his story.
Charles Mamou, Texas Death Row
Charles Mamou and his case inspired me, personally, to go back to school, become a private investigator and also pursue a degree in social work. What I learned from Charles Mamou, and what is abundantly clear and documented in his case – is that people can be sent to death row in cases where the prosecution does not share all of the relevant and available evidence with the defense.
For example, among a number of questionable actions taken in Mamou’s case, the prosecution was aware physical evidence was collected from the victim and the prosecution not only knew this, but had the evidence processed. Mamou had no idea that physical evidence existed and exists – until it was recently discovered. He should have been told that a quarter century ago. There are other issues as well. Phone records that were not shared with him. Those records contradict the testimony of key prosecution witnesses. Yet, Charles Mamou is waiting to be executed and out of appeals. You can read more about Mamou’s case and sign a letter requesting an investigation – please add your name to his petition.
Charles Mamou can be contacted at: Charles Mamou #999333 Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53 3872 South FM 350 Livingston, TX 77351
“My mind was racing with thoughts I couldn’t even grasp mentally. I went home and sat in the house with all the lights out, scared to move, didn’t know what to do nor to say. My mom was gone to a choir convention in Mississippi during the time of the incident. While I sat in our house quietly and somberly in the front room, my mother pulled up with no clue of what just happened. When she came in the door, turned to lock the door, I was sitting there in the dark room. I scared her out of her wits. As a mother who knew her child, she instantly asked me, ‘Boy, what’s wrong with you sitting in here with all the lights out?’ I was so discombobulated I honestly couldn’t speak, it seemed like somebody had my soul…”
It’s been twenty-six years for me now. I’m in solitary confinement and have been for almost six months. It’s the first long stretch I’ve done in lock-up, and I’ve learned if you aren’t mentally strong, it can break you. I’ve thought about everything from being three years old, to that day, to this place I am in now. I’ve probably aged ten years in the last six months, but I think I’ve made it. My blood pressure is crazy, but I think I’ve put it under control by relaxing and focusing on better things.
I was seventeen and still in high school when my mom came home that night. I’d just shot at some men. For months I’d been shot at, intimidated, ‘bullied’, by an adult. I’d sat in a car as it was beaten with a crow bar. I’d had a gun pointed at my head. My parents knew, the school knew, the police knew. They all knew. I can never take back what happened that night.
I now understand what they mean when people talk about the school to prison pipeline. Things are a little different now in Mobile, Alabama, where I came from. I hear there are anti-bullying laws in place to protect kids like I was. There are laws to keep kids from being followed around and shot at, as well there should be. No kid should ever have to grow old in a place like this. No kid should ever be expected to know how to make people stop shooting at them.
I went from going to high school, playing football and dreaming, to living in a nightmare. No, I can’t take it back. I should never have had to. It should have never gotten to that night in my living room.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Mr. Singleton’s story has been shared here, but this is the first time he has written for WITS. I hope he continues to write about his life in the Alabama Department of Corrections. Louis Singleton can be contacted at: Louis Singleton #179665 0-24 Fountain Correctional Facility 9677 Highway 21 North Atmore, AL 36503
For nine years, I have been confined to a single man cell. Days, often weeks, pass without leaving this space. I deserved to be placed here. I am here because I attempted escape and was punished. To be honest, it was probably the best thing for me – at the time. My peer group was violent and negative, and upon arrival I was disgusted with myself for having fallen so far. I resolved to fill the void of what I was forced to leave with positive change and growth. I began a journey to become the man I knew I was, rather than the man my poor decisions had built.
I quickly learned any progress I hoped to make would depend solely on my efforts. There is no education provided to inmates in solitary confinement in Texas. None. Anything I’ve learned through reading is the result of donors from the outside.
I also learned tenuous relationships with loved ones in the free world are easily stressed when a person is placed in isolation. General population contact visits allow hugs with family. In here I am led to visitors in chains to a booth with a glass partition that forces us to speak over a phone. What’s worse is, this is the only phone I can speak through. General population offenders have access to unlimited fifteen minute calls, seven days a week. Access to telephones is not allowed in solitary.
I have learned solitary confinement is an effective weight loss program. More often than not, I am hungry at bedtime. Despite menu descriptions like ‘fresh yellow corn’ and ‘deep rich gravy’, I can count on the unappetizing reality of at least one or more food items arriving spoiled, and the unclean fact that it has passed through no less than six pairs of hands before getting to my cell.
One of the harder lessons – ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is never more true than when locked away in solitary confinement. While prison administration might remove an inmate from population for legitimate reasons, once ‘out of sight’ it becomes easier to check the box that keeps the inmate in solitary than to mindfully dedicate the resources needed to rehabilitate the person and release them from solitary.
Perhaps the hardest lesson is discovering first hand what so much time in seclusion can do to a person. I have spent years tearing down my old faulty value system and building a better one, learning how to make strong healthy choices. I’ve made progress in so many ways, but so much isolation has begun to injure me. A few years ago, I began to feel very paranoid during the rare time out of my cell. For the ten hours per month allowed out, I felt as if I was being stared at, looked at from the corners of people’s eyes. It got so bad I didn’t want to leave my cell, prompting me to refuse medical and dental appointments.
I have never been a mental health patient. None of my family suffers from a mental disorder. I am rational and clear minded. I am literal and focused. Yet, these years in solitary have taken a serious mental toll. To get ‘help’ from mental health staff carries a stigmatized label as a psych patient. I was reluctant to contact them, although intellectually I understood what was happening. Despite the understanding, I could not shake the discomfort I felt when outside my cell.
When I did finally speak to someone in mental health, I worked through the discomfort for the most part. But recently the symptoms have returned, worse than before. When outside my cell, I struggle to hold eye contact and find myself trying to mumble at times. I berate myself. I know that isolation is the cause of the distress. I think this must be what it’s like to have a disorder – maybe like a man with Alzheimer’s who, in his clear moments, feels terrible because he recognizes he’s had bad moments, but he is unable to combat them.
I have no real treatment options. They do not do therapy here. They medicate… a slippery slope. I do not need medication. I feel anxious out of my cell. This is caused by my isolation. I am witnessing, in person, the deterioration of a human mind… mine.
After nine years, I no longer belong in solitary confinement. I am a new man, if not completely, then on my way to being one. I have had three minor disciplinary infractions during my 3,300 days here, all for covering the 24/7 light in my cell so as to sleep. But, alas, they keep checking the box that keeps me here.
The unregulated, unmonitored use of isolation damages as many people as it was meant to ‘improve’. Some of us will one day be neighbors to those in the free world – so shouldn’t those who wield the power to inflict these kind of lessons for years on end be held to a high standard…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeremy Robinson is author of The Monster Factory, which he is currently revising. Mr. Robinson lives in a Texas prison and can be contacted at: Jeremy Robinson #1313930 Polunsky Unit 3872 South FM 350 Livingston, TX 77351
When I first met – let’s just call him Cheese – it was the year 2000, and he’d already been in solitary for twenty-something years. He looked to be in his early fifties then, and I marveled at his resilience. Every Monday through Friday he’d go outside to run and do calisthenics to stay in shape. No matter rain, sleet, snow, ninety degrees or ten, Cheese was getting his yard time. He was an inspiration to those of us beginning our time.
I never talked to Cheese, so I never knew why he was in solitary so long, but rumor had it he was involved in an attack on a guard in the 70’s or 80’s. I myself had been involved in a staff related incident so I was curious, hoping I wouldn’t be in solitary that long.
I eventually left that prison and never kept up with how Cheese was doing, but in 2017 I again found myself in a prison with him. The man I saw was a shell of the person I’d met seventeen years earlier. He was now nearly seventy years old and a completely different person, both physically and mentally. I’d heard of and experienced the affects of solitary confinement, but what I saw left no doubt what it can do to a man. Cheese was old and broken down. He was using a walking aid because his hip needed to be replaced, and as bad as his physical problems were, his mental deterioration shocked me even more. Once proud and defiant, Cheese was now delusional and had difficulty holding a conversation. When you did hear him talking, his conversations were with the birds who’d made a home inside the tarp atop the exercise cages.
At this point, Cheese isn’t a threat to anybody. There’s not one legitimate penal justification for keeping him in solitary, but sadly it appears that the Department of Corrections is just waiting for him to die. I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be him in another twenty years. Right now my feeling is that I’d rather be dead than experience myself slowly wilt away. From where I stand, suicide seems the better option.
I recognize getting out of solitary and into general population isn’t the same as going home, but Cheese should be released from solitary. Let the man at least attempt to recover from the damage of long-term solitary confinement and live out his remaining years not having to be strip searched and hand-cuffed every time he leaves his cell; not having to always eat alone; not having a light on for twenty-four hours a day, making it difficult to sleep; not being forced to change cells every ninety days, making it impossible to get comfortable; not being denied access to religious, vocational, and educational services – and not having anyone but the birds to talk to. Let Cheese live out the rest of his life with some semblance of dignity. Show him some compassion and stop punishing him for a mistake he made more than forty years ago.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Sterlin Reaves is the third place winner of our writing contest. The point of the contest was for the writer to use their words to make people care about someone else – to help us walk in their shoes. He did just that. Mr. Reaves can be contacted at:
I didn’t realize my ‘normal’ wasn’t normal until I got transferred to a less restricted housing unit. Before that, my normal was trying to sleep through the yelling and banging, being forced to show my genitals, including bending over and spreading my cheeks, every time I left my cell – hands cuffed behind my back once I did.
The ‘normal’ I was being subjected to was making it less and less likely that once released – I would be able to function around ‘normal’ people.
I just hope my new normal will undo the damage my old normal caused…
ABOUT THE WRITER: Mr. Reaves is a new writer to our site, and I hope we see more from him. He said a lot in four sentences – I’m excited to see what he sends in next. Mr. Reaves can be contacted at:
Solitary confinement is exactly that… solitary.
There are a lot of people who live there, but because they are each
locked away in a separate box, it’s easy to forget there are people around you. I spent almost twelve years in solitary,
twenty three hours of every day in my cell and everything brought to me. I was only just released over forty-five days
ago.
While in solitary, inmates are handcuffed and escorted any time they leave their cell. Literally. So for nearly twelve years, every single time I would go to a visit or medical, there were two staff members on each side of me.
The day I left solitary, I was no longer cuffed and had no
escort. I walked out of 12-building – alone…
to join a line of inmates that were getting on a prison bus to go to a new
unit. To say that I felt very weird – conspicuous
– would be an understatement. I can’t
overstate how uncomfortable I felt. I
knew that it would be a tough transition, and for months I had worked hard to
prepare myself, but in real time, the feeling of displacement was
overwhelming. Had a person been able to
hear my thoughts, they would have heard an almost psychotic back and forth
monologue with myself.
‘People are staring at
me…’
‘Yes! This is what you WANTED, dummy!’
‘Where do I go now? Where do I walk?’
‘What’s next…’
I didn’t know anyone and was struggling to converse, to keep eye contact. I found my voice wasn’t loud enough, and I was mumbling. It all affected my confidence, which compounded the problems and made them worse. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Apparently, having an awareness of the problem wasn’t going to be enough to solve it. Even as I write this, after a month and a half out, I feel stupid trying to convey the sense of displacement. Solitary damaged me, hurt my ability to relate to others in a normal way.
I was in solitary for attempting an escape. The policy on this states that I was to be
released after ten years, but TDCJ had other ideas. The policy also states that
the security tag, called a ‘Security Precaution Designator’ was to be dropped
after ten years. Of course, TDCJ refuses
to drop the designator, and rather than release me to minimum custody, where I
rightfully belong, they released me to the most restrictive level of custody,
G5. G5, aka ‘closed custody’, is very
violent and full of drugs. Walking into
the section, I could smell K2 burning and see all the walls and doors had burn
marks from fires being set. The noise
level was high.
My first cellmate was just thirty years old and only had
twenty-nine months left until he discharged his sentence flat. This meant he had no incentive to behave well. He didn’t care about making parole. He was
also what’s called a ‘wet head’, meaning when he was free, his drug of choice was
marijuana laced with embalming fluid. Sadly, this had damaged his mind. He could hear invisible people whispering, and
believed a female CO and an inmate were having sex behind the toilet. He was
jittery and very suspicious. I’d been in
the cell – my very first cell since leaving solitary, mind you – ten days, and
he hit me. We fought, and the sergeant
moved both of us to new cells.
My new cellmate was also a ‘wet head’… I wasn’t in the cell five minutes before we
were fighting. This cellmate refused to let me unpack my property, going so far
as to try and restrain me. I’d been out
of solitary for less than two weeks and had participated in two fights and seen
at least fifteen. I was very discouraged.
The next cellmate was okay.
We got along for a few weeks, and then TDCJ moved me from G5 to a better
custody level – G4. Here I can walk to
the chow hall and eat. I get four hours
a day out of my cell. My first day out I
wanted to mail a letter but didn’t know where the mail drop was. Of course I didn’t want to reveal my ignorance
and ask, so I waited until chow and followed a guy that had a letter in his
pocket. Once at the chow hall I sat wondering where the salt and pepper shakers
were and how to get my cup of juice refilled.
Apparently, one simply holds up the cup and the inmate worker… I
hesitate to call him a waiter… refills it.
After eating, I followed the other inmates back to our section and then
copied them as they racked up, went into their cells. Each day found me
imitating some other inmate’s actions, relearning basic things about schedules
and rules.
It’s been almost fifty days of fear and uncertainty. I find myself longing for the solitude, the safety and the predictability of solitary confinement, having to forcefully shift my mental gears to appreciate all the good things that come with being in population. I attend church and am to begin school soon. I got a sunburn. Yes, a happy occasion after twelve years without sun. I get fresh air and hot food – the quality hasn’t improved, but it’s no longer cold and spoiled. Soon, I might receive a visit with my children, contact rather than through glass, and I’m allowed to use the offender telephones and speak with people. I remind myself daily that ‘predictable solitude’ becomes a very lonely place. I’m still lonely, but now I at least have people around me.
There’s no doubt that not only does solitary confinement damage inmates, but that the damage is more insidious, more subtle than I could have ever believed. If the transition from solitary to general population was this difficult for me, how… almost… impossible will it be for me to integrate into society after having served thirty flat years in prison? Do not read that wrong. I haven’t given up. I will continue to improve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeremy Robinson is author of The Monster Factory and is currently working on several projects. He can be contacted at: Jeremy Robinson #1313930 Polunsky Unit 3872 South FM 350 Livingston, TX 77351
I’ve spent the last fifteen years in solitary confinement here in Texas. The ‘correctional model’ here is the punishment model. The school of thought being – by inflicting maximum suffering, maximum poverty, maximum humiliation, deprivation and pain, they can make the prison experience so shockingly traumatic and painful that the incarcerated individual will never want to return to this place and so alter their life to become an upright pillar of the community.
Rather – this correctional model creates monsters. Trust me – I know. This correctional model severely damages the weak
and vulnerable while exasperating mental illness. During my fifteen years in solitary,
I’ve seen numerous men lose their minds.
People who, when I met them, seemed relatively normal. A few years in the hole and they are ghosts –
shells of their former selves. There are those with such profound addiction
issues that they buy psych meds from prisoners who game the psych system and
consume them in toxic quantities to get ‘high’. After a few years of that, they are goners – never
the same again even if they quit the pills.
Meanwhile, the truly mentally ill, the schizophrenics who
are uncommunicative or simply talk to themselves, the manic depressives and
others, suffer in silence. As I write this, there is a schizophrenic a couple
cells away having an episode, shouting at apparitions, banging on the metal
table in his cell. It is 12:43 a.m. He takes no meds. The psych lady never visits him. Texas prisons are a wasteland for the mentally
ill. We’ve had three suicides in less than
three months in this building alone.
There exists a callous indifference to suffering here. Of
course, if you asked an official from the administrative side of things, they’d
lie to your face and tell you Texas doesn’t house mentally ill offenders in
solitary confinement. If you ask a guard
they’ll say, “Hell, they’re all crazy.”
Even inmates dismiss clear signs of mental illness, saying, “He ain’t crazy. If he’s got enough sense to get up for chow, he ain’t crazy.” Being hungry is a clear sign of sanity…
I once had a neighbor who smeared feces all over his hair – and worse. Trust me, you don’t want to know. We asked numerous times to have a psyche interview to get him out of here and to the psych unit. A lieutenant said, “He’ll just do the same thing there. What’s the difference?”
That kind of cynicism and indifference sums up many prison systems. Over the years I have come to believe that a large number of people are here as a result of either undiagnosed mental illness or poorly managed and self medicated mental illness. Some have behavioral, emotional or personality disorders that, while they don’t cross the threshold into mental illness, they nevertheless contribute to criminality.
The actual dynamic between mental illness and criminality is
a complex issue that is often fought over along ideological lines. It is made all the more complex by legal
issues, budget battles, a lack of political will, socio-cultural issues and a general
contempt for prisoners.
Each side of the conflict has valid positions, but what gets lost in the back and forth, I believe, is people’s humanity. As a long time prisoner with lots of time on my hands, I’ve thought of many ways prisons could be made into places of rehabilitation and healing. But the reality is daunting. People have to want to be rehabilitated and healed. They have to want to learn life skills, self reliance, and marketable job skills. They have to want to change for the better, while living in an environment that reinforces their belief that their life has no value. So… what do we do?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Dalton Collins lives in solitary confinement in a Texas prison. He only recently began submitting his work, and we are fortunate to be able to share his insight. Dalton can be contacted at: Dalton Collins #768733 Allred 2101 FM 369 N. Iowa Park, TX 76367
Editors Note: Previously published elsewhere and revised to fit this site’s length preference after submission by the author.
We are an estimated two million, yet the sound of a pin hitting the ground makes a louder noise than our four million teardrops, entombed as we are in a purgatory state of existence inside correctional facilities across the United States. It can be said that we deserve to be imprisoned – some of us for the rest of our lives – that we let people down. Can it also be said that we are human beings? We still bleed. We still breathe. Yet our presence is forgotten when the iron gates slam and the cell door closes.
No one can see or hear us anymore – much like an eyelash falling on your nose; hardly detectible and having no outside effect at all. I’ve been locked here for over a decade and still have not gotten used to the burning sensation of hell’s fire at my feet, never ceasing – not even in sleep.
Animals at the shelter are morbidly euthanized, a bitter
sweet luxury of quick escape from this nightmare. We, phantom souls, serving life without
parole sentences with no rehabilitation or educational reform available are
rotting in supermax prisons. Everyone
eventually leaves your side – scattering like cockroaches when the light turns
on. No more visits or collect calls
accepted. No more photos or letters or financial
assistance. No more anything – a phantom
soul cut off from its body and the hope of getting back to life and love.
That’s when mental illness, violence, murder and the suicide
rate increases. A phantom soul with no help,
no education, no vocational training and no rehabilitation has nothing to lose
and no hope for the future. It’s better
off dead. Actually, that’s what a
phantom soul truly is – a dead man walking.
It’s bone chilling to realize that.
When a phantom soul loses itself completely, it attaches to
the prison lifestyle and culture for survival, like a leech to flesh, thirsty
for blood. We do not live in here. We
survive in a cold isolated world of pain, loneliness, anger, confusion and
hate. It’s a menagerie where big dog
eats little dog. Kill or be killed.
Human snakes of all shapes and sizes roam with evil agendas, resorting to
convict ingenuity to get by and survive.
For many, pride is sealed with tattoos, for others they are shields. Respect, acceptance, loyalty, acknowledgement, reputation, honor and authority are earned by the degree of corrupt mercilessness displayed, and violent deeds against rival gangs, racial enemies and guards. The guards can sometimes be the most ruthless, deceitful, dangerous, conniving, lying and cheating gang in the prison.
Hate is the only way emotion is expressed inside this concrete
bed of barbed wire thorny roses that we reside in. Positive activities are only available to a
select few or non-existent, leaving the vast majority displaying acts of
treachery and hate against one another from boredom, and lack of mental, emotional
and physical stimulation and the absence of hope. People wonder why prisons become rampant with
gangs, violence, drug abuse, racism, hate and mass deterioration of what were once
good natured souls…
Men die in here, physically and mentally, and it’s
planned. Reckless prison administrations
and faulty judicial systems make the plans which provide laws, sentences,
stipulations, restrictions, and little true rehabilitation, education, therapy,
job training and recidivism prevention programs – creating the animals many of
us unfortunately become. The government
planned this horrendous thing that is the greatest unknown atrocity in America –
for not all men are created nor treated equal.
It’s a struggle being a ghost-like soul between hell and a
soulless cell. Some people say, “They
deserve it for what they’ve done.” I
feel sorry for those people, because their souls are more lost than ours. Compassion and understanding are gifts. There are minds of great intelligence in here
that could put an end to issues that are deteriorating our beautiful
world. Imagine what we could accomplish
with proper rehabilitative and educational reform provided to all of us while
incarcerated – at all levels.
This is not a poor me story. I deserve to be punished for my crimes that I take full responsibility for. I also need help to better myself. Most, if not all convicts, will not admit they need help, but there is no fault in that. It’s sometimes hard to admit you are human, because then all the emotions rush in and it can be too much to bear. Prison is not the answer for everything. Punishment with no reform and no proper educational rehabilitation is not the answer. Life without parole, hopelessness with nothing to lose or gain, is not the answer. Long term solitary confinement in draconian supermax prisons is not the answer.
Rehabilitation, love, education, understanding, hope and change are the answer. How can it be properly applied so that it is not taken advantage of? I don’t know, but I sure hope someone can find a solution to this problem before this phantom soul completely fades away…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Gerard is an artist and writer of essays and poetry serving a life sentence in Menard, Illinois. Although this piece was previously published on other sites, it has been revised here to fit our length preferences. Gerard can be contacted at: Gerard G. Schultz, Jr. #R55165 Menard C.C. P.O. Box 1000 Menard, Illinois 62259
