Prisoners’ Letters Offer a Window Into Lives Spent Alone in Tiny Cells - NY Times
By Mosi Secret
October 1, 2012
The handwritten letters arrived by the dozens, from men who described in flawed but poignant language what it was like to lose their minds. “I feel like I am developing some kind of skitsophrinia behaviors,” one man wrote. “I hear voices echoing as I try to fall asleep.”
Another said his mind “rots” with “thoughts that are uncommon or unnatural and you wonder where the hell did that come from?”
They are prisoners in New York’s state prison system, and they were convicted of a range of crimes, including selling drugs and murder. The men were ordered out of the general prison population and into solitary confinement — or, in their parlance, “the box” — where they lived in tiny, elevator-size cells cut off from almost all human contact. The reasons varied: fighting, smoking, testing positive for drugs; but often prisoners are sent into isolation for more serious crimes, like stabbing other inmates, trying to escape or attacking guards.
Having been held captive to their imaginations for weeks, months or, occasionally, years on end, the men — many already struggling with mental illness — brought their paranoia, rage, anxiety and hope to life on the page, with descriptions that were sometimes literary and other times nearly impossible to decipher. More than anything, they conveyed a grisly awareness that their identities were unraveling, a feeling so disconcerting for some that they tried to take their own lives.
The trove of letters from more than 100 inmates to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which corresponded with the men to bolster its attempts to curtail the practice of solitary confinement, gives new insight into a closed-off world usually viewed only one person at a time.
The letters may add fuel to the national debate over whether holding prisoners in extreme isolation amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Many states have recently shifted away from the practice, which was the subject of federal hearings this summer, but it remains widespread in New York.
Nearly 4,500 prisoners in the state are held in segregated housing on any given day, about half in solitary confinement and half in cells with another inmate, according to the N.Y.C.L.U., which planned to publish a 72-page report on its findings on Tuesday, a copy of which was provided in advance to The New York Times.
The civil liberties group called both types of segregation “arbitrary, inhumane and unsafe,” arguing that corrections officials have too much discretion to send inmates to segregated housing for long periods, even for minor infractions.
The report does not call for abolishing solitary confinement but recommends that the state corrections department enact more restrictive regulations that reserve isolation as a punishment for the most violent offenders and that the state take a census of its cells to find out which inmates deserve to be there.
A spokesman for the corrections department, Peter K. Cutler, limited his comments in an interview on Monday because the report had not been released. “Disciplinary segregation is something that we take very seriously in our system,” Mr. Cutler said. He said the factors guiding the department were inmate behavior and the safety and security of the prisons. “There is a process. It is not something that is done unilaterally.”
“Inmates are absolutely entitled to rights, and should never be subjected to violence,” Donn Rowe, president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement. “But their anonymous complaints should also be met with an appropriate amount of skepticism, and the public must be reminded that New York’s prison system houses some of the most violent and troubled individuals in this country.”
In the letters, the inmates — whose real names were not released by the N.Y.C.L.U. because the organization said they might suffer retribution from corrections officials — accepted responsibility for the crimes that they had committed on the outside but questioned whether their behavior on the inside deserved such treatment. They pointed fingers at the mental health officials, nurses and guards who they said brushed off complaints.
“Please, somebody help,” wrote a man who would try to commit suicide months later. “I need HELP!!!”
The inmates began serving their time among the general population at prisons spread across the state. They were transferred to segregated housing after breaking the rules. One said he was cited for “wreckless eyeballing and stalking” after he looked at a female prison guard’s backside as she bent over to pick up her keys.
Most of the men ended up at one of the two state prisons dedicated entirely to isolation cells, Upstate Correctional Facility, in the town of Malone near the Canadian border, or Southport Correctional Facility, in Pine City. Monotony was the rule for 23 hours a day. They received their food through slots in the doors. For one hour each day, they exercised in a small metal cage called the “kennel.”
The men “fished,” or passed notes, books and magazines to each other using ripped sheets weighted by toothpaste tubes. But mostly they watched the walls.
“The water from the sink is a milky color,” one inmate wrote. “It’s not white but its definitely not clear. Our shower is extremely hot and drips even after we cut it off — nonstop. Due to the moisture from the shower and the sink, we now are beginning to notice knats, also known as ‘fruit flies.’ The walls are marked with gang signs, demonic drawings, mucus, feces and rust. We are not allowed to disinfect our cells. There is toothpaste hard and flaky on my lights, walls, bed, ceiling, doors and vents. On my shower there is numerous stickers, mildoo, soap residoo, and what appears to be little spots of dried blood.”
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