Reading to escape solitary confinement

August 3, 2023 11:31 AM

Reading has been my lifeline after seven years in solitary confinement. With my earplugs jammed in deep—sometimes too deep—I’ve read books, magazines, and newspapers and found respite amid tortuous conditions. ... While male prisoners in the restricted housing unit are often there because they have been identified as belonging to gangs, that’s not the case in female prisons. Women are assigned to live here for different reasons. It could be a consequence for behavior, like having phone sex with a partner; for violence, like assaulting staff members; or for rule violation, like having contraband (even if someone set you up with it). Sometimes, it’s outright discrimination: I’ve seen women get sent to the hole for speaking in an Indigenous language while talking to their parents on the phone. From Slate and Open Campus: Kwaneta Harris on lessons from her time as a prisoner in solitary confinement.

Many of the young women living in my pod in solitary are transfers from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. In this state, children as young as 14 can be charged as adults for certain serious offenses, and all 17-year-olds who commit misdemeanors or felonies are considered adults. Most of them are youth of color. If these kids have a history of assault, solitary confinement is often their ultimate destination.

The average education level of the women at my unit, Lane Murray, is seventh grade, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I suspect that number is much lower for many of the young women held here in solitary with me.

Although incarcerated young people 21 and under are guaranteed an education under federal law, that doesn’t always happen in practice. People in some restricted custody levels here are low priority for educational programming, while others aren’t allowed to participate at all.

posted by Bella Donna (19 comments total)

I spent a week in solitary due to a paperwork error - none of the guards who worked the hole would give me the time of day when I would tell them that I wasn't supposed to be there, until finally after a week a Sergeant did a walk through, I recognized he had a Boston accent and started asking him about North Shore stuff through the slot in the door. I guess this humanized me enough that he gave me a couple minute phone call, I called my family and told them as quickly as possible where I was and what had happened. They started calling the warden and raising hell and I was out the next day. If you imagine reality, and your brain, as the hook and loop sides of velcro that stick to each other every hour that went by I could feel those two pieces of velcro slowly tearing apart. A very surreal, very terrifying experience
posted by youthenrage at 1:32 PM on August 3, 2023 [51 favorites]

At an ANFA conference section on prisons, I heard a statistic that something like 80% of individuals that go into solitary for more than X-amount of time (maybe something like 2 weeks) develop schizophrenia-like symptoms (profound paranoid ideation, auditory and/or visual hallucinations, etc). What would your mind do in a sensory deprivation chamber for that long?
I wish I could find a citation for the number now, so this was more than an anecdote. All the air went out of the room.

"Of the people for whom we had duration data, 9,638 or 18% were held in restrictive
housing for 15 to 30 days; 15,725 or 29% for one to three months; 15,978 or 29% for three months
to one year; 7,132 or 13% for one to three years; and 5,909 or 11% were in isolation for three years
or more."

Rehabilitation, not recidivism.
posted by rubatan at 1:32 PM on August 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I found the following article here. Kwaneta Harris corresponds with the author. While it's good stuff to know about... it's brutal reading.
posted by dfm500 at 1:45 PM on August 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Prison conditions generally, and the use of solitary confinement specifically, are important issues that don't get nearly the attention they deserve. That said, I wish we were getting this reportage via someone who wasn't specifically a serial con artist.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:25 PM on August 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

What happened to the 13 year old that she hired to help bury the body of the man she shot? Or the girl she paid to confess to the murder?
posted by Ideefixe at 3:37 PM on August 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

She also forged legal paperwork to decrease her sentence from 50 years to 8.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 4:15 PM on August 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

U.S. prisons are crimes against humanity. Abolition is the only way forward.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:16 PM on August 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Cool cool cool. I'm sure that treating only the *really* bad people this way will have no negative consequences. That's the kind of thinking that breaks all the rules but, gosh darn it, gets results!
posted by stet at 4:25 PM on August 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

Solitary confinement is torture. Not 'like' torture, not 'equivalent' to torture. Just plain torture.
posted by signal at 4:59 PM on August 3, 2023 [17 favorites]

Criminals still have rights under our Constitution. Period. Even if you think their crimes are icky.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:03 PM on August 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

lord I wish I could read a good psych paper about the kind of belief system that leads people to consider “con artist” a worse condemnation of someone’s morals than “murderer”

for the record the particular scheme she tried for reducing her sentence was both bold and brilliant in its simplicity, I admire it. I do not say the same about the murder
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:03 PM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

this is the kind of piece that stabs a nerve often left exposed in people who make a living by their brains and are consequently threatened by the very idea of people who live by their wits, which is the plain name for the kind of resourcefulness that gets the name of con artistry when it fails. but people who are proud of either their brains or their wits not infrequently have a hard time imagining what the big deal about solitary could even be. who even wants to talk to people! just read books all day!

and so the very mild question raised the very beginning of this piece - What if you can’t? - elicits panic and panic makes for non sequiturs. just out of curiosity, in what way is “some people can’t read or can’t read well enough or aren’t allowed the reading materials for reading to to be even a temporary escape” something that depends on the honesty of the speaker to be true? how could it be a con?

I hate rhetorical questions so I will answer mine: it couldn’t. verifiable facts and their obvious implications don’t require you to trust the person who tells you them.

[I remain opposed to murder in nearly every circumstance]
posted by queenofbithynia at 5:23 PM on August 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Follow up - within 24 hours of being in solitary I began pacing the circumference of my (very small, could almost touch opposite walls with my arms outstretched) cell. Something I didn’t think was weird until I got out and was reading a book on canine behaviorism that talked about “stereotypic behavior” and “zoochosis”. And if anybody suspects that they could handle solitary bc they don’t even like people that much and love to read - you don’t get to bring your books, and the books you like to read? If you’re lucky enough for a library cart to come through in the first place, I guarantee they don’t have the books you like on it (unless you like westerns or hood books).
posted by youthenrage at 6:19 PM on August 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

"Fun" fact: solitary* was developed by Quakers because meditation deepened their spiritual practice, so surely it would for others, too!


*At least to America: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-noble-experiment-how-solitary-came-to-america/
** I have an abiding love for the Quakers. Always worth a bit of retrospection tho.
posted by constraint at 8:19 PM on August 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

It does not matter what anyone has done in the past, or what they are capable of doing in the future. Everyone has inherent dignity and worth, and a civilised society does not torture anyone. People convicted of crimes are still people. They do not disappear when we send them to prison.
posted by plonkee at 12:17 AM on August 4, 2023 [9 favorites]

I don't have the link handy, but one of the features of some (most?) solitary is constant noise from other inmates who are suffering. Don't think of solitary as a quiet place to think.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:36 AM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

Lifelines to Solitary is a program where you can write letters to people in solitary confinement, just to give them a connection of any kind with the outside world of humanity.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:15 AM on August 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, a.k.a. the Nelson Mandela Rules (PDF):

Rule 43
1. In no circumstances may restrictions or disciplinary sanctions amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The following practices, in particular, shall be prohibited:
(a) Indefinite solitary confinement;
(b) Prolonged solitary confinement;
(c) Placement of a prisoner in a dark or constantly lit cell;
(d) Corporal punishment or the reduction of a prisoner’s diet or drinking water;
(e) Collective punishment.

"Prolonged" here means more than 15 days. Note that these are the minimum acceptable standards.

According to the article, Kwaneta Harris has been in solitary confinement for seven years.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:03 AM on August 4, 2023 [6 favorites]

I've been thinking a lot more about this. On the one hand, I agree with hydropsyche, and we are never going to get a prisoner's report from somebody who led a pure life, unless we only believe well-behaved political prisoners about anything in jail. And not only is that inherently wrong, there's just not enough of them.

On the other hand, I'm gonna say that murder, identity theft, elaborate body disposal, and an attempt to pin it all on a minor is just a little more than "icky." Forgery to get her sentence reduced -- okay, sure, yeah, icky. Actually kinda funny, under the circumstances. Really shooting the moon on that one.

But when do the underlying crimes create a credibility problem? That's a question for when there isn't much corroborating evidence for what she says. And when it comes to prison conditions, there's a lot. Everything she reports is credible and corresponds to other reports. I am aware that this is also a con technique. But our prison system is one of the greatest cons ever pulled on the American public.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:43 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]