The loneliness and isolation of quarantine is nothing to laugh about, though we might have heard grim jokes about solitary confinement in the last few months. We’ve also seen overwrought comparisons of social distancing to prison. These are, I think, release valves for real pain. One hopes the harrowing experience of the pandemic will give Americans some compassion for the lives of prisoners, a shocking number of whom spend years, even decades, in solitary, mostly deprived of natural light, human contact, entertainment, education, or a change of scenery. It seems, inarguably, like a form of torture.
Unsurprisingly, solitary confinement does real harm to the body and brain. Even inmates placed in solitary for a few days experience symptoms of acute anxiety and depression. “Isolated inmates often report symptoms similar to those of hypertension, such as chronic headaches, trembling sweaty palms, extreme dizziness and heart palpitations,” Mary Murphy Corcoran writes at NYU’s Applied Psychology Opus. “Inmates in isolation may also have difficulty sleeping, and some may experience insomnia…. Consequently, inmates report feelings of chronic lethargy.” Over the years, this stress exacts its long-term toll.
In the Slate video at the top, former inmate Five Mualimm-Ak describes the five years he spent in solitary during a 12-year prison sentence. His account and those of others were recently collected in a book with the grimly evocative title Hell is a Very Small Place. Former solitary inmate Terrence Slater describes a kind of further solitary of the mind: how important it is to limit the amount of time one thinks about loved ones during a 23-hour day alone in a cell, or “you’re going to lose your mind in there.” It’s estimated that roughly 80,000 inmates in the U.S. are placed in such conditions every year.
Given enough time, one may literally lose one’s mind, as Robert King discovered. King was “confined in a 6x9-foot cell for almost 30 years,” Elana Blanco-Suarez writes at Psychology Today. “King knew that solitary confinement was changing the way his brain worked. When he finally left his cell, he realized he had trouble recognizing faces and had to retrain his eyes to learn what a face was like.” He could no longer follow simple directions. “It was as if his brain had erased all those capabilities that were no longer necessary for survival in a cell no bigger than the back of a pick-up truck.”
Prolonged periods of sensory deprivation can be especially injurious for prisoners who go into solitary with pre-existing mental health issues, and “mentally impaired prisoners are disproportionately represented in solitary confinement,” Kirsten Weir notes at the American Psychological Association. One 2005 study found that the “prevalence of mental illness in administrative segregation” in Colorado “was greater than 35 percent, compared with a mental illness rate of less than 25 percent among the general prison population.”
Clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Jeffrey Metzner argues that the “correctional system has become our mental health care system for too many people,” using abusive, barbaric practices that haven’t existed in mental health wards for decades. The effects of solitary confinement suggest that “it doesn’t make facilities safer, doesn’t make our communities safer, and that people are developing mental and physical ailments because of this practice.”
So says James Burns, a formerly incarcerated filmmaker who voluntarily entered solitary confinement for 30 days in 2016 and livestreamed the whole experience. See his last four hours above and read at Vice about his reasons for submitting himself to hell—not a “dark dungeon,” he writes, but “a very sterile, bright hell” which is, “more than anything… a mind fuck.”
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.
You get really bored. Only escape is imagination. Time passes by you’ll begin to not care for time itself. This should be a simple outcome. All opportunity cut off. Hope you got a strong willpower. Then you’ll adapt. You will plan every opportunity to make sure escaping is a hundred percent possible. Your basic senses will go into overdrive a simple scent that’s foreign will be like a train. Ect. Vibrations in the air around you. It’ll be suffocating unable to ignore them. Most would turn violent or self harming instead of assessment of the situation to make the best of it entirely. Depending on how long you’ll ignore emotions
Focus will be entirely on movements interactions it really depends on the person’s personality. The hardest part would be no companionship as a possibility.
Just Read the rest 30days is a joke. That’s nothing. Try total isolation no friends family no visitors no one to talk to nothing. Food water shelter. Physical activity is key to survival especially in such a limited space with nothing to drive your adrenaline. Who would willingly do that for 2 years with nothing to look forward to after it’s over just the escape.
I enjoyed my time in solitary; I’m my own best company, and it allowed me to think about things in peace! It was the PERFECT opportunity to meditate, and practice mindfulness exercises.
I AM 43. I AM LONDON BORN & BRED. I HAVE BEEN BEING LOCKED UP SINCE AGE 15.
SECURE UNITS, YOUNG OFFENDERS & LOTS OF JAILS.OVER 30 ESTABLISHMENTS. I HAVE SERVED 17 YRS ALL IN ALL. I WAS A REAL LIVEWIRE. I WENT AGAINST THE SYSTEM AT EVERY TWIST & TURN. GUYS FROM MY AREA WITH A VERY HIGH CRIME RATE SAW IT AS A BADGE OF HONOUR NOT JUST TO GET LOCKED UP BUT TO BE AS DISRUPTIVE AS POSSIBLE IN THE SYSTEM WHILE HELD IN CUSTODY.ATTACKING OTHER INMATES & SCREWS (GUARDS), DRUG DEALING, HOOCH, EXTORTION.
AS A RESULT I WOULD SPEND LONG PERIODS OF TIME IN ISOLATION, THE LONGEST 17 MONTHS, I WAS RELEASED BACK INTO THE COMMUNITY AFTER NOT MIXING WITH ANOTHER HUMAN EXCEPT GUARDS IN RIOT EQUIPMENT.
IT CAN BREAK YOU OR MAKE YOU STRONGER.
ROUTINE, ROUTINE, ROUTINE.
START A STRICT ROUTINE & STICK TO IT LIKE CLOCKWORK EVERYDAY.
PHYSICAL EXERCISE. EDUCATION. LETTER WRITING.IN UK YOU CAN HAVE A RADIO AFTER 6 MTHS OR SO, THAT HELPED ALOT, GAVE ME A CONNECTION TO THE OUTSIDE.IN UK YOU ARE ENTITLED TO A DAILY SHOWER, PHONECALL, 1 HOUR EXERCISE OUTSIDE ON YOUR OWN.YOU ALSO SEE A DR ONCE A DAY.
I SPENT NEARLY 5YRS IN SOLITARY ALL IN & IT MADE ME A MUCH STRONGER GUY, PHYSICALLY & MENTALLY. YOU JUST HAVE TO SHUT OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD, ACCEPT THE SITUATION YOU PUT YOURSELF IN & MAKE THE MOST OF IT LOL. ONCE YOU ACCEPT YOUR SITUATION & DON’T JUST THINK ABOUT GETTING OUT EVERY WAKING HOUR IT GETS ALOT EASIER. IN FACT I USED TO ALWAYS HAVE A SMILE ON MY FACE, ALWAYS HAPPY, POLITE & UPBEAT & ACTUALLY USED TO TELL THE GUARDS I ACTUALLY PREFERRED TO BE ON MY OWN! ( BIT OF REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY) IT SOMETIMES GOT ME BACK TO THE MAIN PRISON QUICKER BECAUSE THEY SAW IT DIDN’T HAVE THE DESIRED EFFECT ON ME.
ALSO & THIS IS THE HARDEST THING. YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT YOU CANNOT HELP YOUR LOVED ONES ON THE OUTSIDE, THEY WILL HAVE TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES JUST AS YOU HAVE. POWERLESSNESS. IT’S HARD TO OVERCOME BUT OVERCOME IT YOU MUST.
YEAH AFTER ALL THE HUSTLE & BUSTLE OF THE WING IT’S NICE TO GET A BIT OF PEACE & QUIET LOL. AS LONG AS YOU AINT GOT PEOPLE TALKING FROM THEIR WINDOWS ALL NIGHT.
YEAH AFTER ALL THE HUSTLE & BUSTLE OF THE WING IT’S NICE TO GET A BIT OF PEACE & QUIET LOL. AS LONG AS YOU AINT GOT PEOPLE TALKING FROM THEIR WINDOWS ALL NIGHT.
Hey, I can imagine that real isolation from God in hell will make this only fractionsl, and all the while God is with outstretched arms saying: “Come, be reconciled in’relationship’to Me.”
Believe in Jesus Who died on the cross for our sins and resurrected so we don’t have to go on in isolated quarters without the Beautiful God Who sees and knows all things.
so this is definitely a more rare scenario and not as bad as an actual prison cell, but I grew up in a sort of solitary confinement created by my mother. no toys, no books, no form of entertainment, eventually a camera so I couldn’t move, I had paper for writing sentences (same thing over and over) and that helped because I would write stories even though that would mean physical punishment. blinds had to stay closed, but I figured out how to tell time by the sun patterns on the floor from the small window above the blinds, and that also helped with the mental agony, I don’t think there’s a better way of describing it if you haven’t experienced it. besides school, that was all I knew, food and water brought to my room, never left with the family, strongly related to Harry Potter being locked in a closet or rapunzel being locked in a tower. I remember screaming bloody murder for hours sometimes. absolutely losing my mind and being in a lot of psychological pain. dreading breaks from school because that meant anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months of solitary confinement with sometimes a few hours of a break if my mom was feeling nice enough to let me write sentences and watch the other kids have fun, but it was better than sitting in that room with nothing to keep me busy but writing sentences and tracking time by the sun patterns, which took me a while to figure out how to do let alone that it helped a little. I also remember talking to people that didn’t exist, praying all the time because whatever i thought was up there in the sky was all I had to talk to. I remember purposefully screaming while my mom was home to piss her off so I wouldn’t just be sitting in silence alone even if that meant physical pain and fear and getting screamed at. I remember having regular panic attacks and being on heavy meds to be able to sleep at night especially as time periods increased as I got older. this lasted and progressively got more intensive between ages 7 and 12 at which point I was removed from the home because my mental health was past the point of recovery and obvious safety issues, if not physically then mentally. I would bang my head against walls repeatedly and scratch words into the paint, rip my hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows out in huge chunks, I was extremely angry and even homicidal, but the most consistent thing I can remember besides the same days lived out over and over is how excruciating the lack of human contact and noise was, just overall loneliness, having nothing to distract me from that pain other that physical abuse and a lot of yelling and screaming, listening to the voices of my family under the door and trying to look out through the small crack between the door and the floor before they put a camera in there, screaming when noone was home to hear me and to get attention when there was, overall a lot of psychological pain and feeling clinically insane. I’m 18 now, I’ve been out of the worst of it since I was twelve but there’s been a lot of different trauma and I was reunified with my parents by the foster system at 15, thank God it wasn’t the same house because I wouldn’t have been able to handle that. even being around that family was hard enough, and I don’t talk to them anymore. I’m still dealing with the effects of it to this day, I’m still pretty bad off but at least I can somewhat function now, I was basically mute for years, I tried to be normal and still try but I can always feel that something is deeply wrong and am always very afraid and conscious of people being able to notice that there’s something really wrong. I feel like most of my normalcy has come from practice and completely separating myself from the kid I was. I can sleep without meds now, I still am afraid of people and don’t really know how to function socially so I usually distract myself by disassociating into my phone. I don’t have panic attacks anymore unless something directly triggers me but most times it’s just severe disassociation, thankfully because that’s just a calm, I’m not even here, completely zoned out numb place that feels familiar and safe. I don’t have extreme anger anymore although the mood swings are still horrible and I’m on meds for that, the anxiety, and the depression. I still deal with a lot of paranoia, obsessive thinking, hyperfixating on things, creating scenarios in my head that don’t exist, sometimes just living in a reality that isn’t real to distract myself from knowing there’s something really wrong with me. I don’t like thinking about it because I doubt it will ever change and all I can do is learn how to mask it and carry on with life in the ways that I can. on my psych eval it came out with very high masochism, max dependency levels, a max on something else I think it was avoidant, and borderline all in the personality range. I still am not fully aware of how people perceive me from an outside perspective and a part of me really doesn’t want to know. all I know is that anyone who really knows me or has spent enough time with me knows there’s a lot wrong, most of them don’t blame me for it but have admitted I’m really hard to understand and be around because of it. it feels a little hopeless sometimes especially since my experience seems to be a rare exception, but it’s kind of sad that I relate to so many of these prison stories. I kinda came here trying to figure out more about why I am the way I am
Anika that sounds awful, I’m sorry to hear it. Hope you’re doing better these days.