Solitary Confinement's Unlikely Origins | Hacker News Reader

Solitary Confinement's Unlikely Origins

publicdomainreview.org

65 pointstintinnabula64 comments

I've done some time in solitary. It is a weird thing. My first time I was totally unprepared and so sat naked in a cold, empty cell for a couple of days before I could improve my situation. As with anything, you learn, and my second time I managed to kick a book into my cell without the jailers noticing as they put me in there. A book is 14 hours of entertainment for your brain.

Solitary is designed as "prison within prison." It is for offenses committed inside jail or prison. Because you are already confined and fucked-up in prison they have to have somewhere even more confined and fucked-up for you to go if they don't like what you do. Obviously when you're in solitary there is nowhere lower for you to go, so all they can do then is mess with your head.

Last year I was put in solitary confinement in a jail for violation of a jail rule, even though I was living at my home. I think this is perhaps the first time that has happened in US history?

I had sent a magazine to a friend in the jail. The jail alleged that it must have drugs on it because it smelled funny. It didn't. It was just the fresh ink. They charged me with two jail infractions "Abuse of the mail" and "Endangerment of public safety". Two offenses that are published nowhere. And certainly would only apply to someone who was already inside the jail, not someone living at home. A newspaper got hold of the story and asked the jail if they had done any tests on the magazine, which of course they had not.

After a week of me writing grievances they eventually released me from solitary, realizing they had grossly violated my constitutional rights.

Edit: Just to note, all my times in solitary were for activism; taking on my jailers for their misdeeds and unlawful activities.

Were you able to sue for damages? It's quite flagrant that your rights have been infringed upon, from reading this.

Or do you just not have recourse?

It's actually fucked-up that I totally forgot about this until writing this post. I find that my brain tries to erase a lot of the shit I've been through and block it out.

I'm a serial litigant and I should have sued. You have a one year statute of limitation on most torts here in Illinois, so I've blown past that, but on federal constitutional violations the SoL is 2 years, so I could still sue for that and get relief. I'll have to think about it since I am very weary and litigation takes literally years, and often more than a decade. I'm years into litigation with the same police dept. right now about another constitutional violation and it is just 100-page motions each way every month and it gets very tiring. Millions of dollars of lawyer fees just to avoid paying $10K settlement on a case they have already lost.

I absolutely understand - I'm sorry of the situation you are in, I'm certain it's exhausting, and it shouldn't be on you.

I'm way out of my depth, but maybe you could reach out to victim's advocacy groups (you might very well have already!) to get some measure of support and guidance. As you mentionned, the SoL is limiting for your case, and it could be a good idea to see if you could file something and delay it until the other litigation is done. Again - I'm as out of my depth as can be.

Also - just a thought - maybe you could reach out to news outlets or legal oriented content producers (Legal Eagle, Attorney Tom and the likes). The story you told here is harrowing and most journalists would jump on it right away, which could possibly be helpful, but it adds a lot to your plate.

Wish you all the best going forward.

Thank you.

You also reminded me that I never heard back from any of the misconduct investigations I started against the various officers. I will FOIA now and update. There was one incident where I was walking out of jail and two officers from another jurisdiction, operating outside of their legal authority, cuffed me up, without any arrest warrant and put me in jail and I was held for over three years on that one alone. I want to see what the reports on that one say. I also filed one against the sheriff as I found an old law which says it is a crime if the sheriff does not provide detainees with three hot meals a day, and yet we only got one a day. It is literally a crime. But how do you report a police officer committing a crime? It is practically impossible, especially when he is the guy in charge.

Edit: Law is here https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2004&C... "The Warden of the jail shall furnish each prisoner daily with as much clean water as may be necessary for drink and personal cleanliness, and serve him three times a day with wholesome food, well cooked and in sufficient quantity."

I’m curious, with so much time in jail and so much ongoing litigation, how do you make money to cover food & shelter? Do you have children or do you find this activism gets in the way of that kind of lifestyle?

I don't. I get my food from food pantries, and a friend has given me temporary shelter. Luckily I have no children, which is a huge blessing I thought about often during my decade locked up. I would have hated to leave children behind, especially as jail visits can often be close to non-existent and the phones were too expensive and too difficult to access.

are you saying that "well cooked" food means "hot meal"?

That is my interpretation, essentially. We were given no cooked food for two of the three meals. One was peanut butter and two slices of bread, and the other was a slice of cold meat and two slices of bread. While you could say that the bread was "well cooked", that clearly isn't the intention of the law.

I don't think Americans know how uncivilized our prison system is, especially compared to a lot of Europe. Or maybe they do, and we're just a very vindictive society. Sorry you had to experience it first hand.

As an American, who has spent time in a prison in Europe/Germany and was put in solitary confinement under 24/7 monitor supervision, I tend to disagree. The reason why I was put there: I claimed to be a US citizen and wanted to talk to my embassy. Since I don't know US prison, take my opinion with a grain of salt. But fuck Europe!

After seeing a few documentaries on them (but never going to jail in the US or EU), I am now of the opinion that European jails seem as fucked up, but have a much more humane veneer. They are much more likely to give prisoners huge quantities of psychoactive drugs, and often essentially force them to go to intense therapy sessions, which could be considered a form of psychological torture. US jails don't do any of that, but have a lot of other issues.

US guards often push drugs for side money

(Guards who are overworked and underpaid)

I remember this being a thing that happened in the prison drama Oz, and thinking that phenomenon being BS, but I've heard enough stories of guards bringing in contraband that it seems to happen at an oddly high frequency. Is the prison system somewhat complicit with the drug running?

Yes. Go read up on torture island aka Rikers. The system is a cruel joke.

Yes you can buy drugs in prison freely. You can even buy cell phones but they have devices to detect cell phones in your cell.

Who brings them in? Possibly guards but visitors can also bring in a lot. Pretrial detention is tougher. The drugs are brought into prison and then smuggled into pretrial detention.

When I was locked up a few months ago, I would say on an average cell block maybe 80%+ of the prisoners were using drugs? Higher on some decks, lower on others. It would be a lot higher if people could afford them.

Edit: I'd never seen anything except weed before I went to jail. Inside jail I saw and was offered every single drug known to man in whatever quantity I wanted.

From being in jail, the jails do give the prisoners whatever psychoactive drugs are needed to zombify them.

Do you have the names of documentaries handy by chance?

Here's one I happen to know (with English subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCMt7ynK9jg

"TBS" is "prison with psychiatric care". It's a bit complex because you first get your punishment (prison term) and then after that additional TBS treatment (until you're "safe to be released", basically).

I'm not claiming this is representative for Europe, or even the rest of the Dutch prisons. However, everything else I've seen over the years from most European countries gave me the impression the average is closer to that than what I've seen/heard from US prisons.

Solitary confinement on its own is already controversial enough, but being pushed in a cell naked and literally nothing to do?! What the actual fuck?!

> and often essentially force them to go to intense therapy sessions, which could be considered a form of psychological torture. US jails don't do any of that, but have a lot of other issues.

It was my impression that, under the US system, those convicted of crimes related to drug use are very often required to go to therapy.

Yes, many crimes require therapy as part of a release plan in the USA. The therapy supplied is pretty awful quality and the people attending aren't there by choice, but because it is required to stop them returning to prison, so it has almost zero effect on their rehabilitation. From my experience, at least 50% of those released from prison are returned pretty quickly for drug possession.

There must be more to the story than just that.

What do you want to know?

What was the context of you saying you wanted to talk to the embassy? I have a suspicion you were already in trouble for something by that point.

Well, yes, I was in trouble because I was in prison already and my public defender did not pick up his phone for 6 months. In this situation, I said I am a US citizen and demanded to talk to my embassy. And after I insisted on this for two or three weeks, I was put into solitary confinement.

Even talked to one of the highest person in charge. Can you proof that you are a US citizen? Let me call my embassy. They did not allow this. I suggested they call the embassy but they rejected this.

I even wrote to my judge a complain and he said there "is no reason for this". I have it in writing.

This is fairly typical of the attitude towards a person once they are incarcerated. No prison employee is going to go out of their way to look something up, or make a phone call. There is no oversight on prison employees (outside of doing the minimum to make sure they don't beat the prisoners too frequently or openly). Laziness is prevalent inside the justice system. No-one is in a hurry to do anything, especially if it is outside their job description.

There is an international treaty (Vienna Convention) that requires governments to inform arrestees of their right to speak to their embassy. The problem is that treaty violations aren't really enforceable without an underlying local statute to implement them.

It was only recently that Illinois made it a statutory requirement to implement the treaty by adding "(b-5) This subsection is intended to implement and be interpreted consistently with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the United States is a party." to their arrest law:

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=0...

The hands of the idiot judge who run the prison were shaking when the letter of the embassy arrived. Unfortunately the US embassy did not want to send a note of protest, because I am a dual citizen.

"There is an international treaty (Vienna Convention) that requires governments to inform arrestees of their right to speak to their embassy. The problem is that treaty violations aren't really enforceable without an underlying local statute to implement them."

Well, a diplomatic protest note from the US embassy would have worked wonders to the careers of the people involved in this clusterfuck.

I think Americans' view of prison is probably harsher than reality, given that they are informed by Hollywood. Prison is mostly dull.

Horribly, horribly dull. That was the worst part. I'm used to using my brain 16 hours a day. Jail was torture because you're just staring at the walls all day.

There have been numerous cases in recent times where European courts would refuse extradition requests by the USA on the grounds that America cannot be trusted to not violate their human rights (even if they specifically promise it).

In one case, the judge referred to the American punitive system as "medieval"

There was a story recently about a German courts refusal to extradite a prisoner to the UK due to poor prison conditions - massive overcrowding being a significant concern in particular.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/germany-refu...

I have spent 21.5 days in solitary confinement. It’s inhumane torture. The reasons why one might find themselves in such a scenario does nothing to ameliorate that simple fact. It’s inhumane. It’s torture.

And what is its purpose? It is clearly 100% punitive as there is no rehabilitative part to time in solitary.

The first time I did 10 days for a non-crime. I had my trial on day 9, was found not guilty and released the next day back to population. That's some Alice in Wonderland shit right there -- do the time, then maybe do the crime?

The stated purpose within the block of isolation cells I was held in was protective custody—as in someone upstairs decided that you might cause harm to yourself or others if placed with the general population. This might include things like a mental health condition or crisis, an altercation with other inmates, the specific nature of your legal situation[1], and/or if you tell them during intake that you’re transsexual (this may have changed in the ~15-years since my experience). Of course, they were not under any obligation to explain their rationale for placement decisions, so these are just some of the examples I heard from guards when asked, not an official position or statement on their part.

For a few of those categories, and for anyone who’s never experienced it, this may sound like a benefit—or at least somewhat preferable to the risks one might otherwise face in the general population. But for anyone struggling with a mental health condition, or who might not be aware of what category they’re in or how long they might be there, the conditions can frequently be an unbearable psychological burden on top of what is almost certainly an already frightening and traumatic situation.

I had a cell that measured roughly 9’x4’, but because of the service column and toilet, there was not a single place where I could stand or lie down and stretch my arms out fully without encountering an obstacle. This was where I spent 23-hours of every single day I was there. The other hour was spent in a larger cell at the end of the hall with a shower and a payphone that cost my family $20 for every 15-minutes to speak with me. No windows, no daylight, no respite. The Chaplin brought a book cart around every few weeks from which you would be given something at random. Anything worth reading you could easily finish in a few days, even if pacing yourself. If you’re unlucky, you just get some Scientology bullshit. Until the very last day I was there, I had no way of knowing when I would get out. My attorney told me it could take more than a year to get to a trial. My family could not afford my bond. It wasn’t until a second surprise bond hearing 3-weeks later that I would be given an opportunity for relief that was within reach. The not knowing, the endless hours to spend with spiraling thoughts and no distractions, it’s the purest despair imaginable.

It’s one of many indefensible features of our justice system that needs to be consigned to the dark details of America’s ongoing history of atrocities.

[1] Whether you’re charged with a crime while also providing witness testimony against another inmate or that is deemed particularly vital, or the crime you’re accused of is particularly noteworthy or likely to motivate violence against you (inmates read newspapers, and word will generally spread of anyone who’s in for anything newsworthy), etc..

You had the same bond problem I had, except it took me 8.5 years to pay my bond :( I've still not been to trial yet and it is over 10.5 years. After I paid my bond I did another 9 months though because I interviewed for a newspaper about police harassment and the public defender's office Tweeted in support of the article, and I reposted it.

Could you contact the ACLU? 10 years without trial is egregious, perhaps they can make some movement.

I've touched base with a couple of similar outfits. The problem is that it's not that exceptional. I know people above 11 years waiting for trial here in Chicago.

This really is beyond fucked up. It's the kind of thing that creates legitimate 'enemies of the state'.

I think most decent people would be legitimate enemies of the state today if they had any idea just how sinister, profound, and widespread the injustices that it has institutionalized and normalized really are.

Most people have a terribly broken mental model and complete misunderstanding of the criminal justice system in America. It simply doesn’t touch most people, and they got all of their “knowledge” of it from mass media, which perpetuates the completely mythological concepts that people carry about it.

Then again, maybe not. The idea that prisoners get raped in prison is widely held and nobody seems to find this to be that much of a problem.

The degree to which this has been normalized is frightening. Take the Guantanamo bay scandal(s), you'd think that there would be some kind of massive blowback from that but it actually ended up being almost a speedbump in terms of the international response.

People only cared about Guantanamo Bay because they were told to by the media. This isn't to say people shouldn't have cared, but that most people are assigned their beliefs until those beliefs are no longer useful.

> The idea that prisoners get raped in prison is widely held and nobody seems to find this to be that much of a problem.

Worse. People seem to think it's part of the punishment. They want it to happen.

By the time we get to this point, trying to "fix" it or "understand it" or whatever tends to feel pretty hopeless.

I saw a blurb once that for every dollar spent on taking care of preschoolers, you save five dollars down the road on prison costs and similar. So the antidote seems to me to be to try to foster civilization -- feed people better, family-friendly policies, pro-education policies, etc.

A lot of issues that should be resolved before it's this ugly don't get resolved at the "stitch in time" level and then it's a slippery slope and here we are. But suggesting you do the small, thoughtful thing -- people see that as unrelated. It's not heroic enough. They want to take on something big and defeat it.

And here we are and here we stay.

I suspect a big part of the problem is that people who advocate for improved social services also seem to uncannily be opposed to any sort of criminal punishments at all.

It makes it hard for the average person to take these suggestions seriously.

> people who advocate for improved social services also seem to uncannily be opposed to any sort of criminal punishments at all.

I've never once met anyone who felt that way. I'd actually like to have the chance. People might not want criminals tortured, might not want people imprisoned unnecessarily, might not want people arrested for things that should never have been crimes in the first place, but I'm pretty skeptical that there's any substantial number of people who don't want to see serial killers kept away from the public or who feel that all crimes should go unaddressed entirely.

>serial killers kept away from the public

That's not punishment, that's social risk management. Punishment is the deprivation of dignity which the system imposes. Those cells should be a minimum of two-star hotel, the doors should be mostly controlled by the occupants, they should be treated in a dignified manner like any member of the public, they should be paid competitive wages for their work, any housing and restitution charges on those wages should be capped at 1/2 and commissary must charge median prices so as to encourage savings and financial independence on release, etc.

There's also eliminating custodial sentencing for acute nonviolent crimes.

Haters gonna hate. I'm extremely tired of having words put in my mouth.

My father was a two-time decorated veteran. I was a military wife a lot of years.

Vitamins for convicts could save taxpayers money

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16140867

My decade as a fugitive

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481540

Both have comments by me if anyone wants to know what I think and not what people want to imagine about me.

Nobody's putting words in your mouth, Doreen. Simply offering up an opinion as to why your (honestly good) idea would be dismissed outright by the powers that be.

That’s quite the straw man argument.

That's an incredible generalization that may or may not be rooted in being Terminally Online.

In the dzogchen buddhism, there is an excercise that amounts to a voluntary 2-month long solitary confinement in a small room with no light and sounds. The perception of time melts down, hallucinacions occurs, but the trainee is prepared to deal with it, and at the end reaches a clarity of mind that he couldn't have obtained otherwise.

On a related note, the hells (if you believe in such things) are built around the same idea: reduction of freedom. At first the space dimensions are being lost one after another, and the hard offenders appear completely immobilized, but in return they gain an unusual clarity of mind to think about their deeds. If that's not enough, the time dimensions go away: first they turn into small loops of endless repetitions, and then disappear entirely. This final state is known as the Pit.

British Mental health hospitals can be like that. Locked up without any jury trial which can be 24/7 solitary with hourly suicide watch checks to keep you awake and sleep deprived, drugs forcible introduced into your system that fuck your mind and health up.

If you dont becomes the NHS's compliant puppet physically and mentally aka their idea of a typical model citizen, you never get let out.

Its beyond inhumane and healthy, but humans have had thousands of years domesticating different animals, breeding traits in and out, which can be and have been applied to humans.

The state, ie police and NHS can totally bypass the legal system and incarcerate people, in effect dissappearing them, unless the legal system allows this?!?

The legal instrument that is necessary to protect against this situation is a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). This permits a specific other person to make decisions if the subject is deemed to lack mental capacity (that is, diagnosed as insane). Without a pre-existing Lasting Power of Attorney, the NHS may be delegated responsibility for the subject's health - which could include the mandatory drugs that you mention.

It really is rather extraordinary that this is the case, but one's next of kin do not have any power or influence unless a LPA has been signed.

Edit for exact (albeit heavily abridged) quote from the relevant Mental Capacity Act 2005:

  (9)(1) A lasting power of attorney is a power of attorney under which the donor (“P”) confers on the donee (or donees) authority to make decisions about all or any of the following—
    (a) P’s personal welfare or specified matters concerning P’s personal welfare
    ...
  and which includes authority to make such decisions in circumstances where P no longer has capacity. 
  ...
  (9)(7)Where a lasting power of attorney authorises the donee (or, if more than one, any of them) to make decisions about P’s personal welfare, the authority—
     ...
     (c) extends to giving or refusing consent to the carrying out or continuation of a treatment by a person providing health care for P.

Unfortunately, according to Mind:

"But your health and welfare attorney won't be able to refuse treatment for you if: You’re sectioned under the Mental Health Act in the future, and your treatment is prescribed by the responsible clinician or approved clinician in charge of your treatment at that time. Your attorney will have no legal power to refuse the treatment. This is except for ECT, which they can refuse even in these circumstances. ..."

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/men...

Thanks, this appears to be useful for end of life as well.

Problem is GP's really dont like being challenged in my experience, and its a case of having to write papers to challenge their theories with more recent (< 30yrs) scientific discoveries and studies. In other words, I'd have to throw more recent expert stuff back at them, which is an exercise I dont have time for, but when banged up the movements are seriously curtailed, and access to the internet is seriously restricted to non existent, making it impossible to fight back once inside. Its a Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek terms!

Their medicines are shrouded in secrecy in the main, which also makes their judgements harder to fight.

When inside you dont even get a patient information leaflet for the meds they "prescribe", its effing dictatorial, Josef Mengele would be proud of the british state today!

Dont get me started on the patronisation by staff either!

Leaving aside the bizarre comments about breeding animals and humans, it's certainly the case that mental health hospitals are prone to abuses. Sadly, there will likely always be a need for them. Like prisons, some people are just unable to live with others safely. Sometimes they can be helped, but many cannot and will have to spend their entire lives without freedom. Until we discover a means to help them I can accept that.

What I can't accept is the way those people are often treated. Being confined is terrible, but they should still be well treated/looked after and, as much as possible, allowed to pursue their own interests and lead meaningful productive lives.

Ultimately I think that it'd take oversight and transparency to prevent people being "disappeared" without cause or necessity. I'd hope that a hospital would need to make their case to a judge and/or an independent body of professionals to justify keeping someone locked up against their will for longer than a couple days (as an assessment/suicide watch period) which can be challenged and reviewed.

The word 'voluntary' sort of negates the rest of the comment. You can't compare voluntary solitary confinement with involuntary solitary confinement.

Dark retreats are also dark, not loud and bright like solitary is.

I don't think parent was trying to downplay solitary confinement, was just providing an analogous phenomenon

It isn't analogous.

Just being voluntary on its own makes a huge difference, as well as having some control over your environment, and the knowledge you CAN leave if you really want to.

It's the same with noise and lots of other things: if you know you can turn it off it's a lot less annoying than when you have no power over it.

> at the end reaches a clarity of mind that he couldn't have obtained otherwise.

Have you done this? I don't want to knock it out of hand, but I'm a little skeptical of this.

Related, if you're ever in Philadelphia, I suggest visiting, eastern state penitentiary, the first penitentiary in America. For many years, everyone was basically in solitary confinement. Very sobering place.

Dickens' account of his tour of this place (and he was all for the "progress" solitary confinement represented then) makes it seem like the worst kind of torture. However, it stuck out to me that, at that time, solitary prisoners were _provided with hand work of their choice_. So today's version is more barbaric.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com