From Inquest:
You could say we are experts in the harms of solitary confinement — harms that we’d like to lay bare in hopes that they can finally be put to an end. We urge you not to look away, because the people put in the hole now may soon be those closest to you — your loved one, a neighbor, your employees, even your bosses.
One of us, Christopher Blackwell, has experienced solitary confinement, and continues to experience it, while incarcerated in Washington state, which recently imposed a watered-down ban on the practice but has refused to abandon it completely. The other of us, Jessica Sandoval, leads a national campaign to end solitary confinement once and for all, which is part of the broader effort to end mass incarceration writ large. On behalf of everyone currently locked in the hole, or who has ever been locked in the hole, we’re joining together to share a glimpse into the immediate and long-lasting impacts this barbaric practice can have on those in our nation’s prisons and jails — as well as on the communities they come home to. And to let you know what we’re doing about it.
Christopher experienced his first trip to solitary confinement at the age of 12. We call solitary confinement “the hole,” because that’s exactly what it feels like — a dark, deep place, with nothing but your own mind to get through it. It’s been more than 25 years since that trip to the hole, but the traumas inflicted there persist some 28 years later. No one sent to solitary goes there for their own good. Instead, solitary is a tool prison guards use all too freely, and with little accountability, to exert control — oppression through fear. Pervasive in jails and prisons, ICE detention centers, and juvenile facilities in the United States, as well as in some other countries worldwide, solitary confinement goes by many names, nearly all of them euphemisms the penal system uses to mask its inhumanity: restrictive housing, lockdown, isolation, room confinement, special housing units (SHU), administrative segregation, and disciplinary segregation. Continue reading >>>
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