'Far Worse Than Any Death Sentence': Horrific Realities of Solitary Confinement

In a 2013 essay, prisoner William Blake wrote about how much the sentencing judge wanted to "pump six buck’s worth of electricity into [his] body." According to New York State law, that was impossible - a fact the judge publicly denounced. For his part, Blake actually understands the judge’s ire; as a young man, the prisoner ended the life of one deputy and harmed another during a failed escape attempt.

Blake was sentenced to 77 years in prison, 25 of which have been spent in solitary confinement, "a punishment," he writes, "that I am convinced beyond all doubt is far worse than any death sentence could possibly have been."

In addition to his 23-hour-a-day confinement to his cell, Blake explains that his "recreation" time is spent in a concrete yard by himself. While in his cell, he's allowed "ten books or magazines total, twenty pictures of the people you love, writing supplies, a bar of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, one deodorant stick but no shampoo, and that's about it."

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker is a former death row inmate at the Polunksy Unit in Livingston, TX. Whitaker was convicted for hiring hitman Chris Brashear, who ended the lives of Whitaker's mother and brother in 2003. Whitaker was sentenced to death in March 2007, but on February 22, 2018 - 45 minutes before his scheduled execution - his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment without parole.

During his time in solitary confinement, he created a website, "Minutes Before Six," which refers to the hour at which executions take place in Texas. Whitaker and other inmates publish their writing on their prison experience on the site. In July 2016, Whitaker wrote about his experience in solitary confinement for Solitary Watch:

I was messed up when I came here, and in many ways I have far more self-control. But at the same time, I feel frayed, like I've been living in the face of this sandstorm for 11 years, and it's worn my soul down to a pathetic little nub. They don't really kill you when they give you a date. You are pretty much already dead by that point. The only ones that really bemoan their fates are the ones that were too dense to learn a lesson from this place. That's sort of the sad part. This place ruins people. Some it makes insane. Some, like me it forces to go so deep that they aren't ever able to crawl back out again. Some people get so hard that discipline simply can't ever imprint on them again.

Brian Nelson was only 17 when he entered the penal system. He was sentenced to 26 years for violent offenses. After bouncing around several prisons for a few years - including an escape from Stateville Correctional Center - he was transferred to Illinois's Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax facility that saw Nelson spend 23 years in segregation.

Nelson was released in 2010. These days, Nelson says that his time in solitary confinement is still with him even after all this time. In a 2012 interview, he told the ACLU: "I'm still in that box." In 2016, he told the Illinois House Committee during a review of the use of solitary confinement in the state's penal system, said: "Those four walls beat me down so bad." Nelson reportedly suffers chronic psychological and emotional trauma due to the extensive time spent in isolation. 

Cesar Francisco Villa is a "gang-validated" prisoner incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison's Security Housing Unit (SHU), the only supermax state prison in California. Villa is not allowed to leave the SHU until he turns over information, but Villa claims he has no affiliation to the underground circuit, so he has remained in solitary confinement. During his time in SHU, Villa has developed arthritis in the spine, hepatitis, high blood pressure, and a thyroid condition. 

In March 2013, Villa wrote an essay for California Prison Focus, and he outlines his chilling experience in solitary confinement. He admits that he went in determined and believed he could "beat" the experience. Since his confinement, Villa's attitude has shifted dramatically:

My sense of normalcy began to wane after just 3 years of confinement. Now I was asking myself, can I do this? Not sure about anything anymore.

Though I didn't realize it at the time - looking back now - the unraveling must've begun then. My psyche had changed. I would never be the same. The ability to hold a single good thought left me, as easily as if it was a simple shift of wind sifting over tired, battered bones.

There's a definite split in personality when good turns to evil. The darkness that looms above is thick, heavy and suffocating. A snap so sharp, the echo is deafening. A sound so loud you expect to find blood leaking from your ears at the bleakest moment.

In early October 2016, federal prisoner Chelsea Manning was placed in solitary for a week as punishment for attempting to take her own life in July. Manning is serving 35 years at Leavenworth Prison for "aiding the enemy" when she leaked hundreds of thousands of official communiqués online, which threatened national security.

Mental health experts were outraged at the prison's decision to isolate Manning, citing several studies that point to the fact that solitary confinement can actually exacerbate symptoms of depression and anxiety (i.e., two major contributing factors to self-harming behavior). For her part, Manning explained that she was tossed in solitary a mere 15 minutes after receiving the paperwork announcing the judgment. 

During her first week in confinement, Manning again attempted to take her own life - citing psychological torment that occurred on the ward, which authorities denied. Manning's representative maintained that Manning has endured "demoralizing and destabilizing assaults on her health and her humanity."

Sarah Jo Pender was convicted for taking the lives of her ex-boyfriend and his roommates on October 24, 2000. Despite maintaining her innocence, Pender received a 110-year prison sentence. After trying to escape prison in 2008, she was sentenced to solitary confinement for one year at the Indiana Women's Prison. She was told she would get one year of confinement for the escape attempt; she was in there for over five years. She told her story to Solitary Watch and talks about how inadequate the mental health facilities are for those in SHU:

Despite knowing that isolation can drive people insane, the mental health care here is woefully inadequate. Once a month, a mental health staff comes to ask us if we are hallucinating, hearing voices, or are suicidal. More frequent meetings can be requested, but they offer no coping skills, no therapy, no advocacy. The luckiest among us are prescribed anti-depressants to numb us from the hardest parts of being alone.

Acutely psychotic women who refuse medication are frequently locked in a cell where they bang and talk and argue with voices, scream about God and demons, and/or refuse to shower or eat for fear of being poisoned. This can go one for weeks until some invisible threshold is crossed and E-Squad officers dressed in full riot gear come in, hold her down, and a nurse injects her with an anti-psychotic medicine. This scene gets repeated every two weeks until she cooperates.