{"id":3835,"date":"2025-07-29T23:42:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T23:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=3835"},"modified":"2025-07-30T00:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T00:00:09","slug":"solitary-confinement-in-south-carolina-leads-to-suicide-and-psychosis-2025by-kevin-rashid-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=3835","title":{"rendered":"SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN SOUTH CAROLINA LEADS TO SUICIDE AND PSYCHOSIS (2025) by Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN SOUTH CAROLINA LEADS TO SUICIDE AND PSYCHOSIS (2025)
by Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson
—
I recently wrote about the barbaric conditions in South Carolina\u2019s solitary confinement units (euphemistically called \u201cRestrictive Housing Units\u201d). [1] I want now to give examples of the effects of these conditions on its victims. I write this as I remain confined in one such unit in SC\u2019s Perry Correctional (sic!) Institution.

In the cell next to me is Rakeem Scott #373388. Throughout the day he giggles and talks to himself. Not so loudly \u2013\u2013 well not initially \u2013\u2013 that it draws alarm, but adrift in his own world, in what is obviously a desperate attempt by his mind to compensate for, cope with and escape the total isolation he suffers inside an empty concrete box with no access to the outside and next to no human contact. As the weeks have passed his giggling and talking to himself have become louder, more erratic.

On May 29, 2025 the chaplain here, a man named Peatre, came to Rakeem\u2019s cell asking if he were okay.
\u201cYour mother\u2019s been calling the prison,\u201d said the chaplain. \u201cShe\u2019s worried. She hasn\u2019t heard from you.\u201d
My neighbor mumbled something inaudible in dismissal of the chaplain. Nothing much else was said. The chaplain left telling Rakeem he\u2019d let his mother know he was okay. He\u2019s not okay.

A few days later a nurse peered into his cell while issuing his mental health medications.
\u201cWhere are your sheets?\u201d she asked. \u201cYou don\u2019t have sheets?\u201d
\u201cNo,\u201d he answered. He\u2019d been sleeping on a bare plastic-covered mattress in a cold cell for months.
She asked the guard why he had no sheets. The guard blew her off as if to say, \u201cWhy do you even care?\u201d This is how we\u2019re treated.

A few days later still, Rakeem reported to a mental health worker Marie Cox that his mental health medications don\u2019t help anymore, that he\u2019s feeling worse. Prisoners with mental illnesses aren\u2019t supposed to be held in solitary. It is well known to exacerbate their conditions and cause further mental injury. Almost everyone in my cellblock takes antipsychotic meds.

And it\u2019s not just that Rakeem hasn\u2019t contacted his mother. He couldn\u2019t if he wanted to. We\u2019re housed on a non-communication wing, where everyone in this block is barred from using the phone or to send and receive emails on the prison tablets. We haven\u2019t broken any rules that warrant or authorize any of this. In fact the SC Department of Corrections\u2019 (sic!) own disciplinary policy states that phone restriction may only be imposed as a disciplinary penalty for findings of guilt on an infraction for misusing the phone. Not one of us has been charged or found guilty of misusing the phone. We\u2019re just targeted, by abuse of power.

I was put in this block to be held incommunicado in stated retaliation for an article I wrote about my transfer to and treatment here in the SCDC and people calling headquarters about my treatment. I was thrown in solitary on a completely fabricated disciplinary report (that was doctored up and served on me weeks after I was thrown in solitary), and confronted by an irate special agent from the state\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s office named Fergeli (phonetic spelling), only minutes after I was locked up from general population. He told me if I didn\u2019t tell people and the media to stop calling HQ about me we\u2019d cut off all my lines of communication, have me criminally charged, that I\u2019d remain in solitary and I\u2019d \u201cget hurt.\u201d He said this message came from HQ and he\u2019d driven an hour to deliver it. I responded that I would tell people no such thing and that he should tell the media himself. Two days later I was moved to the non-communication wing and all my communication lines were cut off. Each cell on the wing had a sign on the door stating that the occupant was banned from phone and tablet use.

Most of the others in this non-communication block have pending criminal charges initiated by special agents with Fergeli\u2019s office. These agents conspire with SCDC administrators to illegally use this non-communication block as a form of enhanced torture (over and above solitary confinement) to coerce them to plead guilty to their pending charges in exchange for being moved from this wing and returned to general population where most of them were previously housed. They\u2019re literally told as much. Just like a tortured confession.

Being housed in Perry\u2019s inhumane solitary confinement unit with the added abuse of being held incommunicado has driven my neighbor into deeper mental crisis. I am witness to it.

In another nearby cell is Wayne Hollinshead #300696. He\u2019s hung himself twice and tried to kill himself by starvation and dehydration. First on April 9, 2025 after he\u2019d protested months of being cut off from being able to contact his family. He recently lost a close relative who\u2019d raised him like her own son. He threatened self harm. A Captain Brent Blakeley told him he didn\u2019t care what he did and walked off. Minutes later another guard discovered him hanging in the cell, sprayed him with tear gas, and pulled him down.

He was brought out of the cell to speak with a mental health worker Randall Vickery, who told him he just needed to learn how to \u2018cope\u2019 and told guards to return him to his cell. Wayne protested he needed mental health crisis intervention. He was ignored. The next day he hung himself again with the same result.

Then beginning on June 2, 2025 he went nine days without eating; most of that time without drinking as well. The warden, Curtis Earley, came to his cell the following day and told Wayne they\u2019d discuss moving him off the non-communication wing once he resumed eating. Eight days later he ended the strike. The warden hasn\u2019t uttered another word to him.

The mental torture and physical abuse in Perry\u2019s solitary unit is deliberate. The harmful effects are well known. The 4th Circuit federal appeals court that presides over SCDC has made this clear. [2]

Wayne has written a huge volume of requests and grievances to administrators, mental health and many other officials, especially Warden Earley, complaining of the enforced isolation, lack of sensory stimulation and overall torture of confinement in solitary and being cut off from communicating with his loved ones. He has complained about the effects it has had on his mental health.

He has explicitly told them it has made him suicidal and he fears for his life \u2013\u2013 at his own hands. They know about his repeated suicide attempts. He\u2019s been ignored and blown off. As pointed out, almost every prisoner around me is prescribed meds to treat mental illness. They have no business in solitary. And how is isolating them from contact with loved ones on top of that justified?

It is torture that is driving people to insanity and suicide. As the courts have pointed out and based on the volume of complaints from prisoners like Wayne Hollinshead, SC officials know what they\u2019re doing.

It must be stopped!

Dare to Struggle  Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!

—

Endnotes:

1. See, Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson, \u201cThe Barbarity of Solitary Confinement in South Carolina\u201d (2025) http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=3806<\/a>

2. See, Porter v. Clarke, 923 F.3d 348 (4th Cir. 2019); Thorpe v. Clarke, 37 F.4th 926 (4th Cir. 2022).
In the Porter case the federal appeals court emphasized that prison officials can no longer pretend not to know the mental injuries that prolonged solitary confinement causes, based upon the extensive psychological studies and reports on the subject in recent years. In concluding this observation the court stated,

\u201cNotwithstanding that scholars have conducted dozens of studies on the psychological and emotional effects of solitary and segregated confinement, the leading survey of the literature regarding such confinement found that \u2018there is not a single published study of solitary and solitary-like confinement in which nonvoluntary confinement lasted for longer than 10 days, where participants were unable to terminate their isolation at will, that failed to result in negative psychological effects.\u2019\u201d

See, Porter at p. 356 (emphasis in original).

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