Much has been written of late on the torturous effects and wide-scale use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and the fact that this torture causes mental pain and suffering, and in many cases psychosis.\u00a0 Not much has been written, however, that illustrates the forms this damage takes and the suffering it causes both the victims and those around them, which is the purpose of this article.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve witnessed the mental deterioration of many a prisoner over my years in solitary (nearly two decades).\u00a0 Often the worst cases are those who lack outside contacts, and thus have no one to turn to for compassion, material support, and basic human interaction.\u00a0 Deprived of human companionship and the complex sensory stimulation of \u201cnormal\u201d social environments, the mind closes in on itself, searches desperately for stimulation, and attempts to create (compensate for) internally, what it is deprived of externally.<\/p>\n
The resultant imbalances and psychoses take many forms.\u00a0 Even mental health experts admit there is no single nor simple diagnosis of the mental impairments sensory deprivation causes.\u00a0 But common patterns do emerge.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t usually use prisoners\u2019 names in my reports and articles without their express consent.\u00a0 However, in the present case I\u2019m making an exception; first, because the prisoner in question\u2014Ellery Oliver #304611\u2014needs help, which he won\u2019t get if I conceal his identity, and second, because I don\u2019t believe he is capable of competently giving or withholding consent.\u00a0 What is most disheartening is there are thousands of cases like his hidden away within the vast U.S. prison system.<\/p>\n
Oliver\u2019s case is not exceptional.<\/p>\n
Prisoners like Oliver are almost universally disliked by other prisoners.\u00a0 Also by the guards.\u00a0 Their \u201cbehaviors\u201d enrage and frustrate others, few of whom are inclined toward, and none of whom are trained to have, patience, tolerance, nor understanding in dealing with or relating to the mentally infirm.\u00a0 And most who victimize them, or turn a blind eye, or applaud when they are abused, rationalize the lack of compassion by contending that the prisoner \u201creally isn\u2019t crazy,\u201d \u201chas good sense,\u201d \u201cknows what he\u2019s doing,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n
So they feel justified in condoning or participating in venting their own frustrations with the disturbed prisoner\u2019s behaviors through their own and\/or others\u2019 physically and verbally abusing them, which leaves the victim even further isolated in terms of lack of human compassion and healthy social interaction in their lives, as they are abused by both guards and other prisoners.<\/p>\n
Often I find myself explaining to my peers that these men really are<\/em> mentally damaged.\u00a0 I have to point out symptoms and direct them to studies and share my writings on the effects of solitary.\u00a0 I also frequently find myself explaining that persecuting them for manifesting the symptoms of their psychological injuries (injuries caused by their captors), is like persecuting people who\u2019ve been crippled as the result of beatings and physical torture by prison officials.<\/p>\n But I do<\/em> understand that living in close proximity to these prisoners day after day (often for months to years) will severely strain the reason and resilience of even the most self-controlled person, which makes keeping an objective outlook on their situation particularly challenging.<\/p>\n Also, I believe many prisoners and guards alike take a defensive and hostile position toward them because they fear empathizing with them, which requires putting oneself into the shoes of another.\u00a0 In this case that would mean seeing oneself as vulnerable to mental breakdown, which I believe is instinctively terrifying to many.\u00a0 So they project their own anxiety and fear of losing their own sanity onto these prisoners by persecuting them and making them objects of hate, ridicule, and alienation, which are simply defense mechanisms.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the conditioned hyper-macho tendency in prison culture, and U.S. popular culture in general (cultural Darwinism), to persecute and ridicule the weak, which is how prisoners who break down under the pressures of prison life are perceived by their peers.\u00a0 Many of them also transfer their own suffering and vent their own inability to cope with the stresses of solitary on these ready and \u201cacceptable\u201d targets.<\/p>\n Coming to terms with and understanding this condition is something I\u2019ve had to do, both for the sake of \u201chelping\u201d my peers and keeping myself grounded as well.\u00a0 This because one of the many tactics of abuse and retaliation used frequently by prison officials against those who challenge them through complaints, litigation, physically, etc. is to house them close (typically next door) to these mentally impaired prisoners as a form of torment.\u00a0 For many, the technique is highly effective, in that if the experience doesn\u2019t substantially wear the resistant prisoner down, it at least diverts his focus from officials to trying to cope or coming into conflict with his \u201cdisturbed\u201d neighbor.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been an especial target of this practice, which is how I remained Oliver\u2019s neighbor for almost two months.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve refused to allow it to serve its intended purpose.<\/p>\n The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is one of the few prison systems in Amerika whose segregation units have been found by the federal courts to be unconstitutional because they inflict psychological torture and cause consequent mental illness.\u00a0 The courts stated:<\/p>\n Texas\u2019 administrative segregation units are virtual incubators of psychoses\u2014seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities. ((Ruiz v. Johnson<\/span>, 37 F. Suppp. 2d 855, 907 (S.D. Tex. 1999)))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Following and in response to a federal lawsuit I\u2019d recently brought against Oregon prison officials and various articles I\u2019ve written about abusive conditions in Virginia\u2019s and Oregon\u2019s prisons, I was transferred to and thrown into administrative segregation in the TDCJ on 14 June 2013, where I\u2019ve since remained.<\/p>\n I was initially assigned to the TDCJ\u2019s notoriously abusive Estelle 2 High Security Unit (E2U) and housed in cells next to Ellery Oliver for most of my two moths stay at E2U.<\/p>\n Ellery Oliver has been in solitary confinement (administrative segregation) in the TDCJ for over a decade.\u00a0 He\u2019s a New Afrikan\/Black male in his mid-50\u2019s, who\u2019s been confined to E2U for about 4 years.\u00a0 During that time he\u2019s been brutally beaten by guards on numerous occasions, once having all his hair (then in long corn rows) ripped out; sprayed down and left contaminated with OC gas over 20 times (guards usually turn his in-cell water off for hours to days so he can\u2019t wash the gas off); etc.\u00a0 He\u2019s had all his personal belongings destroyed over and over (consisting mostly of notes he writes about guard abuses in the unit, and books and pamphlets he\u2019s obtained from free-books-to-prisoners programs and ABC groups)\u2014on one occasion guards simply threw away some 5 large bags of his legal records and books.<\/p>\n He is routinely starved by guards, who \u201cjack\u201d (i.e. refuse) his meals for any reason and no reason, often for days on end, which often escalates into incidents where guards use violence against him.<\/p>\n Oliver embodies a sort of stubborn rebelliousness.\u00a0 Although its expression seldom takes \u201crational\u201d form, he refuses to relent to guards\u2019 brutal efforts to break him or his peers\u2019 persecutory responses to his erratic behaviors.\u00a0 He usually outlasts them and wears them down.\u00a0 One can see in his behaviors a struggle to cope with and resist the weathering effects of a compulsory solitary confinement, devoid of a normal environment and social stimulation.<\/p>\n He has a remarkable memory.\u00a0 He can give the full names of almost any guard and other staff person at E2U (nearly 1000 people) without fail, and can identify them simply by their shoes, mannerisms, etc.\u00a0 Indeed, I often turned to him to identify various guards and others, including those involved in abuses who were otherwise unidentifiable because dressed out in full body riot armor.\u00a0 He compulsively writes down everything, especially guard misconduct, that happens around him.\u00a0 When he cannot get paper or guards trash his, he writes on the cell wall.<\/p>\n Upon my E2U assignment, I was confined to a cell he\u2019d previously occupied.\u00a0 Every<\/em> wall from floor to ceiling was covered with his notations of dates and times that he and other prisoners had been beaten, denied meals, etc by guards, with all participants\u2019 full names.\u00a0 Independent of his notes, he remembers the dates, times, and places of about every incident of serious abuse that has taken place around him, and the name of each prisoner victim.\u00a0 I often tested and double-checked his memory and information for accuracy, and found most of what he recollected to be exact.\u00a0 His efforts seem to evidence obvious struggles within the limits of his environment to oppose guards\u2019 abuses and hold on to what was certainly once a keen mind and colorful personality.<\/p>\n All who\u2019ve known Oliver for years attest to his lost mental balance.\u00a0 That he is \u201cnothing like he used to be,\u201d and only a shadow of his former witty, outspoken, and jesting self.<\/p>\n Which brings me to his dark side.<\/p>\n Oliver has the nastiest, most provocative mouth one could imagine.\u00a0 And all it takes to set him off into an hours-long tirade of cursing and insulting some poor soul is his delusional belief that one was talking disrespectfully to or about him.\u00a0 You could\u2019ve been dead asleep in your cell, but he will swear you were just insulting him.\u00a0 As a result, he will rain down every vulgar insult and vile name imaginable on you at the top of his voice for hours on end, and if he has a line of view of you (the cells in E2U are positioned in rows along either side of a long corridor and face each other; each cell has a solid steel door with two glass windows in them measuring 3 \u00bd\u201d x 34\u201d), and you are foolish enough to stand at your door looking out, he will hurl sexual insults at you while masturbating in your full view.\u00a0 He believes himself to be perpetually persecuted by prisoners and guards alike and when in his more rational states explains his \u201cbehaviors\u201d as self-defense against his persecutors (real and imagined).<\/p>\n He also believes himself to have direct contact with god.\u00a0 And will shift seamlessly from cursing and insulting someone to high heaven to sermonizing about Judgment Day and obedience of the scriptures with the rhythm and fire of a Southern Pentecostal minister.\u00a0 Then he will sometimes shift just as easily into occult mode, explaining his knowledge of the teachings and abilities of various occult schools, proclaiming himself to be a Rosicrucian and able to see through walls and beneath the ground.\u00a0 He once told me that his occult powers revealed to him that E2U sits above a secret underground nuclear missile site.<\/p>\n Even in his less-distorted moments, it\u2019s near impossible to get him to listen.\u00a0 If one opens the door to a dialogue with him, even by simply asking a guard\u2019s name, he will go off into a loud\u00a0 droning and rambling discussion of all manner of things.\u00a0 Unless one has special skill at defusing him, Oliver will not stop<\/em> rambling until he burns himself out, which can take up to 16 hours or more.<\/p>\n He has a particular aversion to white male guards; I suspect because they are typically the most abusive.\u00a0 That a guard working the pod is a white male is enough for Oliver to \u201cknow\u201d there\u2019s a plot in the making to \u201cjack\u201d his next meal.\u00a0 So he often preemptively goes into counterattack mode, screaming every imaginable racial insult and threat at the guard he can think of because he \u201cknows\u201d the guard is planning to \u201cjack my tray,\u201d which often leads the furious guard to do just that.\u00a0 Oliver\u2019s attacks will then include other prisoners whom he will accuse of accepting and eating his meal in a conspiracy with the guard against him.\u00a0 The unlucky prisoner thus accused is then subject to hours of being cursed and having to avoid coming to his cell door if his cell faces Oliver\u2019s.<\/p>\n Oliver might also chuck feces under his cell door, then flood the tier causing feces-contaminated water to run into others\u2019 cells to their utter outrage.\u00a0 And he\u2019s prone to go into one of his tirades at any time of the day . . . or night, whether at 2 in the afternoon or at 3 in the morning, which means if one is not accustomed to living amid bedlam, he will not enjoy a normal and healthy sleep cycle.\u00a0 This is torture in itself.<\/p>\n What is most frustrating about those like Oliver to many is that he cannot be controlled.\u00a0 He interrupts and prevents sleep, conversations, and general peace of mind.\u00a0 Powerless to escape them, his behaviors are tormenting to others; this fuels and generates their bitter animosity that for many is vindicated when guards abuse him, which many prisoners encourage and celebrate or at least watch in silent satisfaction.\u00a0 Even those who recognize and acknowledge his acute mental disorders still get sucked into arguments with him and take his behaviors personally, as though they expect a person of unsound mind to behave normally and reasonably.<\/p>\n My approach to types like Oliver is to be courteous but firm.\u00a0 When they go into their \u201cepisodes,\u201d I don\u2019t antagonize and often don\u2019t respond at all to them.\u00a0 If it\u2019s feasible, I\u2019ll divert them into conversations about their pre-solitary experiences and things that interest them.\u00a0 I\u2019ll encourage and reward their positive behaviors, and I find that sometimes when they\u2019re particularly irate, it works best to just not say anything to them for a few days.<\/p>\n I challenge their abuses by guards and am responsive to their needs\u2014I\u2019ll give them books, writing and hygiene supplies, and items that guards may vindictively deny or take from them.\u00a0 I struggle to reason on their behalves with other prisoners, and sometimes so that guards can hear and gain some insight themselves.\u00a0 I am usually one of the only people they respond positively to, and who has success in defusing their behaviors that enrage others.\u00a0 I make clear to them that their tirades and such will not prompt me to insult, mistreat, nor turn a blind eye to their mistreatment; but neither<\/em> will it gain my cooperation on anything.\u00a0 I engage and reward their positive interactions.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t take their behaviors personally.<\/p>\n Most of these prisoners crave social interaction (the very thing solitary deprives them of), and acting out is the only way of predictably provoking others to respond to them\u2014even if only negatively (which gives the appearance of their being \u201cfreaks for pain\u201d since their behaviors provoke only abuses from others, yet they keep up the same behaviors).\u00a0 Also, this pattern and inclination to seek attention and wants\u2014satisfaction by acting out\u2014leads many prison officials, mental health \u201cexperts,\u201d and others to dismiss them as fakers and malingering mental disorders.\u00a0 They are not.\u00a0 But they are struggling\u2014often desperately\u2014against being starved of the normal social and environmental stimulation that solitary causes, which is acutely torturous to the average person and causes these prisoners mental distress.<\/p>\n Because officials see these prisoners\u2019 behaviors as particularly disruptive, they are the ones least likely to be given mental health care or consideration.\u00a0 They\u2019re conveniently dismissed as pretenders or behavioral problems and left to the punitive treatments and brutal tactics of frustrated guards.<\/p>\n Most segregation or supermax prisoners live around or know prisoners like Oliver.\u00a0 Many are on a similar downward mental spiral themselves, which is the \u201cnatural\u201d result of these completely \u201cunnatural\u201d environments.\u00a0 Some cope better than others, but no one escapes harm.\u00a0 My only defense is recognizing the situation and being conscious to counteract it through both psychological and physical conditioning.<\/p>\n I still acutely recall the overwhelming sense of sensory overload I experienced for months, and had to consciously overcome, following my February 2012 release to General Population in the Oregon Department of Corrections after 17 years in solitary.\u00a0 I had to relearn how to \u201cinteract\u201d with people in an \u201copen\u201d environment, and how not to feel \u201ccrowded\u201d and often defensive in areas with many people milling around me.\u00a0 For months I suffered a sense of feeling emotionally retarded\u2014unable to readily interpret and appropriately respond to people\u2019s emotions, body language, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues. \u00a0It was like Assata Shakur described in her autobiography, where she had literally to relearn how to talk again after being held incommunicado in solitary for months.\u00a0 I also couldn\u2019t sit and write articles as I\u2019d previously done while in solitary because adjusting to being around and interacting with many people was literally mentally exhausting.<\/p>\n But as a practical person who believes in confronting challenges head on, I was conscious to identify and understand what I was experiencing and devising methods of remedying it, while I was also struggling to carry out political struggle and work amongst the prisoners around me.<\/p>\n Many people, however, don\u2019t independently have or cultivate the internal reserves nore have the needed outlets of social support, and thus don\u2019t \u201cadjust\u201d or survive long-term solitary with their minds still largely intact.<\/p>\n Few societies in history have persecuted and sought to dispose of their mentally disabled in prisons like Amerika, except the German Nazis.\u00a0 Few others have had such little compassion for their weaker members.\u00a0 I\u2019ve personally witnessed guards empty canisters of OC gas into Oliver\u2019s cell and onto his body, then leave him naked for over a week with gas still covering the cell\u2019s surfaces and turned off his in-cell water for days: solely to torture him.<\/p>\n It literally took days of my pressing guards to turn his water back on and persistently explaining to him how and that he needed to wash the gas off his body and cell for him to finally do so on one occasion.\u00a0 He believed he\u2019d been sprayed with a nerve gas captured from a chemical weapons stash of Saddam Hussein\u2019s during the Gulf War, and if he washed it off his flesh would fall off.\u00a0 So he endured days of sleeplessness because of the burning gas all over him.<\/p>\n The torture of solitary confinement must stop!\u00a0 Tens of thousands of prisoners languishing in U.S. custody from Guantanamo Bay to California, from Virginia to Oregon and Washington State have staged massive hunger strikes in protest of solitary confinement and other abuses.\u00a0 Such torture causes acute mental damage and especially targets the disadvantaged and weak.<\/p>\n Only the most insensitive society of people could, with this knowledge, sit by silently and acquiesce in such practices.<\/p>\n Join the struggle to stop the torture because every<\/em> mind is a terrible thing to waste . . . away.<\/p>\n Dare to Struggle.\u00a0 Dare to Win! Introduction Much has been written of late on the torturous effects and wide-scale use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and the fact that this torture causes mental pain and suffering, and in many cases psychosis.\u00a0 Not much has been written, however, that illustrates the forms this damage takes and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,14],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-solitary-confinement","tag-texas-prison-conditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}TDCJ\u2014Seedbed of Psychosis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
. . . And Here\u2019s Ellery<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A Sound Response to Unsound Minds<\/strong><\/h3>\n
None Are Unaffected<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What Manner of Society is This?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nAll Power to the People!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"