Quotations from System-Impacted People
Voices from Solitary Confinement: CA Prisoner Human Rights Movement 2011-2016
"I spent nine months in the SHU at the California Institution for Women in 1999. You don’t experience human contact other than being handcuffed and escorted places. My visits were non-contact…behind the glass. …there would be times that I would wake up at night, because the cells are so small, and I would…feel like…I couldn’t breathe. I used to look at all the little holes in the bricks and try to connect them. You have no control of the temperature of the water. When it was too hot, it was like torture. Federal law prohibits solitary confinement of chimpanzees as social beings and there are organic egg 'certified humane' standards [for] chickens…Yet we keep human beings confined in cement and steel for decades…depriving them of human contact and natural sunlight."
-Dolores Canales
"I spent years in and out of solitary in California. I felt myself literally losing my mind. I started hallucinating…I started hearing voices, I felt real, real alone and the depression was just beginning to close in on me."
-Jerry Elster
"My older brother Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa/Ronnie Dewberry… has been held in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison since 1989, a circumstance that is truly cruel and unusual punishment. When I heard about the inhumane conditions in the SHU, I broke down crying uncontrollably. Ronnie lives in a cramped, windowless cell for at least 22 1/2 hours a day. He is let out of his cell only to exercise alone in a concrete enclosure and to shower three times weekly. He is allowed no phone calls… His food is often cold and rotten. Ronnie has…a severe Vitamin D deficiency. He also suffers from high blood-pressure and has at times been denied his medication. He says that being in the SHU feels like psychological torture. It is traumatizing knowing that a loved one is suffering …The drive is almost 8 hours…and travel and lodging are very expensive. ...After the long, costly trip, we are only permitted to visit for 1-2 hours, through a piece of glass."
-Marie Levin
"…in Pelican Bay solitary confinement…I’ve suffered every torturous physical and psychological attack…We have wasted away here…while our families suffer…psychological torture, and many have already passed on.” I was labeled a Black gang member and put in SHU for reading a book by George Jackson. “I was told off the record that I am in solitary…for my political beliefs. …This is not a unique story. Many…are held in…solitary… indefinitely for not one offense, for 10 to 40 [plus] years."
-Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa
"I initiated a lawsuit against Governor Brown. In California, if you’re put in the SHU for killing someone, you get sent there for a maximum of three to five years. If you’re a validated gang member, you can count on spending the rest of your life in the SHU."
-Todd Ashker
Find exact quote:
Correctional officers, not judges, put people in solitary without 14th Amendment due process. To get out, one must “debrief,” accuse someone else of gang affiliation, snitch to end your torture and start theirs. This is recognized internationally as unreliable evidence.
"I’m Executive Director of TGI Justice, the Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project. …inside the prison system and being transgender, a lot of times you’re automatically placed in [Security] Housing Units allegedly for your safety. …the SHU…further exacerbates any mental health issues that [we] might have."
-Janetta Johnson
"I am a member of the Youth Justice Coalition. …when I was 18, I was placed into solitary confinement for 2 weeks – 24 hours a day. I have epilepsy and I had a seizure. The…officers thought I was playing and they put me into solitary... From the moment I was put into 'the hole' I felt isolated and depressed. … After a few days in solitary confinement I started to feel like I was going crazy. …If a person did not already have mental health problems before coming into solitary…, spending enough time in there, you would lose your sanity. …This was one of the worst experiences in my life."
-Dayvon Williams
“You weren't allowed to talk to anybody after lights-out. The guard would open your door in the morning—at that point, you wouldn't know if you'd been caught or not. Then he would shoot you in the face with mace. He'd close the door, let you sizzle for an hour, then come back and take you to the shower, and you'd be grateful and everybody would be happy. I was 16. My first stretch in solitary was supposed to be four months, but my program was reset hundreds of times, because it would happen every week. That was how I did four years.”
-Steven Czifra
"Torture is unequivocally unacceptable under any circumstances. But what has been unfolding in the SHU's is a systematic use of torture by the state for years and decades. Torture of both minds and bodies, of many thousands of prisoners, to break them. To either have them die in long-term solitary confinement or be driven insane through the psychological torture of years and decades of isolation."
-Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) Short Corridor Collective, housed in the Short Corridor part of the Pelican Bay SHU
"In 2011 my son, Johnny Martinez, mailed me a letter announcing a California prisoner hunger strike. I sent it to the Governor, California Department of Corrections, the media, and prisoners' rights organizations."
-Dolores Canales
"The five core demands are just human things that you and I would expect…: End group punishment and administrative abuse; abolish the debriefing policy and modify gang status criteria; comply with the U.S. Commission recommendations to end long-term solitary confinement; provide adequate and nutritious food; create and expand constructive programming."
-Marie Levin
"When the prisoners first went on hunger strike in 2011, I hated the idea. I was already worried enough; I didn’t want to think about them starving. When I told Johnny that, he looked at me and said, ‘Mom, what else are we supposed to do?’ I realized he was right; they had no other way to change things. Throughout history sacrifice has always been the only way for the people at the bottom of society to make change. But the longer it went on, the more difficult it was—would all this suffering amount to anything? Would they let them die? I had to admit to myself that that could happen. …California left people [in the SHU] for 20, 30, 40 years…I…realized that they had no intentions of letting my son out and that we had to do something."
-Dolores Canales
"…[California Department of Corrections]…and [the] Pelican Bay SHU warden…know that our hunger strike is about human rights and the abuse and physical and psychological torture of prisoners being held in solitary confinement indefinitely – i.e., civil death. …Our Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement is a struggle to be treated like decent human beings…"
-Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa
"In our first and second hunger strike actions in 2011 …6,500 and 12,000 prisoners participated. We succeeded in gaining worldwide attention and support…"
-CA Prisoner Human Rights Movement representative
"We families realized we needed to form a group and keep organizing. So we started California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC). Now we drive up together…a busload of us, to visit our husbands, boyfriends, sons, grandfathers. Some people haven’t been able to afford the trip for years-sometimes they’re too sick [or] scared to make the trip alone-one mom hadn’t seen her son for a decade before she found CFASC. So we do it together. For these men, a visit from their families can totally turn their lives around. ...We take a lawyer to do workshops en route."
-Dolores Canales
"…Greetings from the entire P[elican] B[ay] S[tate] P[rison]-SHU Short Corridor Hunger Strike Representatives. We are hereby presenting this mutual agreement on behalf of all racial groups here in the PBSP-SHU Corridor. … If we really want to bring about substantive meaningful changes to the [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] …system… now is the time to for us to collectively seize this moment in time, and put an end to more than 20-30 years of hostilities between our racial groups."
Therefore, beginning on October 10, 2012, all hostilities between our racial groups…in SHU, Ad-Seg, General Population, and County Jails, will officially cease. …exhaust all diplomatic means to settle…disputes; do not allow personal, individual issues to escalate into racial group issues!!
…forcing CDCR to…return to a rehabilitative-type system of meaningful programs/privileges…via peaceful protest …We can no longer play into…old manipulative divide and conquer tactics!!! …We can no longer allow CDCR to use us against each other for their benefit!! Because the reality is that collectively, we are an empowered, mighty force, that can positively change this entire corrupt system into a system that actually benefits prisoners, and thereby, the public as a whole…"
-Pelican Bay State Prison-SHU Short Corridor Collective Hunger Strike Representatives: Todd Ashker…Arturo Castellanos…Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry)…Antonio Guillen…And the Representatives Body… [of all racial/ethnic and geographic groups]: The Agreement to End Hostilities, August 12, 2012
"On July 8, 2013 we started our third hunger strike, in which 30,000 [California] prisoners [and 100’s nationwide] participated…resulted in greater worldwide exposure, support and condemnation of the CDCR!” Over 100 prisoners stayed on hunger strike for 60 days.
This settlement represents a monumental victory for prisoners and an important step toward our goal of ending solitary confinement in California, and across the country. California’s agreement to abandon indeterminate SHU confinement based on gang affiliation demonstrates the power of unity and collective action. This victory was achieved by the efforts of people in prison, their families and loved ones, lawyers, and outside supporters.
Our movement rests on a foundation of unity: our Agreement to End Hostilities. It is our hope that this groundbreaking agreement to end the violence between the various ethnic groups in California prisons will inspire not only state prisoners, but also jail detainees, county prisoners and our communities on the street, to oppose ethnic and racial violence.
From this foundation, the prisoners’ human rights movement is awakening the conscience of the nation to recognize that we are fellow human beings. As the recent statements of President Obama and of Justice Kennedy illustrate, the nation is turning against solitary confinement."
-Ashker v. Governor of California federal class action lawsuit prisoner plaintiffs, September 2015
"High CDCR officials privately admitted to me that they know Sitawa is in a political group, not a gang. My brother was released from SHU and in early November 2015 we had our first contact visit without the plexiglass between us. We were able to touch for the first time in 31 years! Many of the men who have been released from the SHU are peacemakers, and they are helping to bring about the decrease in violence in the prison General Population… High CDC officials have told my brother that the Agreement to End Hostilities has greatly decreased violence in California prisons."
-Marie Levin
"On May 18, 2014, CCWF instituted a…check procedure…Intended to decrease suicides, a guard checks the status of each prisoner… every ½ hour. …The noise from main doors opening and closing every ½ hour, foot stomping, banging the pipes on the doors…, beeping… and guards shining flashlight[s] into prisoners’ faces as [we] are trying to sleep, turn so-called [welfare] checks into sleep deprivation! Prolonged sleep deprivation is recognized as a form of torture, and can lead to suicidal thinking and/or tendencies."
-Sandi Nieves, in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) Condemned Unit, death row
"20 of us on CCWF death row filed a complaint in June, 2014. The U.S. Federal Courts have said, 'Sleep is critical to human existence, and conditions which prevent sleep have been held to violate the Eighth Amendment...' Sleep deprivation causes high blood pressure, seizures, uncontrolled blood sugar levels, stress, depression, etc. …Flashing lights, banging on doors and lack of sleep have caused some of us to go into seizures. Some of us have had to raise/change meds just to cope, because of the monitoring/banging/ beeping/flashlights… We’re surprised nobody’s has a heart attack yet... To know that we have to exist/live under these conditions for the rest of our lives is overwhelming."
"This is torture. We are being emotionally, mentally and physically battered by the security checks throughout the nights."
"I’m in Pelican Bay SHU, where these security/welfare checks started August 2nd, 2015. '…t[he] call to ‘End Hostilities'…it's something I experience here with my fellow neighbors…from different areas of California each day. The prisoners’ collective spirit is alive! …I believe this is something that the administration feels, and fears! …I think [this] is the reason they have implemented the security/welfare checks!! …coincidentally…the time that the settlement was done on the Ashker case. …they're killing us with these…Welfare Checks. …We really are suffering right now and I can assure you that this is worse than the hunger strikes."
"…the security/welfare check procedure…is intentionally inflicting cruel and unusual punishment… there is a reasonable probability that life-threatening injuries and/or even death is inevitable, as medical symptoms are only worsening but not being treated."
-John Martinez
"I visited my son Johnny in the Pelican Bay SHU…and he is going crazy from not being able to sleep. I’ve never seen him like this. He couldn’t think and he fell asleep while I was talking with him from across the glass partition. I co-signed a complaint to the UN: 'Dear Mr. Méndez…United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment… We request that you investigate this matter…and call upon appropriate United States authorities to take all necessary steps to cease cruel and inhuman prison practices that interfere with these prisoners’ human right to sleep.' "
-Dolores Canales
"The cruel punishment of solitary confinement must be eliminated. It would be much better to spend time in effective programs that focus on helping people to grow and change, than on investing in the torture in isolation. Those most impacted by solitary confinement and our families must be recognized as experts on this issue. Isolation erased our humanity! But we are fighting back so that no one can erase our memories."
-Dayvon Williams
"We prisoner plaintiffs settled our class action lawsuit and ended indeterminate solitary SHU sentences in California. We celebrate this victory while, at the same time, we recognize that achieving our goal of fundamentally transforming the criminal justice system and stopping the practice of warehousing people in prison will be a protracted struggle. We are fully committed to that effort, and invite you to join us."
-Ashker v. California Governor federal class action lawsuit prisoner plaintiffs
"We will be with the prisoners...in the courts, in the legislature, and out in the community. We will use every venue available to us, UNTIL THE TORTURE IS ENDED."
-Marie Levin
Voices from Solitary Confinement in the United States
Dedicated to the memory of Kalief Browder, may he rest in peace and power.
The following testimonies are from LOUISIANA ON LOCKDOWN: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It, published in June 2019, by Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans.
"We are treated like slaves in the Louisiana prisons. We still have slave rules in Louisiana prisons. Every day Monday through Friday, they make us all go to the field in the hot sun and pick beans and potatoes. All the inmates whom mostly be black. And then they’ll have the white correction officer standing over us with a rifle calling us all types of monkeys and ni****s."
-Malik
“The cell I’m currently in is extremely tiny. I can’t stretch my arms out completely width-wise. Length wise—I take two normal steps from the gate and I’m at the toilet. There is no table, no stool. The lighting is poor. A year and a half and no end in sight of my segregation. I have nine more years before I’m released to the streets, I’m stagnant. I’m being warehoused in segregation instead of being rehabilitated in population. DOC officials, prison officials don’t care if we’re rehabilitated or not. They aim to dehumanize us. It’s psychological abuse.”
-Stephanie
"The windows are tinted with a film and are difficult to see out of. The windows are up high, about three feet away from the cell gates. The windows do not open; they’re sealed shut."
Other Voices
"I went in solitary confinement a number of times. I probably did…a year and a half to almost 2 years intermittently. Oftentimes you wind up in solitary for very small, miniscule infractions of institutional rules… I remember one incident…they charged me with having an excessive amount of sheets in a box in my cell. It was illegal for you to have more than 2 sets of sheets at a time. There’s rules and regulations in prison for everything, and you step outside of that line, next thing you know, you’re in SHU, for what? For not following directions…not eating all of your food, excessive art material, looking at a correction officer…it’s almost designed as if to make sure, no matter what you do, that you’re gonna get a ticket somewhere for something… non-security threatening, non-personnel reasons, and the bad part about it is they wind up in there for decades."
-Victor Pate, New York State Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC)
The American Friends Service Committee: From The Inside Out: A Report by the Prison Watch Community Oversight Initiative, Issue 9, researches youth in adult prisons. We hear from and about Harry Jackson and Kalief Browder:
Voices from Solitary Confinement: CA Prisoner Human Rights Movement 2011-2016
"I spent nine months in the SHU at the California Institution for Women in 1999. You don’t experience human contact other than being handcuffed and escorted places. My visits were non-contact…behind the glass. …there would be times that I would wake up at night, because the cells are so small, and I would…feel like…I couldn’t breathe. I used to look at all the little holes in the bricks and try to connect them. You have no control of the temperature of the water. When it was too hot, it was like torture. Federal law prohibits solitary confinement of chimpanzees as social beings and there are organic egg 'certified humane' standards [for] chickens…Yet we keep human beings confined in cement and steel for decades…depriving them of human contact and natural sunlight."
-Dolores Canales
"I spent years in and out of solitary in California. I felt myself literally losing my mind. I started hallucinating…I started hearing voices, I felt real, real alone and the depression was just beginning to close in on me."
-Jerry Elster
"My older brother Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa/Ronnie Dewberry… has been held in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison since 1989, a circumstance that is truly cruel and unusual punishment. When I heard about the inhumane conditions in the SHU, I broke down crying uncontrollably. Ronnie lives in a cramped, windowless cell for at least 22 1/2 hours a day. He is let out of his cell only to exercise alone in a concrete enclosure and to shower three times weekly. He is allowed no phone calls… His food is often cold and rotten. Ronnie has…a severe Vitamin D deficiency. He also suffers from high blood-pressure and has at times been denied his medication. He says that being in the SHU feels like psychological torture. It is traumatizing knowing that a loved one is suffering …The drive is almost 8 hours…and travel and lodging are very expensive. ...After the long, costly trip, we are only permitted to visit for 1-2 hours, through a piece of glass."
-Marie Levin
"…in Pelican Bay solitary confinement…I’ve suffered every torturous physical and psychological attack…We have wasted away here…while our families suffer…psychological torture, and many have already passed on.” I was labeled a Black gang member and put in SHU for reading a book by George Jackson. “I was told off the record that I am in solitary…for my political beliefs. …This is not a unique story. Many…are held in…solitary… indefinitely for not one offense, for 10 to 40 [plus] years."
-Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa
"I initiated a lawsuit against Governor Brown. In California, if you’re put in the SHU for killing someone, you get sent there for a maximum of three to five years. If you’re a validated gang member, you can count on spending the rest of your life in the SHU."
-Todd Ashker
Find exact quote:
Correctional officers, not judges, put people in solitary without 14th Amendment due process. To get out, one must “debrief,” accuse someone else of gang affiliation, snitch to end your torture and start theirs. This is recognized internationally as unreliable evidence.
"I’m Executive Director of TGI Justice, the Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project. …inside the prison system and being transgender, a lot of times you’re automatically placed in [Security] Housing Units allegedly for your safety. …the SHU…further exacerbates any mental health issues that [we] might have."
-Janetta Johnson
"I am a member of the Youth Justice Coalition. …when I was 18, I was placed into solitary confinement for 2 weeks – 24 hours a day. I have epilepsy and I had a seizure. The…officers thought I was playing and they put me into solitary... From the moment I was put into 'the hole' I felt isolated and depressed. … After a few days in solitary confinement I started to feel like I was going crazy. …If a person did not already have mental health problems before coming into solitary…, spending enough time in there, you would lose your sanity. …This was one of the worst experiences in my life."
-Dayvon Williams
“You weren't allowed to talk to anybody after lights-out. The guard would open your door in the morning—at that point, you wouldn't know if you'd been caught or not. Then he would shoot you in the face with mace. He'd close the door, let you sizzle for an hour, then come back and take you to the shower, and you'd be grateful and everybody would be happy. I was 16. My first stretch in solitary was supposed to be four months, but my program was reset hundreds of times, because it would happen every week. That was how I did four years.”
-Steven Czifra
"Torture is unequivocally unacceptable under any circumstances. But what has been unfolding in the SHU's is a systematic use of torture by the state for years and decades. Torture of both minds and bodies, of many thousands of prisoners, to break them. To either have them die in long-term solitary confinement or be driven insane through the psychological torture of years and decades of isolation."
-Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) Short Corridor Collective, housed in the Short Corridor part of the Pelican Bay SHU
"In 2011 my son, Johnny Martinez, mailed me a letter announcing a California prisoner hunger strike. I sent it to the Governor, California Department of Corrections, the media, and prisoners' rights organizations."
-Dolores Canales
"The five core demands are just human things that you and I would expect…: End group punishment and administrative abuse; abolish the debriefing policy and modify gang status criteria; comply with the U.S. Commission recommendations to end long-term solitary confinement; provide adequate and nutritious food; create and expand constructive programming."
-Marie Levin
"When the prisoners first went on hunger strike in 2011, I hated the idea. I was already worried enough; I didn’t want to think about them starving. When I told Johnny that, he looked at me and said, ‘Mom, what else are we supposed to do?’ I realized he was right; they had no other way to change things. Throughout history sacrifice has always been the only way for the people at the bottom of society to make change. But the longer it went on, the more difficult it was—would all this suffering amount to anything? Would they let them die? I had to admit to myself that that could happen. …California left people [in the SHU] for 20, 30, 40 years…I…realized that they had no intentions of letting my son out and that we had to do something."
-Dolores Canales
"…[California Department of Corrections]…and [the] Pelican Bay SHU warden…know that our hunger strike is about human rights and the abuse and physical and psychological torture of prisoners being held in solitary confinement indefinitely – i.e., civil death. …Our Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement is a struggle to be treated like decent human beings…"
-Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa
"In our first and second hunger strike actions in 2011 …6,500 and 12,000 prisoners participated. We succeeded in gaining worldwide attention and support…"
-CA Prisoner Human Rights Movement representative
"We families realized we needed to form a group and keep organizing. So we started California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC). Now we drive up together…a busload of us, to visit our husbands, boyfriends, sons, grandfathers. Some people haven’t been able to afford the trip for years-sometimes they’re too sick [or] scared to make the trip alone-one mom hadn’t seen her son for a decade before she found CFASC. So we do it together. For these men, a visit from their families can totally turn their lives around. ...We take a lawyer to do workshops en route."
-Dolores Canales
"…Greetings from the entire P[elican] B[ay] S[tate] P[rison]-SHU Short Corridor Hunger Strike Representatives. We are hereby presenting this mutual agreement on behalf of all racial groups here in the PBSP-SHU Corridor. … If we really want to bring about substantive meaningful changes to the [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] …system… now is the time to for us to collectively seize this moment in time, and put an end to more than 20-30 years of hostilities between our racial groups."
Therefore, beginning on October 10, 2012, all hostilities between our racial groups…in SHU, Ad-Seg, General Population, and County Jails, will officially cease. …exhaust all diplomatic means to settle…disputes; do not allow personal, individual issues to escalate into racial group issues!!
…forcing CDCR to…return to a rehabilitative-type system of meaningful programs/privileges…via peaceful protest …We can no longer play into…old manipulative divide and conquer tactics!!! …We can no longer allow CDCR to use us against each other for their benefit!! Because the reality is that collectively, we are an empowered, mighty force, that can positively change this entire corrupt system into a system that actually benefits prisoners, and thereby, the public as a whole…"
-Pelican Bay State Prison-SHU Short Corridor Collective Hunger Strike Representatives: Todd Ashker…Arturo Castellanos…Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry)…Antonio Guillen…And the Representatives Body… [of all racial/ethnic and geographic groups]: The Agreement to End Hostilities, August 12, 2012
"On July 8, 2013 we started our third hunger strike, in which 30,000 [California] prisoners [and 100’s nationwide] participated…resulted in greater worldwide exposure, support and condemnation of the CDCR!” Over 100 prisoners stayed on hunger strike for 60 days.
This settlement represents a monumental victory for prisoners and an important step toward our goal of ending solitary confinement in California, and across the country. California’s agreement to abandon indeterminate SHU confinement based on gang affiliation demonstrates the power of unity and collective action. This victory was achieved by the efforts of people in prison, their families and loved ones, lawyers, and outside supporters.
Our movement rests on a foundation of unity: our Agreement to End Hostilities. It is our hope that this groundbreaking agreement to end the violence between the various ethnic groups in California prisons will inspire not only state prisoners, but also jail detainees, county prisoners and our communities on the street, to oppose ethnic and racial violence.
From this foundation, the prisoners’ human rights movement is awakening the conscience of the nation to recognize that we are fellow human beings. As the recent statements of President Obama and of Justice Kennedy illustrate, the nation is turning against solitary confinement."
-Ashker v. Governor of California federal class action lawsuit prisoner plaintiffs, September 2015
"High CDCR officials privately admitted to me that they know Sitawa is in a political group, not a gang. My brother was released from SHU and in early November 2015 we had our first contact visit without the plexiglass between us. We were able to touch for the first time in 31 years! Many of the men who have been released from the SHU are peacemakers, and they are helping to bring about the decrease in violence in the prison General Population… High CDC officials have told my brother that the Agreement to End Hostilities has greatly decreased violence in California prisons."
-Marie Levin
"On May 18, 2014, CCWF instituted a…check procedure…Intended to decrease suicides, a guard checks the status of each prisoner… every ½ hour. …The noise from main doors opening and closing every ½ hour, foot stomping, banging the pipes on the doors…, beeping… and guards shining flashlight[s] into prisoners’ faces as [we] are trying to sleep, turn so-called [welfare] checks into sleep deprivation! Prolonged sleep deprivation is recognized as a form of torture, and can lead to suicidal thinking and/or tendencies."
-Sandi Nieves, in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) Condemned Unit, death row
"20 of us on CCWF death row filed a complaint in June, 2014. The U.S. Federal Courts have said, 'Sleep is critical to human existence, and conditions which prevent sleep have been held to violate the Eighth Amendment...' Sleep deprivation causes high blood pressure, seizures, uncontrolled blood sugar levels, stress, depression, etc. …Flashing lights, banging on doors and lack of sleep have caused some of us to go into seizures. Some of us have had to raise/change meds just to cope, because of the monitoring/banging/ beeping/flashlights… We’re surprised nobody’s has a heart attack yet... To know that we have to exist/live under these conditions for the rest of our lives is overwhelming."
"This is torture. We are being emotionally, mentally and physically battered by the security checks throughout the nights."
"I’m in Pelican Bay SHU, where these security/welfare checks started August 2nd, 2015. '…t[he] call to ‘End Hostilities'…it's something I experience here with my fellow neighbors…from different areas of California each day. The prisoners’ collective spirit is alive! …I believe this is something that the administration feels, and fears! …I think [this] is the reason they have implemented the security/welfare checks!! …coincidentally…the time that the settlement was done on the Ashker case. …they're killing us with these…Welfare Checks. …We really are suffering right now and I can assure you that this is worse than the hunger strikes."
"…the security/welfare check procedure…is intentionally inflicting cruel and unusual punishment… there is a reasonable probability that life-threatening injuries and/or even death is inevitable, as medical symptoms are only worsening but not being treated."
-John Martinez
"I visited my son Johnny in the Pelican Bay SHU…and he is going crazy from not being able to sleep. I’ve never seen him like this. He couldn’t think and he fell asleep while I was talking with him from across the glass partition. I co-signed a complaint to the UN: 'Dear Mr. Méndez…United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment… We request that you investigate this matter…and call upon appropriate United States authorities to take all necessary steps to cease cruel and inhuman prison practices that interfere with these prisoners’ human right to sleep.' "
-Dolores Canales
"The cruel punishment of solitary confinement must be eliminated. It would be much better to spend time in effective programs that focus on helping people to grow and change, than on investing in the torture in isolation. Those most impacted by solitary confinement and our families must be recognized as experts on this issue. Isolation erased our humanity! But we are fighting back so that no one can erase our memories."
-Dayvon Williams
"We prisoner plaintiffs settled our class action lawsuit and ended indeterminate solitary SHU sentences in California. We celebrate this victory while, at the same time, we recognize that achieving our goal of fundamentally transforming the criminal justice system and stopping the practice of warehousing people in prison will be a protracted struggle. We are fully committed to that effort, and invite you to join us."
-Ashker v. California Governor federal class action lawsuit prisoner plaintiffs
"We will be with the prisoners...in the courts, in the legislature, and out in the community. We will use every venue available to us, UNTIL THE TORTURE IS ENDED."
-Marie Levin
Voices from Solitary Confinement in the United States
Dedicated to the memory of Kalief Browder, may he rest in peace and power.
The following testimonies are from LOUISIANA ON LOCKDOWN: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It, published in June 2019, by Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans.
"We are treated like slaves in the Louisiana prisons. We still have slave rules in Louisiana prisons. Every day Monday through Friday, they make us all go to the field in the hot sun and pick beans and potatoes. All the inmates whom mostly be black. And then they’ll have the white correction officer standing over us with a rifle calling us all types of monkeys and ni****s."
-Malik
“The cell I’m currently in is extremely tiny. I can’t stretch my arms out completely width-wise. Length wise—I take two normal steps from the gate and I’m at the toilet. There is no table, no stool. The lighting is poor. A year and a half and no end in sight of my segregation. I have nine more years before I’m released to the streets, I’m stagnant. I’m being warehoused in segregation instead of being rehabilitated in population. DOC officials, prison officials don’t care if we’re rehabilitated or not. They aim to dehumanize us. It’s psychological abuse.”
-Stephanie
"The windows are tinted with a film and are difficult to see out of. The windows are up high, about three feet away from the cell gates. The windows do not open; they’re sealed shut."
Other Voices
"I went in solitary confinement a number of times. I probably did…a year and a half to almost 2 years intermittently. Oftentimes you wind up in solitary for very small, miniscule infractions of institutional rules… I remember one incident…they charged me with having an excessive amount of sheets in a box in my cell. It was illegal for you to have more than 2 sets of sheets at a time. There’s rules and regulations in prison for everything, and you step outside of that line, next thing you know, you’re in SHU, for what? For not following directions…not eating all of your food, excessive art material, looking at a correction officer…it’s almost designed as if to make sure, no matter what you do, that you’re gonna get a ticket somewhere for something… non-security threatening, non-personnel reasons, and the bad part about it is they wind up in there for decades."
-Victor Pate, New York State Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC)
The American Friends Service Committee: From The Inside Out: A Report by the Prison Watch Community Oversight Initiative, Issue 9, researches youth in adult prisons. We hear from and about Harry Jackson and Kalief Browder: