CV: Let’s talk about the effects of cell conditions in the so-called “normal” prison environment. What does it feel like to go to bed in prison every night?

EPJ: Prisoners sleep on hard mattresses that are similar to wrestling mats. At many facilities they are sleeping with their mattresses atop bricks which feels like sleeping in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk. This creates chronic back pain and other problems with their hips and shoulders. Obviously the longer this occurs the more the pain and discomfort is exacerbated.

Some prisoners are sleeping in open dorm settings with dozens of other prisoners where people are constantly talking or making noise. There are also prisoners sleeping in the same double-bunked cells with strangers they have never met before (or people they don’t get along with) in an area that measures the floor dimensions of a queen size mattress or average home bathroom.

Sleep deprived people are constantly exhausted. According to William Kilgore, PhD, professor of psychiatry, psychology, and medical imaging at the University of Arizona, too little sleep can compromise people’s ability to “tap the brakes on the emotional centers of their brain.”

This can affect our powers of emotional control and result in people overreacting in situations. They become inclined to feeling frustrated, hurt, and anxious, and can experience an increase of the symptoms of depression and paranoia. The prefrontal cortex also begins to shut down executive functioning areas of the brain when people do not receive sufficient sleep.

I mention this because of how it can deeply disrupt lives physiologically in prison. This problem fosters a culture of chaos and confusion among thousands of people already experiencing tremendous daily stress. And, when paired with being forced to co-exist under these circumstances, there is little wonder that it contributes to so many problems and dysfunctional behavior. While it may not be the source of all prison problems, it is certainly a contributing factor that receives little attention.

CV: You mention people that a prisoner may not “get along with.” What happens in this event?

EPJ: Prisoners can request a cell change, but such requests are frequently ignored. Some prisons allow limited numbers of prisoner requested cell moves per week, some only allow a prisoner to request them every six months, and some prisons do not accommodate prisoners with requested cell moves at all.

Despite staff members being aware of escalating tensions between prisoners, I have seen instances where staff told prisoners the only way they would receive a cell move is to fight. Then, if prisoners refused to resolve their conflict and fought, staff would place them in solitary confinement as punishment.

This has not only resulted in fights, it has also resulted in prisoners becoming victims of serious assault by their cellmates, and occasionally a prisoner even being killed. All this could be avoided by attempting to de-escalate conflicts and allowing periodic cell moves, rather than planting dissension and chaos.

CV: On the other side of the coin, you have friends you’d like to keep track of through the prison system? How do you do that?

EPJ: When I came to prison in 1989 we were allowed to write each other via U.S. Mail, but not anymore. The Michigan Department of Corrections disallowed it in 2009 in an effort to reduce the amount of mail that mailrooms had to process. They also claimed it would make the prison system safer. Their effort to reduce mail was successful because the majority of mail received at prisons was prisoner-to-prisoner correspondence.

The only way prisoners hear about other prisoners at other facilities today is when prisoners transfer to the prison they are at and share information with them about the prison they just left from and mention who was there that they mutually know. Often prisoners have not seen some of their friends in years, sometimes decades.

After hearing about the events that have occurred in their own lives when reuniting again, after not having seen each other since the last facility they were previously at together, prisoners always exchange stories about other prisoners they mutually know, so they can learn about them as well.

Prisoners can write to each other’s family members or friends to check on each other or find out what the other is up to, but they are disallowed from writing to each other directly. Some prisoners also call each other’s family members or friends to check on them. This is not uncommon since family members of prisoners who may know each other for several years often meet or begin communicating as well.

CV: When you were allowed to write to other prisoners, how did you use that option?

EPJ: I used to write several letters to prisoners each week. After I had been imprisoned a few years and met a lot of different people I began receiving a large volume of mail. Some weeks it could be a couple dozen letters from prisons all over the state. I always tried to stay caught up with the mail, but would fall behind because I was also writing friends and family in society as well.

One reason I would receive so much prisoner correspondence was because I communicated with people who were doing positive work with other prisoners throughout the system. We would update each other about what we were doing, the progress we were making, and even share program proposals we drafted that were successful.

We did the latter so we could make similar proposals at the prisons we were at, that may not have the program(s) yet. It was very helpful to me early on when I was still learning to draft proposals for things and could use some guidance. After a few years of experience and receiving advice I became one of the most successful proposal writers in the prison system.

We would also study different books together and share knowledge we gained about different subjects we were learning about at the time. This was one way I met a lot of influential people and thought leaders throughout the system. We would introduce each other to people we knew who were studying the same kind of information, and share our thoughts.

CV: One of the ways you still communicate is through making phone calls. How is that different from, let’s say, a college student picking up the phone to call home?

EPJ: Prisoners must deposit money into their phone debit account to place phone calls, or the person they are attempting to call must deposit money on their own phone debit account with the phone company that is contracted to monitor prisoner phone calls in Michigan. Phone calls cost $0.16 per minute and calls are limited to 15 minutes per phone call. A person can hang up and call the same person back or make additional calls.

There are usually a few phones available in the housing units for prisoner use. Because most housing units house approximately 200 or more prisoners in them, it means most people must go to the prison yard to make phone calls outside where additional phones are available.

I make phone calls every day and have spent countless hours standing out in the sweltering heat, freezing cold, or rain, making phone calls to family and friends during the time I have been imprisoned.

CV: And that’s the so-called “normal side” of prison. But you also have experience of the other side. For instance, you’ve been in solitary confinement at different times. What are the conditions in this kind of housing and why is it used?

EPJ: Prisons use solitary confinement as an instrument of punishment and control when prisoners are found guilty of violating prison rules. It is also used to segregate prisoners from the general population who may be under investigation by prison administrators for some reason.

Prisoners in solitary confinement are housed alone in a cell where they must remain 23 hours a day. The only things inside the cell when a prisoner enters are a bed, sink, toilet, a small metal or concrete flat surface bolted to the wall to be used as a writing surface, and sometimes a small mirror on the wall. Prisoners are not allowed to possess any personal belongings other than a few pair of underwear, socks, and T-shirts. They are also not allowed to possess electronic devices like their TV, MP3 media player, or radio. If they are kept in solitary confinement for more than 10 days, however, they are allowed to possess a TV if they own one.

A person in solitary confinement is only released for an hour of yard a few times each week, and allowed showers three times per week. They also receive their meals in food trays which are handed to them through a small slot of the cell door. The only times staff open the door slot is to give prisoners their meals, deliver mail, or handcuff them.

Unlike the rest of the prison population, inmates in solitary housing units can’t make phone calls to their family or send them email messages. The only way they can let their family members and friends know they are in solitary confinement is by communicating with them through letters via U.S. Mail. Additionally, prisoners who receive visits from their loved ones in solitary confinement must visit with people through a thick glass window in a small non-contact visiting booth. They are not allowed to have contact visits; and the visits are also restricted to a couple of hours because of the limited number of available non-contact visit booths.

CV: Now, when you talk about having an hour in the yard, you’re not talking about normally walking around an open prison yard.

EPJ: No. Prisoners must place their wrists through a slot in their cell door to be handcuffed and then they are escorted by two staff members to individual yard cages. The yard cages resemble large dog cages that are wrapped and covered with hard, inflexible metal fencing. Once escorted to the yard cages, prisoners are locked inside a cage, unhandcuffed through a slot in the cage door, and allowed to walk around or exercise in the cage for an hour.

For showers, the same process occurs. The difference is that the prisoner is escorted by two staff members to a shower that is located inside a locked cage. Each shower door has a slot on it for staff to use to handcuff and unhandcuff the prisoner through. Prisoners are given five minutes to take their shower.

CV: What is the longest time you’ve spent in solitary confinement, and how would you describe that experience?

EPJ: The most time I have continuously spent in solitary confinement was six months. Altogether the combined total amount of time I have spent in solitary confinement throughout my entire incarceration is one year. I know some prisoners who have spent several years in solitary confinement and one I met who has been there nearly 40 years. (The latter was told by prison administrators his life would expire in solitary confinement.)

Solitary confinement is commonly called “the hole,” but the word doesn’t describe it. I would have to call it a “house of horrors” or a “hellhole.”  If you buried a human being in a living tomb and watched them gasp for air for weeks, months, or years, you’d have solitary confinement.

In the “hole,” prisoners are housed alone in their cells, so the only way they can have contact with others or communicate with anyone around them is by yelling through door cracks, talking through the holes in electrical outlets, or yelling through the heating or ventilation system to their neighbor. Prisoners cannot communicate through any windows that may be in the back of their cells because they are bolted closed, encased behind a locked covering, or the window has no openings at all and is covered with thick steel bars. These images constantly whisper the psychological message, “You’re trapped and there’s no way out of here.”

Feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, and isolation grow to be overwhelming. People in solitary confinement often stay up day and night yelling and pounding on their cell doors; or carrying on some form of disruptive activity, such as triggering the fire sprinkler to go off so they can flood their cell with water and release it under their door into the hallway. Under the stress of sensory deprivation, some become disoriented, experience hallucinations, develop depression, and/or other forms of mental illness. Many also harm themselves (e.g., cut themselves or attempt suicide). Hearing the constant pounding on cell walls and doors, and deafening shouts and screams of other prisoners day and night, causes people to doubt themselves. It makes them question whether or not they can survive these conditions designed to break their spirit and rattle their core because so many others around them are grappling with their sanity.

One night in a solitary confinement unit I remember finally dozing off sometime in the middle of the night after the exhaustion of trying to sleep and being awakened over and over by the noise around me. Just as I fell asleep I heard a prisoner start screaming, “I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore, I’m gonna kill myself!”

A short time later staff handcuffed the prisoner through his door slot, took him to a soundproof suicide watch cell with a camera in it so they could monitor him more closely, and replaced his prison jumpsuit with a gown made of thick, hard, rip-proof material. He was then left to sleep on a mattress on the floor without a sheet or blanket for a few days.

One day a prisoner cut open his stomach and pulled out his intestines. Once staff discovered it they extracted him from the cell and he was rushed to the emergency room. The thing about solitary confinement units is that staff only make rounds every half-hour so he could have laid there for an entire half-hour before they saw the self-harm he committed.

At a prison in Jackson (in 2006) a prisoner who was strapped to his bed under suicide watch was left in his urine and feces where he eventually died.

I have also observed when some prisoners have taken feces and spread it all over the walls and door of their cells so that staff couldn’t see into the cell. Staff had to eventually assemble a team of officers in riot gear to forcefully enter the cell, subdue the prisoner, and place him in a suicide cell. The stench from the feces-covered cell could be smelled through the entire housing unit. At some point one of the porters (prisoners) working in the housing unit would have to enter the cell and scrub it from floor to ceiling.

Moments like that were stark reminders of just how real this experience was and how little margin there was for error. I knew if I gave in to these conditions I could quickly become the guy in the gown sleeping with his mattress on the floor. It was so unthinkable that I refused to let myself go there.

Some days I had to summon every ounce of strength imaginable to avoid being crushed. I realized if I didn’t use my imagination to find ways to occupy my mind, and distract myself with positive or empowering thoughts, I wouldn’t survive. The first thing I told myself I needed to do was employ creative visualization to view my cell as a chamber of wisdom rather than a chamber of torture. I repeatedly told myself I could transform adversity into maturity and use it as a learning experience rather than allow the isolation to become a weapon against me. It was like training to win or competing to get better at something different each day (e.g., trying to concentrate, read, or exercise more); anything to keep going.

I spent my time reading books from the prison library and Chaplain’s library; writing poetry, essays, and letters; watching TV; and exercising. When I got bored or exhausted I would try to sleep. More importantly, I spent a lot of time practicing my spirituality, engaging in reflection, and exploring ways to develop more inner awareness and control over my life. I stayed in survival mode and tried to do anything I could with what little I had available to do it with to make it through each day.

To this day I am haunted by the experience of solitary confinement. It is one of the most dehumanizing and brutal experiences I have endured in my life. No one leaves it without having their memories seared with its sounds, images, and the feelings they experience, whether or not they choose to admit it. Yet it was in solitary confinement that some of my greatest breakthroughs and moments of growth occurred. In many ways the only person I could communicate with at the time was myself, so I used the time to try to get to know myself better and become a better version of myself each day. Since then, I have learned how to take the experience and grow from it rather than be buried in the aftermath of the devastation it leaves behind.

Interviewer’s note: Timothy Souders, the prisoner who died under restraints in Jackson, was 21 years old. Suffering from untreated mental health issues prior to arrest, Timothy was sent to solitary confinement for taking a shower without permission. In solitary, he attempted to flood his cell by breaking the sink it contained. For this reason, according to prison documents cited by CBS reporters, he was placed in four-point restraints for up to seventeen hours at a time. At one point, guards shackled him to a concrete slab after he slipped out of “soft” restraints. Over the course of four days, he suffered from ulcerated skin and tissue breakdown (bedsores), and died of dehydration while lying in his own excrement in the scorching temperatures of August of that year. Although MDOC restraint policies have since been revised, it should be noted that the conditions under which Timothy died were in flagrant violation of policies already in place, and that his death, in the words of a court-appointed doctor, was both “predictable and preventable.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-death-of-timothy-souders/
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/us/15prison.html

For a discussion of the long-term neurological damage caused by solitary confinement, readers also may be interested in the following article from Scientific American:

Neuroscientists make a case against solitary confinement

Efren adds: “Recently a bill was signed by Donald Trump banning the use of solitary confinement for all juveniles in the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and many states are seriously reducing their use of solitary confinement because of the long-term or permanent damage it can cause to prisoners. A number of countries (not the United States) consider it torture, and have banned its use altogether.”

 

Part 4 of this interview coming soon.

Efren Paredes, Jr. is a Michigan prisoner and subject of the new multi-channel documentary film installation, “Half Truths and Full Lies.” He is also a blogger, social justice advocate, proud father, and loving husband. You can learn more about Efren by visiting www.fb.com/Free.Efren and www.tinyurl.com/Efren1016.