On July 1, 2011, California prisoners launched a massive hunger strike to call attention to what we were all forced to endure: inhumane conditions in solitary confinement in California's Special Housing Units (SHU’s). The physical and psychological torture that the [...]
About a week after Thanksgiving of 2004, I stabbed a prison guard when I was at the Barrington Unit, located between Houston and Galveston, and got an additional 99 year sentence for that assault. I spent the next fifteen [...]
For the past two decades, up until April 27, 2015, I was living in solitary confinement at the only federal Supermax prison in America, ADX Florence in Colorado. I was housed and handled under the high-max custody level. No less than three [...]
Gabriele was an upbeat cat for a prisoner with a life sentence. I remember the day that I met him. I was having a difficult day trying to navigate all of the negativity that prison has to offer when suddenly this [...]
Editors Note: Mustafa Zulu spent 20 years in solitary confinement in the harshest Federal Prison in America: ADX Florence in Colorado. One day, he was told he was moving to a STATE prison in North Carolina. 1) STRESS MANAGEMENT: Stress kills. [...]
Solitary confinement is now firmly embedded in this country’s prison system. Indeed, the control units that specialize in housing prisoners in solitary by the tens of thousands throughout the US have become the new normal. Slowly, people out in society [...]
The hole, the new term for solitary confinement. It’s the place they take you when you break one of their “rules,” or at least they say you did. It’s supposed to be a deterrent from future acts of whatever they deem [...]
After spending 3 years in a medium security Ohio prison, a friend of mine once asked me if the time spent there had institutionalized me. At the time my idea of what it meant to be institutionalized consisted of simply forming [...]
After spending over five years in solitary confinement, I have finally come to realize that solitary confinement is known torture -- and the prisoners aren’t the only ones who know this. There have been extensive studies that have shown that lengthy [...]
Courtesy of Brad Simpson Hello. My name is Brad but everyone calls me Lou. I’m in prison for killing an inmate while doing time for another crime. The reason I tell you this is so you’ll know, upfront, [...]
Like thousands of other inmates across the nation, I had a job. I worked in the kitchen. In the stock room area, out of sight in the back of the kitchen, my partner Zeke and I were joined by a few [...]
After spending over five years studying how prolonged periods of solitary confinement harms the brains, the only conclusion that I could come up with is that it’s torture and I’m not the only one who knows this. There have been extensive [...]