Scenes of Prison
37. You’re Torturing People in Seg!
"O kay, James. I’ve got a topic for you today,” said Benjamin.
It was another Tuesday and time for lunch. Benjamin addressed our little group as we opened our sandwiches.
“I read about a legislative hearing yesterday concerning corrections, and the topic of segregated confinement came up,” he said. “You work in Seg, did you notice it? They think you’re torturing people.”
“Yes,” I said. “I noticed it, and it irritates me. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I rose to the topic.
“Have you ever noticed the questions news people ask when they interview our prison administrators and the subject of segregated confinement comes up?,” I asked, “And it happened yesterday in the legislative hearing. People with some knowledge of prison conditions ask about segregated confinement, but they skip a crucial question as they begin. Here’s the question: ‘Does segregated confinement at this facility hurt the inmates who experience it?’ They skip this question, and their next questions assume that they have asked this question, and the answer to the unasked question was ‘yes.’ That’s where I challenge them. They need to ask the question, ‘Does segregated confinement hurt people?’ and then collect data to find out.”
“Well,” said Richard. “Does it? You work there.”
“Do you guys collect data?,” asked Benjamin. “What have you seen?”
“Well, we don’t collect data, not that I know of, but very few inmates have been harmed by the experience of being in our Seg Unit from what I have seen. They don’t like it,” I said, “but that’s the point.”
“For some reason,” I continued, “people in positions of authority from outside the prison who have some knowledge of prisons often feel empowered to impose rules upon people inside the prison, and they expect us to follow their rules to drastically reduce or even prohibit the imposition of segregated confinement on inmates regardless of inmates’ actions that would warrant such confinement,” I said, pausing to take a breath. “They don’t respect our judgment. They think we’re harming people, and we’re not.”
Benjamin and Richard were silent, but they were looking at me with a bit of amusement in their expressions. Richard broke the silence.
“Did you ever hear the story from the State Penitentiary about their Seg Unit, the story about the suicides?” asked Richard.
“No, I don’t remember anything,” I answered.
“The Penitentiary Control Unit is similar to our Control Unit at LCC,” began Richard, “and there was a period when inmates moving to a particular room in this Control Unit would be found dead in the morning, victims of suicide,and it was always the same room, and always on their first night.
“These inmates hadn’t appeared suicidal when they were locked into this room, and staff check on the welfare of inmates regularly throughout the night. Somehow, these inmates had learned the Control Unit routine well enough to successfully carry out a suicide and escape detection on their very first night.”
“Staff were puzzled and alarmed,” went on Richard. “They wondered if the place was haunted.
“Late one night, a third shift Control Unit officer went to the now-empty cell and stood in the center of the room, wondering to himself what was different about this room,” said Richard. “Suddenly, he heard a voice: ‘Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Take a bedsheet and . . . ‘“
“Instructions and encouragement for a suicide were softly coming into the room in a soothing voice, but from where? Was it a ghost?
“The officer quietly left the room, moved down the hallway to the next cell, and he looked through the small window in the door. As he watched, he saw the inmate in this room standing next to the wall with his mouth next to the air vent. He was speaking, or at least his lips were moving. The officer couldn’t hear anything from the hall, but when the officer returned to the cell, he could make out what the inmate was saying.”
“Kill yourself.” “Kill yourself.”
“In the quiet of the night, newly arriving inmates to this cell heard this voice, and they followed the instructions,” said Richard. “They must have thought the dead were calling to them.
“When I first heard this story, it brought chills to me to imagine the scene. In the dark and quiet of the middle of the night, an inmate on his first anxious night in this Control Unit heard this soft, encouraging voice.”
“The staff now had an explanation for the repeated suicides, and the next morning, the inmate giving these instructions was moved to an end-of-the-row cell. They kept neighbors from living close to him,” said Richard, “and when they moved him, the suicides stopped.”
“Wow,” I said. “No, I hadn’t heard that story.”
“Yeah, I knew some guys who were working at the Pen when that happened,” said Benjamin.
“So, what about inmates in your Unit?,” asked Richard. “Have you seen anyone harmed by the isolation?”
“I do recall twice when it did,” I said. “Zachary was the worst.”
“It was several years ago, and I only remember two things about Zachary. First, I remember having a conversation with him about religion. He was interested in the topic, and he raised it in a conversation with me. I was new to the topic myself, so I was interested in it, too. I remember the conversation as lively, and I recall that we differed on a few points. When I explained one point where we differed, I remember that he didn’t react as I expected he would. He wasn’t curious, and he asked me no questions. He didn’t restate his beliefs to draw a contrast. I sensed that he was mildly stunned. Looking back, I think he expected me to share his point of view and his belief, and holding a different belief jarred him. It seemed that I may have accidentally alarmed him. Religion can be a sensitive subject, and I worried that this conversation may have challenged his faith and ultimately, shaken it.”
“We ended our conversation,” I said, “and I went home for my weekend at the end of my shift, but I had trouble getting Zachary off of my mind. I pictured him alone in his cell. Alone with his rising doubts and fears and missing a dialogue he desperately needed to have with someone he trusted about his faith. He had been placed in L-25, a room on the end of the lower tier cells, and it wasn’t easy for him to visit with other inmates on his tier. I feared this isolation would overwhelm him.”
“When I returned to work a few days later, I learned that my worries had been justified,” I went on. “Zachary was in a catatonic state in his room, and he only roused himself when he was shielding himself with his arms and hands extended in front of his face. He was terrified because crosses were flooding into his room from under his door, floating in the air, and pursuing him. He was crouched low against a wall, like a small frightened animal, and he didn’t respond to anyone. No one in our Department seemed to be able to help him, but we knew keeping him isolated in a Segregation cell wasn’t going to help. Before the morning was over, he left our Unit and our prison. They strapped him down onto a gurney and sent him to the Regional Center - a state facility for the severely mentally ill.”
“I felt somehow responsible for Zachary’s mental crisis, and I nursed a personal guilt about my actions after this experience. ‘I should have known better,’ I kept repeating to myself. But I did learn a lesson. I learned to be very gentle with people who are opening up to me and sharing their religious beliefs. Zachary had opened up to me, and revealed himself, and by doing so, he had revealed beliefs that were very fragile. Taking an opposing viewpoint when someone does this can accidentally break a person’s beliefs, crush them. The more important the person is, the more potent the effect, and when a foundational block of one’s faith is destroyed, it can devastate a person. I never, ever wanted to do that again, and I never did.”
“That’s quite a story,” said Richard. “Whatever happened to Zackary. Did you see him again?”
“No, but after this experience, I became more watchful of inmates’ reactions to the isolation of segregated confinement, and I noticed one inmate named Kramer who was having trouble,” I said.
“We routinely escort inmates to the shower room and to the exercise yard, and then we bring them back to their rooms when it is time for them to return. One day, I began to notice that it was becoming increasingly painful to put Kramer back into his room. Every time I closed the door behind him, it got worse. I could see his mental and physical state deteriorating day by day. His personal hygiene declined, and his anxiety increased. He made no efforts to talk with other inmates, and he wasn’t interested in talking with us. When he went into his room, he was utterly alone, and I sensed his growing panic as I closed the door.”
“I advocated for Kramer,” I said. “I did not want to participate in a confinement that I could see was harming someone, and I had no idea how anyone might help him as long as he remained confined and alone in his cell. I remembered Zachary, and I reminded my manager of our previous experience with him.
“Oh, yes,” he said. He did remember Zachary, and he did not want to transfer another inmate to the Regional Center in the midst of a mental crisis.
“I was relieved to find that my concerns were apparently shared by the managers in positions of authority over our Unit. Kramer’s sanction of segregated confinement was reduced, and he was released. We gave him his property, dressed him out, and sent him on his way back to his old Unit. I inquired about his welfare after a week, and I learned that he had recovered completely. We never saw Kramer in Disciplinary Segregation again, and that’s exactly how I hoped the story would end,” I said.
“So, returning now to the original question, ‘Does segregated confinement hurt people?’ Confinement in our Disciplinary Segregation Unit on C-Unit almost never hurt the inmates who experienced it. From our experience with Zachary and Kramer, if we are watchful and flexible, we can make it even safer,” I said.
“Well, that’s all fine,” said Benjamin, “ but I’m hardly convinced. C-Unit wasn’t built to be a Disciplinary Segregation Unit. When we first opened LCC, it was just another housing unit. It started as a disciplinary segregation unit with overflow from the Control Unit. Prisoners who come to your unit won’t notice much difference from their previous rooms. The door windows are big and they have a nice view of no-man’s-land out the back windows. C-Unit Segregation isn’t all that bad. People worry about the severe isolation prisoners experience in settings like the Control Unit, but even in your unit, prisoners have been harmed.”
“I agree with Benjamin,” said Richard. “In your unit, if an inmate wants company, he just stands at his door and looks out. When he does that, he usually sees someone looking back at him from a nearby room, and they visit. That’s not isolation.”
“Well, that’s all true. There is a lot of difference between our unit and the Control Unit,” I said.
“I think you should realize that the experts are concerned about isolation in settings like our Control Unit, not C-Unit Segregation,” said Richard. “Listen to the experts, James. They do have a point.”
“You guys are rough,” I said. “It’s a good thing I like you.”
Discussion
- Is the isolation of segregated confinement too dangerous to use to control inmate behavior?
- What alternatives do you recognize?
- Discuss similarities segregated confinement and time out share.
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