Solitude v. Solitary

One is a choice, the other is torture

With all the things going on in the world, I’ve been imagining this...I’m locked inside a 6’ x 9’ cell with the ‘luxuries’ of a cold, metal toilet, a dirty sink and a musty cot. There are no windows, only a slot for delivery of my wretched daily meals. I have no phone, no internet, no books or magazines to read, no sense of the world beyond this space. The lights stay on all night, but I can’t get an eye mask so I can only sleep fitfully on my cot’s slice of bread thin mat. I’m cold, but I dare not ask for a blanket. I can smell my own stink because my underwear is only refreshed weekly – yes, I’m here for weeks, maybe months...I don’t know. I’m allowed outside to walk, maybe even stretch for an hour a day in a concrete human sized kennel by myself. My only human contact is either the raving screams I hear from others or with guards who may or may not consider me subhuman and deserving of further punishment. There’s no possibility I’ll see or hear from friends or family, and I’ve no idea when this will end.

As you read this, more than 122,000 people in the US are living it for real. It’s called Solitary Confinement for us lay people, Administrative Segregation for employees of US prisons and “The Hole” by inmates of our ‘correctional’ institutions. And those numbers don’t include the people held in solitary in immigrant detention centers around the country.

International human rights groups call solitary confinement torture. Researchers at The University of Washington in Seattle are not allowed to subject rats to the conditions of solitary confinement because it’s ‘too inhumane.’ So, they study bees. As it happens, bees are social creatures much like humans, and when they’re placed in ‘solitary’ for even short periods of time, they return to the colony either depressed, violent or suicidal...much like humans.

I don’t know about you, but when I imagine experiencing solitary confinement I know I would go stark raving mad. While I consider myself a solitude junky, I have the agency to seek solitude because I live freely in a community of relatively connected human beings. I can choose to be with them to refresh my spirit when I need it and remove myself when that connection has sapped my energy. Imagine not having the freedom to choose anything.

In the past few years, I’ve been privileged to meet people who’ve lived in solitary confinement for months, some even years at a time. Once these folks were released from prison, they reentered their communities with incredible strength and the energy to build new lives. One of the things that strikes me about these survivors is that they are calm, personable, ready to laugh and remarkably candid. They waste no time on BS. Many have dedicated themselves to reforming or ending solitary confinement; they work to help those still inside. These activists I’ve been privileged to spend time with are, unfortunately, the exception. Most people emerge from solitary confinement with new or exacerbated mental illness, some with physical illnesses created by intense anxiety. Some are suicidal.

So, since we know all this – we know it destroys all but the most resilient individuals. And we know it’s the most expensive form of incarceration. Yes, it costs more to keep a person in solitary than in the general population of a prison. There are extra guards required while they’re in and increased medical costs when they get out of The Hole.

So why do we keep doing it? What do we gain from continuing to torture people?

Our so-called “correctional” institutions claim they use solitary to protect vulnerable inmates from harm in the general population or to protect the others from their potentially violent behavior. However, records for 2023 show that of the 6,120 solitary confinement cases in liberal Washington state, just four percent were carried out for safety or security reasons. Washington is just one example. So, what’s going on?

No surprise – most folks in solitary are black or brown. Most folks in US prisons are black or brown. The brilliant survivors I’ve met are black and brown, and I am humbled by their kindness, their lack of bitterness, their capacity for joy.

As I muse on this topic, I don’t have answers. I believe there are many layers of elements behind the continued practice of solitary confinement – money for correctional departments. Washington State’s DOC has gotten $5 to $7 million every year since 2023 to ‘reform’ solitary confinement, yet nothing has changed and they don’t have to report how they’ve spent that money. Is it racism? Is it our fundamentalist roots that see prison as punishment first and rehabilitation later if at all? Is it revenge?

All I can feel is that every one of those thousands of humans is a story, a person with a life filled with hopes, loved ones, talents and a need for help to escape whatever got them in prison. And we’re wasting them. They are being tortured in my name – in your name -- and I find that unbearable. It’s also self-defeating. As a society, we could gain so much if we help these individuals regain their self-respect, educate them so they can contribute to us all. It’s not rocket science. It’s simple humanity. They are us. I believe that when we raise people up, we elevate ourselves. And we don’t do that in solitude.

If you want to learn more about solitary confinement and the progress nationwide, here are a couple links:

https://civilsurvival.org/
https://doc.wa.gov/search?keys=solitary+confinement
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-brief-history-of-solitary-confinement-in-america
https://www.christopher-blackwell.com/book