Most people have heard about solitary confinement, but few actually have experienced it and know what it entails. I have and I do. There are basically two kinds of solitary: administrative and disciplinary. The former is usually of a temporary nature or tied to a sentence, while the latter is a response to behavior in prison.
I’ve been in both. For death row is a kind of solitary because of the sentence – death. Guys have spent years doing 23 plus one – or 23 hours a day – locked up in a cell with one hour a day outside, yeah, locked in a cage. Think of a cage for a dog. Only the dog usually gets more space.
I spent 28 years on death row in solitary. While on death row I was sent to the “hole” – or the second type that I discussed earlier – for refusing to cut my hair – where I stayed for eight years.
Remember I said “23 and 1”? That isn’t really true because that 23 hours locked up only referred to Monday to Friday. On the weekends it became 24 hours a day – or the weekend 48 hours. That was solitary.
I’ve seen men lose their senses and start howling to the moon for hours on end. Other men beat on their metal bunks for 10, 15 or more hours a day singing songs of pure nonsense for weeks or months on end. I’ve seen men smear their faces, head and bodies with feces until they looked like mud men, but that wasn’t mud that they were covered with. I’ve seen men shrieking, howling, barking, and screaming in an attempt to escape the loneliness of solitary. For the fact is, some men were sent to solitary for over 20 years or even 30 years for escaping or attempting to do so.
The great prison teacher Russell “Maroon” Shoatz spent over 30 years in the “hole” for escaping back in the 1970s. Arthur “Cetewayo” Johnson spent decades in “holes” across the state of Pennsylvania for being what was called “a Black militant.” That’s the word that they used back then in the 1970s. Cetewayo was a child lifer, an innocent man who was 16 years old when he went to prison. He spent 50 years in prison. He is out now, free.
Maroon worked with the young men in the “hole” with him. He taught them history, he taught them how to organize, he shared copies of The Wretched of the Earth and he taught them resistance for generations. His students emerged from the “hole” different beings, knowledgeable, comfortable, confident, wise, and activists that could not be stopped.
It’s interesting to contrast how the state created an institution like the “hole” to destroy and break men’s minds while a man like Maroon used the “hole” to teach men how to serve their communities and how to struggle to change the world.
Finally, what is solitary? According to Juan Mendez, the [former] Special Rapporteur on Torture for the United Nations, “any time beyond 15 days” – think about it: 15 days! – “constitutes torture because it breaks minds.”
With love, not fear – this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
