In this section, I’ve decided to let the letters that I’ve received from prisoners speak for themselves. While reading, it is important to keep in mind that the majority, if not all of these reports are credible (if only because of the frequency with which these sorts of things are reported, as well as the fact that conditions like these have been verified as endemic in the correctional institutions of a number of other states[1]), that inmates have a tendency to downplay their own mental health issues,[2] and also that the type of inmate that decisions in Madrid v. Gomez, Ruiz v. Johnson, and Jones 'El v. Berge were primarily concerned with (i.e. inmates with serious mental illness) are the least likely to be able to formulate a coherent response to a mailed questionnaire.[3] Because there is no actual court case, it was impossible to visit any specific prison and interview the inmates within that prison’s RHU or SMU. These letters come from a number of Pennsylvania’s correctional institutions, and it is my hope that they will provide an accurate picture of Pennsylvania’s correctional practices as well as clearly parallel the types of abuses that prompted judicial action in Madrid, Ruiz and Jones 'El.
Conditions of confinement
Inmate 1: “The cell I was housed in was filthy with urine and feces on the walls, the sink wasn’t hygienic enough to drink out or bathe in. The light stayed on 24 hours a day…”
Inmate 2: “Conditions vary from cell to cell…usually dirty sink, toilet, floor. Peeling paint, leaking water, too cold or too hot…out of cell for 1 hour Monday – Friday for yard. Only access to the outside world is through the mail. DC [Disciplinary Custody] no phone calls. AC [Administrative Custody] one call per month if you beg for it. [What was the lighting in the cell like?] Bright, and night light is on 24/7… I’ve spent many nights naked without mattress or blanket and sheets for days in ant infested cells without heat.”
Inmate 5: “The cell is bare, with a bed, desk, toilet with sink. You are allowed 1 hour exercise period, but you might sign up for that 1 hour period in the morning with your light on. You can write and receive mail and reading [sic] books. The lights stay on all day and night. The inmates make noises all night long. Also you now have a bad case of throwing feces around…this is what troubles me the most I never seen anything like this before where’s another man throws feces and urine on another. This takes place often, so you can imagin [sic] what the unit smells like.”
Inmate 6: “I am sleeping on a mattress that has the cover ripped completely down the side exposing all of the filling which is essentially the same as using the same sheets unlaundered that every other inmate has used that slept on this mattress. Once a week we get to so call [sic] ‘clean our cells.’ We get offered the use of a toilet brush and a small round tub with some diluted disinfectant. That’s it! No broom, no mop, no cleanser, no rags, no paper towels…When they pass this toilet brush…out they use a black milk crate…this milk crate is placed on top of a rolling cart…I noticed…that the guards that serve us our food are using all of the carts for all of the various uses including using the same bacteria infested cart that is used to transport the used dripping toilet brushes on.”
“I have been infected by bacteria…I have been getting…bleeding, pussing sores about my body for no apparent reason other than the poor sanitary conditions…I have no trash container in my cell to place my garbage so I have been just stacking it in the corner by the door. Now there are bugs and mold growing in the corner. I have asked…guards repeatedly for a garbage bag and have been told that there are none.”[4]
Inmate 8: “The cells are about the size of a bathroom. There’s a metal bunk welded into the side wall. Across from the bunk is a desk and stool and a few feet away from that is the toilet and sink. There’s a long skinny window on the back wall which gives you a glimpse of the outside…I actually lived under these conditions for 23 months straight 24 hours a day. This is where I ate at, went to the bathroom at, exercised at and slept at, 24 hours a day and 23 months straight…the lighting fixture is welded to the wall and stays on 24 hours a day. It can definitely cause one sleep deprivation…there’s loud noises around the clock. In solitary confinement no one sleeps it seems. All day and night there’s loud banging, hollering, kicking on doors, fussing and just about every rowdy thing imaginable…”
Inmate 9: Picture staying in a cell and a bunch of insects lives [sic] with you and have no problem crawling on your bed, up your nose etc. And when you complain the exterminator comes around and spray [sic] the insect killer outside your door only…so what happens next is I get…more insects in my cell because the spray chases them from outside to the inside (my cell)…I’m now in a cell…that’s infested with ants, mices [sic] and rats…I’m sleeping on a concrete slab along with a thin mattress. There’s no kind of ventilation except for when the guards chose to open the window outside my cell…the light gives me a headache all the time because of the 24 hour brightness. There’s only a broken toilet that water leaks out of onto the floor. A sink that only cold water comes out of a little bit and the drain is stopped up. A small desk and stool that I place my personal property on because there’s no shelves…”
Mental Stress and Illness
Inmate 1: “My sleep patterns were different…in solitary confinement, due to constant noises and leaving the lights on all day and night, which deprived me of sleep. My mind couldn’t distinguish the difference between night and day! Plus, the guards would every half hour rattle the doors acting like they were making security door checks, but in reality it was done to keep us awake and off balance.”
Inmate 2: “[While in solitary did you ever have an impulse to hurt yourself? Did you act on this impulse?] Yes. I ate my eye-glasses and needed emergency removal… I could not sleep for months.”
Inmate 3: “I have LITERALLY cut open my wrist requiring 8 stitches so that I would go to the SSNU where there was a radio and not to the hole…my night terrors become so intense that I try not to sleep at all…I get no counseling besides someone coming to my door expecting our interaction to be over with in under 5 minutes and for me to share my condition with them and be ridiculed the rest of my days by the inmates within earshot…If I write to the psychiatrist it takes at least two weeks to be seen…by the time I get out of the hole my nerves are so shot that for weeks I can’t sleep, experience motor tics and heart palpitations.”
Inmate 4: “I suffer from paranoia schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, I have had these diagnoses since an adolescent [sic]. Now the Department [of Corrections] has decided to change them to the following: Anti-social and borderline personality disorder, borderline intellectual functioning level, adjustment disorder, depressed mood, impulsive disorder. Being in the RHU has caused me major problems because of C/Os [Correctional Officers] and psychologist [sic]…disclosing my issues on the door where other inmates hear and harass me.”[5]
Inmate 8: “Not once did I entertain the thought of doing harm to myself…I have witnessed those type of instances…some [inmates] would slash their wrists, some swallowed large amounts of pills, a couple dudes even hung nooses around their necks. It was like a norm for some…there’s nothing to see a literally mentally ill inmate playing in his feces. Yet they’re quick to say there’s no mentally ill inmates [sic] in solitary confinement. There are guys who keep toilets full of feces. They are the ones who play chemical warfare games…they’ll wait until the guard open [sic] their tray slots and then splash him with feces. These type of things [sic] occur daily…I haven’t been in a general population since ’06…the 3 months I was in population was strange. I would walk with my back to the wall from my block to wherever I was going. I would always position myself so that I could see everything within my proximity.”
Inmate 9: “I’ve gotten bitter over this obvious mental torture…I only gets [sic]…2 hours of sleep a day. I’m losing my vision, can’t stop shaking and I got the jumps. I’ve truly turned into an animal man…”
Inmate 10: “I am going through a crisis involving staff members and unknown rituals upon my person that are alien to me, but believed to be either Santeria, Voodoo-Hoodoo or Black Magic that’s unexplainable, and the only way for me to explain it is to say, there are/is the presence of unforeseen-visible persons in my cell space. I can hear them communicating daily, and they’ve even made threats upon my person. They have entered and exited my body and performed illegal surgical procedures upon my person, both external and internally, i.e., my neck, throat, stomach, lower torso and legs. I have visible surgical incisions all over my neck, arms and legs that are unexplainable and a close examination of facility’s medical files will reveal that I have not had any surgical procedures done upon my person…”[6]
[1] See, for example, Pugh v. Locke 406 F.Supp 318
[2] Grassian, Stuart. “Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement.” In The American Journal of Psychiatry, 140:11, November 1983, p. 1451.
[3] The questionnaire I used has been attached as an appendix.
[4] This inmate was not replying to the questionnaire.
[5] This inmate attempted suicide.
[6] This inmate was not replying to the questionnaire. It seems clear that he was hallucinating.
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