Many of these convicts who spend twenty-two to twenty-three hours a day in a windowless cell are suspected of being gang members. They remain cordoned off until they renounce the gang and provide intelligence to prison authorities. If they do so, they are placed in protective custody (PC), which is more confining than standard prison but less debilitating than staying in “the hole.” Once a convict has gone into PC, it becomes his everlasting shadow. Should he ever go into a standard lockup anywhere in the country again, he will likely be marked for retaliation.
John McCain, who was physically tortured on a regular basis by his North Vietnamese captors, singled out solitary confinement as the cruelest punishment. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment,” he said.11
Thousands of isolated convicts in California staged a hunger strike in 2011 that ended after three weeks of on-and-off negotiations. The prisoners ultimately settled for the promise of warm hats, wall calendars, and a loose pledge by prison officials to reconsider the isolation regulations.12 When inmates have to go on a hunger strike to win protection from cold, civilization has made a wrong turn.
Colin Dayan, a Vanderbilt professor who visited a solitary confinement unit at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, described inmates who were allowed no human contact except when handcuffed or chained to leave their cells. Even the “dog pen,” or exercise yard, was surrounded by cement so high that when they were outside, the inmates could see nothing but the sky. After his visit, an inmate wrote to Dayan, “Now I can’t see my face in the mirror. I’ve lost my skin. I can’t feel my mind.”13
Long ago progressive zoos moved their mammals from cages into more natural environments because the animals clearly were stir-crazy. When isolation drive inmates stir-crazy it can create a dystopian hell where the bizarre becomes commonplace. Some inmates look for opportunities to throw feces and urine at passing guards. The standard guard response is to send a specially equipped and armored unit of peacekeepers into the cell with the mission of mercilessly clubbing the offender into submission.
It’s difficult to think of a prison movie made in the last few decades that doesn’t incorporate the subject of prison rape. Stand-up comedians joke about it. Cops-and-robbers films commonly depict detectives threatening suspects with the prospect of prison rape. All this attention is based on how much fact? In August 2010 the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 2.1 percent of jail inmates said they had been sexually victimized in the previous twelve months.14 These statistics were based on a survey, and it’s unlikely that all victims reported their experiences. It’s common for rape victims—in or out of a penal institution—to bottle up the memory.
In 2001 Human Rights Watch released a book-length study that documented case after case of sexual intimidation and rape inside U.S. prisons. It was startling how similar were so many independently recalled stories from all across the country. The genesis of the study was a small announcement posted by the nonprofit group in Prison Legal News and Prison Life Magazine, two publications with a wide audience in U.S. prisons. Activists had been claiming that prison rape was a monumental problem, so Human Rights Watch decided to investigate. The result was a deluge of painful letters from victims.15
As the organization’s staff proceeded to gather information in thirty-four states, many prison administrations denied the existence of rape in their facilities. At the same time, convicts were telling opposite, horrifying tales, and victims said prison staffs were very much aware of their plight.
Human Rights Watch concluded that “rape and other sexual abuses occur in prison because correctional officials, to a surprising extent, do little to stop them from occurring. While some inmates with whom Human Rights Watch is in contact have described relatively secure institutions—where inmates are closely monitored, where steps are taken to prevent inmate-on-inmate abuses, and where such abuses are punished if they occur—many others report a decidedly laissez faire approach to the problem.”16
One of the worst systems surveyed was that of the state of Texas, where victims, after being “turned out,” were routinely auctioned, sold, and rented by their assailants. These activities were discovered in other states too. One Texas inmate complained to a chaplain after a series of brutal rapes and beatings by another inmate. He was put in touch with an investigator who interviewed the victim and his attacker together in the same room. Although frightened, the victim told the truth. The assailant claimed the sex was consensual. The investigator announced that the institution had no interest in “lovers’ quarrels.” The men were sent back to their cells, and the attacker immediately raped the victim again in a particularly savage assault. This story brings to mind Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion about the selection process for camp guards in his Gulag Archipelago: “Every man with the slightest speck of spiritual training, with a minimally circumspect conscience, or capacity to distinguish good from evil is instinctively going to back out and use every available means to avoid joining this dark legion.”17
A Florida inmate, in a letter to Human Rights Watch, chronicled his unsuccessful efforts to induce prison authorities to protect him from abuse. He’d been knifed and raped and had attempted to slash his own wrists. But prison authorities continued denying him protection. Summing up these experiences, he wrote, “The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it’s indifference.”
Among the many dangers of prison rape is the risk of infection with HIV. Evan Wood, a leading HIV/AIDS researcher at the University of British Columbia, has noted that “the mass incarceration of drug users [in the United States] is particularly alarming, given the spread of HIV in prisons.” HIV and hepatitis C tend to travel to the same places, and as much of 30 percent of the prison population carries these diseases. According to one inmate,
I had no choice but to submit to being Inmate B—’s prison wife. Out of fear for my life, I submitted to sucking his dick, being fucked in my ass, and performing other duties as a woman, such as making his bed. In all reality, I was his slave. I determined I’d be better off to willingly have sex with one person, than it would be to face violence and rape by multiple people. The most tragic part to this is that the person I chose to be with has AIDS.
Another inmate wrote,
I’ve been sentenced for a D.U.I. offense. My 3rd one. When I first came to prison, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly none of this. I’m a tall white male, who unfortunately has a small amount of feminine characteristics. And very shy. These characteristics have got me raped so many times I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to 5 black men and two white men at a time. I’ve had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn’t ever think I’d see straight again. One time when I refused to enter a cell, I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segragation [sic] though I had only wanted to prevent the same and worse by not locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lockdown. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record, he suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I’ve requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He also said there was no where to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things…. I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking to hard on all this…. I’ve laid down without physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for.