“I have never received the periodic psychological evaluations mandated by policy. My only other contact with the psychologist is that I’ve seen him make rounds in the housing unit (walk by and look in everyone’s cell) once every few months. He’s stopped for a few seconds a couple of times and said a few words, apparently to gauge my sanity.” (In long-term segregation 3 years)

“The psych comes every 90 days. It’s a knock on the cell door, ‘hey so & so, I’m the psych. Are you okay? That’s it! He marks down a lot of stuff after walking away as if he’s held a conversation with you, yet he rarely does. This lasts no more than 1-2 minutes at best.” (5 years in long-term segregation)

“These mentally dead inmates I’m around are like zombies, aren’t going to write anyone, and its really terrifying.” (20 years in long-term segregation)

“Segregation is like slow torture. The continuous monotony of being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, the lack of any meaningful activities or programming—no school or anything, the non-stop noise, which at times can be deafening, the palpable levels of anger, frustration and hostility which because of segregation inmates constantly express and direct towards one another, the consistent stench as a result of mentally disturbed prisoners relieving themselves on their floors, refusing showers and throwing bodily fluids, and the denial of basic privileges which are common to general population such as access to the telephones, reasonable visiting hours, easy and flexible access to the libraries and other prison legal service, denial of store goods—a variety of hygiene products, snacks, etc… All of these things combine to really wear on you emotionally, Intellectually and spiritually like a war of attrition. “ (10 years in long-term segregation)

“On a day to day basis, I’m stressed out, agitated, with moments of high anxiety. When prisoners aren’t screaming all night, I sleep. Abuse by staff is normal, yet not done on a daily constant basis. Refusing to allow me a shower, or denying me a food tray because some staff doesn’t like my supposed attitude does occur. I have developed a compulsive disorder to the effect that I’m constantly cleaning my cell and washing my hands. Even though I know it’s clean. I’m now really germaphobic because bodily fluids are often thrown in these type of units.” (5 years in long-term segregation)

Living conditions are unsanitary. Like I said, I’ve caught MRSA staph infection six different times in two and a half years. They are painful boils and are caused by a germ/bacteria on the skin. I don’t get any sun and I’m in my cell 24/7…There’s no windows in my cell. I don’t see the outside whatsoever. It’s a mentally unhealthy environment…This place can mentally break [you] and cause paranoia.

I apologize if my handwriting and letter seems sloppy. My hand is shaking with adrenaline. Please don’t misunderstand. I am not an angel. I’m a bad guy. Prison isn’t a nice place and I haven’t been a nice guy. When I came to prison I was 17. SMU II took me down a dark dark hole. I know SMU II made me numb, to where I could care less about consequences. Paranoid, feeling like they’re messing with me even if it was only my imagination. I grind my teeth and clench my teeth while I hold in my breath in flashes of anger. No outside stimulus whatsoever. I go a day or so without sleeping. I’m constantly thinking about what other people are thinking of me. I always feel when I’m escorted to rec or shower I could be punched or slammed at any moment. I’m very careful. My dreams are often violent. I can’t sleep unless I cover my chest with a magazine or book. SMU II does some weird shit to you man. I inspect my food, if it’s weird in any way I won’t eat it….The feeling of being buried alive is real.

We are routinely housed around individuals with serious mental health issues who scream, kick the cell doors, throw feces, urine, blood etc. . . That said, after a couple of years here you begin to lose your grip on reality, and become really paranoid. In that regard, I know this place is having a negative effect on me, which scares me a lot. The strip searches are used to humiliate us, and demonstrate the guards’ dominance over us.

“Lately I’ve been finding myself with very little motivation and entrapment in laziness, flat-out. I help a lot of prisoners with their own problems, when really I cannot solve my own problems. A lot of times mentally I close off this administrative segregation world around me.” (20 years; Baraga;)

The reason that they put me in SMU I on suicide watch was because I had had a nightmare the night before.  And that's all it was- a bad dream.  I had woken up kicking my locker.  They stripped me naked (and remained that way until I left) and placed me into a filthy cell at SMU I that had cold air constantly blowing through it.  I had an open wound on my foot that received no medical care.  I was teased and taunted and my meals were being withheld from me to the point to where upon returning to my unit I was placed on a special diet.  I also was not given a shower during my seven day stay.

tazing, i think is pretty common.  i remember the first time i was in the victoria jail…and i was in a solitary cell where some 'trouble' women were kept. most seemed to be mental illness cases...anyhow, one woman that was clearly mental ill was drug out one night by about 10 guards and dragged, screaming, to the "chair".  where they get tazed. she was gone a long time, then brought back around the early morning, a whimpering mass of jelly.  i saw this also when i was being processed in harris county jail one time and one man caused some minor trouble being processed and they drug him off and he got tazed too. he came back crying. a tough man too.  

One of the prisons I was at was Correctional Mental Health Center-Jessup. I was put in restraints seven times there. Each time I was put in restraints I was pit on my belly, naked. I was never let up to go to the bathroom, I had to lay in my own urine. I have a pacemaker and hypertension, and the staff still did this. One time the nurse even refused me my hypertension medication while in restraints. I was punched in the face by one correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction-Annex in Jessup. 

I am a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I have also been deprived protective custody for years. As a result I have spent three years in solitary.
Prison officials cut off my anti psychotic Seroquel. Three months later…I went deeply psychotic and I was place in the IMU strip cell. Because I was insane I don’t know how many days I was in there but the guards deliberately passed by my cell and would not feed me.  I was naked. I had nothing. The bare concrete was contaminated with feces. The water was shut off and I had to drink out of the toilet.
 I was repeatedly extracted from the cell for no apparent reason and led naked with a cloth bag over my face. I could not see where I was going. I could not understand what anyone was saying. It was like they were trying to get me to resist. They had a camera.

Where is the line between human and inhuman as far as psychological or mental abuse is concerned?
The worst pain and suffering of all is the torture of knowing that I am not the only one that is feeling or experiencing this cruel and psychological torture or inhuman punishment. This kind of torture can and does spread from family member to family member like a plague, yes the pain and suffering is contagious as any virus known to man, and the pain and suffering just keeps intensifying for each member of a family in its own way for each of them, and it will never truly go away, the trauma will be there for the rest of their lives. Yes, the worst torture is knowing that my family is being tortured just as much as I am, and they too are suffering and feeling that pain.
Just how much psychological or mental pain and suffering can a person endure before it becomes too much for them to handle and the individual is willing to do anything to make the pain and suffering stop, even take their own life. It happens all of the time and other people always wonder why the individual did something like that.
I am a husband and the father of three wonderful children, and I am also an inmate…I feel the pain and suffering that I just wrote about every day and night, and it never ends, it even haunts me in my dreams as I sleep…
As I lay in my cell every night, I think of what could be and what should be and what once was but will never be again. I always think of my family and how we once were and can never be again, my last thoughts are always the same, I always think of just how cruel people are to one another in this world of ours…is there anyone in this world that feels the same as I do? Is there anyone that truly cares how wrong people treat one another?

The incident unfolded like this: I told an officer that I was feeling really anxious and very depressed and wanted to talk to someone. But I guess with my past suicide attempt, they don’t want to take any chances. So they put me in this black restraint chair in the detention center’s gym with the lights off and no one around. While they were putting me in the chair, and before, I didn’t resist at all. All I wanted was to talk to someone.
While being put in the chair I told the Sgt in charge I was having a hard time to breathe, he said that if I could ask a question, it wasn’t too tight. So I was left alone for about three hours until they fed me. I asked again about when I was being let out of the chair, they told me that they didn’t know, so when they left I started to freak out cause I saw no end to my restrained isolation and flipped the chair. I was upside down for a couple of minutes until someone noticed. They came in and straightened me out and left for another couple of hours—I know that it was a while cause it was a different shift coming on. And somewhere in between all of that the warden came to talk to me. I asked him why I was being treated this way—he said that it was for my own good, so I don’t hurt myself. I wasn’t aggressive to anyone or causing trouble, all I needed was someone to talk to. After they got me out of the chair I was put in a restraint bed for a couple of days. I cant remember how long. I didn’t do anything. Again I didn’t resist. While in the chair and the bed I was forced to urinate on myself and sit and lay in it for some time. …I learned one thing—don’t say anything no matter what or I’ll be restrained again …

“A psych comes to my door approximately every 90 days. However, his so-called evaluation is a waste of tax payers dollars. It is not thorough at all. The very people that need to see a psych, he does nothing for. For instance, there is a prisoner that spreads body waste (feces), all over himself, eats it, has not taken a shower in months, never sends his laundry out to be washed (sheets, pants, underclothes, etc.) never flushes his toilet. I’ve personally informed the psych, “why are you coming to my cell, when you have all of these guys (doing what I’ve described above), that really needs assistance, you do nothing for. His response was that most of these prisoners are faking. I told him that anytime a man eats his own body waste, then that man is not faking! It is a direct cry for help! When the MDOC removed all of the mental prisoners from Riverside Correctional Facility, they placed them in all of these maximum security segregation holes. Now they don’t know what to do with them. They have no place to send them. So now, a sane prisoner such as myself, has to endure all of their illusions, their madness, their crying out for help, their slamming and banging on the footlockers, doors, walls, their screaming and hollering all day. No peace for days, weeks, months, that turns into years! This is my day in segregation, this is my life!” (2.5 years; Alger)

“I’m not allowed to use the phone – my dad is on his death bed right now and I can’t use the phone to call him until after he dies (if that makes any sense). I’m only allowed to shower, shave, and use dental floss 3 times per week which is not adequate. I have also developed severe memory and concentration loss, speech problems, and I’m now seeing shadows in my peripheral vision, insomnia, and anxiety attacks. Hopelessness is beginning to overwhelm me to the point I hate having to wake up each day.” (8 years; Marquette)

“My experience in administrative segregation has been torturous! I’m surrounded by very unstable prisoners who scream all day and night, throw feces and urine on everyone, and don’t bathe for months at a time. The stench is unbearable. The lights shining in the cells remain on 24 hours per day. The food portions are substantially smaller than those given to general population prisoners and I’m not allowed to purchase food items from the general population store list to supplement what I’m not being given or can’t eat on the trays. This coupled with the extremely high level of stress has caused me to loose 30 lbs. of muscle just in the last two years and I’m still losing weight.” (8 years; Marquette)

The following is from a mentally ill person in prison. It is a re-telling of his time spent in 4 point restraints for 3 weeks. This took place in a prison in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in February. Two other people in prison wrote to our office alerting us to the fact that this man had been held in restraints for so long.
"The staff laughed at me and was calling me nigger every day of those three weeks of torture and telling me if I keep tearing up their cells to try and get transferred back down to Huron Valley Center prison then you will die on that bed. Freezing to death, stsrving and sick from no blood pressure pills most of the time. Until I’m dead from all three ways. And I knew they was serious cause I spit on many of them for taking my food a lot and refusing me yard breaks sometimes. And I spit on them for refusing to give me a mattress and clothes when I was supposed to have. when chain to the bed. Anyway, when I was at the Marquette Prison chained to the bed the only way I was to make it alive each day for three weeks on the cold slab and ice cold room. cold chains on. and no mattress or clothes or food. most of the time. I had to raise my body up far as I could to do as many sit ups as I could every 20 minutes to keep from freezing to death and couldn’t sleep but two hours a day and a couple of hours at night because no matter what I was forcing myself to do 1000 thousand sit ups to stay warm. The cold would come back all over my body within one hour and I would have to do the half way sit-ups again for another 1000 times with tears in my eyes and anger and hate for the whole world beyond human imagination. The hate worse when I was forced to have to use the bathroom on myself and the bed for bowel movements or urinating—most times because they never let me up for three weeks to go the bathroom. And whenever they did bring me some food to eat it was mostly a sandwich and apple. Only then sometimes they will bring food that I could eat without being un-chain and with no spoon or fork. I had to use my hands and eat what little I could. I choked every time and had to throw up a lot of times. Sometimes they would let me keep the food tray to shit and piss in for emergency, ain’t that a bitch? Also when my head and back itched everyday and night I had to rub it against the wall. When I sit up and turn sideways and I had to rub my head on the wall up and down and sometimes bang my head on the wall to make it stop itching. even to the point of almost knocking myself out and every day and night I holler out how much I hate them all and I holler out curses saying Michigan will be destroyed worse than the state of Louisiana with tornadoes this summer and many will die from heat stroke from the sun burning more and more through the ozone layers of sky. And I’ve been spit on and punched. (22 years; Marquette--now at Ionia)

“Since I’ve been in segregation I suffer from what I believe is described as sensory deprivation. After being housed in cells with mice and filth I’ve noticed I respond to my surroundings differently. Constantly washing my hands I guess I become a germ aphobic. The lights are on in the hall 24/7 which effect my sleeping and seeing. The noise level from being placed around such unmanageable prisoners distorts any form of peace and sanity.” (4 years in segregation; Marquette)

This person was confined to a “close management” control unit after seeking anti-depressant medication and the possibility to see a psychiatrist.
“I decided to let you know my experience of what may amount to torture, or at least in the public eye, as I am convinced that I bear the scars of mental anguish…I did not eat for ten days due to a hunger strike. While being held as a suicidal [I only received] a shroud of a short blanket for warmth in a freezing cell (suicide alert prisoners often do not receive sheets or long blankets). Over a month elapsed and in that time period I was beaten with the fist by two officers. I was made to stand barefoot on the concrete floor while an inmate shaved my face with electric clippers that shocked my face. I could feel the electricity run from my chin to my earlobe. The pain was excruciating, and my plea for it to stop was met with laughter and threats of reprisal.
…The struggle of survival didn’t end there. The next year or more has been met with physical and mental abuse where I had to rescue myself…I sit in a cell the size of a small bathroom with blinds over the window for over a year and the memory of isolation I know will linger…The anguish of incarceration, separation and careless custody and control must be met with a strong mind…because peace of mind they will take…if you aren’t exercising peace in the midst of evil.”

“It’s a waste of time to even talk to a psychologist while in ad-seg because as long as I’m able to hold a rational conversation, I’m considered manageable. They only help ad seg prisoners when the prisoner is so far gone mentally that he is an actual threat to staff.” (in isolation 8 years)

"it's a waste of time to even talk to the psychologist while in ad-seg because as long as I'm able to hold a rational conversation, I'm considered manageable. They only help ad seg prisoners when they prisoner is so far gone mentally that he is an actual threat to staff."
"Every few months [sees the psychologist], only to ask 'how ya doing? Okay, goodbye, don't got time today, gotta go.' Sometimes they actually say all that in one breath as they're walking by my cell, other times the interviews only last long enough to say the one sentence."
"the psychologist comes around every few months only to tell me to be strong because there is nothing that can help me. They won't even provide a simple pair of ear plugs to help with the noise level. Most of the time they don't even stop by but they document that interviews take place." Has been in long-term segregation since 1998.