June 4 , 2021 9:00 pm
How might I impart what it resembles to get captured when you have one multi month old girl and a second little girl in transit, and afterward be condemned to a term of existence without the chance of parole after your first lawful offense conviction, via a hypothesis of responsibility, for a wrongdoing you didn't perpetrate? How might I portray what it seems like currently to have two little girls who are twelve and thirteen years of age whom I haven't held in more than nine years since I'm limited in a supermax jail for my sole authentic disciplinary infraction? A jail which Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Tamms Year Ten all censure since they think about the conditions here as adding up to torment. The English language needs satisfactory phrasing for such an undertaking.
The first time I ever wrote anything really was shortly after I arrived at Tamms (the supermax prison where I’m currently confined). I wrote an essay. I had never written an essay before, not even in school as far as I can remember. Yet desperate for money, I tried my hand at it. There was an essay contest being put on by a death row inmate and a good Samaritan. The theme was Who Am I?” I learned of the contest from another prisoner who yelled out the details from down the ganery. I had to send it in that night in order to make the deadline. I simply wrote down the first thing that came to mind. Surprisingly I won first place and fifty bucks, even more than the ten dollars promised to every entrant. More than anything though, it inspired me to learn how to write better. In prison good writing skills are essential for just about everything — keeping in contact with your family (especially here in Tamms where they still won’t allow us to make phone calls); presenting your appeals in concise, coherent arguments to the courts; advocating for change; filing grievances; etc.
In that first essay I briefly touched upon what it is like in prison. I wrote:
“Most people’s conceptions of being locked up are completely wrong. It’s not the physical things that you’re without that make it so hard to be incarcerated for life. It’s the fact that you’re helpless to take care of your family when they’re sick, to raise your children, to help in their times of struggle, and to give back to your community. Instead you’re a burden, a charity case, someone to pity. It strips you of your self-esteem and your self-respect. That is what breaks a man, not the absence of good food, alcohol, sex, or any of the other inconsequential thing we may often wish we had to temporarily give us pleasure.”
I still find all of that true. Yet, after being confined and isolated for the past 9 years in a supermax prison, I’ve also come to realize that the little things add up too. There are a million little stressors and injustices that prisoners must endure on a daily basis that can also break a man. These are what I will try to describe with this diary. Each one may seem minor, but the cumulative effect of them all is what drives so many here insane. I’m not sure how accurate the word “insane” is, but it definitely causes a variety of mental illnesses. A recent report by the John Howard Association claims that 95% of inmates in Tamms suffer from a diagnosable psychiatric problem. Up to a point I wonder if this figure is just rhetoric or propaganda put out by the administration to further slander and stigmatize us in the eyes of the public, similar to how they call us the “worst of the worst”. I can hear them now, “not only are they the worst of the worst, but they’re all crazy sociopaths!” At the same time it disturbingly seems plausible to me that so many here are mentally ill. Numerous studies have shown that as little as three months in solitary confinement can cause deterioration in one’s mental health. I wonder what the past nine years here have done to me? What psychiatric problem have they surreptitiously diagnosed me with?
Explanation:
