My cellie is dead. I killed him.
March 30, 2016 11:43 PM   Subscribe

The Deadly Consequences of Solitary With a Cellmate. "The 4'8"-by-10'8" space was originally built for one, but as Menard became increasingly overcrowded and guards sent more people to solitary, the prison bolted in a second bunk. The two men would have to eat, sleep, and defecate inches from one another for nearly 24 hours a day in a space smaller than a parking spot, if a parking spot had walls made of cement and steel on all sides. With a toilet, sink, shelf, and beds, the men were left with a sliver of space about a foot-and-a-half wide to maneuver around each other. If one stood, the other had to sit."
posted by Rumple (57 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
United Nations Charter of Human Rights might have a place in this scenario. So sad what we have become.
posted by Freedomboy at 11:59 PM on March 30, 2016 [8 favorites]


Greatest country on earth!
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:07 AM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


over 80 percent of the 10,747 federal prisoners in solitary have a cellmate

This whole article is horrific. If the problem is extreme overcrowding, how long before they decide to maybe stop putting too many fucking people in prison? I'll never understand how we as a human race that can put people into space can't figure out a better way to deal with offenders than locking them in a box.
posted by billiebee at 12:44 AM on March 31, 2016 [25 favorites]


Wonderful plausible deniability for the COs/warden. Have a prisoner you don't like? Put him solitary with a 'bug' (prisoner with reputation for attacking cell-mates). Turn off the AC/ turn the heater on. Wait.

Better the old 'jailhouse suicide'.

America, land of the slaves, home of the gulag.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:49 AM on March 31, 2016 [16 favorites]


Despite the risks of double celling, some corrections officials insist it’s preferable, because it’s technically not “solitary” at all.

I'm not sure that's how this works,
posted by Mezentian at 1:27 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I realize this is an incredibly naive question, but who is accountable?
posted by Literaryhero at 2:34 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nobody. There are responsible parties, but none of them can our will be held accountable.
posted by Dysk at 2:36 AM on March 31, 2016 [16 favorites]


When I read this I actually recoiled, leaning back in my chair. How did we get here?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:08 AM on March 31, 2016


Mezentian- I think the idea is that solitary (with no cell mate) is psychologically awful. There's been discussion of this before on the blue.

Of course, it seems like sharing such a tiny space with another person would also be pretty terrible, in ways different to, but possibly no less than, being without any human contact.
posted by nat at 3:19 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I realize this is an incredibly naive question, but who is accountable?

This is the United States - with rare exceptions, the answer is "nobody".
posted by ryanshepard at 3:59 AM on March 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


by the way. Obama just nominated to the supreme court one of the principal architects of the federal sentencing guidelines, whose rigid and arbitrary requirements are one of the big drivers of incarceration in federal prison.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:07 AM on March 31, 2016 [20 favorites]


it seems like sharing such a tiny space with another person would also be pretty terrible, in ways different to, but possibly no less than, being without any human contact

And in fact, potentially worse. All the research about psychological damage and they managed to make solitary confinement worse! I mean, just wow. Fucking high fives all round.
posted by billiebee at 4:13 AM on March 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


I'll never understand how we as a human race that can put people into space can't figure out a better way to deal with offenders than locking them in a box.

I propose we already have: An earlier FPP of mine on modern Norwegian prisons and the low recidivism rate over here. Having the US adopt this philosophy is a whole different kettle of fish, though.
posted by Harald74 at 4:42 AM on March 31, 2016 [18 favorites]


"If you can come up with a better way to do this, understanding the fact that we are 162 percent of capacity without double celling, I'm willing to listen to you."

I know! How about we stop putting people in prison for bullshit non-violent drug offenses?

Seriously though, like LeRoienJaune, I have a feeling correctional officers see these murders as a handy solution to several of their problems, the least of which is overcrowding.
posted by Brittanie at 4:47 AM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


It is crazy to think that we also have empty prisons built on spec by small towns who thought they could cash in on the private prison boom. America is fucked.
posted by humanfont at 5:18 AM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


I so echo Billiebee - I can't believe authorities found a way to make solitary worse. Then again I was surprised at how bad conditions were in the article on Rikers. I shouldn't be amazed anymore.
posted by biggreenplant at 5:31 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll never understand how we as a human race that can put people into space can't figure out a better way to deal with offenders than locking them in a box.

Because it would be less profitable than locking them in a box.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:32 AM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


After two months of begging for a single cell, Fox wrote a note to guards: “Move my cellie or I’m going to erase him.”

They didn’t, so he did.
They really just don't care do they. They literally want them to kill each other to solve the overcrowding problem.
posted by Talez at 5:34 AM on March 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


I just skimmed the post on my way down the front page and the parking space imagery sprang the entire situation to life in my head instantly. I'm mildly claustrophobic but only in extreme circumstances, but the thought of somebody else being that close to me, and unyielding walls around us, and people outside hearing us and knowing about our experience and not doing anything about it just made my skin crawl so bad, and gave me such a visceral experience reading it, that I instantly felt so sick, and so much compassion, and so much rage against those perpetuating it that I must look away. I have to close this tab, I can't read on. I'm usually a very optimistic person but this feels too much to bear.
posted by Brainy at 5:42 AM on March 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


I am 100% sure that when future societies look back on ours and discuss the things we did that they find completely barbaric and repulsive, our prison system is going to be one of them.
posted by kyrademon at 5:43 AM on March 31, 2016 [14 favorites]


They literally want them to kill each other to solve the overcrowding problem.

This was also the conclusion that I came to upon reading the article.
posted by koucha at 5:46 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Another FPP concerning Scandinavian prisons - The Norden is a Finnish TV series, taking Americans and introducing them to their profession within the Nordic countries. First, James Conway, retired Superintendent of Attica Correctional Facility in New York, visits four Nordic prisons and facilities.
posted by XMLicious at 6:14 AM on March 31, 2016


How did we get here?

I can only speak to a small part of it -- so much of it is prisoner overcrowding, lack of regulatory oversight, and low pay and high turnover for people involved in the correctional system -- but at least part of it is a result of the development of federal civil rights and specifically prisoner rights law. To bring a 1983 suit based on prison conditions, you have to show as a threshold question that the conditions imposed on you constituted an "atypical and significant hardship" in order to even have a liberty interest as protected by the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. Although it is possible to have a property interest in one's "good time" credits or other things affecting the length of your incarceration, raising a legal challenge to the conditions of your incarceration requires showing that you are treated BOTH differently from other inmates AND more severly.

As you can imagine, this standard has created a situation where conditions of facilities are evaluated in reference to what is normal at that time, or done by other facilities. So, first solitary confinement became not atypical and significant, because it was adopted fairly widely. And then 24-hour lighting was not atypical. And then all of a sudden, two people sharing a tiny baby cell was not atypical or significant, because it became commonplace across the country due to overcrowding. And therefore none of you prisoners have relief under the law. And without any threat of colorable legal pressure, correctional officials are under no obligation to change or alter these practices, and the Overton window continues to shift towards less and less humane practices.

It is only when, like in some of the cases discussed in the article, that prison officials can be shown to have some knowledge that there was a real risk to another inmate, that you even get anywhere close to a colorable lawsuit. And obviously that is not an easy standard to prove in most cases.

I guess the last thing I would mention is simply that prisoners' rights litigation in this country is sorely sorely needed, and there are lots of young lawyers with interest in pursuing this field. But very few firms are taking the cases because they are so infrequently winnable, and few private foundations are interested in it because, well, prisoners. So there are actually very few advocates practicing this type of law -- most practitioners are court-appointed lawyers after court personnel (ie. not actual prisoners' advocates) evaluate pro se lawsuits and determine whether there might be a colorable claim. TL;DR prison conditions are a huge problem in this country, and not very many people are doing anything about it.
posted by likeatoaster at 6:14 AM on March 31, 2016 [29 favorites]


If the problem is extreme overcrowding, how long before they decide to maybe stop putting too many fucking people in prison?

I'm pretty sure they'll decide to simply build more prisons before that. Especially if private industry has any say in it...And they do.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:15 AM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


If the problem is extreme overcrowding, how long before they decide to maybe stop putting too many fucking people in prison?

Part of the problem, though, is that there isn't any unified oversight. I absolutely agree that we should stop putting too many fucking people in prison, and I think a lot of correctional administrators would feel the same (not enough, maybe, but certainly at least some of them), but the people responsible for lowering incarceration rates are NOT the people who are responsible for housing inmates. Once someone has been sentenced to prison, it's the responsibility of the Department of Corrections to put them SOMEWHERE. These options are horrific and totally not okay, and this is an extreme example of overcrowding that's happening all over the country and is immensely problematic, but part of the problem is that the people responsible for housing the inmates and keeping them in humane conditions don't necessarily have control over either how many inmates are in their custody or how much space they have. I mean, when the guy says:
If you can come up with a better way to do this, understanding the fact that we are 162 percent of capacity without double celling, I'm willing to listen to you.
Well, that's a real problem! Doubling people up is not okay and is not the answer, but this is actually an impossible situation and the people in charge of coping with correctional facilities do not, for the most part, have any say over how many people are incarcerated. It's a shitty, shitty situation and the blame goes to many people, not just those actually running the prisons.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:38 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think I am genuinely confused as to how it would be worse to share a cell with another person than full on solitary confinement. Maybe I've just read too much prison literature from the 1800s or something? It just seems like you would want to band together against the people who put you there. Is there any writing or research on why this doesn't happen, on why some people react worse to companionship than solitude?
posted by corb at 6:44 AM on March 31, 2016


When I read this I actually recoiled, leaning back in my chair. How did we get here?

Racism.
posted by mhoye at 6:55 AM on March 31, 2016 [16 favorites]


I think I am genuinely confused as to how it would be worse to share a cell with another person than full on solitary confinement.

A cell smaller than a parking spot.

It just seems like you would want to band together against the people who put you there.

Curiously, people in prison tend not to be the best at banding together for the collective good.
posted by Etrigan at 7:00 AM on March 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


whose rigid and arbitrary requirements are one of the big drivers of incarceration in federal prison.

To be fair, the Guidelines became advisory over ten years ago. It's the blankety-blank mandatory minimums that are now much of the problem at the federal level.

But, yes, Garland's criminal law record should give everyone pause.

I think I am genuinely confused as to how it would be worse to share a cell with another person than full on solitary confinement.

You're probably picturing a cell wider than a coffin. And a cellmate who isn't mentally ill or desensitized to violence as a means of problem-solving after experience in a brutal environment.
posted by praemunire at 7:00 AM on March 31, 2016 [11 favorites]


Is there any writing or research on why this doesn't happen, on why some people react worse to companionship than solitude?

Well, there is this, from early in the article..
“We've done this utterly bizarre thing, which is to put two people in cells that were built for one and leave them both in there for 23 or more hours a day,” says Craig Haney, a psychologist who has studied solitary for more than 30 years. “The frustration and anger that’s generated by being in isolation is intensified by having to navigate around another person’s habits, trials, and tribulations.”
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:05 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Norwegian prisons and the low recidivism rate

repeat business is good business.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:05 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Curiously, people in prison tend not to be the best at banding together for the collective good.

And prisons (and, increasingly, the justice system and society) are specifically designed to prevent exactly that.
posted by mhoye at 7:21 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's a shitty, shitty situation and the blame goes to many people, not just those actually running the prisons.

Couldn't the people running the prisons have refused to take any more prisoners when they reached 100% capacity?
posted by Dysk at 7:33 AM on March 31, 2016


Couldn't the people running the prisons have refused to take any more prisoners when they reached 100% capacity?

They're either public officials, in which case they get fired by a law-and-order politician who gets to campaign on that forever; or private employees, in which case they're taking money out of their own pockets if they turn people away.
posted by Etrigan at 7:36 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Or, y'know, spend the money to increase capacity by building more cell blocks. I mean, if you're at 162% capacity, you're also at 162% of your projected maximum revenue for the facility, right?
posted by Dysk at 7:36 AM on March 31, 2016


or they're private employees, in which case they're taking money out of their own pockets if they turn people away.

...and we should expect them to do just that. We expect it off everyone else whose business we regulate or legislate in any way to do it, why not prison officials?
posted by Dysk at 7:38 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


or they're private employees, in which case they're taking money out of their own pockets if they turn people away.

...and we should expect them to do just that. We expect it off everyone else whose business we regulate or legislate in any way to do it, why not prison officials?


We have regulations specifically to keep this sort of thing from happening in other businesses because we don't expect a club manager to say "No, 100 people is enough for this space, so I won't sell any more tickets because it would be dangerous."
posted by Etrigan at 7:41 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


They're either public officials, in which case they get fired by a law-and-order politician who gets to campaign on that forever; or private employees, in which case they're taking money out of their own pockets if they turn people away.

Yeah, I agree that private prisons should in fact spend that money on improvements because they have more choices about, for example, compensation and budgets and stuff, and the idea of getting rich off of this kind of suffering is appalling and I'm ashamed of them as they should be of themselves.

In the case of state-run prisons (which they should all be! WTF! Who lets private corporations run prisons? They literally control every aspect of people's lives! It's horrific!), public officials will get fired and replaced by someone who DOESN'T care about stuff like this and might also be significantly less experienced/qualified. Good, appropriate, well-run prisons don't look like this, but they only happen when prison administrators fight for humane conditions AND people listen instead of just getting rid of them. It's not always easy to find qualified people who are willing to risk their jobs for a fight they almost certainly can't win.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:45 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


There was also a great, and really heartbreaking, piece about this on NPR last week, done in collaboration with these folks.
posted by lunasol at 7:45 AM on March 31, 2016


I realize this is an incredibly naive question, but who is accountable?

This is the United States - with rare exceptions, the answer is "nobody".


Slight correction: This is the United States, so the people who are held accountable will be the people who suffered the most. This is how we assign blame in many types of situations. If you lose your house due to a market crash, it's because you were financially irresponsible. If you get raped, it's because you were sending out signals that said you wanted to be. If you get killed in prison, it's your just desserts for having gotten into prison at all. A person who was doing the right things could only profit from our very not-broken-at-all system, you see, so if you didn't profit it's because of something you did wrong.

The whole prison system in particular is designed to PUNISH inmates, because American society loves punishing people who aren't being successful. Everybody loves a winner and everybody hates a loser, and woe be unto you who finds yourself on the wrong side of that line. The people making the decisions know about all the things this article is talking about and they make the decisions they do in part because they think the inmates deserve these outcomes on account of them being filthy prison inmates. The psychological damage and the prison violence and scary stories in the outside world about prison rape and the recidivism and the prodigious poverty and death rates are all a feature of the system rather than a bug, in their eyes, and sadly there's a significant segment of the voting public that agrees with them.
posted by IAmUnaware at 8:12 AM on March 31, 2016 [19 favorites]


It just seems like you would want to band together against the people who put you there.

And indeed this is the case in Poland, in much of the ex-Soviet Union, and most other places that I have read about. This seems to be a problem that is perversely amplified in the exceptional USA.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:13 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


This seems to be a problem that is perversely amplified in the exceptional USA.


While "gang activity" can be a euphemism among prison staff for "any behavior we don't like," there certainly are gangs in prison. Another reason to worry about two-person solitary.

Relatedly:

"Last summer, four alleged leaders of rival prison gangs worked together to coordinate a hunger strike at California's Pelican Bay State Prison. They were protesting long-term, indefinite incarceration in solitary confinement."
posted by praemunire at 8:17 AM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also I'm sure there is something I'm missing, but why can't they just transfer prisoners out of state to these apparent empty prisons elsewhere?
posted by corb at 9:56 AM on March 31, 2016


Also I'm sure there is something I'm missing, but why can't they just transfer prisoners out of state to these apparent empty prisons elsewhere?

Because, first of all, California fucks everything up by having an ungodly amount of excess prisoners. The number of excess prisoners in California alone is larger than the prison population of every state bar Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia and North Carolina.

Secondly, there would be a massive clusterfuck of lawsuits filed under 8th amendment grounds about being transferred out of state away from their families and support systems.
posted by Talez at 10:03 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's a great article by Ted Conover on solitary confinement, which (though it focuses on true solitary) outlines how solitary came to be in the U.S. from the Quakers. As he says, "In a perverse tribute to human endeavor, solitary confinement began as a reform."
posted by knownassociate at 11:15 AM on March 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


The whole prison system in particular is designed to PUNISH inmates, because American society loves punishing people who aren't being successful.

Yeah, the prison industry and so on are of course motivated by profit ("of course" because America, not because its the natural order of things), but the reason they can keep themselves in business is that a large group of Americans are happy to vote to continue this situation, because they believe criminals should be punished, not simply removed from society or rehabilitated.

Obviously we don't all believe that, but there are enough people who do that change is difficult.
posted by thefoxgod at 12:13 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


In Menard, double-celled prisoners are placed in rooms that are a foot-and-a-half narrower than those in general population (too narrow, one inmate has said, to do push-ups). Gerard Schultz, who was double celled at Menard for a cumulative eight months, explained in a letter that he had to create a schedule with his cellie to determine when someone could stand up.

We literally treat stray fucking dogs better than this in a kennel.

I don't even have words.
posted by three easy payments and one complicated payment at 1:11 PM on March 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


I would honestly rather be waterboarded.
posted by gottabefunky at 1:32 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


corb: "I think I am genuinely confused as to how it would be worse to share a cell with another person than full on solitary confinement."

Oh so many ways but a few of the major ones in my case would be dealing with that other person's flatulance; or if they mutter or yell out loud (often the same word or phrase over and over again) constantly; or they sit there staring at you.

I mean just imagine the worst co-worker you have ever had to deal with and then imagine them being within touching distance essentially 24/7/365. You eat your meals with them; shit with them; and they only shower twice a week if you are lucky. I'm surprised murders aren't a weekly thing.
posted by Mitheral at 2:24 PM on March 31, 2016


Seems like if someone's captured for the War on Drugs, the POW rules in the Geneva Conventions should apply.
posted by rifflesby at 4:08 PM on March 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


Those aren't great either, but honestly a lot are better than this.
posted by corb at 4:13 PM on March 31, 2016


How did we get here?

If you count the brutality of slavery before the Civil War, “here” has been going on for a long time. Now it's just no longer (completely) segregated by skin colour.
posted by acb at 4:36 PM on March 31, 2016


Why would anyone bother to stay alive in that condition? Cellie, thanks for killing me, I appreciate your help.
posted by Goofyy at 5:10 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Each had to prove that he would not be messed with, because if something happened — if one attacked the other — there was no escape. The only way to alert a guard was to bang on the door and hope the sound could be heard above the din.

jesus fucking christ. I guess I should be vaguely glad that I'm still capable of being shocked by the levels of inhumanity that exist, but somehow that doesn't feel comforting.
posted by threeants at 7:09 PM on March 31, 2016


Also I'm sure there is something I'm missing, but why can't they just transfer prisoners out of state to these apparent empty prisons elsewhere?

Unless something has changed recently they do. When I was working with a class inside San Quentin the guys inside really really did not want to be transferred out of state because the facilities in Texas that many of them ended up at were notoriously worse.

For one thing, the prison guards in California, as bad as some of them are, are apparently much better than the ones in Texas who, they said, only get minimum wage, and it's such a crappy job that it does not attract the best and the brightest.

Because it's a union job in California they get a decent salary and have great benefits so it's a little more competitive.

All this is hearsay - I have not researched it myself.
posted by small_ruminant at 7:52 PM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would rather have been a solitary confined prisoner in the mid 19th century in Port Arthur than what is described as the status quo in much of the US in the 21st century. At least if I went mad from solitary confinement I might have ended my days gardening or respite with work and companionship.
posted by esto-again at 1:55 AM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


"What’s it like to spend 23 hours a day in a cell measuring 6x9 feet for days, weeks, months or even years? 6x9 is the Guardian's first virtual reality experience, which places you inside a US solitary confinement prison cell and tells the story of the psychological damage that can ensue from isolation.

We've created a mobile app allowing you to fully experience VR on your own, with or without cardboard viewer. If you don't have a smartphone scroll down to watch the 360° video."

Recollections of life in Solitary.

Welcome to your virtual cell.
posted by Rumple at 5:21 PM on April 27, 2016


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