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The Plan

12/5/2014

 
At the Maine Youth Center in ’95, a “Plan” was punishment for minor transgressions such as cursing, yelling, arguing, talking during a silent period and so on. A single-spaced one page essay, the Plan was acknowledgement of what you did, why you did it, and how you would make sure it didn’t happen again. To make the punishment even more dismal, it was administered during the few hours we could watch TV – usually Baywatch, Married with Children and MTV.

Most of us 14-17 year olds hated school for one reason or another and the Plan served as an ugly reminder of that antipathy. It was a boring task made worse with the fear of what happens to those who can’t complete the essay and those bold enough to refuse.

Failing to write a plan for any reason got you sent to an ICP cold cell without clothes or light and a hole in the floor for a toilet. After being put into this cell with the air-conditioner on high there was nothing to do but wait for six long hours. If at the end of this time you still refused to write the Plan, staff gave you a pair of skivvies, a blanket and thin mat, and put you in solitary confinement for seventy-two hours. Continued rebellion increased the time to fourteen days with reduced meals, then thirty days. If at that point, after a month with nothing to do but count cracks in the floor and you still wouldn’t give in, they moved you to the Security Threat Unit, a much more brutal form of solitary confinement.

Most kids were ready to write the Plan after a trip to ICP, especially the younger ones. It’s not like you were allowed to sit in silence during this time; staff typically attended to your miseducation with noise, threats and physical assaults. A few kids went to the ICP cells for three days. Nobody wanted to endure STU. Wherever you ended up, the staff meant to break your will and when that was done, the Plan was waiting.

The easiest way to write a Plan and escape the pressure of the hole involved using a lot of description. Elaborate and verbose details that had little to do with the event under question, or misspelled, half-remembered words glimpsed in a National Geographic magazine – whatever it took to reach the bottom of the page and sound vaguely coherent. With most of the space used to describe the incident, less was needed to explain the “why” of the infraction or the “how” it wouldn’t happen again. It was quicker this way and required minimal thought about personal accountability. In my four stays at the Maine Youth Center, I only wrote a few plans. The last I remember was for talking during a silent period.

“Mr. May, “ said Mr. Lemry. “You’re talking when you should be silent. Grab a pencil and piece of paper, sit in the corner, and write a plan about your runaway mouth and arrogance.”

It helps to have an imagination when writing a plan, and to actually like writing. Some kids broke down in tears at the thought. I didn’t mind writing. By the time I reached the bottom of the page, I had composed an extravagant story about Al Bundy being secretly married to Pamela Anderson’s body double, who also happened to be either Miss September of ’94 or Miss October. I couldn’t remember which and this is why I asked Jeremy. He didn’t know either but had sense enough to shrug. To prevent such a misguided and grievous error in judgment in the future, I would most certainly endeavor to keep my arrogance in check and avoid the displeasure of staff by keeping my mouth shut.

I have often wondered what the staff thought of our Plans. We never received grades or feedback unless it was a demand to write another plan. I thought I saw a staff member smile once but she saw me looking and quickly stopped. In the end it didn’t matter. The Plan was merely a second chance to submit to the will of the authorities and a last chance to avoid the misery of the hole.

Human Rights? Not in Solitary Confinement

10/11/2014

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It's happened again. Another mentally ill inmate has died as a result of the mistreatment of prison guards at Alexander Correctional in Taylorsville, North Carolina. Anthony Michael Kerr was in solitary confinement and denied water for an unknown period of time until he died of dehydration. This is a horrendous way to die, especially considering it occurred at the hands of staff charged with caring for prisoners who need more attention -- not less.

In 2008 another mentally ill prisoner at Alexander Correctional, Timothy E. Helms, was severely beaten with his hands cuffed behind his back. His skull fractured, a large boot-shaped bruise in the center of his chest, Timothy later died of his brutal injuries and all the while staff maintain he fell on the way to the showers.

Like Kerr, Helms was in solitary confinement and mentally deficient, but rather than receive much needed treatment from staff psychiatrists he was murdered. It seems the treatment at Alexander Correctional leaves patients dead.

In both cases a handful of low-level staff were fired or asked to resign, but no criminal charges for either death are forthcoming. The change being called for is a request for emergency prison staff to fill the many vacancies in the state’s prisons. As if that’s going to help. As if more of the same treatment will cure how the mentally ill are dumped into the prison system. If ever there was a need for mental hospitals such as Dorothea Dix it is now.

In the Kerr case the medical examiner claims to be unable to determine if the man’s death was an accident, natural, or a result of homicide because she hadn’t seen any official record. It’s almost as if she needs to be told what conclusion to reach.

Here’s a theory: if you isolate and restrain a man in a cell, then deny him water, he will die of dehydration. Since this takes some time and it was the intent of prison staff to deprive Kerr of water, this deliberate indifference to the man’s suffering resulted in his death. There is nothing natural or accidental about Anthony Kerr’s lack of basic human rights – he was killed by abusive prison staff.

That another mentally ill inmate died as a result of mistreatment in solitary confinement is no surprise to those of us who have served time in an isolated cell. Many of my experiences on Unit One at Central Prison, ICU at the Maine Youth Center, Safe Keeping at Blanch Prison in Greensboro, the Morganton High Rise, and the Buncombe County Jail have shown me jail and prison is where authorities don’t have to justify the abuse of power – it’s all they comprehend.

Any attempt by prisoners to decry isolation by yelling or banging on the door is met with excessive force. Chains or straps for four-point restraints, food rationing, canisters of mace emptied through the food slot, the water and toilet shut off, tasers and shock shields on naked flesh, and assault from thugs in uniforms while the prisoners is handcuffed behind the back and shackled – this is how prisoners in solitary confinement are treated in North Carolina and across the country. For those unfortunate who are resilient to such abuse and remain uncowed or incapable of understanding some prison staff don’t care – there is death.

When the horrors of Abu Ghraib were broadcast around the world many prisoners laughed at the indignant headlines. Where do you think such tactics were learned? Several of the military guards at the prison in Iraq previously worked in the American penal system. It doesn’t matter whether you are a suspected terrorist, mentally ill, young, old, male, or female, the hole in America is a reflection of its ugliest aspect. It demonstrates how vicious and pervasive our need to control and punish people has become. It is also suggestive of the primitive urges typically found in the undeveloped countries to which we pass the torch of democracy and civilization.

Where are our human rights, America?




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An Ingenious Torture Device - Guest Post

9/21/2014

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17 years ago I would lie in bed for most of the day, getting up only when my meals were delivered. I would lie in the sweat and the funk of my stale mattress, covered by a tattered old blanket as the cockroaches crawled around me.. Often, the nasty insects would drop from the walls and ceiling into bed with me, but I would only lie there in a vain attempt to sleep my time away, wishing that one day I might wake to find myself somewhere else -- home, dare I hope? -- and the nightmare would be over.

That cell at C.A. Dillon School, the odor, the roaches, the chaos in my mind dulled to an annoying din with Haldol and Cogentin -- this was my personal teenage hell. I celebrated my 16th birthday there. When most boys my age were newly licensed drivers, dating, and looking forward to the prom, I was languishing behind a steel door, broken already when I hadn't yet begun to live.

My closest friend at Dillon was Kevin Martin. The two of us were housed on the same wing -- Wing 1, I believe it was -- for a while. We would be the only two left behind in our calls during the day while the other kids were at school, and he would talk to me from behind his door and try to rouse me from my drugged, lethargic dream world. At one point we were going to break out. When one of the staff members entered the hallway to let us out of our cells for showers we were going to jump him and take the big brass key that would open the door at the end of the hallway. Once outside we would climb the fence and sprint away to freedom.

It was a stupid idea and I was in no condition physically for fighting, climbing, or running. Staff caught wind of our plan (they likely heard it from us as we had to yell to hear each other) and came to move me to another wing so Kevin and I would be separated. I armed myself with two sharp pencils, fully intending to stab one or more of them when they stormed my cell. When the door opened they came fast, rolling in four deep, and though I tried to bury a pencil into the neck of the first guy, he somehow managed to grab my arm. Before I could bring the second pencil into play, the second staff member had my other arm and they were both bending my wrists in painful ways while yelling for me to drop the pencils.

When I finally relented and dropped my weapons, the four of them carried me by my arms and legs to a cell in Wing 3. Once they'd succeeded in locking me in I immediately stood up on the bed and pissed on the wall, and then, having relieved myself, I stepped down and proceeded to bang my head against the door repeatedly.

Five minutes later when they returned with the heavy canvas strait-jacket, I could only laugh and hold out my arms as they slid it on and fastened the straps in the back. Already exhausted from the earlier struggle, there was no way I could resist now.

When fully strapped in I realized the strait-jacket is just an ingenious torture device, probably invented by the same person who invented the rack and thumbscrews. My arms were wrapped tight around my body and held in place by a vertical strap along the front of the garment. The sleeves were pulled around back and strapped in place along with a number of other straps, but most painful of all was the strap pulled up between my legs and buckled tight in back so it dug into my crotch. Aside from the obvious pain in my groin, the combined pressure from the tightly cinched straps bent my lower back in a way that made any movement painful.

For the first 15-20 minutes I stood there singing old Pink Floyd songs, pretending not to be bothered at all, but slowly the pressure and the pain began to build until my groin throbbed and my spine felt as if it might snap. After a couple of hours of this torture they finally removed the strait-jacket. I was moved to another cell -- one that didn't reek of piss -- and there I promptly fell into bed and went to sleep..

Looking back on these events from within the confines of yet another cell, I feel a profound sense of sadness. At that point in my life I knew only rage, a white-hot inferno that no modern pharmaceutical could quench. I wish I could travel back in time and talk sense to that angry, screwed up boy in that strait-jacket. The medicine he needed the was not Haldol, restraint devices, or locked doors and fences. What he needed was real talk combined with a heavy dose of love and understanding.

Timothy White

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Is The Hole Torture?

9/17/2014

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Is the hole torture? This was asked of me several months ago in a ten minute writing exercise and the response I gave was disjointed and confused. There have been times in solitary where it felt like torture, but at others it was not so noticeable. After 17 years of imprisonment as an adult, the hole has taken on different meanings in my life. I try to avoid it, but prison is a place full of pitfalls and even the smartest or wiliest get pushed into the hole. It's a fact of life you prepare for and harden yourself against much like a car accident -- it's all about damage control.

The first time I experienced solitary confinement was a 2 week stint at the Maine Youth Center when I was 16. After stealing a disposable Bic razor from a staff member's desk a kid try to earn a home pass caught me and told staff. As punishment for the theft I was taken to a darkened row of cells that stank of mildew and cleaning chemicals. They stripped me of everything but my underwear and slammed the door shut. There were no books, magazines, television, or radio and my only relief from the monotony came in the form of self-mutilation with sharp rocks, singing half-remembered songs from school and church, and defiance. They were two very long weeks but enduring the hole as a teen was more like a scary right of passage, one that clings like a nightmare.

A year later, back at the youth center for running from a cop and violating my probation, they put me in the hole for a month because I dared to flee. This time the hole was harder because I knew just enough to understand the guards were not my friends. They in turn proved this by shutting off the lights during the day and serving meals at varying times. Showers and our 1 hour of rec out of the cell were sporadic. One kid tried to kill himself, and because he was unsuccessful, was tormented by staff for his failure. This was in 1995.

By the time I was charged with capital murder in 1997 my familiarity with the hole prepared me for the twenty months I would spend on 23 hour lock down at the county jail. The time became the hardest of my life for more reasons than being confined in a cell. Though I had access to books and magazines the emotional impact of being charged with murder, the doubts and suspicions of friends and family, and the thought of spending the rest of my life in this tiny space broke me.

I grew so angry during this period I punched the steel mirror upon seeing my reflection, or the wall wishing it would crumble. My hands stayed swollen a lot. I cried for the lives that had been lost -- including my own. Eventually I tried suicide, and when failure brought me back to the same cell I died inside. The cell became an extension of my thoughts and they ended in its cold corners.

I have not spent years in the hole like some of my friends, but the signs of their long ordeal are apparent. Everyone I know of who has spent a minimum of two years in solitary confinement displays some form of dysfunctional behavior. Obsessive cleaning, sleeping fully clothed, talking to themselves, fits of rage --whatever it is they do we prisoners as a group can tell who has left a part of their mind in the hole. Even the most defiant can break eventually.
Yes, the hole is torture, but the asker already knew that, and so did the people who designed the practice and implemented its use in the penal system. The question that needs to be asked is: why is the hole still used if we know it's torture?
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    Author

    In the time he has been incarcerated, Lyle May has earned an Associates in Arts degree with a social science emphasis through Ohio University; paralegal certification through the Center for Legal Studies; and is currently working on his bachelor’s degree. He has published two articles in The Wing, an international newsletter for death penalty opponents, and is hard at work writing a second memoir detailing his experiences on death row. When he is not writing Lyle enjoys sci-fi and fantasy novels, calisthenics, and dreams of freedom.

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    Lyle welcomes comments to his blog.  However, because Lyle's case is still pending, he will not be able to respond to any questions or comments that you may have.

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