When they promoted me to medium custody after more than eight years in isolation, I thought I was leaving solitary confinement behind. Instead, I found myself in a strange space: not quite solitary, not quite general population, but somehow managing to combine the worst aspects of both.

On paper, in Texas, medium custody is supposed to have outdoor recreation twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday, for one hour each time. In reality, staffing shortages mean we often go weeks without seeing the sky. It’s like being teased with freedom. Here’s what you could have, if only we had enough guards to watch you. 

Then there’s the 23:59, a bureaucratic sleight of hand that would be almost impressive if it wasn’t so cynical. Texas has regulations against twenty-four-hour lockdowns, so they lock us down for twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes instead. One single minute of theoretical freedom makes it legal, makes it not-technically-solitary-confinement for the 86 people in medium custody. Someone in an office somewhere must have felt very clever when they thought of that.

The worst part isn’t even the confinement. It’s the psychological game they’re playing. In solitary, at least the rules were clear. You knew you were locked down. You knew what to expect. Here, they dangle the promise of freedom while holding the threat of lockdown over our heads. It’s like being given a longer leash but still feeling the collar just as tight. Now I understand why most of the people promoted to medium ultimately returned to solitary. At least solitary didn’t dress up torture in a promotion or play games with minutes and regulations. This “medium custody” feels like gaslighting, telling us we’re more free while finding new ways to emulate solitary.

Someone raises their voice in the dayroom? 23:59. Short of staff? 23:59. An argument in the chow line? 23:59. One person’s infraction becomes everyone’s punishment. During these lockdowns, which happen weekly and can be extended indefinitely, life becomes a mirror image of solitary. Meals arrive through the food slot. Medications are delivered to our cells. Laundry appears and disappears without us ever leaving our rooms. The teargas drifts through corridors just as frequently as it did in solitary—a burning reminder that control here is maintained with the same tools of force. I was supposed to feel grateful for this new “freedom.” But, sometimes, the only real difference I can see is that they’ve painted the walls a different shade of white.

We do get daily showers without guard escorts or handcuffs now, which sounds like an improvement over solitary, where broken plumbing and predatory guards make showering rare and risky endeavors. But this small mercy feels almost mocking in the face of everything else that remains the same.

The cruelest part is that this is supposed to be my transition period—twenty months of “preparation” for general population, which I won’t reach until January 2026. But even this uncertain progress isn’t guaranteed. The prison regularly sends me back to solitary when they need my bed space, treating me like a human chess piece to be moved at their convenience.

Sometimes I wonder if this is what purgatory feels like, that theological space between heaven and hell where souls await judgment. It’s a waiting room with tear gas, a transition period that feels suspiciously permanent, a “promotion” that keeps dragging me backward.

I realize now that I never really left solitary confinement after eight and a half years. They just rebranded it, added a roommate, and called it progress. This isn’t freedom or even a step toward it. Some days, watching the sun through barred windows during another extended 23:59 lockdown, I wonder if they’ve just found a more palatable way to keep us in solitary by another name. 

Photo credit: Jonathan Haeber