Having survived over two decades in solitary confinement, Jacob Barrett is currently incarcerated at Oregon State Correctional Institution for crimes committed when he first entered prison at nineteen years old. In addition to his work as an ADA Orderly, Barrett utilizes writing and drawing to document his three decades of incarceration in a multi-part series on his Facebook page. Solitary Watch is publishing a snapshot of this series in two parts. Part 1 focuses on how Barrett’s acquiescence to the “convict code” during his first year of incarceration led to his placement in solitary. The following piece, Part 2, details the various impacts his experience in solitary has had on him, ranging from developing trauma responses to renegotiating his identity.

Jacob’s other writings and artwork can be found online at the Real Cost of Prisons Project. He can also be reached through his mailing address: Jacob Barrett SID# 11123024, Oregon State Correctional Institution, 3405 Deer Park Drive, S.E., Salem, OR 97310 —Kilhah St Fort

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I have spent 21.5 years combined of the last 30 years in one form of solitary confinement or another. Looking back on what I experienced during that time, I often wonder how I am sane today. It is an environment that is unhealthy for staff and prisoners alike—a place that eats away at all the goodness in people no matter what side of the bars they are on.

It may sound strange but I am a believer in solitary to some degree. I believe there are people who pose a significant enough threat to necessitate isolation. What I don’t agree with is the deprivation that occurs. I believe there needs to be an environment that fosters and promotes normalization and rehabilitation, not social, physical, and sensory deprivation.

In December 1995, after my altercation with my co-defendant, I began my journey into the belly of the beast. But what do you think that means? What do you think solitary is?

According to psychologists Craig Haney and Mona Lynch, there are no forms of imprisonment that produce more psychological trauma and symptoms of psychopathology than solitary confinement. The debilitating psychological consequences of long-term solitary confinement have long been documented and include: an impaired sense of identity; hypersensitivity to stimuli; cognitive dysfunction (confusion, memory loss, ruminations); irritability, anger, aggression, and rage; other-directed violence, such as stabbings, attacks on staff, property destruction, and collective violence; lethargy, helplessness and hopelessness; chronic depression; self-mutilation and suicidal ideation, impulses, and behavior; anxiety and panic attacks; emotional breakdowns and loss of control; hallucinations, psychosis and paranoia; overall deterioration of mental and physical health. 

There are different kinds of solitary confinement in prison. Every state has its own version or name for it: punitive segregation, disciplinary segregation, Intensive Management Unit (IMU), Special Management Unit (SMU), Close Supervision Unit (CSU), Level-6, or “supermax”, to name a few of the monikers for solitary. Despite whatever small differences they might have from each other—including the rationale for why each individual might find their soul locked in solitary—they all share the common characteristic of long lock down, severe restrictions, sensory deprivation, little or no contact with others, and extreme social isolation measures under the guise of “security concerns.” 

Contrary to prison officials’ express declarations that solitary is used for the “worst of the worst,” it is more often than not used as a center of safety. Imagine for a moment a prisoner who is serving a lengthy sentence and might be vulnerable or subject to victimization in the prison. They are faced with a choice: be a victim or attack first. Either way, they will go to solitary whether as a victim in need of protection or as the aggressor. In the latter, they are able to save face and send a message. Given these alternatives, a trip through solitary becomes a reasonable option for a guy doing a lot of time. If he acts out, he looks like he is standing up for himself and can even build on that false narrative.

In that context, solitary becomes not just a warehouse for predators but a storage bin for the vulnerable, weak, and canny. The inside environment of solitary begins to reflect that dynamic. Men who were victims in general population find “door strength”—protection behind the door—and utilize psychological warfare to chip away at the men who might have victimized them in population.

Behind the door they can say whatever they want without the potential for physical repercussions. These weak links often become fixtures in solitary. They intentionally rack up minor misconduct reports to ensure they remain isolated. They find comfort and safety within the walls of solitary and, on some level, a sense of control over men who may have otherwise had power over them under different circumstances.

I’m not sure how I would describe my experience in solitary. While I have heard many prisoners describe it as a living death, I don’t think that articulates the experience because death is a finality, a release from life in which you are released from suffering. With solitary there is no release from the suffering. Your experience is lived with every breath, and there is no genuine hope of an end to the misery. It is a living hell, and death would be a release from that misery. That’s why so many people who have been in solitary have committed suicide. Death was a preferable choice over another moment in the void of nonexistence of solitary.

Death, depending on one’s religious beliefs, is transcendence to a better plane of existence. Solitary, in contrast, builds a physical and mental wall which deprives you of any meaningful interaction or contact with others, forcing you to find refuge in your own mind, to escape not only the solitude but also the insanity of the minds of others, who may find their way of coping by acting out at everyone within earshot.

Even then, solitary makes solitude impossible. Deprived of rational and meaningful social interaction and trapped in your own mind, your individuality and your identity are challenged and begin to evaporate. Your mind creates a world of fantasy to exercise itself, blending the fantasy of the mind with the reality and complexities of surviving solitary. Your mind feels as if it is melting or going numb as it releases memories of stimuli you no longer receive and replaces them with illusion. You begin to feel anxiety, fatigue, confusion, paranoia, depression, and in some cases, your fantasy world in your head manifests as actual hallucinations and confusion as to what is reality and fantasy. This is magnified for youth and emerging adults who are placed in solitary and still haven’t developed a firm identity or understanding of who they are as an individual.

I once went nearly 12 years without seeing a TV. The first time I was given access to one in my cell, I felt as if my mind was on overload with all the colors and motion pouring out of the screen. Even with a TV, I was not able to fully grasp reality. While it walked me into the direction of having stimulation to exercise my mind, I had been deprived of normal human contact with others for so long that I still felt no real connection with anything or anyone, not even myself. I had no way to turn my ability to feel or perceive the world around me into something tangible. The stimuli was too little too late, and without rational connection to the world around me.

All this said, while I don’t see solitary as a living death, I certainly see it as a civil half-death. It is a death in which my humanity is reduced by the state as a matter of law and policy, and my uniqueness and worth are denied by those tasked with overseeing me as a part of that law and policy structure. On top of that, my being is diluted in a prison culture, where one’s value is measured by fellow prisoners according to one’s forced adherence to imaginary “codes of a convict.”

This civil and social death denies people in solitary not only participation in a meaningful life in prison but also tools to participate in life outside the walls. Sitting in solitary, I was an object; I was property of the state. I had the ability to speak and act, but was not able to do it in a way that was meaningful and could impact the world outside my mind.

The administration pokes at you, trying to break you into small manageable pieces to “rehabilitate” and “control,” as long as it’s in a cost effective and controlled way, and never really putting the pieces they break off back healed or replaced with something meaningful. The power structure in prison, and amplified in solitary, is broken into the “us vs. them” relationship of guard and prisoner, in which a prisoner has to choose between breaking prison rules or breaking the convict rules. These two social bodies compete for control over an individual’s mind and body, often under one form of threat or another. Breaking rules becomes less about actually being incorrigible and more about simply surviving prison life, and maintaining even the smallest amount of control and power over oneself—even if that control is completely illusionary.

In that context, solitary began to instill in me the idea that I had been forced into choices that I didn’t want to participate in, but felt I was obligated to in order to not only feel something, but to feel like I had something tangible worth living for. Thus, I chose a “convict” life as opposed to a life of submissive control by guards who treated me as an animal.

Guards and prisoners alike reinforce this type of thinking. It binds you to a cycle of insanity, which is further reinforced the deeper you sink into your head. Even though you are an individual, you actually have no individuality or free will. You become trapped in a Catch-22. Little by little you become unhinged from your identity and the box of your existence is filled with illusion. After years of this acidic process, you become the incorrigible prisoner, the “other than human” object that the state sees strictly as a piece of property to store, while the illusion of the prison culture tells you you can fill it with purpose if you just accept and adhere to a diametrically opposed ideal. You sit with all this in your mind and you begin to pull yourself apart into fantasy and a diluted reality. 

For a long time, I chose to be a broken human being. I lived in toxic shame and a loss of hope. I could not see myself as anything other than the prison world I lived in. I gave up on myself. If you have a family member in solitary confinement struggling with their behavior and environment, I encourage you to not give up on them. Help them turn solitary into a time to educate and motivate themselves.

Rather than buy them music or girlie magazines, purchase them rehabilitative workbooks and books that will expand their self awareness. Offer to do the programs with them. But don’t give up on them. As the old saying goes, sometimes when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, you are just bumping your head on the way down. They need help to find the pathway forward, and the system isn’t going to put the tools out there for them.

Before my mom passed from cancer, she made sure she fostered that seed of hope. It took a long time to set in but when it did, those seeds blossomed, and I was able to begin the crawl out of the darkness.

But it was a dirty journey.