John C. Buckely IV is a decorated U.S. Army veteran. Among other awards, Buckley has been granted the Purple Heart for being wounded in combat. He has also been incarcerated for the past 15 years. Of that time, he has spent at least seven years in solitary confinement. His most recent stint in the hole lasted three years. 

Up until August 2025, Buckley had spent the majority of his prison sentence in Kentucky. Now, he resides in an Arizona correctional facility. Despite the inhumane living conditions Buckley has endured, he wants readers to know that he still holds many hopes for the future. As he continues efforts to overturn his conviction for a crime he maintains he did not commit, Buckley says he has been using the education and rehabilitation opportunities in Arizona to become a better writer and musician and work towards his master’s degree. Buckley says his biggest dream is that “my children will forgive me for standing my ground against an unbeatable foe (the government) and spending their childhoods in prison as retaliation for not plea bargaining the case out.” 

Buckley can be contacted by writing to him at: John Buckley IV #377381, ASPC Eyman/Cook, 801 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix, AZ 85034. —Kilhah St. Fort

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While being confined for years in long term solitary confinement (“the hole”) in Kentucky, I experienced severe torture as a result of my condition. I am 100 percent service-connected disabled for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) as a result of some particularly violent combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq as an Operator in 3rd Ranger Battalion 75 Ranger Regiment. Along with my own extensive experience in solitary in U.S. prisons, I observed the warehousing of the most mentally ill prisoners in the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KYDOC) in the hole, in lieu of treating them.

At one point in my life, I enjoyed a modicum of success. I was an Airborne Ranger in the Special Operations community. I enlisted before 9/11, and my battalion was on alert when the towers fell. I was one of the first 100 uniformed soldiers to set foot in the Global War on Terror when I conducted a nighttime parachute assault into Afghanistan (Objective Rhino) a month after 9/11. As the first ones to the show, we led the way into a 20-year conflict and two theaters of war. We deployed constantly. Our deployments were arduous as we advanced to forward areas and stayed in constant contact with the enemy. 

Everyone in my unit, including myself, was wounded in battle at least once and participated in dozens of firefights. On my third combat tour, after doing a second combat jump into Iraq, I was involved in the historic battle of Haditha Dam, where a company of Rangers (approximately 90 men) fought against a Regimental size force (2200 to 2800 men) of Iraqi Infantry and Republican Guard. I’ve seen death and evil in all its conceivable forms, both in combat AND in prison. 

The reality of sustained combat, as it turned out, was not a movie with good guys and bad guys, romantic notions and happy endings. 

The reality of combat was horrific: a kaleidoscope of adrenaline, death and life in its most visceral form. Sights, smells, and sounds etched themselves into my brain and replayed themselves in my nightmares. The extreme stress of 24-hour hyper vigilance coupled with the physical wounds that I suffered in combat, altered my personality and made me a different person. 

Becoming a father was the catalyst for change in my life. By some miracle, my desperation to get back over there (those of us who make it home lose our connections with the unaffected civilian society and are desperate to get back to the sand box) was replaced by my passion for fatherhood. My girls became my world. However, three days after coming home from my final tour as a security contractor in Iraq (something I did after being shot and losing full use of my left arm), I got into a scuffle with an off-duty cop and the justice system crushed me into dust. Sixteen years later, here I sit, in a prison in Arizona.

In American culture, when society doesn’t understand something, they relegate it to the shadows. Out of sight, out of mind. Solitary confinement is prison’s version of that dichotomy. They don’t need a reason to stick you in the hole for years. Instead of having mental hospitals and sanitariums, society incarcerates all of their mentally ill, and once locked away, the mentally ill ALWAYS find their way to the hole. 

There are no (real) mental health services to speak of in prison. Mental health services consist of the mental health professional asking someone in crisis two questions: “Are you suicidal?” and “Are you homicidal?” If a person is dumb enough to admit that they are having a mental health crisis, they are stripped naked and put into an observation cell without a mattress, while a guard sits outside the cell watching their every move. The observation cells are kept at 54 degrees. The prison system has turned mental health crises into punishment, and being in the observation cell is torture on top of torture. The men who are seriously mentally ill are ignored, as dealing with them is too inconvenient. I always marvel at the effect even 24 hours in the hole has on the psychology of some people.

Some people are relatively normal on the yard but the hole brings the animal out of them. I’ve seen several men cut their testicles out. I saw a man cut out a large piece of his intestines and throw it onto the walk in front of his cell. I’ve seen men smash the bulbs out of their lights (or use any other sharp object they could get their hands on) and swallow the object or deposit it into ANY conceivable hole of the body, thinking, in their insanity, that it will get them out of the hole. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen a man cover himself in his own excrement or paint the cell walls with his own excrement or EAT his own excrement, or throw it on each other). I’ve seen countless suicide attempts and actual suicides. It was always understood that when a guy actually decided to check out in the hole, we would honor his choice with our silence, giving him peace for the act. We all understood. I think most of us wished we had the courage to check out. (I know I always wished I did.)

The Kentucky prison building I was confined in was built in 1870. There are only a handful of dungeons from the 19th century still in use in the entire country. There are rats, mice, roaches, lice, bed bugs and mites that infest that hole. Many guys kept pet rats just for company. Almost ALL the toilets leak their sewage onto the cell floor (especially when flushed). Most cells do not have working sinks, so we would have to beg for water when the guards did their rounds. Most of the time, they ignored us. There is black mold and every kind of bacteria that comes with sewage, vermin and insect infestations. Nearly every surface had human feces smeared on it. There were no covers on the mattresses (which were eight or nine years old), so every mattress was soaked in sweat, blood, feces, urine and mace accumulated from hundreds of filthy men forced to sleep on the same mattresses.

There was no out of cell recreation, as rec would consist of merely being moved from your cell into another empty cell. As a result, no one goes to recreation which is, yet again, by design. I have been in charge of detainees (POWs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. These were men who had actively tried to kill me and my friends, but they were fellow warriors who I treated with dignity and respect as POWs. Never would I have dishonored myself by treating the enemy as I have been treated as a prisoner in Kentucky.

I am an exceptionally strong person mentally. I have survived and overcome things that would break most people. However, I struggled mightily while in the hole. This last stint of three years in the hole was the worst for me of all my previous trips (two years, one year, six months, and many stints between 45 and 90 days). When I say isolation, that is exactly what I mean. Complete and total isolation. The only time I saw anyone else was through a six-inch window in the door above my tray slot when my food trays were shoved through. Otherwise, the only thing that could be seen from that window was a wall four feet away. 

There was no socialization with other prisoners. I could hear other prisoners screaming night and day. We were given three ten-minute showers a week (if we were lucky; I have gone six weeks without getting a shower in the hole). One horrible book a week (usually a romance). And one ten-minute phone call a week. That was my schedule day in, day out, without variance, for years. 

I began seeing shadow monsters (people out of the corner of my eye) constantly. I talked to myself incessantly (a habit I have still yet to  break) when I wasn’t sleeping or reading my horrible romance novel (I was even dreaming about Elizabethan England romances). I even drew a face on one of the cinder block bricks and had conversations with it. 

Most of the time, I would lie there with my eyes closed watching my internal TV. I became fixated on praying for my own death—praying that I would go to sleep and never awaken so that my waking nightmare would end. I was as depressed, anxious, paranoid, and suicidal as I have ever been in my life. With NO distractions and NO stimulus whatsoever, the mind can’t help but turn in on itself. 

Depression is rage internalized and, needless to say, I was filled with rage at my horrific, shameful treatment. I dwelt upon the worst, most depressing, vividly violent aspects of myself and my life, hour upon hour, day after day, without escape. My guilt over not being there for my children nearly drowned me in despair. THAT was the worst torture for me. 

In the hole, they do not offer you hope of release. Mind games and hopelessness are part of the psychological experience they have designed to penalize those that have been classified into a prison within a prison. I became a man without hope. 

There are mind games that are played by the most antagonistic employees (who are of course assigned to the hole). They consist of kicking your door every time they pass; not feeding you when they work; spitting in the trays they DO serve; and of course, the incessant, disrespectful remarks and daily strip searches meant to dehumanize and shame you. All with the intention of prolonging your stay in the hole. I had to stop speaking to anyone else the last year I was in solitary, lest they lie about the verbal exchange with the intention that I would never be released from the hole.

I realize society is not interested in the well-being of prisoners. The warehousing of the mentally ill and the long term effects it has on people (many of whom are going back to society) should be a concern for ALL human beings. I myself experienced this abhorrent treatment and would not wish it upon my worst enemies. I’m a firm believer that a century from now, we will look back on this time in our history as a time of barbarism, especially as it concerns our treatment of the weakest and most helpless of us. 

In hindsight, thinking back on the torturous ineffectiveness of my years in solitary, I would reference the man in my home state of Colorado who did eight years in solitary and was released directly back to society from the hole. He then murdered the director of the Colorado DOC less than two months after his release, resulting in Colorado abolishing long-term solitary confinement.

Warehousing the mentally ill is a lazy and failed policy that not only exacerbates current mental health issues but develops new issues simply by caging people like animals, depriving them of exercise, sanitation, hygiene, stimulus, and human contact. This is a guaranteed recipe for failure, violence, and recidivism that society is sure to regret. 

Take it from an Army Ranger. I’ve lived it, experienced it, and I am combating the aftereffects much like I did when I returned from war. This is something that people should get in front of, lest they be deemed the monsters they are so hasty to judge.

Banner Photo: Cory Lum, Civil Beat