Editor’s Note: In March 2010, we began posting the work of Enceno Macy, an inmate in a U.S. prison. Enceno’s articles are sent handwritten, then typed and edited by a trusted editor. Comments typed into the response area will be sent directly to Enceno. Thanks for reading and for the warm response he’s received each time. –efc & ajp
by Enceno Macy
On June 19, 2012, Senator Dick Durbin held the first ever congressional hearing on America’s excessive use of solitary confinement. “America has led the way with human rights around the world,” Durbin said. But “what do our prisons say about our American values?”
“Solitary confinement makes our criminal justice criminal … It dehumanizes us all.” (Statement by Anthony Graves, exoneree who spent nearly 18 years in extreme isolation for a crime he didn’t commit.)
These are the conditions in which some 80,000 inmates live on any given day in American prisons and jails.
The light is as dim as a 40 watt bulb in a basement, like you might see in a B-rated horror movie. But this light illuminates a different kind of horror.
Imagine you’re in a cube, a concrete cube six feet by ten feet max. A thick concrete slab three feet high is built into the back wall. An exercise mat lies atop the slab, three inches thick and almost as hard as the slab itself. A stainless steel combination toilet-sink is built into the side wall, and next to it is a solid steel door. There may or may not be a small, filthy window, no bigger than a VCR tape, high up in one wall. The available floor space is about the same as a standard 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. This is your entire world, 24/7.
You have two books, if you’re lucky, chosen from a very limited selection of dog-eared novels, usually with subjects of no interest to you. A couple sheets of paper, a pen the size of a golf pencil, a toothbrush and a comb complete the inventory of your property.
Three times a day, a slot in your door opens, a tray is shoved through with strictly regulated portions of alleged food the FDA may or may not have approved strewn across it. Every two days, you are restrained — put in handcuffs and leg chains — and taken to shower. The hotel-size bar soap is made with the most basic ingredients, the major one probably lye, leaving your skin instantly dry. So dry that scratching the resulting itch tears your skin.