Solitary is being presented as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City. Visit the official site for other cities and dates.
"Every day is exactly the same. . . . In that cell by yourself, you're not in prison, it's like you're somewhere else, you're just away from life, you're just away from life, period," states Michael Kelly, who is serving a life sentence in Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility in Wise County, Virginia. He lives in an 8 x 10 foot cell for 23 hours a day. Twice a week, he is taken outside to exercise or walk back and forth in a "rec pen" which is a little larger than his cell.
Solitary confinement is referred to as "seg" or segregation. The cumulative effect of this isolation is described by a prisoner named Randall:
"The main thing that seg means to me is extreme loneliness and boredom. That's the main thing, loneliness. It don't matter how tough you are. It gets to you and hurts like hell."
Besides presenting profiles of a handful of prisoners, this intense documentary directed by Kristi Jacobson also gives us a look at the men and women who serve as guards at Red Onion. Most of them took jobs here following the closing of coal mines and sawmills in Virginia. They view their work as maintaining order and control as they deal with "the worst-behaving offenders in the state." The correction officers escort prisoners in shackles, take regular looks at them through windows in their cell doors, and provide food for them to eat in their cells.
There is no getting around the fact that solitary confinement breeds psychological and emotional problems ranging from rage and insanity to self-destructiveness. In 2013 some 29,000 prisoners in California set up a hunger strike in order to make the case that solitary confinement is nothing more than torture. According to the Bureau of Prisons statistics, more than 80,000 American inmates are in solitary confinement.
We agree with faith groups, including the American Friends Service Committee, that this egregious practice is immoral and ineffective.
After sharing his lamentable life of crime, Randall asks: "Am I being punished enough? In my opinion, no, not even close. But segregation isn't working."
The constant screams of rage and frustration of prisoners and the noisy banging on the doors of their cells in Red Onion State Prison is proof positive that solitary confinement is a cruel and unusual punishment that should be banned.