Solitary confinement conditions in a Pennsylvania state prison are unconstitutional, worsening and creating mental illness in those held there, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday on behalf of five inmates who say they have spent long periods in “torturous conditions.”
With limited mental health resources, some of the plaintiffs inside the Department of Corrections’ State Correctional Institution at Fayette have attempted suicide, flooded their cells with dirty toilet water, punched walls and written in their own blood, their lawyers said.
The lawsuit accuses prison officials of placing inmates into confinement based on secret evidence, leaving them unable to challenge their placement. Those practices violate the constitutional rights of those incarcerated to due process and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, their lawyers said.
A number of lawsuits nationally have targeted the conditions of solitary confinement, saying that the treatment of incarcerated people there has led to psychiatric episodes of self-mutilation and death due to lack of adequate care.
I was always thinking that a nerd like myself would be better off in solitary confinement if I ever went to prison. I am having second thoughts about that now.
You sit in a white room empty of everything but theres a slab to sleep on. One thin as fuck scratchy wool blanket. A sink/toilet combo. Maybe a cup that tastes like plastic, if yr lucky. That’s it. And the light never goes out.
You lose track of time as you have no basis besides meals (which is like a sack lunch with 2 pieces white bread dry and a piece of bologna. And a red delicious apple. I’ll starve, thanks) which are by no means at a set time. You lose track of everything.
It’s inhumane. It’s contempably cruel. And the cruelty is the point. What little contact you get with the jailers, they make sure to to let you know they enjoy your suffering. There is no empathy inside. There is no respect. You’re a piece of meat, not a citizen.
If there’s a just god in any capacity, everyone who works in the prison system will burn in hell. All of them