After spending two years in what the Idaho Department of Correction refers to as “administrative segregation,” I can personally vouch for the horrible, life-changing, long-term effects that accompany excessive confinement and isolation.
In 2018, the Department made a promise with a policy that, to this day, it has never implemented: To allow all clients held in Restricted Housing Units time out of their cells for three hours a day.
For the last two years that policy has been hidden by IDOC’s Transparency Department and substituted with other documents when requested through public records. [Grievances 15 & 20 ]
I was also denied access to library self-help materials during my last six months spent in the black hole where IDOC hides their most problematic inmates.
Our department heads know as well as anyone that these practices are incredibly dangerous. Still, they continue to release their most problematic clients, after compounding their defects with long-term isolation, into Idaho communities without supervision.
Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the efforts of Solitary Watch, a watchdog organization out of Washington, DC, that advocates to eliminate the practice of subjecting the incarcerated to long-term isolation.
View my article, “Among the Blood of Last Year’s June” published by solitarywatch.org.
It’s imperative that we all work to shine what light we can on the mental, physical and spiritual torment experienced by those who are “kept in the back”.