Herman Bell on a Subject He Knows Too Well -- Isolation in Prison

Tweet THE 7th ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM AGAINST ISOLATION

By Herman Bell, December 2008

When imprisoned, and placed in an isolation unit, at
some point you begin to live inside yourself, assessing and measuring
how you are doing against the moment-to-moment, day-to-day challenges
that you are confronted by to gage how well you are getting on. Even
though we may spend countless years in prison, little if anything
ever changes there. This might sound contradictory: in our minds we
can become inured to the harshest conditions as a natural survival
instinct; however in reality, they remain just as agonizing. How we
deal with them, process them, interact with them in our mind largely
determines the change we perceive around us and inside ourselves.

Isolation bears two recognizable features: one is
introspection, the other is torture. It brings out the worst in us
and the best in us; regardless, we must somehow still make it through
the day. And in the course of that day, and every day, we must fight
our demons, real and imagined. The real ones are plain enough to
see. They turn the keys. (But not all the turn-keys are bad, just
most of them. I like to think that the decent ones were well brought
up by their parents; and that the bad ones, perhaps, didn't receive
all they thought they should from their parents and others, and
therefore will always feel the world owe them something and that
meantime they can do whatever they want. Controlling for greed and
ideology -- how else do we explain the pathology of man's inhumanity to man?)

Isolation means you are cut off from the rest of the
world, save for the occasional life-line that finds its way to you in
the form of a visit, a letter, and the occasional headline on a
discarded newspaper that you might glimpse as you pass it by. Your
world is greatly reduced. Fresh air, sunlight, food, keeping your
body and clothes clean -- the things you once took for granted --
take on new importance in your life.

Under these reduced circumstances, you become so
sucked into yourself that an hour feels like a day has gone by, a day
feels like a week, and a week like a month. You lose a sense of
time; you no longer care whether it's day or night; you hallucinate;
you hyperventilate. You know your scene has to change, nothing lasts
forever. Your survival instincts keep you holding on. And suddenly
the unexpected melodic sound of jangling keys break through the
cocoon that time and isolation had woven around you. Then you wonder
had all that been a dream.

Isolation transposes our reality; physical torture
shapes it. Physical torture is a ravening beast that has slipped its
bounds from Hell to feast upon the soul of humanity. It's the Big
Bad Wolf threatening the Three Little Pigs. It's the Boogeyman
lurking in the woods we heard so much about, coming to get us. It's
our worst nightmare rattling a locked door, straining mightily to get
at us. It's Abu-Ghraib; it's Guantanamo; it's the CIA's
Extraordinary Rendition; it's the screams of prisoners in U.S. police
stations. It's the cries of the torn, the battered, the tormented
victims of this ravenous beast that rears its ugly head to feast on
pried fingernails; electrically charred genitalia, ear lobes, and
human breasts; chased down with a liter of water-boarding,
stress-positions, extremes of hot and cold temperatures; and
garnished with absolute silence and jarring noise. All done to
preserve an antiquated political and economic system that deprives
the many of their needs and serves the few in their greed. Outrage
against this social practice should know no bounds; how can we not
fight to end it?! Let us send the beast and its minions back to
where they belong.