Breathing Under Water

Matthew Davis                 Stateville Corectional Center                      www.hopeforinmates.com

I am currently 11 years, 3 months and 22 days give or take a few hours, into a life prison sentence. (Don’t feel too bad, I basically deserve it.)In these 11 years, 3 months and 22 days, I have endured the absolute worst that the I.D.O.C.  has to offer. Until recently, I was considered one of the worst of the worst inmates in I.D.O.C., so maybe they felt justified in my treatment. Never the less, through my years of endurance I’ve had the chance to witness first hand, just how destructive the prison systems psychological warfare tactics, like isolation, can be on the human mind. Let me begin by telling my story so you can better understand what I’m saying.

On February 28, 2004, I smoked PCP for the first time. On February 29, 2004 I woke up on my friends couch with blood all over me. My panic only increased when I saw that same friend lying motionless on the floor in a pool of blood. In a state of utter confusion and blind panic I ran out of the apartment, and found my way home. Less than 12 hours later I was in police custody. I was a petty criminal, constantly in trouble, but Id never done anything that could prepare me for this. Upon being taken into custody I was interrogated for three days, during which I was not allowed to sleep. Then I was taken to the county jail where I was “booked” in. My visibly confused and upset condition was interpreted as “suicidal”, so I was put in a strip cell. For those of you who don’t know what a “strip cell” is, allow me to enlighten you.

A “strip cell” is a 6x4 feet concrete box. There is a hole about the size of a baseball in the corner for you to use as a toilet. You are naked. You are cold. No one will speak to you. A bright light is kept on 24 hours a day, 7 days week. Meals consist of “meal loaf”. Meal loaf is whatever they served that day all blended together, and pressed into a loaf. The meal loaf is brought at irregular times. Soon you lose track of time. You sleep no longer than 15 minutes at a time, as an officer will wake you up on 15 minute intervals to “make sure you’re alive”. You are bored and cold. Those two conditions become your most pressing concerns as reality fades away. After a while, maybe 12 meal loafs, you become angry. You start kicking the door. Boom. Boom. Boom. When an officer comes in to check on you, you show them how alive you are with a string of profanity. Every 15 minutes, a string of profanity, then back to kicking the door. A few meal loafs later, you switch tactics, to compliance and reasoning. “I’ll be good”, you tell them. You’ll do “whatever you’re told”, you’ll say. “Just let me out”, you beg. Nothing. A few meal loafs later you switch to apologies, for what, you have no idea. “I’m sorry”, you offer humbly. “It wont happen again” you promise, even though you have no idea what “it” is. This goes on and on. Each interaction is met with a blank stare by the officer “checking” on you every 15 minutes. Only, you don’t know its 15 minutes. Sometimes it seems like 30 seconds, sometimes hours. Time ceases to have relevancy in the “strip cell”. When you get no reaction from anger, no results from pleading, and an endless stream of meal loaf, you are willing to do anything. An officer comes, you pound on the door. “Hey, Hey, Hey!” you scream. No reaction or response. You are invisible. You begin to wonder, does anyone even know I’m here?  What about court? You begin to think that since you’ve gotten nowhere with normal, rational actions, you’ll shift gears. As the next officer approaches your cell, without even being aware, you smash your head into the window. The officer stops, looks at you, SEES you. Finally, you exist. So you do it again. The officer says, “Hey buddy, are you okay?”  “NO!” you scream and as you begin to again, beg and plead to be let out, or at least get some clothes and maybe a shower. (after all, by now you’ve defecated 5 or 6 times with no running water or toilet paper, and you’re feeling unnaturally dirty.)The officer says, “I’ll be right back.” Relief floods you as you slump against the door. Tears stream down your cheeks. In the distance you hear a rumbling. Its getting closer. It sounds like something heavy, rolling on rusty casters. Its really loud now. It stops right outside your cell door. You hear voices then silence. Five seconds. Fifteen. Thirty. Then a key in the lock. You scramble to your feet as the door is ripped open. What you see is almost too much to  compute. Six or seven officers standing around this, this, chair? It looks like some medieval torture device, with its hard edges and leather straps. What’s worse is all seven officers are looking at you! Then they rush you. They lift you bodily and force you into he chair. You are immediately strapped and a bag is placed over your head. It’s cloth and you can just barely see through it as the chair begins rolling. It only rolls a couple feet, spins around and the officers walk away. You hear a door slam closed. As you settle in, you can feel the hard plastic dig into your legs and back. You can see just enough to realize that you are in the middle of the strip cell, facing the door. You are still in the strip cell. Naked. Cold. Confused. Strapped to a chair. A couple of minutes, or hours, who knows, your meal loaf comes. Someone unstraps one of your hands so you can eat. It is immediately strapped back into place. Every two hours someone comes in and lets one of your appendages loose for five minutes. “Arm or leg? Left or right?”, they ask. You need to use the restroom, request denied. You soil yourself. More meal loafs come. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty-five? You lose count. The door opens. Your restraints are loosened. You’re led down a hall to a shower. The water is cold. It’s wonderful. You are led back to the strip cell. The chair is gone. You step into the cell as the door closes behind you. You’re back in the strip cell. Naked. Cold. And you think. “This ain’t too bad”.

I spent over two years in that cell. Let that sink in for a minute. Over two years. In that time my mind was broken, put back together, and broken again. Countless times. Each time I lost a little of myself. But the human mind is a crazy thing. For instance, I used to count the bricks used to build the cell. Subconsciously, knowing that was the only stimulation available, I would immediately forget and have to recount. I counted those bricks thousands of times and to this day I couldn’t recall how many there were. When I wasn’t counting bricks, I was plotting against the officers. I would get occasional attorney visits, from family or when the smell of me became obvious outside of the cell, I’d get a cold shower. Those were my opportunities. I made it my mission in life to make them feel a little of my pain. If I died in the process, well, shit happens, I guess. (I suppose this is a form of self harm, but nothing like what I would witness later) Every time they opened that door, I attacked. I always lost. I was always outnumbered. I didn’t care. Eventually mace had no effect on me. I would spend weeks covered in mace. That was my life.

The only good part of being found guilty, was that my time in the strip cell came to an end. I was sent to prison and my mind eventually began to operate for what passed as “normal”. I had been exposed to numerous horrors that would shock even hardened individuals, but I’m grateful, in ways for my experience. For one, there is nothing that this prison system can do to me that I haven’t already survived. There is comfort in that. Secondly, if you were thinking that my treatment was illegal in America, you’d be right. I filed a lawsuit, which was settled for an amount that allowed me to live a little more comfortable here in prison. I also forced the jail to install an actual toilet in the strip cell, provide a mattress and some form of clothing. Small comfort knowing I made them do that. Overall, I was lucky. My mind was not lost for good. Changed, most definitely, but there nonetheless. I have seen men who are not so lucky. Don’t believe for one second that my situation is unique. There are men right now, as you read this, cutting themselves or eating feces. I know a man who, after everything he could cut himself with was confiscated; he began biting chunks-CHUNKS- out of his flesh. He swallowed the chunks. Another man cut his penis off. Another shoved ink pens- yes, plural, as in multiple ink pens- into his urethra. Guys swallow spoons. One guy cut a hole in his stomach and pulled a length of his intestines out. Reading this you’re thinking these guys have razor blades or something like that. No. They use sharpened staples. Sharpen the clasp from a legal envelope. It takes them DAYS to cut themselves. Can you imagine, cutting a body part OFF with a staple over days time?  Most recently I watched a man with a smile on his face, jump backwards off the 5^th story landing to his death. It took him 18 hours to die.

I have a theory. The idea of rehabilitation is based on behavior modification. The problem is the methods used by I.D.O.C are arcane. The only reward in prison for modifying your behavior, successfully is to NOT get punished. Those of us do positively modify our behavior are still punished because prisons in and of itself is punishment. Unfortunately, the prison systems idea of punishment is to demoralize and dehumanize us on a daily basis. They use psychological manipulation to achieve their goals. When playing with people’s minds, you gotta expect it’s not always going to go as planned. But, as they say, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. Their favorite response and ONLY answer to mental breakdown is heavy medication. That is because the only other option is to STOP doing what they’re doing. The handful of us who go crazy, cut our “parts” off, or kill ourselves are considered collateral damage.

Our only real defense is to recognize these tactics for what they are- Tactics. There is a reason that the “48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of War” are books banned by the I.D.O.C. Once you become AWARE of WHY the tactics are used, they lose power. In other words, you can’t drown a fish. They are actively preventing us from growing gills so that the fear of drowning keeps us compliant. I’ve learned to breathe under water and kept my sanity.