ISOLATION

Matthew Davis                                  Stateville Correctional Center                                   Crest Hill, IL

In the mirror is where I see my only enemy

Your life's a curse?

Well, mines an obscenity.

-Kanye West

What I am about to tell you is true. You will be tempted to reject it as a lie. You will find it easy to dismiss as the exaggerated complaints of a disgruntled convict. You will think that this could not, would not, happen in America. For, to believe, is to accept that what you thought you knew about "civilized" society is a fallacy. You will not want to believe it. Fight that urge. Open your mind. Open your eyes. This story is true. It happened to me. It is happening every day.

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~I~

The first thing I noticed when I entered the isolation cell was the word "shit" written across the wall in feces. I couldn't help but laugh as I thought to myself "well, ain't that some shit.". 

The next thing I noticed was that there was no toilet. There was just a small hole, about the diameter of a baseball, in the corner where a toilet should be. As these two things rolled around in my head, I began to feel a chill. It was really cold. Freezing cold. It was the beginning of March, and while it wasn't exceptionally cold outside, it was, technically, still winter. I put my hand up by the vent in the ceiling and felt ice cold air blasting through. To make matters worse, I was naked. 

~II~

I had been in the county jail for one year and four days on the morning of March 5, 2005. I woke up that morning as I had the previous 369 days~ to someone banging on their metal bunk, or arguing with the voices in their heads. I didn't let it bother me on that morning though, because I knew that my attorney was coming to visit me later that day to discuss my living situation. Up until this point, I had been housed in the "Special Housing Unit", or S.H.U, due to my case being "high profile". Of the twenty men housed in the S.H.U, I was the only one housed there for that reason. The other nineteen men were housed there due to mental illness. Being the only sane man in the asylum was taxing to say the least. I had been petitioning the warden to move me to general population for about nine months. I thought that today was finally the day that my request would be granted. 

Later that afternoon, when I met with my attorney, I could tell as soon as I saw his face, that he had bad news. He informed me that the warden had agreed to move me ~ only not to general population. I was to be moved to segregation. 

Anger doesn't even begin to describe what I felt in that moment. I went back to my cell and began demanding that the warden come speak to me. After about an hour, he sent his lackey, the assistant warden. The conversation that followed was incredibly frustrating, yet hilariously stupid. He was sent ot answer my questions, but every answer was the same. "It's the warden's decision." My anger finally boiled over, and I began a string of profanity laden insults that culminated with me throwing a plastic drinking cup ~full of WATER~ at him. I guess he got the point after that, because he left me to stew in my anger. 

A couple of hours went by, and I was beginning to believe that my logic had won the day. That I was not going to segregation. My hopes were dashed however, when a little after three o'clock, four officers came to move me. I was only a little surprised when, instead of going to the segregation unit, I was led to an isolation cell. 

I stared into the entrance of a small, dark concrete box. I was told to strip naked. Then I was pushed into the cell, the door slammed shut behind me. Now entombed in darkness, my nostrils were assaulted by the foulest stench. Human excrement. Mace. Body odor. And a bunch of other stuff i couldn't even describe. Suddenly, a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling blinked, grudgingly to life. Once my eyes adjusted  to the light, the first thing I saw was the source of one of the smells. Written across the wall, in three foot letters, was the word "shit", written in feces. Directly beneath the word, on the floor, was a huge pile of feces. Next to that, a small hole in the floor. Nothing else. Just a filthy, bare, concrete box. 

~III~

That first night was the worst. I quickly learned that the light was never turned off, and the flow of cold air was constant. I did not sleep. I just crouched in the corner farthest from the pile of feces, and tried my best not to touch anything. I didn't think that I would be left like this for long, so I just waited. I think that was the longest night of my life. 

One day turned into two, then a week. I was able to keep track of those first few days only because every day brought a new disturbing element for me to overcome. the first hurdle was sleep. I had to sleep. Unfortunately, the cocktail of body fluids covering the floor made it impossible to lie down. Every fifteen minutes an officer would come and look inside the cell to "check" on me. I found that while none of them would respond to my questions, or speak to me for that matter, if I asked for toilet paper, they would give me about ten squares. So, every fifteen minutes I'd ask for toilet paper until I covered a small patch of concrete to curl up on. It was only then that I discovered I would not be allowed to sleep for more than fifteen minutes at a time. The officers would hit the door until I woke up every time they "checked" on me. This was supposedly done to "make sure I was alive". I personally believe the reasons were much more nefarious, but who am I to say for sure. 

It was becoming very clear that my previous thought that "I wouldn't be left like this for long" was wrong. I decided that I would try to make my situation a little more comfortable. I began trying to clean the cell as best as I could. I had no running water, and nothing to clean with except toilet paper, but I did the best I could. I used a milk carton from lunch to scoop the pile of feces into the hole. Then I used the toilet paper to wipe the filth off the floor. I still couldn't touch the walls, but at least I could walk back and forth now. When I was able to sleep, I would always wake up with the toilet paper bed shredded, so I slept on bare concrete and used the toilet paper to keep warm. 

I realized, also pretty quickly, that they would bring my meals, which consisted of "meal-loaf", at irregular times making it hard to keep track of time. After a week or so, I stopped trying to count the days. "meal-loaf", for those who don't know, consists of whatever food was served that day, blended into a liquid, then baked into a loaf. It is entirely disgusting, and requires no utensils, so you have to eat with your bare hands. I didn't eat too much a first anyway, because I was dreading using that hole in the floor as a toilet. After a few days, however, i had no choice. I finally squatted down over that hole, and of course,  I missed. It took some practice, but eventually my aim improved.

And so the days passed. I am still amazed by what the human mind can, if pushed, adapt to. Once I accepted the fact that the floor was as clean as it would get, the filth on the bottoms of my feet no longer bothered me, I didn't think twice about eating with hands I hadn't washed in weeks. And, in spite of being disturbed every fifteen minutes, I was soon able to sleep peacefully. Most amazing to me, however, was the ability of my mind to simply occupy and pass time. I would sit and count the number of bricks it took to construct the cell. I would count those bricks, then immediately forget the number. It was like my mind knew that if I remembered that number, I'd have nothing else to do. I probably counted those bricks a thousand times and I cannot, to this day, tell you how many there were.

I had been in isolation for nearly two months. I had not had a shower. I was not allowed to send out or receive mail. I was not allowed visits, except with my attorney. I spoke to no one. I had nothing. Only my own thoughts to occupy my mind. I could feel myself fading. I think that, if not for the following events, I would have lost my mind.

~IV~

I knew that what was being done to me was, if not outright illegal, very close to it. I felt like there was nothing I could so to change my situation. So, in desperation, I went on a hunger strike. I should have foreseen the outcome, when not even the lightest concern was shown over my refusal to eat. I wasn't eating much to begin with, but, at first, hunger overwhelmed my every thought. After a couple days, I wasn't even hungry anymore. The days passed in a blur, until finally, on June 14th 2005~ a little over three months into my ordeal~ I was found unresponsive on the floor of my cell. I do not know how long my hunger strike lasted. I do not remember passing out, or how long I lay there before they found me. All I remember is waking up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Doctors put an I.V. in one of my veins, and stitched up the gash on my head from my fall. And after a total of four hours in the hospital, I was taken back to the county jail and promptly placed back in isolation.

Later that day my attorney came to visit me. turn out that the hospital staff was so appalled by my condition~ I weighed 120 pounds, was filthy, and covered with open sores~ that they contacted the public defender’s office. I had become so numb to my situation that I didn't even notice, or think about my appearance. When my attorney saw me, I woke up. The look of horror on his face actually scared me. He then informed me that he petitioned the warden for me to be let out of isolation and the warden’s response was that "when I left that cell, I'd be in prison or a body bag." In that moment I knew that if nothing changed, I would not survive. My mind shifted. I saw clearly that they were trying to kill me. I could roll over and die, or fight. I decided to fight. I declared war.

On the way back to the isolation cell that night, I collapsed in the hallway in front of the nurse’s station. I faked a heart attack to get the doctor to see me. I showed him the sores on my body and told him about the condition of my cell. The next day, I was finally given a shower and my cell was cleaned.

Bolstered by this small victory, from that day on, my every thought was about attacking the officers and the warden. Every time they opened the food slot to my cell I would reach out and try to grab them. I would try to pull their arm into my cell. I would try to rip it off, break it, bite it, whatever I could do to hurt them or make their job miserable. I also figured out how to get a shower. If I wanted a shower, I could jump up and hit the light bulb hanging from the ceiling until it would break. When the officers came to replace it, I would refuse to be handcuffed, forcing a cell extraction. They would spray me with mace, then rush into the cell and handcuff me. Protocol requires them to give me a medical shower after using mace, so I would get my shower ~ and they would have to work for it.

~V~

For over a year I had some form of altercation with an officer at least once a day. It could be anything from insults to physical altercations. I was constantly lashing out, and plotting my next move. I would attack the officers to, more or less, pass the time, but my real target, the focus of my anger, was the warden. I thought I had the perfect plan to get him. I just needed the opportunity to execute it.

That opportunity came one day when my attorney visited me.

Shuffling past the wardens office in handcuffs, leg shackles and a paper hospital gown, I began to , slowly, separate myself from the officers escorting me. As I neared his doorway, I asked "do you mind if I ask the warden a question?" When I reached the doorway, I had separated myself from them about 5 feet. The warden looked up just as I lunged across his desk. I felt my hands grip onto his tie and I yanked as hard as I could, intending to choke him to death with his tie. Up until this point my plan was flawlessly executed. The warden was so surprised; he didn't even try to stop me. Then two things happened that I could not have foreseen. First, in the melee, the paper hospital gown was torn way so I was naked. Second, and more importantly, the damn tie was a clip on. The fact that it immediately pulled away, instead of cutting off his supply of air, somehow confused us both. Time slowed to a crawl as we both started at the tie in my hands, then at each other, our faces inches apart. It seems he was less surprised because he recovered first and hit me with a right cross. Hard. Really hard. All I remember after that is lying naked on his office floor, then being drug back to isolation. From that point on my attorney visits would take place at my cell.

~VI~

I would end up spending 27 months in isolation. For two years and three months, that was my life. During that time, maybe two or three hundred men were put into the isolation cell next door to mine ~ the only other isolation cell. None lasted more than a week. Every one of them broke down at some point crying, and begging to be let out. In 820 days of isolation, of freezing cold, of humiliation, not once did I break down. Not once did I beg.

In 2010, I won a federal lawsuit for the unconstitutional treatment I endured at the hands of Joe Gulash, the warden of the Madison County Jail. The now former warden, Joe Gulash. They now have a toilet and mattress in the isolation cells. They no longer serve "meal-loaf". They now have guidelines restricting the amount of time a person can be left in isolation.

The isolation cells are still hell.

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