Mental Warfare

Matt Davis                                               Stateville CC                                       Crest Hill, Illinois

Matt is currently spending six months in segregation. He was taken March 25th and will be released September 25th. He is having a hard time concentrating on anything long enough to complete another blog. I told him I could help him out. Out of the mass of letters I have there is a lot of substance in them. The below is taken from a letter Matt wrote me August 15, 2014. He was six weeks from finishing a six month stint in segregation.~~Krista

“You wouldn't believe the absolute lunacy I am exposed to on a daily basis. I've been consumed by the thoughts I talked about a few letters ago...could a normal "sound" mind actually withstand the pressure of prison or is it normal to go crazy and abnormal to deal with it and NOT go crazy. My ideas, thoughts and realizations go so deep that I'm sure you wouldn't want me to go into details...5 pages in, you'd give up! But check this out...almost every cellie I've ever had no matter how "sane" or cool they were, everyone has some weird shit going on. They might not be cutting on themselves or playing in their poop but the constant stress we are under will always manifest in some form. Most common is OCD. I'm constantly giving myself a "self-examination" to be on guard for weird shit. I don't have any "common" weird shit~ for instance the OCD~ but my thing is my routine. I do the same shit every day and if my routine is thrown off my whole day is ruined. I get so mad especially if my cellie is the reason my routine is interrupted...I mean I'm not going to beat somebody up, but I will hold resentments about it. It's insane! I said before how I wished I had a voice...the main difference between me and a lot of the guys in here is that I can recognize the psychological games the prison plays, therefore it doesn't affect me as profoundly. I'd like to write a book exposing the penal system for what it is. I feel like I've got a very clear and accurate view of what is going on. I guess youre wondering why I'm going H.A.M right now...Ready for some REAL crazy shit? Yesterday on the yard I had a long conversation with a young guy who eats himself. Yes, you read that correctly. He eats himself. Actually takes bites out of his arms and legs and eats it. The scars are horrific, complete with teeth prints. My question to him was, what events in your life led you to think it was a good idea to eat yourself? The answer was not completely informative, but highly enlightening. This fucking guy came to prison for burglary, with a 4 year sentence…that’s 18 months after good time. He was in a minimum security prison, got into an argument with an officer and allegedly slammed a door in the officer’s face. The door hit the officer in the shoulder. The inmate was issued and IDR (inmate disciplinary report) for staff assault, given one year in seg and transferred to the Pontiac CC. Pontiac is a seg only prison, where the absolute most incorrigibles are sent. People are literally rotting in seg for decades there. In Pontiac, the most bazaar things go on as normal day to day. A few examples… guys fill their mouths with shit, piss and semen and spit it into other people’s faces…or shit directly in their hands to throw at people…guys use a STAPLE, a fucking staple, to cut their penis off. One guy cut his ball sack open, pulled his nuts OUT and tied them to the cell door so the police wouldn’t open his door…something becoming more common is guys cutting their stomach open and pulling their intestines out. I could go on for days. So they sent this young man there, someone threw shit on him. He made a shank, got caught with said shank, then another shank and another…now he eats himself and doesn’t get out of prison until 2021…He is out of Pontiac, but doesn’t get out of seg until 2016…so they are going to expose him to the above mentioned things for basically a decade~ day in, day out~ then release him. How do you think it will turn out? Some days I’m glad I don’t have a TV because I’m more aware of what’s going on, and some days I wish I had one to just tune this madness out....”