Panopticon

Matthew Davis                                             Stateville CC                                                 Crest Hill, IL

I have been back in isolation for 5 months now. In March I was caught tattooing and received 6 months punitive segregation. It has taken me a while to adjust back to the mentality of isolation...confined to my cell 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, surrounded by madness. We go to yard 5 hours on Saturday and Sunday. There are moments when I feel my sanity slipping and I have to fight to get it back. Some people aren't so lucky. Not everyone is built for this. I've spent a total of 12 months out of the last three years in isolation. In March of 2014, I got 6 months for 3 1/2 bottles of homemade alcohol, which was later proven to be kool-aid. (But not before I served all of those 6 months in isolation.) Most recently for tattooing "smile now, cry later" on a guy's hand. These last two times are nothing compared to my first 2 years in isolation. At least this time I have clothes, a toilet, running water, a mattress and other basic items, I am, however, thankful for those first 2 years because if not for that I may not handle my current situation quite as well. That's the scariest part for me, that I could have been part of this madness.

I'm currently housed in F-house at the Stateville CC. F-house is the last functioning "round" house in America. The round house is just that, a circular building with 4 levels of cells around the outer ring with a central tower, allowing, by the use of backlighting, a single observer to watch over an entire cell house. This is a great source of pride for Stateville officials, not so much for those of us housed within. A round house is an architectural figure called a panopticon. The panopticon was designed by J. Bentham in 1791, and its design is based on the idea of mental as opposed to physical subjugation. Bentham himself described the panopticon as "a millstone to ground upon the criminal mind." Later in Michel Foucault's book "Discipline and Punish", the panopticon is described as a tool "to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power." I, myself, have come to understand the function of the panopticon as one of self-policing. By placing the tower in the center with unseen guards inside, who can peer into any cell at any time, one will unconsciously, or consciously, follow the rules. While we do not know if we are being observed, we do know we COULD be observed.  This form of mental subjugation and oppression have been proven more harmful than helpful and the use of round houses has been discontinued in America~except in Stateville.

Because the building is round, not only can the tower man see every cell~every cell can almost see every cell. This allows me to observe first hand the madness brought on by lengthy stays in isolation combined by the mental pressure of the panopticon. I will look out upon the cell house right now and describe what I see...

Imagine the mouse cages in a laboratory stacked 4 high and 60 long. I see about 100 men just standing in their doors watching. There are about 20 or so guys "texting" each other by using a rudimentary sign language. I count 10 cells on suicide watch. That means the hospital and x-house are full, so there's probably 20-30 guys on suicide watch. There are so many guys kicking their doors it is hard to count~or concentrate. It's a constant BANG BANG BANG BANG...so loud and constant. I must have tuned it out because I'm just becoming aware of it. There are nearly 500 men over here, most yelling about something. It sounds like the dull roar of a football stadium. There is movement everywhere. I just noticed what most of the commotion is about. Four cells to my right, in 146, there is a puddle of blood slowly oozing under the door and out onto the gallery, Three police are standing outside the cell watching. I can only assume the guy is cutting himself...orange crush will most likely be here soon to do a cell extraction on him. Cutting is a very common thing back here. Mental health people come around once a week to ask if we are okay. If we say we're not, they schedule an appointment with mental health~usually in three weeks. (Uuuh, Im not okay right now, dummy!) Here comes orange crush. There are 7 of them dressed in bright orange riot gear. They just sprayed, I'm guessing, an entire canister of mace into the cell and all 7 ran inside. It took them a long 5 minutes to subdue the guy. Now they are marching him~ naked and backwards~ down the gallery. He's bleeding from a self inflicted cut on his arm and a fresh gash on his head that was most likely not self inflicted. He is taken out of the building. Maybe he will be back, maybe not, This has really set the building off, Probably 100 doors are being kicked. Trash is raining down. Insults fly. It's not even noon yet. Welcome to the round house.