When I left the USA for Africa in February 2020 over 80,000 prisoners were incarcerated in solitary confinement in US prisons, which equals the entire penal population of the UK. The practice was first introduced in the Eastern State Penitentiary in 1830. The punitive toll on inmates had been touted by prison officials as the last recourse for convicts who were a danger to other prisoners and guards. Quakers and Calvinists supported the isolation of inmates as a less vicious alternative to public floggings.
At present New York State has the highest rate of ‘disciplinary segregation’ in the nation and Rikers Island was a hellhole for adolescents subjected to long stays in ‘the hole’. It is torture. Plain and simple, but many people in Rikers are awaiting trial, because they can’t make bail for their release.
And now everyone in the world has been sentenced to ‘solitary confinement’ due to Covid 19.
Home every day.
Out for an hour every day.
No freedom everyday.
Just like Thomas Silverstein, who has been locked down thirty-five years for killing a prison guard and died in Range 13″ at ADX Florence federal penitentiary in Colorado.
We are now all in the hole.
Our crime?
To be human.
Hopefully it isn’t a life sentence.