All I Needed Was Someone to Talk to

The incident unfolded like this: I told an officer that I was feeling really anxious and very depressed and wanted to talk to someone. But I guess with my past suicide attempt, they don’t want to take any chances. So they put me in this black restraint chair in the detention center’s gym with the lights off and no one around. While they were putting me in the chair, and before, I didn’t resist at all. All I wanted was to talk to someone. While being put in the chair I told the Sgt in charge I was having a hard time to breathe, he said that if I could ask a question, it wasn’t too tight. So I was left alone for about three hours until they fed me. I asked again about when I was being let out of the chair, they told me that they didn’t know, so when they left I started to freak out cause I saw no end to my restrained isolation and flipped the chair. I was upside down for a couple of minutes until someone noticed. They came in and straightened me out and left for another couple of hours—I know that it was a while cause it was a different shift coming on. And somewhere in between all of that the warden came to talk to me. I asked him why I was being treated this way—he said that it was for my own good, so I don’t hurt myself. I wasn’t aggressive to anyone or causing trouble, all I needed was someone to talk to. After they got me out of the chair I was put in a restraint bed for a couple of days. I cant remember how long. I didn’t do anything. Again I didn’t resist. While in the chair and the bed I was forced to urinate on myself and sit and lay in it for some time. …I learned one thing—don’t say anything no matter what or I’ll be restrained again …
-Prisoner at Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, MD

Code of Silence

I want to tell you about the Code of Silence among the prison and jail population. Basically no matter what, you tell the cops nothing about problems with other inmates. MCSO uses the inmate Code of Silence to cover up the violence that they allow. If you write a note to the guard about being beat up or extorted or stolen from, more than likely the guard will show the note to the person doing the beating or extortion and the note writer will be beaten by more inmates for telling the guard about anything. - Prisoner in Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Arizona

4 Point Restraints

The following is from a mentally ill person in prison. It is a re-telling of his time spent in 4 point restraints for 3 weeks. This took place in a prison in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in February. Two other people in prison wrote to the Michigan branch of the AFSC alerting them to the fact that this man had been held in restraints for so long.

"The staff laughed at me and was calling me nigger every day of those three weeks of torture and telling me if I keep tearing up their cells to try and get transferred back down to Huron Valley Center prison then you will die on that bed. Freezing to death, stsrving and sick from no blood pressure pills most of the time. Until I’m dead from all three ways. And I knew they was serious cause I spit on many of them for taking my food a lot and refusing me yard breaks sometimes. And I spit on them for refusing to give me a mattress and clothes when I was supposed to have. when chain to the bed. Anyway, when I was at the Marquette Prison chained to the bed the only way I was to make it alive each day for three weeks on the cold slab and ice cold room. cold chains on. and no mattress or clothes or food. most of the time. I had to raise my body up far as I could to do as many sit ups as I could every 20 minutes to keep from freezing to death and couldn’t sleep but two hours a day and a couple of hours at night because no matter what I was forcing myself to do 1000 thousand sit ups to stay warm. The cold would come back all over my body within one hour and I would have to do the half way sit-ups again for another 1000 times with tears in my eyes and anger and hate for the whole world beyond human imagination. The hate worse when I was forced to have to use the bathroom on myself and the bed for bowel movements or urinating—most times because they never let me up for three weeks to go the bathroom. And whenever they did bring me some food to eat it was mostly a sandwich and apple. Only then sometimes they will bring food that I could eat without being un-chain and with no spoon or fork. I had to use my hands and eat what little I could. I choked every time and had to throw up a lot of times. Sometimes they would let me keep the food tray to shit and piss in for emergency, ain’t that a bitch? Also when my head and back itched everyday and night I had to rub it against the wall. When I sit up and turn sideways and I had to rub my head on the wall up and down and sometimes bang my head on the wall to make it stop itching. even to the point of almost knocking myself out and every day and night I holler out how much I hate them all and I holler out curses saying Michigan will be destroyed worse than the state of Louisiana with tornadoes this summer and many will die from heat stroke from the sun burning more and more through the ozone layers of sky. And I’ve been spit on and punched." (22 years; Marquette--now at Ionia)

The Daily Grind

I arrived here on 2/3/06 but immediately received a skin infection that took till about 8/10/06 to get rid of due to the medical neglect and incompetence here at ADC - I had golf ball size dripping OOZING sores and medical refused to see me for MONTHS at a time - they also gave me the wrong antibiotics and on and on. It is beyond a long incredible story - the medical neglect of inmates here is criminal - I had dripping oozing sores for 5 or 6 months for they refused to see me or give me more antibiotics or the RIGHT antibiotics - now they are giving me tickets left and right so I can't have my TV or other privileges so as to harass me more - also they are delaying and tampering with my mail and just flat NOT sending out my mail - ALSO my food is cold almost always and for 2 weeks or so now I have been receiving ROTTEN and sour milk almost everyday and my food is watered down to death - the oatmeal and gravy is almost water...
-Kemp Horton, a prisoner in Arizona Eyman (I)

Wrongful Restraints

One of the prisons I was at was Correctional Mental Health Center-Jessup. I was put in restraints seven times there. Each time I was put in restraints I was put on my belly, naked. I was never let up to go to the bathroom, I had to lay in my own urine. I have a pacemaker and hypertension, and the staff still did this. One time the nurse even refused me my hypertension medication while in restraints. I was punched in the face by one correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction-Annex in Jessup. -Maryland, Maryland Correctional Institution, Jessup