All Eddie Willis wanted was to take a shower. It was his tenth day without being allowed one, even though inmates were supposed to take one every two days. Reaching his breaking point, Willis said he banged on the door of his small cell, begging guards to allow him to bathe. After denying his demand, Willis said a guard fired pepper spray into the cell, and his only choice to avoid suffocation was to dunk his head in the prison toilet. 

Willis, 36, was put into solitary confinement at Danville Correctional Center in Danville, Illinois, for 17 months after an auto-theft conviction. During that time, he was confined to a cell where he could touch both walls if he stretched his arms out wide. Crammed in the closet-sized room was a bed and a toilet. The lights were on 24 hours a day, and he was only given short, infrequent breaks from confinement. 

“[Solitary confinement] is inhumane because in prison you’re already segregated,” Willis said. “Restricting a person’s access and free movement is already being done in prison.” 

Willis was forced into solitary confinement, a practice about 2,000 inmates are currently subjected to within the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to Alan Mills, executive director of Uptown People’s Law Center. While the lasting psychological effects are debated among experts, the testimonies of past inmates illustrate that the long-term effects of confinement can be severe. Recent changes in the legal system bar its use on the mentally ill and restrict its use on juveniles.

Currently in Illinois, House Bill 0259 is being debated in the General Assembly. The bill would create the “Isolated Confinement Restriction Act,” limiting the time of confinement to a 10-day maximum within a 180-day period. It also prevents the use of solitary confinement unless the prisoner “would create a substantial risk of immediate serious harm to himself, herself, or another” with no satisfactory alternative solution. 

This bill speaks to the changing mindset of solitary confinement and the future of prison reform, Mills said.

Introduced by State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, D-Chicago, the bill passed through the Restorative Justice Committee with a 7-4 vote March 9, according to the Illinois General Assembly website. It is awaiting an unscheduled vote from a full house committee as of press time.

UPLC is also currently working on Davis v. Baldwin, a case that alleges that the Illinois prison system puts too many people in confinement for prolonged periods of time, Mills said. The case labels solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, amounting to torture.

“[UPLC] is working with a coalition of community groups and the legislature to try and change the way Illinois uses solitary,” Mills said.

Willis has been a part of the prison abolitionist group Black & Pink since he was incarcerated in 2007. Without the organization, he said he would not have received the proper help facing the trauma from prison and solitary confinement.

“It’s very hard to be locked in a little closet for long periods of time,” Willis said. “It’s torture and it has no place in a civilized society, so I guess we’re not civilized.”

During Willis’ seven years at Danville, he said he was placed into confinement because of “the way prison is set up.” While there have been improvements in the Illinois prison system, Mills said there has been an increase in the use of solitary confinement as they have become more crowded—about 43,000–44,000 inmates in a prison designed for 34,000.

 Many times, inmates are put into confinement simply because there is nothing for them to do outside of cells, Mills added.  

“Everyone in prison pretty much [returns] every fews months,” Willis said. “We’re overcrowded, and they say, ‘Well, put people in the hole,’ then officers will go around and make up [infractions] to fill up those cells.”

In Illinois, there are no regulations on a time limit of solitary confinement, which makes it easier to place inmates in confinement without reason, Mills said.

Sitting in confinement with no educational or creative stimulation, Willis would pray for peace and try to do as little as possible to not get any infractions to prolong his stay. During some periods of time, he was allowed a cellmate, crammed together in the cell left to speak on their hopes of a more positive outcome for the future—anything to get away from thinking about the present.

“[Being in confinement] gives you thoughts of suicide because you know that if you die, you won’t be tortured anymore; you’ll be free,” Willis said. 

According to American Friends Service Committee, numerous studies have documented the harmful psychological effects of long-term solitary confinement. Some effects include visual and auditory hallucinations, hypersensitivity to noise and touch, insomnia and paranoia, uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear, increased risk of suicide, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Brian Nelson, 52, was convicted of murder in 1984 and said he had never needed psychotropic medication or seen a psychiatrist prior to his experiences in confinement at the supermax prison Tamms Correctional Center, in Tamms, Illinois, since closed for budgetary reasons.

Nelson said he was first put in solitary confinement at 14 for a week in Juvenile Temporary Detention Center in Chicago and was again put in confinement for about 12 years as an adult. He was part of what he called the “circuit program.” The program had Nelson transferring rooms after every meal for about a month, he said. In one instance, Nelson said he was kept in a pitch black cell for about 47 days in what he called a “psychological experiment.”

“When I was in Tamms, my grandfather died and I got depressed. They stripped me naked and put me in a glass room that was freezing cold with the lights on 24 hours a day,” Nelson said about another instance. 

By the time Nelson was out of Tamms, he said he was on five different psychotropic medications. Because of his experience in solitary, he said he cannot ride the bus because he is fearful around people, unable to be in crowded rooms or close to any physical contact with others.

“I am worse off now than when I was released from prison because everything was new to me,” Nelson said. “As that wore off, the effect of solitary confinement started to kick in. I’m now in self-imposed solitary.”

Some experts, such as Peter Suedfeld, professor of psychology at University of British Columbia, continues to defend the practice. He conducted one of the first studies on solitary confinement in 1982 titled “Reactions and Attributes of Prisoners in Solitary Confinement.” The results of the study illustrated that with these subjects, confinement was not torture.

Suedfeld said the reasons an inmate could be put in confinement is because of a threat they might pose to another individual, if they are at risk of harm in the general population or because they ask to be in solitude.

“You could think of it as a vacation from the rest of the general population if they ask to go into solitary,” Suedfeld said.

It is difficult to tell whether confinement actually caused psychological distress, or if these symptoms existed prior to an inmate’s time in the box, he said. In order to truly get a grasp of the effect of confinement, a study evaluating the mental state of an inmate pre- and post-confinement would have to be conducted, he added. 

“Psychology in this conversation is probabilistic science, ” Suedfeld said. “That doesn’t mean that [inmates might have had deterioration due to confinement].” 

Monica Cosby, 48, who was convicted of murder in 1998, said in many cases, the women she encountered in prison had been physically or sexually abused prior to being incarcerated. The behaviors of the guards sometimes resembled that of past abusers, she added.

“We see a lot of the same abusive behaviors from them that we see in our own lives and we tend to react to that,” Cosby said. “A lot of our trauma response is not taken well [by guards], and we’re penalized.” 

Cosby said she was in confinement for 10 months, constantly moved from cell to cell. For Cosby, it was destabilizing to constantly change rooms. Without warning, guards would come into her cell with a garbage bag, telling her to pack her belongings, she said.

Now, Cosby said she checks her doors umpteen times a day, even though she lives in a remote area outside of Chicago. She is unable to have comfortable physical contact, “halfway consenting” to giving people hugs. 

“People know you’re having a hard time [from confinement], so they try to make it easy on you and stay apart,” Cosby said. “Now you’re isolated more and people think they’re helping you, but they’re making it harder.” 

While confinement may have a cost to the mental health of inmates, it also has puts a monetary cost on taxpayers. When Tamms was open, it would cost approximately $64,000 per inmate per year to keep them incarcerated, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections 2008 Annual Report. The cost per inmate in this higher security supermax prison was almost $20,000 more than the most expensive medium-security prison, which that year was Jessie Ma Houstain Adult Transition Center in Dixmoor, Illinois. 

 “If you lock people up with nothing to do and release them—so broken that they can’t actually hold a job—society’s going to support them for the rest of their lives [through taxpayer money],” Mills said. 

Most inmates who come in and face confinement are not sentenced for life; thus, they are going to be released back into society, Mills said. 

“We continually lock up more people, and it’s certainly not working,” he added. “The streets are not any safer than they were before.” 

 

 

Danville Correctional Center and Illinois Department of Corrections were not available for comment as of press time.