If you're in Austin, you may want to check out
a documentary film on Wednesday at UT's LBJ School about the long-term effects of solitary confinement. Here's a description of the event:
On
October 1, 2013, Herman Wallace's 1974 murder conviction was
overturned, and he was released from prison after four decades in
solitary confinement. Just three days later, Herman Wallace died of cancer, a free man.
Join the LBJ School's Center for Health and Social Policy for a public screening of HERMAN'S HOUSE,
the award-winning PBS documentary that shines a spotlight on the
injustice of solitary confinement and helped free Herman Wallace.
After the film, LBJ School Professor Michele Deitch,
a national expert on criminal justice policy, juvenile justice policy,
and the school-to-prison pipeline, will moderate a discussion on policy
implications and questions raised by the film.
The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration at http://HermansHouseLBJ.eventbrite.com is required for communication purposes. Light snacks will be provided.
"Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons."
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteJames Calvert is confined to solitary confinement now and has been almost continuously since his incarceration 19 months ago. This in spite of the fact that he has been diagnosed with sever long term depression, suicide attempts, anxiety and this was before solitary!
ReplyDeleteWhat help is available?
Being a person who has spent some time (not more than 30 days)and I have met and talked with a fellow, (Clyde Thompson) who spent 17 years welded into a cell in Hunstsville and he seemed a quite lucid and nice older man.He was lucid and we had a great conversation. So I would have to say the effects are different, it seems it would not be a place for some but I don't know how to determine that. Some people will jump on any bandwagon that will cause the state to be blamed for anything. Solitary might harm some people but I used to ask my Prison Boss for overnights in solitary, because it was quiet and I could sleep down there. true story.
ReplyDeleteDuring my 22 year tenure falsely incarcerated on Texas death row wrongly convicted of a crime I didn't commit out of Smith County, Texas, three of that 22 years was spent in a little box called Solitary confinement. My first year was spent in what Smith County Jail officials --Lt. Ron Scott -- called the "Side Cell." It was a tiny cell on the 6th floor of the old Smith County Jail im 1977. It was pitch dark. For the eleven months I was buried in the darkness, I was taken out for a shower maybe a total of 3 times -- and that was when I was finally taken to trial a year later. I subsisted of stale peanut-butter sanwhiches thst collected by the door a d fed the roaches and the mice. In the darkness I cried all the time, unavle to determine day or night. I hallucinated. I heard voices. The sensory-depravation was complete. My Dad was only allowed up to the jail to see me omce a week for 3 minutes at a time. A jailor would a portal at the top of my steel door and I would talk to my Dad. I suffered paychosis from the affects of solitary confinement. Then, when I finally won a new trial in the '90's, District Attorney Jack Skeen and David Dobbs had me placed in solitary confinement for two more years during two more retrials because sending me back to death row on another wrongful conviction based on the same misconduct that had me convicted in 1978. I am an expert on the causes and effects of solitary confinement because I lived it....
ReplyDelete