The Truth About Solitary Confinement Nobody Talks About

[00:00:00]Solitary confinement, the behind-the-scenes truth a lot of people don't hear. Let's [music] go.

[00:00:08]Kyle or Jerry the Silver Dog coming at you. I'm going to talk about solitary today. Yep, solitary confinement.

[00:00:16]Anyone new here?

[00:00:17]I'm in recovery, talk about stuff with addiction, recovery. Did 4 years in prison and 12 months and 25 days of that time out of that 4 years was in solitary confinement when I was in prison. You see stuff online and we see documentaries and different things come out and Netflix and and other, you know, programs. And there's been a lot of, you know, places uh solitarywatch.org is a great website and and and nonprofit that tries to bring awareness to solitary confinement abuses across the country.

[00:00:49]Uh so, some of this stuff gets out, but it is one of those things unless it's happening to somebody you know or happened to you, many people don't really care. And a lot of people look at it like, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." You know, things like that or, you know, kind of screw it, whatever's happening to those violent inmates is happening to those violent inmates. Couple pieces of that I want to touch on just for people. I've been putting up solitary stuff, you know, on social media the last couple days and I get a ton of feedback from different people. You know, a lot of support, a lot of people, you know, agreeing of of how bad and wrong it can be. Then a lot of people with just stupid comments like, "Everyone in solitary, you know, checked into PC." Or it's just the worst of the worst in the state, the violent animals that get sent to solitary. And it's funny that a lot of these comments are people that have never worked in a prison, never worked in a jail, never done a day in jail, never done a day in prison, and have no idea. They just jump to conclusions.

[00:01:45]So, a couple pieces of that I want to touch on.

[00:01:48]First of all, with solitary, what happened was there's this body of evidence in the '60s, '70s uh time frame that solitary confinement is the way [music] to punish and you know, kind of redeem inmates. It actually started with like kind of Puritan solitary punishment in the early 1900s with certain groups, certain religious groups. [music] Then it transferred into the prison system and it was like yeah, solitary's the go to punishment. Somebody misbehaves, you segregate them. And if it's two, three days, whatever is what it is. It started to build up and then they started to build thousands of solitary cells in the 80s and early 90s across the country.

[00:02:38]That we in New York, like where I was, there's entire prisons that are nothing but solitary units. I'm talking prisons with three to 400 cells for nothing but solitary. No general pop, nothing else going on. Solitary prisons. Also at prisons like Collins where I was, I did a fair amount of my my general pop time at Collins and then also I was in the shoe at Collins, the box.

[00:03:05]There's Collins side one, Collins side two, which are both general population prisons. [music] You know, roughly, I don't know, 500 guys on side one, I think 700 on side two.

[00:03:17]Then there's the third part of Collins which was a third prison within the Collins unit. The shoe unit, the shoe 200 unit. Nothing but solitary. It was 100 double there was double bunk cells for solitary. Not everyone was double bunked, but an entire unit for just solitary. And I mean, you do the math, you're talking 1,200 inmates at this prison between the two general pop side, 200 of them in solitary, 20%. 20, you know, a little less than 20%. They built these and then the higher-ups to fill the quotas and to make it, you know, we just spent millions of dollars on these solitary units, we got to fill them.

[00:03:59]They started to make more and more infractions accessible for solitary.

[00:04:04]This isn't just New York, this is across the country. By the time 2013, I go in and do my time, solitary was the go-to punishment for everything.

[00:04:14]I'm talking anything and everything. I went to solitary five times for a total of 12 months and 25 days. My longest stretch in there was 123 days, non-violent non-violent prison infractions every time. Once I got in a fight and ironically it was actually my shortest term in solitary was the fight.

[00:04:36]Punishments for failing a drug test were five times as long as getting in a physical fight.

[00:04:41]You know, and and in most of the fights you don't go to solitary, you don't even get caught fighting, you know, much of the time. Only one I got caught and went and it was for 15 days and I got in more trouble in solitary >> [music] >> for a non-violent infraction that extended my time. That's a it's a common misconception that oh, all the people are in PC, they're all violent. No, it's estimated that 70% of the men and women in solitary at any given time across the US are in for non-violent minor prison infractions. Now, for many people, why this is such a big deal, solitary makes everything and everybody worse. Not a single human I met went into solitary and came out better. If you get value from Sober Dogs, make sure you hit that like, that subscribe, share the video, leave a comment, really appreciate it.

[00:05:27]Almost 85% of all the people incarcerated right now will be released in the next five years. They'll finish their time and they'll be released. Do we want them coming out better or worse?

[00:05:39]You have depression, solitary makes it worse. You don't have it, it'll give it to you. You have anxiety, solitary makes it worse. You have psychosis, you have any any mental health predispositions, solitary will make it substantially worse. And if you don't have any, you will come out with some. Anger issues, you'll come out with them.

[00:05:57]Claustrophobia, something you will come out with it. It does not help anybody.

[00:06:02][music] Now, ironically, a lot of organizations have reached out to me to to fight solitary, and I'm all for it.

[00:06:08]But, I'm actually not completely against it. Not to be wiped out 100%.

[00:06:14]I do understand the need for it when you do have a violent inmate that needs to be pulled out of, you know, away from everybody else. That is a real thing. You know, there's people that say you got to abolish it 100%. I I don't completely agree with that. I I should be drastically cut down, but I have seen an inmate lose his mind in general population with a weapon, stabbing up inmates, guards, civilian workers, going after all them, where that inmate need nurses, everybody. That inmate needs to be physically taken out of general population and segregated and until he or she, whatever they do, treat them and unwind them or at least a couple days to cool down minimum, you know, that is a complete real thing and needs to happen.

[00:07:09]So, it shouldn't be taken away 100% of the time.

[00:07:12]But, that's not what I'm talking about.

[00:07:13]I'm talking about the situations where >> [music] >> you have people doing 30, 60, 90 days for failing a drug test, for covering up a light when they weren't supposed to, having unauthorized magazines, having unauthorized like gambling material, like guys who play poker and gamble all the time. So, you give a a guy 90 days in solitary for having a couple dollar bills, which, yeah, is contraband, I understand he shouldn't be allowed to have, but shouldn't get 90 days in solitary. Yet, that guy over there just stabbed somebody and got 30 days. It's not this equal balance, and it does make both those inmates work. Again, the one that stabbed somebody does need to be physically pulled away for a little bit and you know, cooled off and and and [music] you know, need to be punished. I understand that. But, we shouldn't make people worse and it's all it's doing is making people worse.

[00:08:10]What also makes it hard with getting these stats out? Within the prison world, there's this bubble. Prisons are some of the most secured places in the country for obvious reasons, but it actually goes a lot deeper than you may even think. A prison warden has an un- godly amount of power.

[00:08:30]I have a friend who works for a US senator.

[00:08:34]They wanted to visit somebody they knew was incarcerated. The warden said no, that shuts it down. The senator, the president, if a warden at a state facility says no, even the president can't go in and trump them. Presidents can give federal pardons, not state pardons. They have an ungodly amount of power to control the flow of information both in and out of the prison. So, what gets out about solitary? The truth is bare minimum.

[00:09:03]Camera crews aren't in there recording solitary. Rarely, if they are, they're controlling a lot of what's being, you know, put out. What actually happens, inmate [music] beating, inmate deaths, inmate things like that, it's very controlled. Even if you're an inmate in general pop and you want to make a phone call, it's recorded. If you're an inmate with your family, when you're, you know, on the the dance floor, the visiting floor they call it, you know, sitting with your family talking, there's microphones and cameras [music] everywhere when you're sitting there with your family. So, every letter in and out, you know, can technically be at any given time recorded or it could be stopped, read, recorded. The only papers that the jail's not allowed to read on the way in are legal papers from your lawyer for, you know, client attorney privileges. Again, it just shows the flow of information going in and out is controlled on to what these state facilities and these governments and even federal facilities want people to see, want the public to see. So, there is whatever stats [music] and figures we actually get and and videos, there's way more going on behind the scenes. Solitary doesn't help anybody except in those extreme circumstances I mentioned. These people getting out are going to be your neighbors, people working at the store we go to.

[00:10:28]They could be the coach of of one of our our kids' baseball teams or assistant coach.

[00:10:34]We don't want these men and women coming out worse than they went in. We want them coming out better.