DannyBoyinExile

They say that spending long periods of time in solitary confinement (what they call Administrative Segregation in TDCJ, or Ad-Seg) causes psychological damage – and can even drive people crazy. But I don’t believe it. I mean, I had a neighbor in set who called himself Jesus Christ, and He wasn’t crazy! haha He was nothing like the Jesus of the Bible, though he did have long hair and a beard. This was long before those things were legal, which resulted in endless disciplinary cases for him – and earned him the nickname Jesus Christ.
He was a little eccentric, but he didn’t bother anyone, and they didn’t bother him. Until HE got a neighbor, who really was crazy, and called himself the Devil! This guy (the Unholy one, I mean) refused to shower, until our whole run would smell like his body odor. To make matters worse, he would also refuse to flush his toilet. Due to his toilet being filled with urine and feces, our whole WING stank, though he didn’t mind at all.
Officers would go out of their way to cajole him into showering and/or flushing his toilet, to no avail. He’d scream, “I’m the Devil! What am I supposed to smell like? ROSES?”
They ultimately found a way to get him to flush his toilet: they’d simply refuse to give him his trays until he flushed it. Showering, on the other hand, was out of the question – until one day they literally forced him out of his cell and into the shower, while they sprayed his cell down with a fire hose to eliminate the odor.
Any inmate or guard in seg can point out a person just like that, so there’s no doubt that Ad-Seg is psychologically damaging, at least to some people. After two tours of seg, for a total of seven years in a cell by myself, I could even see the ways it was affecting ME – so I decided to get out of seg, and stay out. I did learn quite a bit about its effects while I was there, though I did my best to resist them.
The most common symptoms of mental illness that arise in seg are paranoia and depression. I cannot remember how many guys I witnessed go from relatively normal people – to complete paranoid schizophrenics. I’d listen to people stand at their doors and yell for HOURS, because they heard someone talking about them, and didn’t know who it was. I mean, they’d do this EVERY DAY! They may not have known who was talking about them (and honestly, nobody was!) – but they were damn sure trying to find out. Practically any row, of any wing in seg, has at least one person like that.
When other bored guys realize what type of person they’re dealing with, some of them will go out of their way to rile him up, simply to amuse themselves. Which of course only makes the poor guy worse, because then he has to respond to the people he really hears, as well as the ones he only thinks he hears!
Depression is just as common to Ad-Seg, it’s just not as noticeable because it’s usually silent. Unless the guy is cutting on himself for attention, or genuinely attempting to kill himself, you’d never pay any attention to him. So you just wouldn’t notice that all he does is stare into space all day, and has completely lost interest in interacting with people – or even writing his family. He’ll be just another “quiet guy” in seg, who doesn’t socialize – unless or until the suicide attempts begin.
However damaging Ad-Seg can be to a person, they generally improve to a degree, after returning to GP and resocializing. Look at me! (OK, maybe everyone doesn’t improve!)
I knew one guy who was the most notorious cell warrior in seg, on the Robertson Unit. He didn’t just argue or make threats – he would make arrows or spears to jab people with, throw hot water on them, or even resort to throwing doo-doo on them, if that’s the only way he could get to them. If you wound up on his “shit list” (no pun intended!) – he WOULD get you, even if it was months before he had a chance.Then one day, here on the Wynne Unit, I see an SSI (janitor) sweeping his way down the run. Lo and behold, it’s him – Shitty Hawk! (Names have been changed, to protect the guilty) He came all the way out of seg, made it to G2 status, and was as normal as he could be. (Which is far more normal than I expected!)
So there IS hope for people who have been damaged by seg – they just have to be willing to change, and stay away from the activities that led them to Ad-Seg in the first place. If I did it (and Shitty Hawk did it!), there’s hope for anyone. So says DannyBoy.