Wisconsin Hears About Solitary Confinement
On April 23, 2024, in the state Capitol building, a panel of 10 spoke to a packed hearing room about the practice of solitary confinement in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails. The 70-plus listeners included five legislators and about twice that many aides; the panel included seven who had spent time in solitary, two ministers, and a woman who had recently lost her dad to suicide in solitary.
The first speaker was MOSES’s own Talib Akbar, who designed, and with the help of Edgewood College students built, a solitary confinement cell replica that is (as of December) on display at The Crossing on the UW campus. Akbar said that solitary changes people, alters them in some way. He began his volunteer effort to apprise the public about the realities of solitary in 2014 and has taken the cell, which people can actually sit in and experience, to various places in Madison, to different cities in Wisconsin, and to a few other states. He has also written a play, “Like an Animal in a Cage,” which has been performed by people who have spent time in solitary. He noted that the Wisconsin DOC has reduced maximum time in solitary from 360 days/year to 90, but said the practice needed to be ended entirely.
“Incarceration is one of the social deterrents to public health,” said Melissa Ludin from the ACLU. “A person who’s gone to prison is 12 times more likely to die than one who hasn’t been to prison. Incarceration causes PTSD, and solitary makes it even worse. Solitary is a jail within a prison.”
Ludin spent 100 days in solitary during an imprisonment in her youth; she was taken out only twice, for medical appointments. She still feels the long-term effects of that experience, though she’s been out since 2007.
Prince Rashad grew up in the early ‘80s and ended up in Green Bay Correctional Institution at age 18. In solitary, he became suicidal; “the experience made me more dangerous,” he said. He was sent to solitary six times; each time it was devastating.
“It brings no resolution or rehabilitation,” he said. “We need to align our criminal justice system with international human rights standards. Solitary confinement exacerbates existing psychological conditions — or starts new ones.”
Randy Forsterling said he was in Supermax for seven years and spent 360 days in solitary, so much time that it got to be routine, he said. He had friends who were “in the hole” for 20 to 30 years. When his mom died, he couldn’t even cry, he felt so stripped of his humanity. “People in solitary aren’t even seen as human beings,” he said.
Politics is the root cause of the prison system’s problems, Forsterling said. For example, the 1994 crime bill almost tripled Wisconsin’s prison population. He said that “we the people” need to get decent people elected and restore rehabilitative programs, which have slowly been disappearing, back into the system. The DOC doesn’t let people participate in the programs they must complete until near the end of their sentence, he said, which means they can’t complete them soon enough to be considered for release anywhere close to on time.
Megan Kolb tearfully related her father’s last days before he hanged himself after nine days in solitary confinement. He spent those days begging for his psychiatric meds, which he had not gotten in 71 days. He was given no paper, no pen, no books. “We need rehabilitation, not torture,” she declared.
“Bobby” was paroled three years ago by John Tate II (the crowd applauded this name), 27 years into a 60-year sentence. He spent over seven years in solitary. He went in with PTSD due to the loss of his parents, and while in prison received notice via phone that his brother had died. He got no support beyond the empathetic silence of fellow prisoners when his phone call was announced. “Solitary is torture,” he said. “I survived by will alone.” Bobby is now a state-certified peer-support specialist.
Jessica Jacobs is now the director of FREE, which advocates for incarcerated and previously incarcerated women. Two of FREE’s current campaigns are 1) to get doulas in prisons to assist pregnant women and 2) to end the shackling of pregnant women.
Jessica described additional dehumanizing aspects of prison that she experienced: being known only by a number, or maybe one’s last name; being physically abused and completely at the mercy of the guards; being put in solitary for no reason, perhaps even during the booking process. She said the reasons people are imprisoned — PTSD, trauma, sexual assault, substance abuse — are all signals of poverty, and that’s what we need to deal with. We need to expand programming within and outside the prisons, and to offer trauma therapy, not solitary confinement!
Ron Stief talked about the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which started 20 years ago out of concern about U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and of Iraqis, e.g. Guantanamo. Five years in, the campaign began to also address the torture in stateside prisons. There have been some successes, e.g. in Maine, where the head of the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) rewrote its policies. Rick Raemisch, who moved from heading the Wisconsin DOC to directing its parallel in Colorado, spent a few hours in a solitary-cell replica and ended up eliminating solitary confinement in Colorado prisons.
NRCAT has legislative campaigns in 23 states. Michigan has made some progress. Illinois has passed the Nelson Mandela Act: no more than 10 days in solitary, and no more than 20 hours/day. California has passed the Mandela Act, but the governor has threatened to veto it. That happened in New York, too, so the legislature assembled a veto-proof majority. From written legislation to passage took eight years! In New Jersey, there was a confluence of state legislators, faith communities, and activists. Legislators sat in a solitary cell replica, wrote a bill, and had it signed into law in 2022.
There are lots of people in solitary in city jails, too, Stief said, adding that 60-90% of those in solitary would do fine in the general prison/jail population. We have a fear-based system, he said.
The role of the faith community? Working to end torture is a moral absolute, he said. The fight will be long, but it’s worth it. We need the voices of all of us working together.
Legislators respond
“I never thought I’d be legislating [the right of] ‘seeing the sky,’” Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) said. “The standard is so incredibly low in Wisconsin.”
What gives him hope, said Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), is that advocacy is breaking through, and other states are passing legislation. “When I see advocacy by people who’ve been transitioning back [from prison], with so much pain and such lack of resources, in a world that tells them they’re worth nothing – it gives me the will to sit in this space, which can be one of the most toxic in the state. I know that it can happen here [too], in a state that has a perverse relationship with incarceration.”
“A lot of folks just don’t know,” he added. “They buy into building more prisons, giving more money to the police … The real solution is safety nets … ‘Know that we have your backs,’” he added, addressing those who are system-impacted.
Rev. Willy Brisco of MICAH gave the closing blessing, starting with a little story about God looking down on our institutions of slavery, prisons, and war and saying, “’That’s not what I meant!’”
“Tell someone what you heard today, and don’t be silent again,” Rev. Brisco admonished everyone. The crowd responded with a firm “Amen!”
WISDOM members delivered informational packets to all legislators’ offices after the event.
What is the “23” Campaign?
Since May 23, 2024, MOSES members have been gathering on the Capitol’s State Street steps once a month at noon on the 23rd to draw attention to the fact that hundreds of people are being subjected to solitary confinement in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails, and to demand that the state put an end to this practice. The 23rd was chosen to draw attention to the fact that people in solitary spend 23+ hours/day alone in their tiny cells. They may spend the other hour someplace else, but still alone.
The United Nations has declared that solitary confinement for more than 15 days is torture. By that measure, we are torturing hundreds of people in Wisconsin’s prisons and jails. Said WISDOM’s David Liners: “Wisconsin needs to join the states that have adopted the ‘Mandela rule’ that limits the practice to 15 days, and that for only in extraordinary circumstances.”