Solitary Story #2

I came to Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) in 2005 when I was 18 years old and was really trying to rehabilitate myself by turning to my Christian faith. However WDOC officials put me in a 4-man cell with three very violent known gang members who immediately started beating me up because I would not join their gang and their violent ways. After being beat up numerous times and having correctional officers walk by our cell turning their head the other way when they knew I was being assaulted I had no choice but to join the prison gang and get involved, which deprived me of any opportunity of prison rehabilitation and continuing my Christian faith. Instead I was forced to do things against my will.

This went on for three months and I told my classification counselor in 8-wing Washington State Penitentiary closed custody in February 2006 that I was being abused by my cellmates. But I was still made to return to my cell. For the next two weeks after that I was beaten every day severely until I couldn't take it any longer and I asked for protective custody. At that time my classification counselor started repeatedly apologizing for allowing me to go back to my cell after I told him I was being abused. The counselor stated he told the CUS, but they thought I was just being picked on. But the bruises all over my body which they confirmed by taking photos said otherwise. The prison authorities were just trying to avoid a lawsuit for failure to protect. After that I was thrown in the hole for protective custody and 3 hours later a prison Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) person came and talked to me,

After all that had happened to me he asked me if I would be willing to go back out to general population to gather information for him of the white supremacists. I told him I don't think so because I was scared and beaten. But all he was interested in was getting me to tell him information. I was sent to another dangerous closed custody facility at the Washington State Reformatory at the Monroe Correctional Complex and once again put in harms way by being celled up with another white supremacist that was in the same gang as my former cellies at Washington State Penitentiary that I had just told on. On top of that this cellie "paper-checked" me. I told him I didn't have any paper-work, He said if I didn't get some he would cut my throat. To save my own life I had no choice but to assault another inmate in order to not have to return to the white supremacist's cell.

I was then placed in solitary confinement in an IMU (intensive management unit) at Shelton's WCC (Washington Corrections Center), where I developed a mental illness from being isolated so long. I started hurting myself, so I then was transferred to a mental health facility and kept in solitary for three years because I kept trying to hurt myself and commit suicide. Instead of putting me in a safe mental health population to get me help, I was instead kept in solitary where I slowly deteriorated mentally, physically and spiritually and gave up hope. I was given minimum, inhuman living conditions.

In February of 2010 I was transferred from Monroe Correctional Complex to a dangerous closed custody facility at Clallam Bay Corrections Center. At Monroe I had asked for protective custody because a white supremacist had made a shank and intended to kill me, so I was kept in solitary on protective custody for three months there. When I was transferred to Clallam Bay which was even more dangerous, it was only a matter of time before the white supremacists known as the AF (Aryan Family) and their allies Surenos Gangs found out I was transferred on protective custody. I was celled up with a Skin Head gang member who immediatly asked for my papers and I told him I didn't have any, so he threatened me and grabberd me by the throat and said that if he found out I was no good I better not come back to the cell. So once again I assaulted a Correctional Officer to save my life by being in solitary and out of danger.

Because Washington Department of Corrections doesn't have a "sensitive needs yard" or honor yard, I was forced to live in extreme danger. I was given twelve months in solitary (IMU) and an extra year in prison. But it was a small price to pay to save my life from the gangs that I was forced to live with in population. After being in IMU I again started to suffer from insufficient mental health care and sensory deprivation. Now here I am being in IMU for 29 months. I am anti-social and have 72 suicide attempts, self-mutilations. I've banged my head open and cut my wrists. This is what being in IMU does to mentally ill people. I have lived it and seen it but I'm not ready so give up. I have been at Walla Walla State Penitentiary for one year now and mental health care is insufficient and poor and does not care about inmates that are suffering in these IMUs like myself. Instead they throw me in a cell buck naked with an unsanitary drain in the floor with bars and in order for me to use the drain I have to sit on the cold steel drain on the floor and then the officers will tell me now use your hands and shove your feces down the drain.This is inhumane. There is no water and soap or a sink for that matter, so I can't clean the feces off my hands.

These seclusion rooms are used to psychologically break an inmate down, basically the motive is cruel and unusual. Punishment to stop an inmate as myself from asking for help. After hurting myself one day a mental health staff member forced me to walk around naked. His name was Blackham and he let me bang my head for 5 hours and then I had to sleep on the floor naked, freezing cold, then the next day I was sent back to solitary IMU.

If Washington Department of Corrections would have had a sensitive needs yard for me to go to I would have been safe, a model inmate and would have been rehabilitating myself every day. Instead they don't care about the money a sensitive needs yard would save taxpayers, because in the end some corrupt prison officials would be losing money because there would be less violence and therefore less money granted to the budget. The system is not about rehabilitation or public safety, it is about a few corrupt Department of Corrections officials' greed.