A CONSTANT THREAT //
A CALL TO ACTION
CHAPTER FOUR
In November 2021, guards came and took DeMarco Raynor back to solitary confinement for a small infraction.
Letter from DeMarco Raynor:
They write you up for ‘disobeying a written or verbal order.’ Disobeying a direct order can be as simple as, get on the other side of the yellow line. Or if you don’t have your ID badge on you when you leave your cell. Or it can be, don’t go in that room right there, and you step inside the door to say something to somebody. They also have rules they have written that you might not know about—you can break those too.
[From the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC)’s quarterly report, January 1st, 2023 through March 31, 2023]
As a dedicated thinker and communicator, Raynor struggled to survive isolation.
Letter from DeMarco Raynor, continued:
You can’t have any reading materials unless they’re religious. You can’t have any books. No newspapers. You can’t have a radio. No TV. There’s no way for you to keep up with what’s going on in society. Which is another strain on the brain for me.
I don’t know what type of modern-day correctional facility could justify people not being aware of what’s going on in society. It just doesn’t make sense.
When Raynor finished his 30 days in punitive isolation, guards came and took him to restrictive housing for ten weeks.
Correspondence between DeMarco Raynor and Anna Stitt:
Stitt:
How has your experience in solitary impacted you long-term?
Raynor:
It gives you pause to engage in certain things. Like previously, anything that was rebelling against the system, I’m saying yes without even thinking about it. Solitary does make you hesitant because you know the conditions you’re gonna be under. Me personally, sometimes I’m still willing to sacrifice it. But you still have that pause—like man, are you ready to go through this again?
The people you need to have in contact—nobody is really communicating with you. Because 30 days in regular society is nothing. 30 days in solitary confinement seems like a year. You’re under a lot of psychological pressure.
A lot of these people were normal when they went back there. They were normal. But a guard made them so angry, so upset. They didn’t have no other way to get back at them. Who wants to be hit in the face with feces and urine and pus and blood and cum? They use that as a hell of a weapon. And it is.
I never want to get there. But I know there’s a breaking point with being in solitary confinement, where it can happen to any single one of us.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners says, no one should be in solitary for longer than 15 consecutive days.
A 2019 Yale survey found that 38.4% of people in solitary in Arkansas stay for more than a year at a time.
Extended solitary (defined by the Arkansas Department of Corrections as 30 days or longer) can be especially harmful for people who are already struggling with mental health. The ADC says that “inmates who are seriously mentally ill are NOT placed in extended restrictive housing.” But reports from incarcerated people contradict the ADC’s claim, and we know that nationally, people with mental illnesses are overrepresented in extended restrictive housing. The ADC's April 2023 quarterly report says that 59 people classified as having serious mental illness, or SMI, were in restrictive housing. It does not provide information to assess how long each person is there or how people’s conditions change over time.
[From the ADC’s quarterly report]
Regardless of how they were doing when they came in, we know that people who leave solitary often have long-term psychological and physical struggles.
Letter from Anthony Vinson at the Maximum Security Unit:
I am an inmate who is currently serving time at Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, AR 72168 in Restrictive Housing in a one man cell. Since *7-5-2019* I have been in a one man cell on 24-hour lockdown. I believe that I have become *PTSD* and my hands shake at times. I have to sometimes sit on my hands because the shaking makes me fearful.
I have tried to talk to the mental health officers and they always say just lay down or pray about it. I know that there is no assistance with talking to them, so I don’t even bother to ask anymore.
At times I forget where I am at mentally! Just talking out loud to myself with my eyes closed helps me through a day of stress. I also read and study the Bible and the Quran just to keep my mind positive and my beliefs strong.
I am a people person at heart, but since I have been locked down in a one man cell, I don’t like talking to people. I will become very angry when someone tries to have a conversation with me! So I don’t say anything to anyone at times.
I am soon to go up for parole. I am afraid that the parole board will say that I am not fit because I have been locked down in restrictive housing. But I am going to continue to keep my focus on my parole date and hope there will be some good news on that day to share with my family… because I am lonely and stressed out from being confined in a one man cell like this.
How can I become a better man for society when there is no opportunity to rehabilitate myself or take a self-help program? I will not go home like this, and I know that something mentally has affected me since I’ve been in this one man cell since *7-5-2019.*
I pray that no one has to suffer with what I am going through right now, which is PTSD, AntiSocial, ADHP, and shaking hands. Truthfully I had none of these problems before I was confined to this cell! Truly!
I pray that I could be given some aid of release from the nightmare of this cell.
Letter from Ulysses Maxfield at the Maximum Security Unit:
I was first subjected to solitary confinement (or as prison officials call it now restrictive housing) in 2010. I was being housed at the East Arkansas Regional Maximum Security Unit in Brickeys, Arkansas. I didn’t know then how 23-hour lockdown, sometimes 24-hour lockdown 7 days a week would affect my mind. I was sure about to find out.
Just the thought of having to depend on someone to do everything for you is enough to drive some people crazy. The waiting on someone to feed you, the waiting on someone to take you to the shower or someone to bring you the phone to talk to your family are just a few examples.
I haven’t begun to speak about how some officers treat us prisoners who are on restrictive housing. I’ve literally seen officers spit in prisoners’ food. There have been some prisoners who’ve found more disgusting things in their food.
Can you imagine the psychological effect that can have on someone’s mind? It comes to a point where a prisoner begins to truly think they’re crazy. I’m a prime example. I’ve got it in my head that I/we have to fight back by any means. I have become so untethered to reality that I will put my feces and urine inside a cup and throw it on the officers. There are days when I wake up and feel like the walls are closing in on me.
I tried speaking with mental health and higher up prison officials. Their solution was to push me off on someone else. I was transferred to the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker Arkansas in April of 2015. That’s where my mental condition got worse.
The officers here are worse. I have seen prisoners pushed to commit suicide. The psychological torture here is 10 times worse. Imagine someone spraying you with mace and cutting all your clothes off. Then walking you down the hallway butt naked in front of women employees. It’s all a joke to them. I’ve had this happen to me and I promise you it’s no joke.
When you’re treated as less than human, you begin to act like that. I’ve been subjected to this type of treatment for 11, almost 12, years. I feel like I’m at the end of the road and I don’t know what to do. Hopefully someone like you can shed light to these conditions prisoners like myself go through. Maybe knowing someone cares will give me the hope I need.
Correspondence between DeMarco Raynor and Anna Stitt:
Raynor:
Isolation is a threatening mechanism—we’re going to threaten you with isolation. Because while you’re isolated, none of your immediate needs are going to be met. So people fear isolation. Once you get back there, if anything happens, 30 days can be extended to 60. Sixty turns into 90, turns into 120. Guys can catch disciplinary infractions while already in punitive isolation. Once they get into a long-term punitive situation, that’s when you see guys who people would consider have lost their minds.
Now they’re throwing feces, now they’re flooding cells out, where they flood water and it goes out into the hallway. They’re throwing food and feces and all that type of stuff. They can’t get along with nobody now.
The staff created that problem, but now they say, that guy is crazy.
You have staff who instigate situations with these guys. They prod and pick. Anna, you stupid. Anna, you so and so. So and so. Now you’re arguing. Now you spit on the staff. Because you feel powerless.
If the officer gets into an argument with you, right now they’re putting you in isolation and on behavioral control, and it’s not a behavioral control incident. For behavioralcontrol, they’re allowed to strip people’s clothes. So they’re cutting people’s underclothes off them and taking them down the hallway naked. That’s their latest thing. If you get to arguing and say, ‘man, what’d I do?’ They’ll spray you with mace and come in and cut your boxers off and walk you down to the infirmary where all the women are at and let everyone see you naked on the way.
It’s hugely degrading.
Stitt:
It sounds like sexual abuse.
Raynor:
Yes. Once there’s no longer a threat, there’s no reason for you to march somebody down the hallway with no clothes on.
The guard who’s the worst about marching people around naked, he was on shift the night Adam Green killed himself. He’s at range school right now for the military. I’m afraid he’ll be even more programmed when he comes back.
In March 2024, the Arkansas Department of Corrections produced an official report on suicides in state prisons. A review of all Board of Corrections minutes in the six months after the report shows no sign that it was ever discussed. We reached out multiple times to the Arkansas Department of Corrections to ask whether the department has made any changes in light of the report’s findings. We did not hear back.
* * * * *
There’s often a pull to separate ourselves from such intense conditions. It can be too much. But it impacts all of us. At least 95% of incarcerated people eventually come home. Our current and potential future parents, neighbors, co-workers, and friends are the ones experiencing this trauma.
Restrictive housing porters, offered a bit of power, are discouraged from identifying with prisoners and taking in the full extent of the harm happening around them. In the same way, the prison system is a shadow over the rest of society. We're encouraged not to over-identify with prisoners. Not to look at the full scope of what's going on inside prisons. Not to step out of line and risk going there ourselves.
Many incarcerated people who aren’t in solitary feel it as a threat—isolation can be used to punish perceived disobedience and looms over any organizing they might do in the face of conditions like forced unpaid labor. How are all of our daily lives shaped by the presence of prisons? What could we gain if we weren’t afraid of what society might do to us?
If our society is shaped by the logic that shapes solitary—a logic of control and punishment that has a natural progression toward isolation, self-harm, and death—what happens if we break that logic? What role could you play in getting us there?
If you’d like to learn more about solitary conditions in Arkansas, you can find extensive data in this 2021 report produced by DecARcerate and Disability Rights Arkansas.
Sign up for email updates from DecARcerate here to learn about stops on DecARcerate’s solitary confinement awareness tour and stay up to date on calls to action.
Donate to DecARcerate here.
With love,
Anna Stitt and DeMarco Raynor
P.S. We reached out multiple times to the Arkansas Department of Corrections ahead of releasing this report. They did not respond. Our invitation stands to the ADC to address the questions raised in this report. Here is what we sent them.