“Stick out your tongue,” a guard barked through a window.

“Turn around, show me the bottom of your feet.”

“Now lift your sack.”

I was stark naked, standing inside of the segregation intake cell.

At least this time they did not order me to turn around and spread my cheeks.

Over the past six years, I’ve become familiar with this routine. Despite my best attempts at good behavior, an annual return to solitary confinement feels inevitable. 

Solitary, or administrative segregation — or “the hole” as it’s known among most prisoners — is generally used as a catch-all punishment for various infractions. This stint was the result of my taking an allegedly unauthorized route to the gym. 

Prison is full of rules that are inconvenient, arbitrary and waiting to be broken. Violations can earn you a “major” conduct report and time in solitary, leaving you to wonder if the punishment fits the crime. 

For prisoners, once a conduct report is written, the only thing that really matters are the consequences. In addition to time in the hole, a rule violation provokes a whole cascade of other punishments. 

In my case, the punishment dominoes would soon start to fall. 

Two weeks in solitary

In the conduct report meeting about the unauthorized route incident, the lieutenant read the report aloud. It said that I’d been in an unassigned area, disobeyed orders and disrespected staff. He asked if the information was accurate.

It wasn’t. But I knew that he wasn’t really asking.

The lieutenant fixed me with a steely look and said, “Fifteen days in segregation is all that I can offer you.”

I could have chosen to formally dispute the report and the officer’s recommendation of solitary. But with that comes the possibility of being placed into “temporary lockup,” which is still the hole. The dispute process would almost certainly take longer than 15 days. 

So I made my march to the hole, contemplating the paradoxes of prison. Here I am, about to sit in the hole as a result of not following the policy to the letter. Yet when staff do not follow policy, there is seldom accountability. (In my state of Wisconsin, calls for greater accountability have been growing following a series of reports highlighting problems in the prison system.)

Following that initial strip search, guards took my gray sweatpants and T-shirt I purchased from commissary and provided me with the bright orange uniform reserved for people in solitary. Then I was escorted to Cell 37. 

Guards threw around and combed through my possessions and property under the guise of searching for contraband and taking inventory of my permitted belongings. In the past, my belongings were damaged. Sometimes items have disappeared entirely. 

Worse still, as a result of my being banished to the hole, I lost my job in the kitchen — and state pay — for 90 days. I became ineligible to apply for an off-unit job, school, vocations and the facility’s dog training program, all of which require applicants to be without major conduct reports for at least one year.

Substandard living conditions 

Back in Cell 37, the air pumping through the vent above the toilet was frigid. There was snow on the ground outside. The vent never blew with this kind of vigor when I was in the hole during the summer.

To obstruct the cold air, I soaked blobs of toilet paper with water, making a moldable and sticky mass that I hoped would adhere to the wall as it dried. Pressing these blobs into the vent is the only means of temperature control. In the past, I’ve molded chess pieces out of the blobs so I could work on my game while in the hole. 

As I finished my makeshift vent cover, I became aware of the eerie silence in the building — a rarity. Then I looked around the parking space-sized cell and took inventory. 

On the bunk was a cracked foam sleeping mat; two brown, worn and itchy blankets; and a sagging, depressed-looking pillow. There was toothpaste, a 2-inch prison-issued toothbrush and one flexible pen with black ink. And there was one large towel; the smaller face towel typically provided was missing. 

When I finally brought this to an officer’s attention I was told that I’d have to wait until the next shower day. Shower days are once every three days.

After a while, my makeshift vent cover hit the floor. The stream of air had curled the edges of the damp mass. Then I remembered that state toothpaste can be used as a jailhouse adhesive, so I gave that a try and gingerly pressed it back into place.

Eating on the toilet

There was no clock in my cell and no view from my cell window, so meals became my primary method of keeping track of time. They arrived with the sound of keys jangling, doors slamming and finally the scrape of the plastic tray as it was pushed through the door slot. 

With the arrival of my first lunch tray — damp macaroni and cheese, salad, peas, two slices of bread and a square of yellow gelatin — came the realization that there was nowhere to comfortably sit and eat. I was using my bunk as my writing desk, so I decided to sit on the toilet. 

I held the tray in my left hand as I ate, careful not to let the blanket draped over my shoulders dip into the toilet water. The rubber spoon was the exact same shade of bright orange as my clothing. It flexed inconveniently as I tried to eat.

After the meal, I placed the bunk mat on the floor. It has become a ritual for me to sleep on the floor instead of the bunk while in solitary. That’s usually because the floor is cleaner than the bunk. But in Cell 37, both were in pretty bad shape.

A small win 

Once the 15 days were up, I would be forced to play the “cellie lottery” — that is, I would be moved to a different cell with a different cellmate and made to readjust to a new situation all over again.

After reflecting on the totality of my predicament, my mentality only hardened against the system. I am determined to gain the skills I need to be successful upon my release, but the way the prison is run seems counterproductive to that end. 

Here, we are not expected to think for ourselves or ask questions. The expectation is that we follow the rules and accept what we are told without protest, whether it makes sense, or is just, or not.

Still, in a strange way, I welcome the aloneness of the hole. My times there are opportunities to reset and reflect. I can sit and contemplate my situation with fewer distractions. But herein lies another paradox. Even in solitary, you are never really alone. Zero privacy is part of the punishment of prison.

As I wrote this, my thoughts drifted. All of a sudden I noticed a slight increase in the room’s temperature. I glanced at the vent to find that my makeshift cover was holding. I took comfort in my small victory.