A Voice from the Hole

by Matt Kelley · 2010-01-28 15:11:00 UTC
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I've written recently about the very welcome arrival of prisoners to the blogosphere -- from Change.org contributor Michael Santos to the posts of Theodore Braden at Teen in Jail, technology is giving a voice to the previously silenced millions in our jails and prisons. Now, this revolution has even reached into the deepest recesses of our prison system -- solitary confinement.

Thanks to the great new blog, Solitary Watch, I came across the writings of a Nevada prisoner named Coyote Sheff, who has been in Nevada prisons for more than a decade, spending much of it in disciplinary segregation. He writes blog posts, poetry and zines from a cell he inhabits 23 hours a day, and somehow manages to keep his thoughts positive:

I deal with the struggles of being in prison and I keep moving. I deal with the despair, I deal with the agony, the suffering, the misery, and I keep living. I deal with the depression, I deal with the destruction and I deal with the hate. I keep loving life and I keep living my life. Life is beautiful, I'm thankful to be alive. I live in a graveyard, but I'm not dead, I'm alive and well.

We have as many as 25,000 prisoners in solitary confinement across the United States, and a groundbreaking New Yorker article on the topic last year left little doubt that in many instances, the practice of solitary confinement meets the definition of torture.

I'm glad to see Sheff giving voice to prisons in the hole, and I hope this year we can work together around campaigns like American Friends Service Committee's Stopmax campaign.

Photo Credit: caitlinator

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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