Aaron Striz has been in solitary confinement for his whole adult life for a crime in which no one was hurt
The UN officially considers solitary confinement beyond 15 days to be torture. By that definition, Striz has been tortured, nonstop, his entire adult life. Now he's doing something about it.
At the age of 17, Aaron Striz and his friends robbed a convenience store. They were quickly apprehended and put in a small Texas county jail. But security was lax and he escaped through a hole in the wall. “It was a dumb and impulsive decision by some dumb teenage boys,” Striz writes from the Darrington Unit, a maximum security prison in Rosharon, Texas.
A few days later, they were caught again. The escape attempt vastly worsened their situation. “The jail staff began taunting us with about how we were going to receive 50 to 60 years, and what happens to young boys in adult prisons,” he writes. Thinking he had nothing to lose, he tried to escape again, assaulting two guards, neither of whom was seriously injured. Hours later he was captured, beaten, and thrown, naked, into solitary, he says.
A month later, he was taken to court, so disorientated he didn’t realize what was happening when his court-appointed lawyer urged him to agree to three aggravated life sentences. 18-years-old, and terrified of prison, he joined a gang for protection. At 21, despite no serious incidents, he was placed in solitary confinement, where he remains today, aged 42. “The only human contact I’m allowed is when an officer places handcuffs on me through a food-slot in the cell door, and grips my arm to escort me to shower, solitary recreation, medical or visitation in a cage.” At 5 foot 9, his cell is barely big enough to do pushups—it’s three short steps from the door to the toilet. “For more than two decades my life has been confined to a space smaller than a typical walk-in closet. For what purpose?”
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“He is a man buried alive,” a horrified Charles Dickens wrote upon observing solitary confinement in America. Solitary was invented by the Pennsylvania Quakers, but they discontinued the practice when they realized that rather than inspire quiet reflection, as they’d initially thought, solitary confinement made people go insane. Nevertheless, solitary became ingrained and widespread in the US criminal justice system. In 2011, Juan Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture declared that more than 15 days in solitary constitutes torture.
It’s next to impossible for people who’ve never been incarcerated to understand the horror of longterm solitary. But people placed in segregation report the same hellish experience. “Silenced: Voiced from Solitary in Michigan,” collects letters from people in segregation and categorizes them by mental health symptoms and effects: paranoia, panic attacks, hallucinations, suicide. Men write on the walls with their own feces; night and day, dead silence is punctuated by screams. They face abuse by guards, deprivation, extreme heat and cold. "You are treated like an animal, until you begin to doubt your own humanity,” Striz says. “I’ve seen normal men driven to paranoid insanity within a few years, permanently damaged.”
In 2017, Striz learned of a planned hunger strike in other Texas facilities, inspired by a hunger strike in California prisons. He and one other man decided to starve themselves to draw attention to their plight. Within a week, the warden started begging them to end the strike, making promises to improve conditions.
At the same time, the facility confiscated their outgoing mail, Striz says, to stop friends and family from alerting the media. The strike ended and the warden’s promises went unfulfilled.
On January 1st, Striz issued a statement alerting the prison leadership of another hunger strike, this time with close to 20 participants. 17 people joined. “For decades we have excepted (sic) TDCJ‘s lies, abuse, deprivation, and inhumane solitary confinement that even TDCJ acknowledges to a use of extreme mental, physical, and emotional harm, much of it permanent,” their statement read.
They demanded TDCJ end the use of indefinite solitary confinement and immediately release anyone who’s been in solitary for 10 years or more into the general population. For those who would remain in solitary, the participants demanded educational and rehabilitative programs; improved conditions, such as cold water in the hottest months as well as access to television, online messaging systems, and access to video conferencing.
On day five, Striz stopped drinking liquids and collapsed from dehydration a few days later. Ten days in, the warden and regional director—who struck Striz as a “reformist” type—spoke with him, promising access to TV, more entertainment and educational resources, the opportunity to occasionally mix with others. When the warden asked Striz if he’d stop the strike if his own personal situation were resolved, Striz proudly said “Nope!” pledging to hold out while the others continued.
When the rest of the men decided to end the strike, and so did Striz. “I feel like we got played,” he concludes. None of the concessions were put in writing, and their main demand, the abolition of indefinite solitary, remains unaddressed.
He plans to resume the strike. “I have made up my mind, I’ll give them two months to follow through … If I’m still in solitary by March 14, I will resume my hunger strike. Most likely alone. And I will not end it until they’ve met every single one of my demands. I’ll show them how far I’m willing to go, my determination that I refuse to spend another year in solitary confinement.”
But he looks beyond his own situation. “Thousands remain in solitary confinement indefinitely. I’ll continue to speak and write even if they release me.”
I'm not sure that's accurate about the Quakers. Since you didn't give a year I can't really dispute it but I thought it was (from a Western perspective) Victorian England.
https://ourcriminalancestors.org/2018/04/convict-prison-lives-in-victorian-london/