I ran away, didnt want to deal with anything. Just wanted to be me, myself, and get my head right. Narrator tonight on frontlinlast days of solitary. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the ford foundation. Working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from laura debonis. distant howling and yelling howling and yelling pounding loud knocking and pounding howling this is the maine special management unit. Its a segregation unit for the state prison. What we have here is, we have the prisoners who are down here to do segregation time for disciplinary reasons. pounding time to take care of this. They are locked down 23 hours a day for the most part. While theyre down here, theyre angry, they flood their cells, they could be upset about the littlest things, and they just turn to violence. The other thing that they do from time to time is, they will selfinjure themselves. They can bang their heads, punch the doors with their fists to break their hands, they can resort to razor blades that they find, and they will cut themselves. pounding men yelling kidd. I think he passed out. Kidd, you need to cuff up. You might as well talk to me now, because youre going to bleep me sooner than later. Why dont you take that stuff off your window. I have three windows covered right now, and one of them appears to be selfabusive. Obviously he is, because theres blood on his toilet paper. I attempted to look through the tray slot to see if i can get a visual on him, and hes got it covered with a mattress. Kidd so my only other hope before i have to extract him and bring him out of there, since he refuses to talk to me or cuff up, is that i can see him through the back of the window. If i cant see him from the back window, im going to have to go in and take him out for his own safety. radios squawking lets see if he is smart enough. Hes got it all covered. So now we have to pull him out. radios squawking officers talking softly pounding you know you got to come out. Theres a smart way to do this, and this is not it. pounding and yelling bleep elevator dings radios squawking pounding monsters this is what theyve made in here. Hell and monsters, and then they drop you into society and tell you, go ahead be a good boy. This is what they create in here, monsters. radios squawking you cant conduct yourself like a human being when they treat you like an animal. Copy that, 114. man talking on radio pounding chatter on radio man coughing howling man coughing this place is like an insane asylum. You cant even imagine, i dont even know how many times ive seen this tier filled with blood from these guys cutting their arms and their necks and their balls, cutting their ball sacks out, all types of crazy, craziness, and, uh, and thats because theyre stuck in here with nothing to do. officer speaking man yelling if you dont have a strong mind, this place can break you quick. A lot of guys, they dont even have reasons why. They just snap out. Thats what this place does to you, it makes you mean, makes you violent, and it bleep a lot of peoples heads up. This is solitary confinement. radios squawking my names todd michael fickett. My prisoner number is 93262. Im here for arson, in prison for arson. man yelling radio squawking down here, makes you feel like youre being buried alive. Youre some place alive, but youre no place anybody wants you. Im down here in solitary confinement for, like, six months for hitting an officer in the kitchen. Thats what you get to do, sit there and think about your thoughts all day, pace back and forth. Pretty much 24 7, like, you come out, i think its twice a week for a shower, you know. Change clothes when you want, but you know, but youre still stuck in a cell every day. My, my mental, my mental state will probably go downhill like it did last time. pounding i go pretty crazy. Were not supposed to do it, but we do it. Its kind of funny. Were just bored. We got to have something to do. We want to make sure somebodys around. We send notes, letters, medications, and sometimes razor blades. Thats a razor blade todd. Whats going on . We got a bleeder we got a bleeder hey, fickett. Fickett. radio squawking fickett, talk to me, man. Hey, whats going on, man . Talk to me. Uh, i cant do that. How come . Ive got bleep six others talking in my head, smartass. Okay. Why dont you take this stuff down . Whats going on, man . Come on. Can you grab a camera and come in here, please . Thats what Mental Health you get for not doing their job. man squeaking how bad are you cut . Let me see it. Let me see it. We need to get medical. Yeah. Like, a lot. Yeah. Okay. Hey, fickett, do me a favor. Put your, that towel over there on your arm, okay . Lets at least slow that bleeding down. men yelling drip some of your blood, fickett. Come on. Were going to help you. Here we go again first step is, we got to get that arm taken care of, then we can get you some help, okay . Put this on your arm. men yelling hes a pretty serious cutter. Ive known todd for quite a while now, and his history of selfinjurious behavior is pretty significant, so he does a pretty good job when he does cut. So, i mean, hell go right for a main artery or that, you know. Hell tap into something that produces copious amounts, and, you know, puts his life at risk. So basically right now im going to see if i can move him to one of our two cells that i have that are designated for constant watches. They have cameras built in, they got full glass doors. man talking its inevitable. You put us in here with nothing to do, bleep going to hit the fan. Another day on the job. Thats a real cleanup right here. Real cleanup. We probably average about 20 of these a month, so. Yeah. In the last year, ive become an expert on blood, i guess. It doesnt just mop up, does it . No, it doesnt. It coagulates. Generally i try and saturate it with a germicide, and then i use a sheet to mop it up, and then afterward, i try to scrub it down. My heart goes out to everybody down here. Ive been behind these doors, so i know what its like to stay down here for years. You know, being behind these walls, they get to everybody, and everybody deals with it in their own particular way. As you can imagine, someone being 18 years old in a setting like this, you know, its not really. It does a lot with your mind. My belief is the use of segregation has its place when you have real dangerous prisoners, but from my perspective, it is overused throughout the United States. For the normal person who doesnt work in a facility like this, theyre going to be thinking, if you punish them, youre going to make them better. And the reality is, the exact, the exact opposite happens. Come and get it, mother bleep putting them in confinement and forgetting about them is essentially going to make them worse, theres no question in my mind. yelling if i have somebody that comes in with a fiveyear commitment, you could have them do their whole time in segregation. But i dont want him living next to me when we release him. pounding and yelling i think we need to make every attempt at moving them out of, of those cells and moving them into general population. I want you out on the other side of that door. Because thats good for you, to be on this side of the door and not that side. All right . All right. So weve got to find a way to get you out so youre not fighting with people. We have some very, very dangerous prisoners, so on the surface, it might look crazy, but the reality is that 80 of these inmates are going to be hitting the street, okay . So we can either make them worse, okay . And create more victims when they go on the street, or we can rehabilitate them. intercom playing bugle call im Adam Brulotte, 102817. Ive been in prison since november 28th of 2012. Got into a lot of fights in school, started drinking at 17, getting into huge fights at parties, like, threeonone, and winning. And everybody thought i was the coolest kid, so i just kept on doing it and doing it, and then i went too far and i broke a kids jaw in seven places with one punch. That landed me an aggravated assault. Local 613. All right . Yep. Secure bravo 101 local, secure, please. I just went overboard. Thats why im down here. I freaked out. I was screaming, and i started punching stuff. And i got maced and tackled. And theyre trying to say i started a riot. And they brought me down here. Ive been down here two days now. I like seg. I can handle being locked down 23 hours a day, because i can read, i can write, i can do pushups. Most of the time i just chill. You got to relax. You cant get yourself wound up, because you cant leave that room. Sounds good to my standards. laughs im always at this window, so i like the window to be clean. My face touches it, my hands touch it. Yeah, it sucks, but i think im doing good. Good, thats a good place for you to focus on. Bravo 225, open bravo 22. man talking loudly i dont know what i can do. My mind races all night. I got hardcore a. D. D. , and im about to leave in five months. I dont know where im going to go, i dont know where im going to work. I dont know how im going to get a car. I still got 1,000 to pay with no car, no job. When youve settled down in your room and you really just start thinking, and just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, all at once. And i need to try to get some medication to slow that down for now, but. Thats really the problem. This really kind of bleep with my head. bleep look at that. Its decomposed, its compost why are you pissed off . Because theyre bleep bleep with peoples portions. yelps men yelling and laughing scumbag thats a milliondollar shot, there thats what they call a milliondollar shot oh, its long. pounding hey, what is all this stuff on the floor . Probably urine and toilet paper and food. yelling whats going on, adam . In a halfhour, im going to let that loose itll be in the hallway. Prisoner, theres no need for this, man, you know that. If you make a mistake. men yelling never bleep ends. radio squawking cant do anything unless you talk to me. You know that, come on. bleep no . man yells if we just leave brulotte in segregation, hes going to become worse. Were going to end up with an inmate that probably will attempt to starve himself, without a doubt, at some point, begin, begin demonstrating some selfabusive behavior. So now by introducing programs, well work with the inmates until eventually they become less dangerous, and then we could look at moving them back to general population. Good morning, good morning. Well talk about that after. Oh, here he goes. No, no, no, no, i just want to get started, because we only got a little bit of time. Class is going to go the same way we always go. Aint nothing going to change for nothing, no reason. These inmates have been significantly violent and theyre truly a danger to self or others, so this is going to be a slow process. We had brulotte initially in cuffs and shackles. After we developed a little more confidence, hed be attending the groups just in cuffs. Develop a little more confidence, hed attend the groups without cuffs and with just one other inmate. And we would gradually work him so that hed leave that group, from segregation into general population, where his program would continue. So how does pride affect us . I show pride, i try to go, like, too far, and i start to get hardheaded. And you go from pride into doing what everybody wants now. Oh, yeah, ill be so much cooler if i break this guys eye socket. Then i go do it. Then i go higher. bleep you got to find a different way of dealing with your anxiety, your anger, and all that other stuff that comes with sitting in that cell all day. I dont know, when i get angry, i dont think before i act. I usually dont take responsibility for myself and i just blame other people. But im doing this program. Im going to start taking responsibility. Im the one bleep up, so i cant be pointing the finger at this anymore. That sounds, that sounds fantastic. Number one, honesty. Ive seen it work. Im an absolute believer in it working. It is our job, to the extent that we can, to rehabilitate them so they can become successful productive citizens in the community. door closes my legal names samuel caison. I prefer to be called sam. Im currently here for a class a aggravated assault. Most of my familys been in and out of prison their whole life. I grew up around this. I first drank and smoke pot about ten years old. By age 14, i was shooting heroin and had already done a couple juvenile sentences. The first time i got in trouble, i got sent to a mental hospital. Then i got sent to a juvenile facility for a year. I spent nine months in seg by myself when i was 16. That was the worst, you know. It was torture, pretty much. I would bang my head on doors, cut myself. Um. Pretty much anything i wasnt supposed to do that i could do with the very little bit i had in my cell. I turned 18 and i got sent up here and pretty much spent the rest of that sentence in seg. Me personally, when i spend too much time inside my head, its a dangerous thing. Also open bravo 120, 120. Cell extractions are like a game. Its our opportunity to get back at c. O. S. They mess with one person and spend the rest of their shift doing cell extractions. men yelling as dumb as it is, the cell extractions and people cutting up is our tv, so to speak. I cut because its my only way to escape. Obviously, being locked up, you dont have control of nothing. And cutting myself makes me feel in control. Since i came to population, i just tried to bury myself in programs, but i dont know how any of thats going to work out. After doing a lot of time in seg, im not a person that likes to talk. It breaks you. When im inside my head too much, i get paranoid about things and ultimately get depressed. Depression is not a good thing when youre locked in your cell 23 hours a day. Solitary confinement has the most fascinating history in the United States. The United States was actually the leader in modern times of introducing solitary confinement to the world. It was actually introduced by the quakers as a noble experiment in rehabilitation. There was a belief that you could put a prisoner in his own solitary cell, freed from the evil influences of modern society, and if you put them in that cell, they would become like a penitent monk, free to come close to god and to their own inner being, and they would naturally heal, heal from the evils of the outside society. It was a noble experiment that was an absolute catastrophe. By the 1830s, statistical evidence began to accumulate that there was an inordinate incidence of psychosis, of suicide, and that people just deteriorated. By 1890, there was major condemnation of the institution by the United States supreme court. And so the experiment with solitary confinement gradually diminished as evidence became unmistakable that this was causing disastrous psychiatric consequences. on tvin our special segment tonight, the subject is overcrowding prison overcrowding. The state has the nations largest prison system and also one of the most overcrowded. Outdated, overcrowded, and near a state of crisis. With three times as many inmates as. So after the quakers experiment, the United States abandoned the use of solitary confinement. But then in the 1970s, we began to put unprecedented numbers of people in prison. And so you had terribly overcrowded conditions and prisons that looked like they were about to become out of control. Prison populations reachedn alltime high in this country last month, and one prison burst under the strain. Inmates set fire to 13 buildings and then attacked prison guards. The other thing that happened is that there were increasing numbers of mentally ill prisoners coming into the prison system. Their behavior was harder to understand, it was harder to control, prison systems didnt have the resources to properly deal with them. Marion, americas toughest prison. Conditions are so tense, officials now say that the prison is in a virtual state of siege. In october 1983, two inmats already serving life sentences murdered two guards in the same cell block the same day. Well, in 1983, there were two officers within 24 hours that were killed by the aryan brotherhood. The staff at marion were completely demoralized. They felt that we had to do something to protect them from these inmates, and we had to do something to protect inmates from these inmates. The Bureau Director got involved and said, lock it down. It wasnt just a day, it wasnt a week. It was a permanent lockdown. The entire prison was lockd down. That is, every man was confined to his cell to restore order. Now there is nearly one guard for every inmate. Unruly inmates can be chained to their concrete slab beds for hours, even days. The high security, the lockdown, was created out of necessity to maintain control of the inmates, confidence, and protection of the staff that have to face these kinds of individuals on a daily basis. We never wavered our belief that this was a necessity. Their response to it was to employ very largescale solitary confinement, put a ton of people in solitary, which took away opportunities for programming, opportunities for social interaction. And that model of utter total control and harsh punishment took off in the United States, so that over time we developed more and more supermax prisons, where everyones in solitary confinement. bugle call playing over intercom i think segregation to a point does correct behavior. For the people who felt we were too hard or harsh, well, what alternative did we have . What choices did we have . Our job is to protect the inmates and the staff and to allow people to get through their time and go out as respectable citizens, that type of thing. But what are you going to do with those people who dont want that to happen . If youve got a better answer. I wish we did, i always said, you know, i wish we had some social medicine or a magic wand that we could use to correct peoples behavior, but theres no such thing. man yelling you guys get to go home ive got to stay the bleep in here. What were going to do with todd is introduce an individualized program in the Mental Health unit. Were going to have a clinician working with todd until were successful at reducing the cutting behavior. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you know, well look at reintegrating todd back into the general population. We still believe that he presents a significant danger to the staff and the other