I Thought Solitary Confinement in Iran Was Bad -- Then I Went Inside America's Prisons

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CDCR, like correctional departments around the country, does not consider the SHU solitary confinement. Inmates have TV, and they have contact with staff when they bring them their food, officials told me. Our interrogators in Iran said the same thing.
 

JOSH AND I USED TO MAKE up stories about other prisoners who walked past our cell, blindfolded, on their way to the bathroom. In our imaginations, the man who looked to be in his mid-30s with a smooth head and a slim build was the lead singer in an alternative rock band. His anguish was fueled by the fact that the government deemed his music subversive, when all he wanted was to play his guitar. The grizzled old man was a playwright. The guy with the long beard was an imam. The clean-cut twentysomething was an internet hacker.

Lately, it's like I've been doing the opposite—shaping living, breathing people out of snatches of information. Vincent Bruce has written me more than 20 times, and I've read through hundreds of pages of his court and prison files. From this, I can tell you that the 50-year-old has spent nine and a half years in isolation—seven of them alone in the SHU—but I can't tell you whether it shows in his stride like I could with the guys who walked past my cell. I can tell you that when he was 26, he busted out of jail in Chicago, that The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of his favorite books, and that he loves Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight."

I can tell you that he is one of California's most effective jailhouse lawyers. This is how his days pass: At six o'clock every morning, he wakes up, washes his face, and scrubs the floor of his cell. He does half an hour of yoga and meditation. From noon until dinnertime, he sits hunched over on his bed and pores over whatever legal case he is working on. Sometimes he gets diverted and watches court shows. It's one of his weaknesses.

When Bruce was a kid, he says,  his mom had nervous breakdowns when she would turn into a zombie that he had to feed and bathe. Her boyfriend's solution was to "slap her out of it." At 13 or 14 he started running with the Crips. Since then, he has spent a total of about one year on the outside. At 23, he was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, and two counts of first-degree robbery, and sentenced to life without parole.

Several years into his incarceration, he started to organize other prisoners. In the 1990s at Salinas Valley State Prison, he crossed the intense racial divide of prison and organized 74 black, white, and Latino prisoners to pressure the administration into providing family visitation, religious services, and  better food.

In 1998, Bruce was put in administrative segregation for allegedly assaulting another inmate. Ad-seg, as it is commonly known, is a solitary unit in each prison where inmates are often placed for disciplinary infractions. Some 6,700 California prisoners are in such units.

Bruce's ad-seg term was supposed to last 90 days. While there, he started pushing for improvements—allowing ad-seg inmates access to the exercise yard, reading and writing materials, the law library, and adequate bedding  and clothing. Shortly afterward, he was told he wouldn't be getting out of isolation: He was under investigation for gang affiliation. (His time in the Crips, which he says ended years ago, was irrelevant here—indeterminate SHU terms are only given for connections with prison gangs.)