The Politics of Solitary

I met a man last month who has spent more than 30 years in solitary confinement. When I returned home to tell of my visit to Angola, friends and colleagues shook their heads sternly, muttering about African nations torn apart by civil war and chaos. They reminded me how hard it is for Westerners to grasp the traditions and political realities of the Third World. Thank God, they added, for Amnesty International.

But, I said, I wasn't in Africa. I wasn't in the Third World. I was in Louisiana, at Angola prison.

Inside that prison, in the belly of the so-called Land of the Free, two men -- Albert Woodfox, whom I met, and Herman Wallace -- have been languishing in solitary confinement for more than three decades for a crime they almost certainly did not commit.

These men -- along with Robert Wilkerson, who was himself proven innocent and released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary -- are known as the "Angola Three". They are former Black Panthers and prison reform organizers who have suffered appalling retribution at the hands of a racist and corrupt system that they had the courage to challenge from within. They are, in short, political prisoners.

Yet Amnesty International wasn't there in Angola, Louisiana, and I wondered why. It's true that for most people, the idea of political prisoners left to rot for years in solitary confinement conjures images of countries like China, Russia, Colombia, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, Nigeria and Indonesia -- certainly not America. The political prisoners whose cases spring to mind are in places where such abuse is a well-documented fact of life:

- Jigme Sangpo, a Tibetan freedom activist, was recently released after 41 years in prison under the Chinese regime, much of that time spent in solitary.

- Mordechai Va'anunu, the Israeli whistleblower convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years for exposing Israel's illegal nuclear weapons manufacture, spent almost 12 years of his sentence in solitary confinement.

- Abbas Amir Entezam, the former spokesman for Iran's moderate provisional government in 1979, was captured, jailed, tortured, and thrown in solitary for most of 16 years after the Islamic revolutionary government took over.

- Woo Yon Gak, a 70-year-old, stroke-enfeebled North Korean, has been held in solitary confinement in South Korea for 40 years on charges of espionage. His is believed to be the longest sentence served in solitary confinement anywhere in the world.

- Shin In Yong, another prisoner in South Korea, was recently freed after serving 31 years in a cell barely larger than a coffin for his sympathies for North Korea.

Surely, I once thought, that sort of bald retribution against people of conscience is not permitted, let alone practiced, in a freedom-loving country like America. Unfortunately, I wasn't alone in my naïveté. The Americans I spoke to after my visit to Angola seemed more shocked than anyone to discover that their fellow citizens are spending decades in solitary -- political prisoners or not, guilt or innocence aside. Most Americans still believe that solitary confinement is what it once was: a troubling but necessary tool used sparingly to keep order among the incarcerated. The subtle change in its use in recent decades seems to have slipped in under the popular radar.

Indeed, solitary confinement, at least in Western countries, was originally a tool of last resort for jailers who could not otherwise control unruly or violent inmates who violated prison rules. Even then, it was used for days or weeks at a time. But now it's becoming a routine ingredient in particularly harsh sentences handed down by judges, notably in the United States. Instead of weeks in "the hole," convicts face years and even lifetimes there. Human rights advocates are understandably concerned.