What Is Quiet Madness?
Quiet madness is screaming and hearing people scream without making a sound. Quiet madness is looking into the face of someone gone mad or fighting madness, yet who has no facial expression. Quiet madness is being entombed inside of a square box made of concrete and steel that has entered into a conspiracy through construction to destroy you, to systematically dismantle you mentally, spiritually, and physically.
At 50 years old and after a total of 32 years of imprisonment, I never thought that this would continue to be my life...this existence where people have to come up with coping mechanisms as part of larger survival strategies in an attempt to maintain some degree of mental balance. The sad part is that often times in an abnormal environment what passes for normality is, in actuality, unhealthy and abnormal. Its true nature doesn’t reveal itself for what it is or the depth of such until you’re in a normal situation. Only then do you discover that you’ve not only been psychologically institutionalized, but that you suffer from some form of P.T.S.D. or other psychosis.
Reality Check
The Indiana Department of Corrections (I.D.O.C.) has had 25 to 30 years to experiment with Supermax control unit prisons and determine through trial and error what is most effective, what works and what doesn’t, what best serves the interest of the state. This is why we now see the I.D.O.C. building a new Secure Housing Unit (S.H.U.) at the Miami Correctional Facility (M.C.F.) that is rumored to be intentionally designed to increase prisoner’s isolation and restrict even further his movement by reducing his need to leave his assigned cell for anything other than 1 hour of recreation. It is rumored that showers will be in the cell with a fixed T.V. monitor built into the cell wall where all institutional programming will be piped into the cell. This could possibly include video visiting.
As part of the state’s larger strategy in most Supermax control unit prisoners where people are locked down for at least 23 hours per day, programs are virtually non-existent. It has always been a part of the solitary confinement/ isolation effect to disallow any type of rehabilitative, educational, or mental health programs. Such programs have always been deemed privileges that those held on such isolation status have forfeited by their very placement on such units.
Only recently has Indiana begun to introduce some degree of programming into these units as part of a so-called step down process towards transitioning prisoners into general population. On the surface and to the layperson, these programs appear to be progressive and productive, when, in actuality, it’s smoke and mirrors. Often these programs are behavior modification programs geared towards re-programming prisoners into the act of self-policing, policing other inmates or de-briefing. These programs are not reality-based in terms of adequately preparing me to return to society or my community and confront in a healthy manner the social ills/ social reality that most of us are going to confront.
Often these programs are culturally and racially biased or stereotypical in so far as it is automatically assumed that we come from dysfunctional homes with drug addicted parents and/or engaged in narcotic use ourselves and perpetrated violence against women and children in our lives. This the narrative from which these academic approaches start. You might ask yourself why this is? Because this narrative helps to feed “data” which supports the D.O.C./ state’s agenda when seeking funding for the creation of such programs that, in turn, fuel job creation and expansion within the prison industrial complex. We as prisoners get lost in the process and recidivism continues to grow and expand.
Quiet madness and Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms in a Solitary Confinement Context
As part of October, 2016, I have 11 consecutive years under some form of solitary confinement, i.e. 23 to 23 1⁄2 hours per day confined to a cage. In the last 32 years, I have approximately 20 years under solitary isolation with more than 5 long-term tours in Supermax prisons for nonviolent activity-- primarily for political organizing inside and outside of the prisons. In order to survive this madness, this torture, you have to not only have a strong mindset, you have to have a survival program that is healthy, a program and support structure that feed your mental and physical health. This can consist of reading, writing, educating yourself, exercise etc..
However, some methods of coping are unhealthy. For example: coping mechanisms of consuming hours upon hours of senseless, mindless T.V. programming... Coping mechanisms of hours upon hours of exercise in an attempt to not only feed but contain that beast called rage or depression... Coping mechanisms of living on what I call the Wendy Williams/ Jerry Springer circuit of endless hours discussing, debating, and arguing about the latest celebrity gossip of who is sleeping with whom, whose booty is fake or real, or even closer to home where brothers do the S.H.U. chat room shuffle of gossip...Grown men gossipping about someone else’s character who is supposed to be a snitch, who the police told them was a snitch, who he said she said blah blah blah and usually they were just smiling in that same prison face. This applies to activities on the streets as well, both illegal and/or political where secure communication goes out the window as open discussions are conducted over the ranges or tiers or vent systems in these prisons all the while real informers document and record this info that these elements spew. Often this is encouraged by the administration and by design. And because we have no real life in terms of social intercourse/ interactions, we vicariously try to live through these episodes of “as the world/ penitentiary turns”. This becomes debilitating psychologically after years upon years of engaging in such conduct.
Quiet madness and coping mechanisms is when you’re so sexually deprived in a patriarchal concentration camp that you can’t see a woman’s thigh or any skin on T.V. without becoming sexually aroused... where any form of sexually suggestive expressions sends you into a fit of masturbation or screaming out to others to turn channel such and such... where every female that comes into your orbit is immediately objectified and picked apart for hours. How big are her breasts, how shapely or not her ass etc. which evolves into fantasies of I bet she can do this or that, all of which ultimately contributes towards sexaul violence agaisnt women and misgyny.
Quiet madness and coping mechanisms manifest through blasting of your T.V./ radio combination to the point of drowning out any and all conversation and becoming so engrossed in sports where for however many hours you scream, bang on the walls, tables, toilets, till you climax in a fit of exhausted energy. For those couple of hours you have escaped and have coped with the physical and mental oppression of both prison and solitary isolation. THe opposite of this is where you’re so accustomed to being isolated and entombed in environments of silence to the point that any long periods of excessive noise cause you not only discomfort but mood swings of rage, anger, anxiety, stress, and general aggravation.
Quiet madness and coping mechanisms also manifest through debating, discussing, and theorizing for hours on end the political ideologies and strategies regarding social injustice... discussing for hours on end the pros and cons of trying to fight, litigate, or use a corrupt, racist, oppressive judicial system... attempting to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house....engaging in hours of intellectualism and yet can’t create or don’t have the opportunity opportunity to put together a concrete proposal or outline for a program that can be effective in a revising the effect of some of this madness.
People, I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and yet not only can you not hear me, my mouth remains closed!! In struggle
10/2016
Note:
I.D.O.C.’s projected funding needs for the next biennium FY 16/17:
“With the passage of HEA 1006, the prison population is expected to increase beginning January 2016 and continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The most efficient, initial solution would be to build additional cell houses within the current secured perimeters of the Miami and Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. These five units would allow I.D.O.C. to house an additional 1,312 medium-high security offenders and would take approximately 18 months to construct once funding is available. Their cost is 45 million $. The operational costs associated with these units would be phased in based upon need and is estimated to be 10 million $ per year once fully constructed...The longer term solution would be to build another prison. It has been 12 years since Indiana opened the doors of a new prison, the longest stretch in more than three decades. The new facility would need to be a hardened prison capable of accommodating the growing number of high-medium and maximum-security offenders I.D.O.C. expects to receive. It takes an estimated 2-3 years to design and construct a new facility, and the estimated cost of new facility construction is 140 million $, with an additional cost of 30 million $ per year in operational costs...”.
--- Bruce Lemmon, I.D.O.C. Commissioner, I.D.O.C. Overview-Budget Letter, December 16th, 2014