"Solitary"

Summary

Concrete Mama: The Podcast

Episode: "Solitary"

Date: August 12, 2026
Hosts & Guests: Demar (Damo), Anthony, Red (Zach Benz), Cambo, Vik, Rachel, Dr. Kermit Ryder, Donald Carson (Don), Thomas, Nathan Bowers, Officer Morgan

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Episode Overview

This gripping and unvarnished episode dives deep into the realities and repercussions of solitary confinement at Washington State Penitentiary (WSP) in Walla Walla. Featuring direct testimonies from currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, correctional officers, and leading academic Dr. Kermit Ryder, "Solitary" pulls back the curtain on a practice often hidden from public view. The episode contrasts perspectives—those traumatized by isolation and those numbed by it—to illuminate both the individual and systemic toll of solitary confinement. Both personal stories and investigative research converge on a central question: Can anyone truly leave solitary confinement unscathed, and what does it do to the human psyche, to prison culture, and to society beyond the walls?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Debate on Solitary Confinement’s Harm

• Dr. Kermit Ryder outlines a surprising debate within criminology: whether solitary confinement is singularly harmful or just amplifies the existing traumas and harms of incarceration.

  “People outside of criminology are often shocked by this. I think it's a bit of an embarrassment to the discipline. But there is a debate...about whether solitary confinement is harmful.” (02:05)

• Describes decades of researching Pelican Bay and other supermaxes; the challenge of hidden or uncollected data around solitary.

Lived Experiences of Solitary

• Donald Carson (Don) shares an unstinting, heartbreaking story of two and a half years in solitary during which he lost three family members.

  “My sister passed away two days later, my dad a month later and another sister two weeks later after that...I actually got a hold of mental health and told them, hey, look, I don’t want no meds...but I would like to be able to talk to somebody because I’m going through it.” (05:57)

• Access to coping mechanisms: Only after eight months did Don get a radio or TV; the George Floyd protests led to some reforms in unit conditions (TVs, more opportunities).

  “For the first eight months I was pretty much alone...I went months without even talking to nobody.” (06:53)

• Isolation details: Don describes tangible monotony and deprivation—rubber trays for meals, the sound of shower leashes, and knowing the schedule by the noise alone.

  “I knew exactly what was coming, when it was coming, just by the sounds...you could hear the wheels on this one car...the trays...the leash...carrying a leash clink, clink, clink, clink...that you knew that it was shower time.” (16:00)

• Psychological impact: Don and Thomas recount how isolation leads to institutionalization, self-talk, and numbness.

  “Instead of thinking it in my mind, I started talking to myself...because I had nobody to talk to.” (25:57)

• Discusses the adjustment needed upon release—even just back to general population—describing profound discomfort in social situations and increased internalization.

  "I don't even like coming out because there's too many people around me." (42:37)

Research and Data: Quantifying the Harm

• Dr. Ryder’s study: 100 randomized interviews of people in IMUs across Washington. Results were consistent:

  “We saw significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety, sleep disruption in solitary confinement...over half of people having one of these psychiatric symptoms.” (09:45)

• Qualitative vs. quantitative: Mental health screening tools often miss the deeper existential impacts—loss of sense of self, disconnect from time and family, loss of speech, and more.

  “People experienced kind of existential disruptions, like not really even feeling like themselves...being disconnected from families, that they were experiencing this loss of their sense of self.” (27:45)

Institutionalization and Coping

• Thomas (long-time solitary): Describes numb acceptance and heavy reliance on routine and self-reflection. Medication and counseling help, but result in a sense of detachment from other prisoners and outside life.

  “At the start of this sentence I was...just pissed. I didn’t do a lot of self-reflection...but...you start picking at yourself and really start self-doubting yourself really bad...it can make or break you.” (12:35) “I have no shot of going back out to mainline from all my violence. There’s no chance I’ll ever go back out to mainline. So…it’s either figure this out or I’m going to do the rest of my time...sitting in the hole.” (21:11)

The Ripple Effect on Staff

• Dr. Ryder and Officer Morgan explain how solitary’s harms extend to correctional staff, changing their psychological outlook and making it harder to relate to family and community.

  “Having spent an 8 or often a 16 hour shift seeing only these incredibly challenging people...they go out in the world and look at the world differently...They see kind of the worst of humanity and society failing people in solitary confinement.” (30:48)

Reform Initiatives: “The Washington Way”

• The podcast details programmatic reforms at WSP aimed at humanizing and reducing violence—coffee with officers, cornhole, improved out-of-cell time.
• Don’s transformation: After initially mistrusting programs like Amendment, participation leads to restored socializing skills and hope.

  “It was literally like being back out of the hole. I was like, man, I got to really push to get back out...Because I built up this comfort while I was in the hole that like, I was like, I was good, but I wasn't good.” (36:13)

Policy and Systemic Shift

• Dr. Ryder discusses national reforms—adoption of the Mandela Rules (30-day max in solitary), legislation in New York, and the critical necessity of staff buy-in.

  “You can pass any law you want...these units are incredibly hidden. It’s incredibly hard to get access even in Washington State...as long as you’re imposing top down reforms, there’s going to be immense resistance. Some of the work has to involve whether you agree with or like the staff or not—they are a critical part of reform.” (39:39)

• Explains how true change requires not just new laws, but a cultural shift within corrections.

Reflections & Calls to Action

• Nathan Bowers concludes that solitary’s effects “become a permanent part of you,” impacting not only the incarcerated but their families and staff.

  “Solitary confinement is often framed as a tool...it really starts to feel like less a temporary condition and more like something that follows you, something more permanent that becomes a part of you forever.” (38:44) “We humans, we’re social creatures. We have to have contact with other humans. You can’t leave someone to their own devices for long periods of time...that’s when the carnival kicks into high gear and the crazy takes over.” (49:09)

• Strong advocacy for further reforms and systemic change, with concrete suggestions like clemency boards and second chances for all.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Don on the psychic toll and isolation:

  “I noticed that I’d be sitting there and instead of thinking it in my mind, I started talking to myself...because I had nobody to talk to.” (25:57)

• Dr. Ryder on the hidden impact:

  “We saw significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety, sleep disruption in solitary confinement...over half of people having one of these psychiatric symptoms while they're in solitary confinement...” (09:45)

• Thomas on adapting or breaking:

  “This will make or break you.” (13:43)

• Dr. Ryder on staff and reform:

  “The staff have to walk into these units every day and if they don’t understand the change and they aren’t invested in it, it’s useless. You can pass any law you want...” (39:39)

• Nathan Bowers’ passionate closing:

  “We humans, we’re social creatures. We have to have contact with other humans...You can’t leave someone to their own devices for long periods of time in isolation because that’s when the carnival kicks into high gear and the crazy takes over.” (49:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:05] The debate within criminology on solitary confinement’s harm (Dr. Kermit Ryder)
• [05:57] Don’s personal experience in IMU and family tragedy
• [08:39] Dr. Ryder on the Washington solitary study methodology and findings
• [12:35] Thomas’s account of adaptation, numbness, and self-reflection in solitary
• [15:05] Don gives a vivid description of daily life in IMU
• [19:16] Dr. Ryder and Thomas discuss the alternating noise, quiet, and psychological consequences
• [22:22] The "cycling" of people in and out of solitary—re-entry challenges (Dr. Ryder)
• [30:48] How solitary affects correctional officers and their perception of the world
• [34:29] The "Washington Way" reforms—programs aimed at normalization
• [39:39] National reform efforts, legislation, cultural resistance, and the need for staff buy-in (Dr. Ryder)
• [49:09] Nathan Bowers’ concluding, personal reflection on the need for systemic change

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Summary & Takeaways

• “Solitary” is a searing exploration of the practice’s harm, drawing from voices most often excluded: those living it and those tasked with enforcing it.
• The episode makes plain the psychological and social costs of solitary—depression, anxiety, existential loss, self-isolation, institutionalization—that often persist well after release.
• It offers hope through the “Washington Way” reforms, but insists that real change must be both structural and cultural, involving the humanity of both the incarcerated and the staff.
• The message is clear: isolation is both a profoundly individual and communal wound, and addressing it requires broad, humane, evidence-driven transformation—“rethreading” the very fabric of incarceration itself.

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Concrete Mama is more than a podcast—it’s a movement, a platform for voices that need to be heard, and a call to action on solitary confinement and prison reform.

Transcript

[Craig Jackson]

This program contains mature language that may not be suitable for all listeners. Discretion is advised.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Now we turn to an issue Many

[Donald Carson]

state and local penal systems are increasingly

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

concerned about the effect that solitary confinement has.

[Officer Morgan]

Solitary confinement lawmakers, it's time to end

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

practice of solitary confinement for years and years. Rooms smaller than an ordinary parking. Some experts say it's the same as torture.

[Nathan Bowers]

It's July 1st, 1:36pm Washington State Penitentiary. This is Nathan Bowers, researcher and journalist with Concrete Mama Investigations. Mind you, this research is personal, but there'll be more on that later. I've recently uncovered some data in interviews with two currently incarcerated individuals, Don and Thomas and Dr. Kermit Ryder from UC Irvine. The interviews and data changed my perspective entirely on imu, also known as Intensive Management Unit. Some call it the Hole, some call it the shoe, AKA Solitary Housing Unit. But for this research, for all intents and purposes of this investigation, I will refer to all the acronyms in one term, Solitary. But whatever acronym you want to use, it all ends with the same result, isolation. It seems to have not only short term effects, but long term effects on the human psyche. My research and my reality have become very blurry. It's too familiar sights, sounds, structure, the routine.

[Craig Jackson]

Welcome to Concrete Mama, the podcast.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

There is this huge debate in criminology. People outside of criminology are often shocked by this. I think it's a bit of an embarrassment to the discipline. But there is a debate in criminology about whether solitary confinement is harmful. There are people, often behavioral psychologists, who come out of a corrections background who argue that solitary confinement isn't that harmful, that a lot of people survive it, that prison itself is harmful. And you can't separate the harm of solitary. And when we see harm, it might just be that people in prison experience all kinds of trauma. There's a lot of mental illness anyway, and it's not clear that solitary confinement itself is that harmful. And you see people who go in and come out and they're okay, so how can we prove this? And this has been a real problem in litigation and reform efforts to have this cadre of experts, many of whom, you know are professors, have PhDs saying, We don't think there's real harm. I actually got interested in prisons more than 20 years ago because I started volunteering in an education program in Boston in some juvenile halls and jails, just doing tutoring, whatever folks needed. This was right around the time Pell Grants were abolished, actually, for people who were in prison. So it was just volunteer, trying to fill the gaps. But over the course of doing that work, I was just repeatedly surprised by how little we knew about prisons, like how often I would ask policy questions and people wouldn't know the answers. So right now I'm a professor at UC Irvine. A lot of my work is around solitary confinement. I often say more broadly, kind of extreme conditions of confinement, both the law and history of those conditions and the lived experience. And I also run a college program at a prison in San Diego. So it's the first University of California bachelor's program for incarcerated students. My work has been on solitary confinement for a few decades now. So I wrote a history of Pelican Bay, which is one of the largest solitary confinement units in California, and one of the. I argued the archetypal unit. So it was built in the late 1980s as one of the first supermaxes, and it had a lot of fame for that. So I wrote this history about the institution, including lots of stories about people who had been confined there for many years, kind of how it got built, the legal restrictions on it. You can imagine I was very critical of this place. And I think that's part of the backstory of Washington State. Right? When I started to do that research, when I was in a doctoral program, my dream had been to go to Pelican Bay and to interview people who lived there and staff and observe disciplinary hearings and kind of understand the day to day experience of that place. I could not get access. California is an incredibly closed state in terms of research. In particular in California, when I asked them how many people were in the Pelican Bay shoe when I started my research, they said they count beds, not people, and they couldn't tell me. And in fact, there was no data about how long people had been in the Pelican Bay shoe until the hunger strikes when a journalist got a snapshot of how many people on that day had been in the shoe for more than 10 years, and it turned out it was more than 500. And that was the first time people knew because there just wasn't. The state just wasn't collecting the data. It wasn't even that they weren't making it public. It was that they just weren't tracking it. They weren't keeping the records.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 1, 4:47pm the word routine. Being in prison, we have to find a way to move, to do our time. We have to be methodic. But what happens when we are pulled from our routine

[Damo]

concrete? Mom of the podcast, one of your hosts here, Damo.

[Donald Carson]

My name is Donald Carson. I've been in 19 years now, I got eight months to go.

[Nathan Bowers]

Dom was in solitary confinement for two and a half years.

[Donald Carson]

I had two sisters and my dad passed away in the first two months

[Damo]

that you were an IMU?

[Donald Carson]

Yes, right when I, right when I got there. My sister passed away two days later, my dad a month later and another sister two weeks later after that. And I mean, I was going through it and so I actually got a hold of mental health and told him, hey, look, I don't want no meds or nothing like that, but I would like to be able to talk to somebody because I'm going through it.

[Nathan Bowers]

Don seemed to have a lot of trouble finding his routine. He seemed very shocked in his isolated time. He's very anxious.

[Donald Carson]

I didn't hear from him for months when they said that they was going to be seeing me weekly, you know, and. And then I felt like all they wanted was my information. They didn't want to actually help me with the mental health in the whole.

[Damo]

What are the things you can get that can help you cope inside of a place where you're isolated?

[Donald Carson]

When you get in there, it takes. You could get a radio after a month and then when you're in three months, you could get a tv. If you're not high violent. That high violent thing didn't, at that time wasn't, didn't count with me because it was like eight months into my stay when they switched everything over with that George Floyd is. It was George Floyd, the one that got killed by them cops. And that's when they really started switching everything over and they're like, hey, look, the hole's bad for people. We got to start giving them things like tv, giving them different opportunities in there. So I got lucky. I was only. I was in there with nothing for eight months. I had a radio, but then after that I was able to get a tv. Got my. Got the player in there and is a lot better. But I know for the first eight months I was pretty much alone. I didn't really talk to nobody on the tier because I had hard, hard hearing. So I went months without even talking to nobody. And with everything that I was going through with losing my family and stuff like that, I didn't know what my future was. So I was really going through it.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 2, 2:26am can't sleep. But this interview with dawn, it reminds me of my own anxiety and depression and I'm just in general population. I can only now imagine the mental anguish dawn was going through in total isolation and solitary. My reflection Is in direct correlation with the research study Dr. Ryder from UC Irvine did on the effects solitary confinement has on on incarcerated individuals.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

As someone who had studied solitary confinement nationally, the Washington study actually came about in this really interesting way. The American civil liberties Union national prison project was interested in people doing more research on solitary, having more information about who was in these units and why, and for how long, and what the impacts were as part of ongoing reform efforts around solitary. And Washington state was actually one of these states that collected decent research data, had longstanding relationships with researchers, and was open to this. And so the state was involved in trying to reduce their reliance on solitary confinement. They were proud of the work they were doing. The project we agreed on, there were many pieces, but the core of the project was to interview a random sample of everybody in long term solitary confinement in what were then the five intensive management units.

[Nathan Bowers]

Dr. Reiner provides tangible proof that solitary confinement is not good. What are the mental health implications? Are the institutions making incarcerated individuals more antisocial?

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Part of the motivation for this study was to say, well, there hasn't been a good analysis of a random sample of folks to understand what the experience is. And so that was really. You know, people talk about wanting research to be objective, right? They want to know that you could replicate it. And we can't do an experiment putting people in solitary, but we want to know that we're not just hand picking people who had the worst experiences, as often happens in litigation. And so that was why we thought about this project. 100 people is a lot, right? It took us basically an entire summer of a team of eight researchers doing these interviews. And I can tell you that after we talked to 20 people, we didn't hear that much new. Right? Like, when you look at our data, it is amazing how consistent the experiences are. But we really wanted to be able to say we talked to 100 people, right? Over hundreds of hours. And the fact that it was a random sample that we talked to essentially one in three of everybody in these conditions across the state, we had the same set of questions. We asked everyone about things like whether people had ever thought about harming themselves, but also questions about their mood that we were trained to evaluate to see, like, what's their frequency of depression, what's the frequency of suicidal ideation. But the whole interview team was also trained by a psychologist in a behavioral assessment to kind of see what people's mental health status was like. In addition to all the qualitative, incredibly haunting, powerful experiences, People told us to be able to match that with this quantitative scale of we saw significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety, sleep disruption and solitary confinement. And again, you know, people saying ah, it's not that harmful. We could say like when you look, it's pretty shocking to see more than half of people having one of these psychiatric symptoms while they're in solitary confinement having experienced, saying they experienced it recently. Right. Over the last month or so.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 7th, 8am I need more to compare and contrast in this investigation. Something more right here, right now.

[Zach Benz]

Red here. Concrete mom of the podcast and bro, can you tell us your name?

[Thomas]

My name's Thomas.

[Zach Benz]

And how long have you been in here?

[Thomas]

Sunday will be two years but I was just in here for another seven months right before this one. So I've been about a little over two and a half years.

[Zach Benz]

And I understand this isn't your only time in imu. You've been in other ones.

[Thomas]

I've been in the one at Airway here. Shelton and Columbay.

[Nathan Bowers]

His view, it's much different. Almost tamed, maybe just numb to solitary confinement itself.

[Zach Benz]

You've done a lot of IMU time this round.

[Thomas]

At the start of this sentence I was hella, I was really mad. I was only 22 and so I got a 90 month sentence and then I was like I had to do at least five, you know, so I was just hella young. So I was just mad, just pissed. And so then I didn't do a lot of self reflection because like it was on me. I shouldn't have done what I did.

[Nathan Bowers]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

And then but after my second program at Columbia, you start to realize like bro, is this really what you want to do? Because while you're in the hole you're either zoned out on medication or you're going to start. There's no way around not self reflecting or seeing like what am I really doing? Yeah, because it's either going to eat at you or you can try to build yourself up and try to make it better or like it took me a while. This is like my third time in prison. I didn't start doing this until I was like 25. Few more years after being in prison you start to reflect of like this really what I want to do. It just starts to eat at you too because you start at least for me, I start picking at myself and like really start self doubting myself really bad.

[Damo]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

Because it was already. You already start to do that on the streets or just in here. It starts to. It can make. This will make or break you.

[Donald Carson]

Yeah,

[Nathan Bowers]

it's as If Thomas is only used to being in solitary confinement. Scary thought. This interview provides just the juxtaposition I need for this investigation.

[Damo]

How are you coping with your. The loss of your family in there, man, and not having nobody to talk to. You lost three people.

[Donald Carson]

The three people. Yeah. Three people in. In two and a half months. And that in a way, that was good that I was in. I felt like at the point that. That I was in the hole for that because probably would have snapped or something. Yeah. You never know. You know, I. I usually ain't that type person, but just my feelings. I don't like people to be able to see my feelings neither. And that's why I wouldn't even. Like, when I was in the hole, I wouldn't even talk to seals. I wouldn't even call my auntie and stuff because my auntie felt so bad for me for being in the hole, you know, And. And you got to literally adjust your mind to being in the hole so you don't go crazy.

[Damo]

So explain isolation for someone who's never seen it. No one's ever told them about what it's like to be in imu, the shoe or solitary confinement in a prison. Explain that space. What does it look like?

[Donald Carson]

You got a bed, and you got a bathroom, and you got a sink, and that's pretty much it. You got a little. A door with a little sally port so they could give you the food. And they carry the cart up the stairs and you get these little rubber trays. I think they're made out of tires. That's what I always thought. They're just like tires.

[Craig Jackson]

They're rubber.

[Donald Carson]

Rubber trays. They keep it. They keep everything insulated and warm. But you got two slots, and then you got the bigger slot for the main meal. And you usually knew what time, you know, when the time would come. You could hear the wheels. I was. I was so into, like, I knew everything.

[Damo]

The sounds of everything.

[Donald Carson]

Of everything. We would know if it was the books coming. Because the way the books rolled when you're in there and you ain't got nothing else to hear, and you ain't even got a radio or nothing like that. All these different sounds, you.

[Officer Morgan]

You.

[Damo]

You associate them with the time and what's going on.

[Donald Carson]

Yes. And so I knew exactly what was coming, when it was coming, just by the sounds of them when they'd come through. You could hear the wheels on this one car that would make a certain sound. The trays getting moved from one. One slot to the other. You would hear when it was time for showers, the sound that they'd come in with the showers is carrying a leash. They would literally, for showers, you'd get cuffed, they'd have a leash that would clink, clink, clink, clink. You could hear it that you knew that it was shower time. And they literally would cuff you from behind through the sally port and they'd hook a leash up to you and then they would literally walk you to the shower. They would unhook you and they put you in a cage to where it's just. You got a bunch of holes in the cage. And then they'd ask you if you wanted a razor. And then they would. They'd come back in like half hour. You get to shower three times a week. Mine was one Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. I mean, I spent a lot of time with myself. I only come out twice a shower in a week just because I didn't even like the COs to mess with me. I don't like them to touch me or nothing. And then, then they had a little workout area, but there ain't no windows or nothing in there. You can see through a bunch of little cracks to the outside, but it's not outside.

[Damo]

How many paces can you take inside of this jail?

[Donald Carson]

I know, of course I know that it's ten. Ten steps. It's ten feet. You could walk from one to the next. And I did that and I counted almost every single step. And I started making myself do that every day just to get up off of that bunk, you know, because you could literally get lost in your head in there and you could hear everybody around you that from different cells and yelling around, tapping on the wall, screaming, literally crazy from being in the hole for as long as they have. And you can't get mad at them because you're almost at mind.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Zach Benz]

I think people, their idea of IMU and the hole and stuff, they think of like people screaming, like, kicking stuff.

[Thomas]

They can happen. There's times where it can happen. We have a couple people doing that right now, but it usually comes in waves. It'll go up and down.

[Damo]

Okay.

[Thomas]

And you just kind of got to ride with it. You get earplugs and so you kind of just drown it out. Or I have headphones for like my tablet or. I've been lucky. I just got a tv, so I've been. I have a TV where I can kind of chill out

[Zach Benz]

all of a sudden.

[Nathan Bowers]

Sharing this with her. Nothing left to do. Everybody stick around because we're going to have some Fun. And look at this, Franco, if you

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

want to get yourself an aquarium.

[Donald Carson]

And all these months, I remember doing

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

an interview one time where there was someone in a mental health cell next door just banging their head, right? Which is a common phenomenon. And just the sound, right? Like, you're talking to people about what this lived experience is like, and at the same time, you're hearing the sound of someone banging their head and people trying to stop it. So I think that. That too, right? Like, sometimes people talk about these units as being really loud, and sometimes people talk about them as being really quiet. And I think that's a really interesting.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Like, it was. Sometimes it felt like we were just in this silent, echoey concrete box. And sometimes, though, there'd be a sound that would really be haunting, right? Like someone banging their head or someone calling out, and it would feel really loud because it's echoing. So I also think of solitary as being this place of, like, when you say it's not harmful, it's like it's just a place of constant contrast, right? Everybody experiences it differently. And, yeah, some people survive, but at what cost? And some people don't survive.

[Donald Carson]

People are throwing poop on the wall. They're just. Just to get some type of tension because they're literally in there, and they ain't got nothing. And most people that are in here, one way or another, we have mental health problems, you know, and so being in that space is not a good place for any of us.

[Zach Benz]

What is that with, like, the loud noises? The. What does that do for your mental. Does it throw you off?

[Thomas]

Kind of used to it, because I've been down almost five and a half years, and then I've done most. I've only been on mainline maybe six or seven months out of the whole time. So it's been doing a lot of whole time. It makes you want to edge a little bit, But I listen to music, or I'm just putting my earplugs. And you kind of just read a book and let it go because you can't let it bother you because you can't do anything about it. You can't tell that dude, hey, stop doing that. Is it just makes it worse. And so you kind of just ought to let him get it out of his system.

[Nathan Bowers]

Has Thomas become so institutionalized that isolation doesn't phase him? He's used to the noises, the yelling, the screaming. He's used to the routine, tamed, really. Not much inflection in the tone of his voice. My belief now is he's Become very institutionalized.

[Thomas]

I started self reflecting a lot. And then when I was on mainline, right before I teamed that to the whole it's working on figuring out different medications for mental health. And then I got on bipolar medication that kind of leveled out. And then in here they offer you mental, mental health if you're willing to take it. But it's, they're only going to help you as much as you want to help yourself. It's not just about getting on medication to go get high or zone out. It's you need to use it for what it's for and it can really help you. Where I started doing counseling was like once a week for I think like the first year I was in here and then part of my last program where it was just grinding out what you need to do because you're not in here with other people. And so you can really self reflect on, put down some hours on figuring out what you need to figure out. Because I have no shot of going back out to mainline from all my violence. There's no chance I'll ever go back out to mainline. So it's like I either figure this out or I'm going to do the rest of my time or if I ever come back, it'll be another sitting in the hole until they can send me out of state.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

I and my team of, they were doctoral students, they're all now faculty who did this project in2017 and 18. We had all studied and thought a lot about solitary confinement. But I think one of the most surprising things for us that, that we've written about is the cycling, right? Like instead of thinking about this as this defined experience of three months or two years or five years that you then put behind you, that what we really got a strong picture of in our second year of interviews was the experience of cycling. That this wasn't this one time thing that people were coming and going and that the coming and going itself was incredibly stressful. Like I think we were expecting interviewing people in general population who'd been in solitary confinement to see relief. And yes, obviously people are better off not in solitary confinement. But a lot of the conversations revolved around the immense stress of that transition and the challenges of learning to resocialize in general population, particularly if they'd been in solitary for a long time, the discomfort of loud noises, of having a cellmate, of being in crowds. When I did my work in California, one of the things that struck me the most was people telling me they had to learn how to smile again. Because they hadn't had, they hadn't had a need to make facial expressions or see other people reacting to their facial expressions. So those kinds of examples I think, and then thinking about that not as a, oh, I spent five years in solitary and I came out, but as a people coming out and saying like, you know, I'm also now afraid of what it would be like to go back in. Or maybe some people saying I feel more comfortable in solitary because I'm in total control of that. I spent so long there, I'm so overwhelmed by these crowds and these new routines outside of solitary and just really thinking about navigating. A lot of times people lose connections with their family while they're in solitary because they don't want to see people behind glass. And so they come out and they have these very frayed social networks. So all of these things made me think more about the ripple effects and the ways in which the experience of solitary is kind of running through the threat of incarceration more centrally than we had thought of it.

[Thomas]

Right.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

I think people sometimes talk about solitary as this like cancerous tumor that you can cut out. And I think that lacks an understanding of the ways in which it's really part of the fabric of the institution in all these disturbing ways.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 9, 8:08am A question to reflect on. Even though I'm not in of search solitary, am I too slowly becoming institutionalized? Spending time with These recordings with Dr. Ryder shows the tangible proof of the long lasting impacts and effects on the human psyche. It seems to become harder to separate the environment from the outcome. The routine is controlled, methodic, intentional. It takes a while to adapt to the shock of total isolation. As I sit here, it reminds me of my own journey of coming to prison. The shock of coming from a normal life full of people, society, lots of life experiences, to a very limited one in prison.

[Damo]

Me talking to you now that you've been back, I've been able to learn a little bit about you, but I could see like looking in your eyes now how raw this experience was for you and recovering. And I do want to tell you, I commend you, you know what I'm saying, for pulling yourself out of that. But can you kind of talk to us about how it affects your speaking and relating and talking to human beings?

[Donald Carson]

And so seeing what everybody else was going through in a hole, I told myself that I wasn't going to get to that point. And like, even just like when you see people in prison and some of them older cats, they talk to Theirself and this and that while you're in here. And you were wondering how, why, why do they talk to their self? Well, one of the reasons is you go the hole and you ain't got nobody to talk to you. And I noticed that I'd be sitting there and instead of thinking it in my mind, I started talking to myself. And I'd be like, you know, you got to keep that under control, like talking to yourself. Because I've thought about that. Like people out there, that, that's why a lot of times that they do talk to their self and they just keep talking to self because they ain't got nobody. Maybe it's just them being lonely and, you know, and so I didn't talk to hardly anybody in the hole. There's, you know, I'm Native American too, and there's a couple of bros that would come in. I'd say hi and try to do what I could to help them, but I have bad hearing, so I didn't talk to nobody really for months on end. And my, literally, my speech, I always had a speech. I went to a speech therapist and stuff when I was younger. So all that started coming back, having trouble just speaking to somebody when they come up or even wanting to speak to them. I was. I was so gone that I didn't even want people to talk to them. Even nurses, the COs come up and I was always, I was always outgoing. When, before I went to the hole, I was always outgoing with all the COs and everybody. Now I literally, I hardly talk to any of the cos now I just pretty much want to stay in my cell because I got out of the hole. And it was. It was even different in my mind than what it was when I first went in there.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

The work we found was that people in solitary and after solitary are experiencing incredibly high rates of distress. And some of the challenges of this work, right, if you ask the standard questions that you might ask someone about their psychological well being, like, have you had suicidal thoughts in the last two weeks? Or have you had sleep disruptions? There are two problems with this. One, they're questions that are designed for people that are often getting decent health care, right? These are designed in hospital or health care settings, not designed to be asked of incarcerated people who often have survived by denying that they're having any psychological discomfort, right? So. So there's this one real challenge of, like, part of how people get through solitary, part of people socialization, particularly in gangs, is to not talk about these things. And so you're asking them these questions that they might not even have the vocabulary to think about. 1 and 2. If you ask just a single set of questions, right, you're not going to find shockingly high rates of suicidal ideation among everybody or shockingly high rates of depression among everybody. What we found was that the constellation of symptoms was shocking, right? So if you looked at clusters like anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, well over half of people experience one of those things, right? And so that really important to think about solitary confinement, not as causing any one set of things, but as causing a constellation of things. And looking at that together and that many of the questions we were asking weren't even getting at some of the things people were experiencing, right? So one of the things we talked about in our work was that people experienced kind of existential disruptions, like not really even feeling like themselves, right? Like not having a mirror, not having a sense of time, being disconnected from families, that they were experiencing this loss of their sense of self. There are psychological questions about that that are generally asked in rating scales. That's something that people are experiencing because of the constellation of conditions in solitary confinement. We also wrote about the physical problems people have because they have a lack of access to, to sunlight, right? Like all of the things they have lack of access to normal ways to exercise. And so sometimes they get really lethargic, Sometimes they exercise so much, doing things like push ups and jumping jacks, what they can do in a confined space that they get weird muscular injuries. So there are all of these things where if you ask just one question, it looks like there's a really low rate of harm. But if you try to understand from the people the constellation of experiences over time time and ask kind of a series of questions, you get this sense of significant harm that's a little bit different for everybody.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 9, 5:30pm Is it always predictable? Can there be another way to fix the current system's policy? I need another perspective.

[Zach Benz]

Can you guys tell me your names?

[Officer Morgan]

Officer crowd, Officer Morgan, can you tell

[Zach Benz]

me a little bit about your job that you do here?

[Officer Morgan]

We are, two of the five team members of the resource team for Washington Way.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Working in a solitary confinement unit on the one hand is more relaxed than general population and some people find desirable because everybody's locked in their cell most of the time. On the other hand, you have to do everything for everybody. And so you have to escort people to the showers, to the yard, to legal, to medicine. And so it is also very busy in a different way. And I think the high stress of working with people who are in such fraught conditions in all kinds of different ways, right? Was one thing that we really found is that it for people who work in solitary confinement units for any length of time I think is very distorting because the people they're working with all day long have faced such severe challenges, right? Like if you're in a unit with someone who's banging their head all day every day, you, if you work in a solitary unit, you've certainly seen suicide attempts. Even in a state like Washington that's working so hard to get people out of solitary, then you're left with a core of really tough cases, right? Really seriously mentally ill people who sometimes the forensic hospitals refuse to take. You're left with folks who, I remember there was a guy who was sentenced to life without parole as a kid and was stabbing correctional officers every time he came out of his cell. So he had nothing to lose, right? And again, I mean, I think I was sort of seeing these officers, officers facing this system that they felt very helpless to engage with, right? Like they have, many of them don't even have a college degree. And the psychiatrists in the forensic hospitals are saying we can't handle this person. You handle them. Many of them don't, like, don't have law degrees, don't necessarily agree with the sentencing practices. They get this kid who's sentenced to life without parole and there's nothing they can, right? There's no system, there's nothing they can encourage that kid to do, to change. There's no resources available to give them and they just have to manage them. And I think those kinds of cases again and again. I saw the toll that was taking on correctional officers psyche and the ways that they then went out into the world. And having spent, you know, an 8 or often a 16 hour shift seeing only these incredibly challenging people over and over again, they go out in the world and they look at the world differently, right? They see like, oh, anyone could be psychotic, anyone could be incredibly violent, anyone could have been in foster care and abused all their lives and turn on me, right? Like they, they see kind of the worst of humanity and society failing people in solitary confinement. And then it changes the way they think about the rest of the world and it makes it, it makes it hard to relate, right? I mean, and so even like it took a long time to understand why people who work in solitary, when it's the most secure setting and it's really, it's very safe now, right? Like correctional officers are rarely hurt when they work in solitary, but they're, in some ways they talk about being the most anxious and scared, and it took a long time to understand that, but I think it's that, right, it's the population they're working with changes their perception of everybody around them.

[Officer Morgan]

When I first started, it literally was us versus them. There was a lot more violence back then, too. I mean, not that the violence has been reduced significantly, but the culture in prison in general has changed. We've gone from violence and drugs and all that kind of stuff on a consistent basis and all that is still there. But it seems like the population and the staff coming in are becoming more, I guess, human based. The whole Washington way concept is in general going to be better for everybody because with us working with the high risk, high need individuals, we're reducing that tax on unit staff by working with them, helping them work through their behavior issues that they may be having. And if we're helping with that, they're less of an issue out for floor staff or classification or hearings or, you know, stuff like that.

[Zach Benz]

Can you tell us what the Washington way is?

[Thomas]

Well, at first I only heard stories about it, and I just. I didn't really hear good stories about it. But when I was in counseling, my counselor was like, hey, I think you should try to do this. And then I'm like, all right, well, we'll give it a shot. I was like, I don't really know. And so I was apprehensive when I came back the first time just because it was weird. Because it's like when you come to prison, it's always been that hard line pushed of it's us versus them.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

A lot of the Washington way work is trying to address this. And one of the things that's really amazing in that work is hearing how, you know, like when we talked about people in solitary confinement in our, in our study almost 10 years ago, and things like there not being clocks on the isolation units now. You know, I've been in the imus and they have couches and they come out and they have coffee or they play cornhole with correctional office officers. And so that unit looks very different for those incarcerated people than it did. And some of the things that people talked about as being maximally disorienting have been at least mitigated a little. On the flip side, correctional officers talk really differently about their work, right? Like that being able to interact normally with people, like have a cup of coffee with them, play cornhole with them, really lowers their stress level and makes their comfort with the rest of the world, world when they leave, right. It's like, it's like less of a disorienting conflict when you've had something that resembles a normal interaction during your 8 or 16 hour shift. It makes it easier to go back into the real world. Right. We talk about normalization in prisons and how the more like society of prison is, the easier the transition back to society will be. I think it's true for correctional officers also. Right. Like if they're going into a prison where everyone is behind a cage banging their head against a wall all day long, it's very hard to go back out into society and interact with your kids in any kind of normal way.

[Donald Carson]

I got into this other program, the amendment program, and that's kind of what really pushed me on trying to get back out of the hole. Because they got. They do got a pretty good program in there. The COs kept coming up to me. A couple of them that I knew kept coming up to me and said, hey, we got this program. And they seen that I was being that I wasn't talking to nobody and I wasn't even talking to the CEOs. I said, no, no, I thought it was a snitch program all this time. So I was like, no, I ain't get. No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. And then after like six or eight months of them coming up to me every three months, like, no, it ain't like that. You know, you really like this program. So I was like, all right, yeah, I'll try it out. I go to the program and I mean, it was literally kickback CEOs, we played spades and listen to music and it was literally like being back out of the hole. And I was like, oh, man, I miss this so much, being able to be out of the hole. And I was like, man, I gotta really push to get back out of the hole. Because I built up this comfort while I was in the hole that like, I was like, I was good, but I wasn't good.

[Damo]

It was destroying.

[Donald Carson]

Yes, it was.

[Thomas]

There's a lot of COs here that want to see you change. They don't want you to stay in here forever, but they want to see that you're willing to work for yourself. They're not just going to get burned by trying to help you and then you just make them look like an ass. Like, nobody wants that. But there's plenty of people in like education or just regular floor staff that are like, they're on your side as long as you want to ask for help. And so when I went back there, it was. It was weird at first, but then you start to make a connection and you start to get comfortable around them where you're like, well, this is cool. They're not like asking weird questions or trying to grill you for information. It's kind of back there to help bridge a communication between more than just inmates or just more than a cop and a person. Because, like, that strains the relationships. Hella. And then it's like if you're trying to change, it could be taken a certain way with other inmates, or it's like, there's plenty that would want you, but it's like misery loves company.

[Donald Carson]

One thing about these COs, they almost. It's like they almost heard us, like we're cats. We don't really have too much reaction with them, but when they. With that amendment program, now I'm in there for two hours kicking it with four COs and you. And you see that. That they're human and they're. They're just there to help you.

[Nathan Bowers]

You. It's July 10th, 6am I haven't had my coffee yet. The studies and interviews have me drawing a lot of conclusions. Solitary confinement is often framed as a tool, something necessary, something contained. But listening to Dr. Ryder, who studied it, the incarcerated who lived it, and the officers that occupy the space, it really starts to feel like less a temporary condition and more like something that follows you, something more permanent that becomes a part of you forever. Even after the door opens and you walk out of here. My final question, will freedom actually provide freedom from lasting implications and effects from solitary confinement? I pray I never have to find out.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

We were very lucky to be part of a social movement that is very critical of solitary confinement. And I don't. I cannot credit our work or our study. I think we partly got access to Washington because there were critiques of solitary confinement and Washington was interested in being a progressive role model nationally and demonstrating that they were doing that. Certainly over the last 10 years, there has been immense movement nationally to reduce reliance on solitary confinement. So dozens of states passing legislation modeled on the Mandela rules, which are international standards that try to limit solitary confinement to no more than 30 days. New York famously passed legislation, litigation, also in lots of states working to reduce solitary confinement use. We talk in law and social science about law in the books and law in action, right? And like the law in the books look much better than they did 10 years ago. The law in action is a Different question. I think New York is a really important example of some of the most progressive legislation about solitary confinement being passed, but it being passed without the buy in of the staff on the ground. And the staff have been incredibly resistant. There have been strikes and people refusing to work and literally beating up people in prison in order to prove that they need to be in solitary confinement. And so I think understanding the potential for backlash, one of the things we said in our work in Washington was that the staff have to walk into these units every day and if they don't understand the change and they are invested in it, it's useless. Right. Like you can pass any law you want, you can have any legislation you want. The fact is these units are incredibly hidden. It's incredibly hard to get access even in Washington state. And it's hard to document what's happening there. And so I think one of the lessons for us was just the importance of trying to understand what challenges staff are facing, what resources they need. Because as long as you're imposing top down reforms, there's going to be immense resistance. And some of the work has to involve whether you agree with or like the staff or not. They are a critical part of reform. And I think the folks on the ground in these places are often left out of the conversation. To the extent Washington has been a little bit more successful than other states, which I think, you know, over time they have a lot of regulations that are more clear about solitary. Right. Like limits on how long people can spend there. Ensuring that people are there only because they broke a specific rule, not indefinitely like they were in California for a long time. Making sure there are reviews, processes to get people out, a lot of re entry support. Right. For these people who are recycling. All that kind of work I think involves buy in from the staff. No reform is perfect. There's an immense amount of work to do. But I think Washington is interesting as a model of a lot of work happening from within corrections instead of being imposed externally.

[Damo]

So now that you're back out here after experiencing that you're on the main line, what kind of things do you still struggle with?

[Donald Carson]

I would still think like being in a group of people. Before I was always able to kind of cope with it. You know, I grew up in the woods anyway, so I didn't like being around people. But now it's really bad when people are out in the day room and you know, it starts getting lively, should I say I don't even like coming out because there's too many people around me. I'M not comfortable. I don't even like to talk to too many people. You know, there's a handful of people that I even talk to now, and that's all distributed from the being in the hole. Before, I was. I was. I would talk to all kinds of people. Now, I don't really do that.

[Damo]

How has it affected your emotions? You know, I know you shared that you was a person. I don't like to show your feelings. You think it's made you go more inside yourself? Are you more moody?

[Donald Carson]

I'm more emotional. I even.

[Damo]

Even now, I respect you for sharing that as a man. Like, people need to hear that. Like, we don't like to say that.

[Donald Carson]

Yeah.

[Damo]

But it's a real thing.

[Donald Carson]

Like, my whole time being down, I literally, when I first fell, I was like, you know what, man? I'm done with the drugs. I want to get on the red road on. On this walk, and I want to. I want to be. When I get out, I want my son to be proud of me. When I pass away, I want to leave that footprint that when my name is mentioned around my son, his eyes light up. And that's what every man needs. That's what we need to leave on this earth. That's what I've always pushed. And sometimes that pushing that, you know, in here, it's not always the way to be, you know, and that's. That's how I ended up in the hole.

[Thomas]

I used to write letters all the time to my grandma, and then she would write me and then talk on the phone. And then my dad and mom, I didn't talk to them for a long time. When I started to get in trouble, my dad's a copy. And so, like, as soon as I started getting in trouble, they just cut ties because he's like, oh, this is not how I raised you. I'm done. Instead of, like, I was hella young when that happened, too. So then I took it as, like, all right, well, I don't want. I have nothing for you, so get out of here.

[Officer Morgan]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

That caused resentment. But then quite a few years ago, he reached out. But then I wasn't ready to be done.

[Damo]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

And I've always been honest about getting high and, like, telling him, well, I'm not done. Like, yeah, get. You guys miss me? Yeah. You want me to do this? But you're only going to be here if I'm sober. I don't want to be clean.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Yeah.

[Thomas]

And so I just push them away, you know, this time, I have to be done.

[Donald Carson]

The whole, the hole is not good for people, the politics and everything of prison is, is not good, you know, and we, we all need to come together and figure out a better way because there needs to be a better way. Not just on our behalf, on the co's behalf, on everybody's behalf. There's a better way of running this prison than what we're doing now. Because a lot of people with mental health, they get brought in here and they get forgot about. They put them on medication, they think that that's going to help them out, but that ain't that. All that does is make them worse. You see people walking around here, you look in their eyes and they're gone.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

Solitary confinement is unequivocally harmful. And I hope that we've been part of documenting that to everyone, to the incarcerated people experiencing it and to the people working in the system. In an ideal world it would not exist. I also think that we really have to understand how integral solitary confinement is to our system. We have a system of incarceration and punishment that is built on deprivation, right? So the idea is we just take away more and more and more. And as long as that is the fundamental principle of the system, it's really hard to imagine getting rid of solitary confinement because there's always going to be. We can parse the definition, right? Is it 23 hours in the cell? Is it 22? Do you have a TV? Do you not have a TV? Do you have a window? Do you not have a window? It's still the maximum deprivation. And it's hard to imagine a prison system in our structure that doesn't have a place where there's maximum deprivation. However you define it,

[Damo]

how do you help these youngsters or people that are going in there, like, I don't give a fuck, I'm gonna go to the hole. But they don't understand the long term effects of what that's gonna do to them. There's some people who find solace in going to imu. They're like, I don't wanna be around nobody, I'd rather be in imu.

[Donald Carson]

That and you know, the way the prison politics are, a lot of them, they do something to, to show their worth or to show, you know, just putting in work and all that. And you know, sometimes it takes time of being in the hole to, to realize that this is not the place. Because a lot of these, a lot of these youngsters will go in there. They're due a couple weeks here, a month, stint here, two months, tent here and they, they think that they're, they're. They're cool for going in the hole, but they don't. They literally don't realize that it's, that it's eating at them, it's messing with them, and maybe they do. And, you know, we all got a lot of mental problems in here, and that does not help our, Our problems. I think we all need to wake up and realize that this prison is not the place for any of us. They. They need to find a better way of doing it. Don't give up for one. And try not to judge other people that are in there that are going through it by yelling around, banging on the walls and doing all that. You don't want to judge them neither, especially during long periods of time, that of why they went crazy or whatever, you know, because you just want to work on yourself, make sure that you're. That you're staying healthy, because that's a big part of being in the hole, is being healthy.

[Dr. Kermit Ryder]

I think of the solitary confinement as a really important lens for seeing, like I often say, prisons magnify our social problems. And solitary confinement is like a 10 times magnifier of that. So I think it's an important place where you can see all kinds of harms. The rates of serious mental illness, the problems with gangs, the problems with trauma in prison. But I think when we think about getting rid of solitary, we have to think about reconceptualizing the prison system that we have and rethinking that structure of deprivation. And so I get a little worried when we talk about just abolishing solitary, because I think it's so integral to the system that we have to think about how we, like, unthread it from the fabric of incarceration. And that means thinking differently about prisons overall.

[Nathan Bowers]

July 11, 10pm Micah. Concerns grow significantly larger by the day as my research draws in more conclusions on the effects solitary confinement has not only on the incarcerated individuals, but on all within their immediate circumference. Families, friends, even the staff in charge of watching and facilitating the needs of these individuals. Watching someone's mental capacity to diminish in real time due to isolation is extremely tragic. I believe this antiquated form of punishment needs serious restructuring under the lens of a microscope focused solely on humane practices. And I don't believe there should be any further debate on this subject. The proof is right in front of us. I remember how shocked I was when I left county, went through Shelton, and finally landed at wsp, even though I was technically imprisoned In Shelton, I believe. It didn't quite hit me there because that particular place wasn't my permanent landing yet. I knew I was still going somewhere else. Like there was still this anticipation. It wasn't until I got settled into my cell and locked down that like, this depressive weight of being confined for the long run fell over my body and mind. I was just standing alone in my cell, locked in my own thoughts, not really talking to anyone. The only time I left at all was for food and a shower. Sometimes not even that, Just laying on my bunk, feeling alone and depressed. The real shock, though, I felt was the fact that I was ripped from my normal life in the real world with my great family, my great friends, to being helplessly stuck on Planet Walla Walla in a small cell inside wsp. I couldn't leave even if I tried. I was trapped here under false accusations which led to a false conviction. It was mind numbing. It was absolutely mind numbing. Like I'm literally going to have to legally fight my way back to freedom with extremely limited resources. Are you kidding me? This is always like heavy on my mind. After listening to the stories and research interviews, I can't stop thinking about how much worse it is in solitary confinement with absolutely no resources or contact with others. We humans, we're social creatures. We have to have contact with other humans. It's as simple as that. You can't leave someone to their own devices for long periods of time in isolation because that's when the carnival kicks into high gear and the crazy takes over. I experience it in micro doses regularly, and I'm not in solitary confinement. That's why this research is so important. It completely changed my perspective on solitary confinement. We can combat against solitary confinement and find a better way. Through facts and testimony, we can show the mental health problems and impact solitary has on the currently incarcerated and the lasting effects it has on them post incarceration. I relate to this man. I know that helpless feeling of being isolated away from my family and friends, not being able to just go home. I've suffered from major depression and anxiety because of just being in prison and I'm in general population. Just imagine though, being isolated on top of being isolated, a prison within a prison, away from absolutely everybody and everything. Now that's a torture I can't comprehend and frankly, I don't want to comprehend. In my mind though, I keep coming back to the same conclusion over and over again. And it's. It's very simple. It's the restructuring of solitary confinement. Not just here, but all over the country. It's time for change. The is just a little bit of my story and thoughts. My name is Nathan Powers from Concrete Mama Investigations signing off.

[Zach Benz]

As we've talked about before on the podcast, there's one thing that always happens when people are doing a lot of time in prison. Something that no matter how good the security is or how much people have tried to prevent it, someone or some group always feels like they have a shot of pulling off escapes. D and myself have both talked about numerous escapes over the last couple years, but they were always about the 70s and 80s. There's one escape from back in the day I've always stayed away from because it's not a fun story. It's actually super sad. The story notoriously known as the Lincoln's Day Massacre, so well known because multiple people died, including the facility's first line of duty death. Even though this incident happened almost 100 years ago, it's still the single most horrific thing that's ever happened here at the penitentiary. So please listeners and history enthusiasts, beware. What you're about to hear is heart wrenching and explicit. This is the story of the Lincoln's Day Massacre. It's Monday, February 12, 1934. Two corrections officers, Floyd Jackson and H.M. williams, are in the office inside the administration building when two incarcerated enter. The first, James DeLong, pulls a knife on Officer Williams. At the very same time, turnkey Tom Hubbard, walks into the office, sees what's going on and immediately goes after Del along. He's able to get the knife, but simultaneously more incarcerated enter the room, stab Hubbard several times too. A few more wrap wire around Officer Jackson's neck so they can take him to a nearby cell and lock him inside. Minutes later, Warden J.M. mcCauley calls the office for something unrelated. In a panic, the inmates decide to make Officer Jackson answer the phone at night point. They warn him not to say anything, but during their conversation, the warden senses something is wrong because of the tone of his voice. After the phone call, the nervous incarcerated lineup Officers Jackson, Williams, Hubbard, H.L. briggs, A.W. ballou, Truman and Chief Engineer Bowen and bind their wrists with wire. Bowen and Truman are then forced to lead the inmates into the yard where the officers are used as shields. In the meantime, Ward McAuley is assembling a team of officers along the top of the wall to meet them as they come out. While heading toward the gate, one of the incarcerated fatally stabs Officer Herbert L. Briggs and wounds Williams in the leg. During the struggle, they also try to strangle Officer Balloon Officers Then open fire. And during the first series of shots, seven inmates are killed and many more are wounded. The sounds from all the chaos and gunfire cause other inmates to try and run for the gate to try and escape as well. But the guards immediately fire submachine guns over the top of their heads and they retreat back to where they came from. The entire prison is immediately put on lockdown. Walla Walla county deputies, Walla Walla City officers, as well as Company F of the Washington National Guard are immediately dispatched to the prison to help get things under control. Along with the very first line of duty death of Officer Briggs. Six other officers are injured and eventually an eighth inmate dies as well. That's nine dead and at least six more injured. Though the amount of incarcerated injuries are not kept track of apparently. After an investigation, it was determined the riot wasn't pre planned. Though it seems there was intense thought put into the breakout. Several men decided they had too much time and had enough of prison life. They thought they could pull off what so many had failed at before. They had made knives, a leather SAP loaded with nails and a marlin spike. The weapons were buried in the yard and were dug up the day before the escape. This story was exciting and I believe someone even wrote a book about it. But that doesn't change the fact that nine people died. The other thing that trips me out is it sounds like Washington State was overcharging people almost a hundred years ago too. Who knows if these guys really were doing too much time, we'll probably never know. What I can tell you is there are better ways to get out early than escaping. For all the incarcerated who are listening to this right now that don't have link co op a life without parole sentence. If you get serious about rehabilitation and put in the work inside setting yourself up for success when you get out, someone will notice and you could have a shot at clemency or the sentence review board. Just start putting in the work right now and you could be on the next thing smoking out of here. There's multiple ways to get out legally. You just have to get serious about it and actually try. For those of you you that do have an LWOP sentence, laws change all the time and people can get another chance. I've seen it. If not, there's all kinds of things you can teach the younger generation to keep them from making the same mistakes you made. Your time matters too. You just have to care and have hope for the future. For all the free folks of the world listening to this right now, we need to set up some kind of a committee that automatically checks to make sure incarcerated sentences still meet the interest of justice. I know that's what the clemency board is for, but they can only do so much. A lot of people inside give up because they don't think they have a chance at redemption. Please help keep these guys from falling through the cracks nationwide. We need processes in place to give people second chances and an opportunity to redeem themselves. Everyone deserves a second chance and people shouldn't just be thrown away and defined by one mistake. For those of you with life that are listening outside of Washington and your state doesn't have a clemency board or a sentence review board, we need people on the inside that will keep the youth from coming back with their own life sentences. The system is set up to be a revolving door and if we don't start changing prison culture and helping these youngsters figure out how to stay out of here, more and more people will keep coming back with the same sentences. If you're in one of the many states that have parole, please do everything you can to get out legally. I know a lot of people who escaped or attempted to escape and nothing good came out of it. They all either got caught immediately, came back with more time, or were killed while they were on the run. No one wants to look over their shoulder for the rest of their lives.

[Craig Jackson]

That's it for this episode of Concrete Mama. But before we go, here's who makes it happen. Zach Benz is a producer and our editor, sound designer and graphic designer. Chris Gates and Nate Bowers our the audio engineers. Megan Sanchez is a producer and handles our social media content and audience engagement. Vic Chopra and Rachel Cech are the showrunners and executive producers. I'm Craig Jackson, one of the newest voices of Justice Media coming at you from inside the prison walls in Walla Walla. The Washington State Penitentiary and Washington State State DOC have made this project possible. For more information, check out our show notes and you can write to us with feedback and questions about the podcast. We will read and answer some of them on future episodes. Concrete Mama is more than a podcast. It's a platform for voices that need to be heard. If this episode resonated with you, share it, support it, leave us a five star rating and keep listening. You can find unincarcerated productions on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and various other social media platforms. Thanks for listening.