From Kezlyn Mendez's op-ed that appeared in The New Haven Independent:
I am writing to you from inside my cell in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield. As a victim and witness of the abuse prisoners suffer in this state, I strongly support S. B. 1059, the bill to end long-term solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement destroys individuals like myself and leaves people with serious mental health issues without the proper treatment or help. I would know. Altogether, I spent more than five years at Northern Correctional Institution, Connecticut’s notorious supermax prison. That prison is now closing. But all around me, I am seeing that the Department of Correction (DOC) has no intention of stopping the abuses I endured there.
At Northern, I was on a status called “administrative segregation.” I was locked in my cell for 22 or more hours a day. On weekends, I never came out at all. I was shut up for 24 hours in a concrete room the size of a parking space. You are forced to strip naked in front of correctional officers anytime you go out for the hour of recreation. The extreme conditions messed with my head. I found it hard to follow orders from the officers. Sometimes I’d act out, desperate for human interaction, by putting my hand through the food trap in my cell door. My reactions to the environment were punished with disciplinary tickets, keeping me at Northern longer. Continue reading >>>
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