On June 15, 2023, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed Senate Bill 307 into law. This bill didn’t get much attention, probably because it pertains to a relatively invisible and largely disdained segment of society — the imprisoned. The bill limits the use of solitary confinement, in most cases, to 15 days. The law went into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
Solitary confinement is the practice of confining someone to a small cell for 22-24 hours a day, with one hour out for “recreation,” usually to an empty cage. Other than a food tray passed into the cell, there is minimal human contact. Often referred to as the “jail within jail,” it is primarily used as punishment for jailhouse infractions. The length of time in solitary can range from days to weeks, months and, in some cases, decades, depending on the infraction.
On the face of it, solitary confinement would seem like a reasonable tool for prison management. Most people have some familiarity with it from movies where the hero goes into the “hole,” and emerges a little beaten up, but no worse for the wear. But in real life, it is quite a different story. In 2011, Juan Mendez, then the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, declared that after a mere 15 days, solitary confinement may constitute torture.
From my own personal experience, I would have to agree. My name is Frank De Palma, and I spent 22 years and 36 days in solitary confinement at Ely State Prison. To say it was torture is an understatement. It was an agony beyond words. Honestly, a bullet to the head would have been more humane.
According to Michael J. Zigmond, who was a professor of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh, “Isolation devastates the brain. There is no question about that. Without air, we will live minutes. Without water, we will live days. Without nutrition, we will live weeks. Without physical activity, our lives are decreased by years. Social interaction is part of these basic elements of life.”
It was a violent act that placed me in long-term solitary, but my initial placement was not the result of any infraction. I was 36 years old, working my job at the weight pile, minding my own business, when I was told that, along with 13 other “old-timers” with difficult histories, I was to be placed in solitary as a pre-emptive measure to avert problems with an influx of violent young gangbangers.
On Monday, Feb. 3, 1992, I was consigned to a cell about the size of a parking space — no TV, books or magazines — just four cement walls. The worst of it was that I wasn’t told how long it would last. My only salvation was recreation, when I got to play handball and commiserate with the others. Then, when this bit of socialization was abruptly taken away, all I could do was stand alone and stare at the sky.
Months went by and with no one to talk to, and nothing to do, I grew listless and disoriented. Every 90 days a form was slid underneath my door informing me that I would not be released, but that I could expect another “review” in three months. I lost all track of time, but time marched on as sweltering summers gave way to cold frigid nights. With no relief in sight, agitation on the unit led to assaults on staff, resulting in new legal charges. Ironically, the very violence that this move was designed to avert was inducing it.
As for me, my own desperation and rage boiled over, and when a guard mistreated me, I retaliated violently. As punishment, I was sentenced to another 20 years in prison. Perhaps worse, the horror of solitary would continue for another 20 years.
The next couple of decades was a descent into madness. In the beginning, I tried to cope by pacing the cell, doing push-ups and chatting with the chaplain when he came by, all the while struggling to blot out the shrieks and screams from the surrounding cells. When depression deepened, I stopped going out to rec, taking solace in the dark, befriending the bugs that crawled the walls. I grew so lonely that I spoke out loud, just to hear a voice — even though it was my own voice.
Over time, I drifted into an imaginary world where I existed normally, asking a woman out on a date, and becoming the head of a happy family. For how long these fantasies lasted, I can’t say — months, years? When reality finally crashed through, my own screams were the loudest on the unit.
About 10 years into my isolation, I tried to kill myself. At the hospital, I was initially declared dead, until someone detected a faint pulse. After surgery, I was brought right back to the cell, where I tried to sleep away my existence. But nightmares woke me, and I could no longer tell if I was asleep or awake. The voices became loud and unrelenting, and in a moment of horror, I realized they were now in my head.
Desperate to make the voices stop, I banged my head against the concrete wall — again and again and again. That’s the last I remember. Of my 22 years in solitary, I have no memory of the last six years. I was told that I was nothing more than an arm reaching for a food tray.
On Tuesday, March 11, 2014, I was finally released from the cell, a broken old man, struggling to see, to speak, to walk, to put thoughts together — a far cry from the strapping 36-year-old I’d been when I’d first entered solitary.
It has been 10 years now since I left that cell, and while I’m doing far better than I had been, I will never be the same. Yet I am one of the luckier ones. Others lose their minds permanently or commit suicide. I saw it happen.
I am frequently asked if I’m happy about the passage of SB307. Yes, of course, I am — but I’m also skeptical. While the passage of the bill was a major step in the right direction there is still more work to be done. Advocates and legislators will need to monitor the law’s implementation and we must continue to talk about solitary and its impacts. The more people that understand this tortuous practice the quicker we will see its abolition.
My story is one of many and I will continue to tell it until this barbaric practice is ended once and for all.
Frank De Palma spent 43 years in the Nevada prison system for an initial nonviolent offense, of which 22-plus years were in solitary confinement. Since his release in 2018, De Palma has advocated for the abolition of solitary; in March 2021, he testified before the Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee in support of a bill to reform this practice. He co-authored a recently published book about his life: Never to Surrender! 22 Years in Solitary: The Battle for My Soul in a U.S. Prison.
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