Solitary Confinement

 I wanna say thank you for stopping by and spending a little time here. You have found yourself at another brevis talk, and today I want to take you into the penitentiary and talk to you a little bit about Solitary Confinement. But let's read some verses of scripture. First, Psalm one 30, the word of God says, out of the depths, I have cried to you, oh Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

If you Lord should mark iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in his word, I do hope my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. Oh, Israel hope in the Lord.

For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is abundant redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all, and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Solitary confinement. Many of the men over the years, quite a few, a large number of them are in Solitary, Confinement. If you are in a supermax prison, you do not have mobility.

And when I say Solitary Confinement, I'm talking about 23 hours a day. It depends on what the prison is and how the staffing is. Most of the prisons that I have gone into, the, say the last 15 plus years, actually are all understaffed. And as a result of that, some things just cannot get done or they don't get done. I'll give you an example of one state, 23 hours a day in your sale.

Every other day you'll have the opportunity to be escorted out of your cell and into a shower stall. And then usually every other day you'll be allowed to go into a exercise yard. It could be in the, on the inside of the prison, depending on the weather, but quite often is is on the outside. But those are not things you get every day. So it's a little bit of a misnomer when we say that they are in their cells for 23 hours a day because there are many days where they are in their cells 24 hours a day.

If there is a lockdown in a prison, and what I mean by a lockdown, if some contraband has been found, something illegal, it could be a weapon, drugs, a cell phone, something like that, then the whole unit is locked down. There is no one is, no one is moving. Everyone's locked down and they'll go through the prison, one inmate at a time going through their property and looking for contraband.

And so everything stops on a lockdown. I've seen lockdowns last anywhere from three days to two months, and really depending on what they're looking for and the suspicions that they have, and so it's a bit of a misnomer for to say what most people say that they're in their cells for 23 hours a day. Now, who am I talking about? Certainly quite a few inmates live in barracks and they have beds.

They are lined up and at the end of the bed, quite often you'll see they'll have a, a lock box, it's welded to the end of the bed, and they can put their property in there and they have a combination lock And that that lock is secure. They can't just pull it out. Back in the day, individuals would take a lock and put it in a sock and You know knock someone in the head with that. So those, those locks are, they're fastened down, they're stationary on that particular box, but that is more of a barrack setting.

And I'm thinking of an inmate in particular that really found a way to do his time. And there's something that is said, it's certainly not new by him or new by anyone else. You're gonna hear it, but you'll hear this said in prison, you can do your time or you can let your time. Do you, this particular inmate that I am thinking of, he was the most regimented person I think I've ever met, and he locked down year after year after year.

I think he came into prison, he was 19 or 20, and he's well into his forties now, one of those things that he would do at the beginning of the year, you have 26 letters in the alphabet, and you have 52 weeks in a year. Well, he would take, he would, he would learn a word. He'd take a word at the beginning of that first week in January, and it began with a letter A. And he would learn that definition.

He would, he would really get acquainted with that word. The second week of January, he would pick a word that began with the letter B, and he became very acquainted with that. He would, he would learn it, not only would he learn it when he would write letters, he would try to fi find a way to put that in a sentence or two or somewhere all throughout the letter that he was writing. And then see, and then on and on, and at the end of 26, the end of the alphabet, he would start over.

And so he went through the alphabet twice, picking up additional vocabulary works. He was very regimented. He never deviated from that. And all the time that I have known him, he wrote everything down, everything has a record. He has a, a notebook paper, and there's, there's nothing left a chance. If he like would write me a letter, he would and send it out. He would write a, a little notation, sent a letter to Brother Wayne, and he would put the date out there.

And when he would receive a letter from me, he would put a notation of the date. And so you could go way, way back and he could tell you who he sent a letter to and did they respond and when did they respond? So everything was kept in a record exercise every day. I know this particular man would do 300 pushups and 300 sit-ups, and I believe 300 jumping jacks and all of that.

He, he held himself to that high standard. All of that, had to have a check mark beside it every day and cleaning day. It was always on schedule. He, he had a particular day that he cleaned, and he was a fanatic about keeping his cell clean, and it was never out of sorts. When I spoke to him and came around and visited with him the Bible, he had Old Testament reading one week, and then, I'm sorry, he had Old Testament reading in the morning.

He had Old Testament reading with the Bible studies. He had Old Testament reading in the morning and New Testament reading in the evening. These particular places, they have different names. If you're in trouble and you're locked down, it's called Ad Seg And. that is an abbreviation, therefore administration segregation. That means you're in trouble and you're not following the rules.

Now, Ad Seg, you can be punished while you're in Ad, Seg, if you really mess up, they can take you to an isolation cell away from everyone. And it's simply known by most all through the years is the whole. But you can be on the administration segregation and, and several of the prisons that I visit, there are three levels of restriction. There's one level A, well, 1, 2, 3, or a, B, c, depending on where that's at.

And so your level, the first one, level two, they take all of your, take your fan. If you have a fan, they take your radio, all your electronics, and then level three, they take all of that. And then if you do get visits from a family, a member or someone, a friend, you get one a week. I'm sorry. If you are punished in level three restriction, you get one visit a month.

And most of these prisons that I go to you, an inmate can have a visit a week, but you lose that. If you are level three, you get one visit per month. If you're level two, you can have a visit every other week, and of course you're level one still restricted. You can have a visit each week. That's administration segregation. Then you've got PC. And a lot of people were held in Solitary Confinement in what is called PC And.

that is protective custody. And that would be who would end up being in protective custody? Well, that would be someone who was in law enforcement and now find themself incarcerated. Someone who was a officer in corrections penitentiary, they would find themselves in protective custody. Some of the inmates that are, they're adults, but they're young adults.

Maybe they've came in the system at 16 and went from a juvie unit or into an adult prison. They're gonna be put in protective protection, protective custody. And certainly it goes without saying that almost all of your pedophiles are going to go into protective custody. Inmates don't like pedophiles. I had a man tell me one time, time he'd killed two or three people, and he, he was talking about how he wanted to get to this particular pedophile, and I didn't quite understand his reasoning.

And he, I guess he read my face, he said, Brother, Wayne, you don't understand. I'm a killer, but I never heard a child. And so he had this plan in his mind that he was going to get to a particular pedophile and harm him. Well, that, that man was kept in protective custody. And then you're more infamous cases, if you have an inmate that there's a lot of print, television, newspaper, sometimes inmates wanna make a name for themself by getting someone like that.

And if it's a high profile case, and I've known several, several inmates who are in protective custody and will be there for the duration of their sentences, simply because they are high profile cases and they have got, if you will, a mark of some sorts that is on them. And then, and it's called something different. But in one of the prisons that I go to, it's called CCR And, that stands for closed cell restriction And.

that is a lot like PC protective custody sometimes. But it mostly, the reason you find yourself in CCR is that you are deemed an escape risk. You've either tried to escape or you have escaped. And so you get that in, in your paperwork, and so they will lock you down into a secure place and you're gonna be their CCR close cell restriction.

Several, several crazy things I've seen over the years. I remember one maximum security prison going to close cell restriction. They had four hallways and I went cell to cell, visited with everyone, stood outside their cell, and if they would come to the door and talk with me, we would have a conversation. We, we talked about several You know weather, we talked about sports, we talked about the Bible, just anything to get a conversation going.

And then I was able somewhere, maybe not the first visit, but down the road to ask them, are they a person of faith? Do they believe in God? What do they believe about God? And so many of those conversations and, and had great conversations. One of the strangest things I could, I've ever seen, and I've only seen it once, where there in this particular building, closed cell restriction, there were three brothers and they were all serving life without parole, all deemed escape risk in this particular area.

The brothers, they were not held together, but they were all, all three of them spread out in a different hallway. And they introduced themselves to me. And I started noticing it's their last name, not Smith or Jones. A little bit unusual. And I may ask the the person, are you kin to the, the guy I just visited? And he, oh yeah, he's my brother. And so they were all brothers and not the same crime. They were all in for murder, life without parole, no possibility of parole.

They, they were escape risk, but they were not, their crime was not the same. We're talking three different scenarios, three different murders. And so can you imagine how dangerous these people were? And, and what a what a family. I'd love to know the background concerning that family, but they were enclosed cell restriction. I met a man who was a part of a motorcycle gang, one of the national ones.

If you, if I called it, you would know it. And he wanted to live in closed cell restriction. His crime had occurred some 15 plus years previously. And he had turned state's evidence against them to testify against someone. And all these years later, he is fearful for his life. He believes that they're gonna find him. They're gonna, they're gonna get him, and they're going to take him out.

And so he begged and has been accommodated. He stays in his cell, And that closed cell restriction. So many things some of these guys do to keep their sanity, it would amaze you. Let me tell you a few of those stories had one guy we called Spider-Man. And Spider-Man was, he's nice enough to me. The reason he was called Spider-Man, is he kept spiders for pets and specifically black widow spiders.

And on occasion, he, he shared with me his spiders had offspring, and he told me about laying down and letting them crawl all over him, up his arms and in his hair and all those things. And he, he liked spiders. And he was called Spider-Man. He was just stuck to himself. And he, he was kind, he was cordial when I would speak with him.

And he liked to talk about his spiders. And so we talked about spiders. One inmate I met some years ago built an elaborate trap. He took popsicle sticks and rubber bands, and then he secured a razor from a disposable shaver. And it just ingenious how he put this thing together and it with glue and things like that.

And it was a mouse tramp and You know there in some of the prisons, you see my running up and down the hall. I, I don't, I don't know what they do to try to get rid of 'em or what, but on occasion he had had several mice in his cell. So he built this tramp and he, he told me that the best bait for it was peanut butter. And he kept a running record of all the mice that he had killed over the years, and it was 40 plus fo 40 something.

And he would build mouse traps for other inmates. And, and of course then you run into the next inmate, not the next one next to him, but another inmate who would keep a mi a mouse for a pet. And You know they, it's unreal. How tame they can get is this, this guy was holding that in his cell and showing it to me. And that these are the ways that some of these guys deal with the loneliness that are being solitary.

I have noticed that if an inmate has been in a solitary situation for a number of years and they don't get any family visits and really don't have any friends near 'em, and they do converse, they, they're in Solitary Confinement, but they scream and shout and holler, and it's a noisy, noisy place, especially when everyone's shouting and screaming At the same time. I don't even know how they pick up on which one of those is their conversation, but I have met on occasion inmates that do not converse on a regular basis with anyone.

And then when you go and visit them, it's almost as if they have forgotten how to speak. They, they can't put sentence structure together. They have trouble. You can tell they're fishing for a word. And that's, that's a strange, strange thing. On the other side of the equation, I meet several men that get so excited that they have someone to walk up to their cell, that they try to speak to you. And it's like a flood of thought.

A flood of words comes to their mind, and they're trying to say them all At the same time. And it's just almost like a, an overload that they have and they can't really converse. And, and I'll put my hand up quite often and say, okay, hang on, hang on. I'm not, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not moving. Just slow down, slow down. And, and You know, they get, they're so excitable because they don't have anyone who speaks to them. And and I don't know how this works.

The, the coaxial that runs through the cells, the men can buy radios. They have to pay for 'em, and they can screw that coaxial into their radio and pick up the radio stations within 20, 30 mile radius. And somehow the ones that know how to do this, they can, they'll, they'll alter their radio and they know how to communicate with one another.

It's a, they've tried to explain that to me. I am not electronic savvy and I don't understand that. But from what I can understand, it is a very ingenious thing that they're doing there. They will, they'll find strings, various strings, pieces of string, they'll tie them together and then they, they go fishing, we call it under their door. They'll put something out there and, and they'll swing it and slide it.

And then another one will throw his string or his, his fishing line over it. And if they wanna switch things around, they'll, that one will pull something in that's on the end of that other one string that's called fishing. I've seen a lot of fishing over the years, and the fish line has made of various things, just whatever they can get their hands on. I have seen men who just almost their personality evaporated.

They turn within themselves. They don't speak to anyone. And it's as if they die first on the inside before they die physically. And sad. It's, it's like the Walking Dead who has been in Solitary Confinement, I I don't know how many years, 20 plus I would think. And there's a reason why he is in Solitary Confinement.

That's for his safety. And yet he, he's like the walking dead. There's no emotion. You don't get a, a smile. There's certainly no sparkle in his eye. And he speaks just, just a mundane sentence. There's no pitch. The the voice doesn't rise. It doesn't lower, it's just straight across the board. And it's, it's really a sad, sad situation to walk by.

Very appreciative, very well mannered. We laugh and joke about this. I'm pretty popular when I go sell to sell in some of these places. And it's not because there's anything special about me, it's just that quite often I'm the only show showing. And so they, they very appreciative. I remember doing, starting to do this many, many years ago, and the inmates would stand back and they would not engage me in conversation.

A lot of them wouldn't. And ask a man one time, I said, have I, how do I break this wall? And began to you guys to talk to me. He said, well, let me tell you what's going on. He said, ministers and volunteers, they come and go. We see guys that come in here and they're enthusiastic and they want to talk about God and tell us about God and, and have all of us to know God. And then they get discouraged or whatever happens, and then we don't see 'em again.

And so several of us in years past have gotten close to people that came to talk to us and visit us only to see them leave and never come back. And so we don't like the hurt. And so if you'll forgive us, we've, we've met people and we've been their friend and they've been our friend and then, then they vanish. Well, I'm thinking of a prison right now. I've been going for 23 years.

And we've gotten past that. They, they realize that I'm there to stay and we have great friendships. I know so much about their families and they confide in me, their fears, their dislikes. They just, they speak to me. And I, I listen, I know someone is probably saying, well, these guys are pretty bad if they're in Solitary, Confinement.

Yes, yes, yes. I visit some really, really bad people who have done bad, bad things. But my friend, that's who Jesus came for. He did not come for the righteous. He did not come for those who are spiritually well. He came for the sinner. He came for broken humanity. That's who he died for. And he loves them.

And we would do well to love what God loves. And that's people most of the time. I do not know what the crime is the person has been convicted of or put in prison for. I'm better off if I don't know it. Certainly, if the individual wants to talk about it, we are going to talk about it. And it's, it's sometimes difficult on a personal level. You know some of the things that we talk about are, are pretty rough and, and even disgusting.

But the gospel is for everyone. The invitation is for all to come to Christ. And so as God has commissioned, and God has put this upon my heart and in my mind and my soul, we go, we go and we speak the gospel and we speak his truth to each and every person that we meet.

Well, Solitary, Confinement is a tough, tough way to live your life. It really is. And I can't imagine, I've thought about this. I've asked myself, what would I be like or on a mental level, on a psychological level, and I just don't know. It would be terribly disturbing. I, I'm a people person.

I, I like to communicate. I like to visit and converse with people. And I am pretty sure I would not do very well in that sort of a situation. Well, I'm gonna close now, and we've talked a bit about Solitary, Confinement protective custody, Ad, Seg administration, segregation, CCR, closed cell restriction.

And I wanna give you a name of an inmate to, I'm begging you to pray for him. He has really got some problems emotionally, spiritually, the enemy, the devil has got a strong, strong grip on him. And yet this young man wants to be set free. I believe he is sincere, that he wants to be set free, but he has been ground, ground, ground into the ground by the devil.

And I'm gonna ask you to pray for him. His name is Steven, and he needs the Lord. And I believe as the light of God is shining in his heart, that he's coming to an understanding that he needs Jesus Christ. Well, thank you. Thank you so very much for stopping by. We'll tell some more stories. Hey, we're coming up on some things here too. In the months ahead, we're going to begin to talk about mental health.

Stop the stigma, broken humanity. And we, especially in the church, we don't know what to do with that. We don't talk about it. And we're very good, those that are broken to hide because they feel like that's what they have to do. But we're gonna put some things out into the open. We're gonna let the light You know light's the best antiseptic. We're gonna talk about these things and we're gonna hit 'em head on.

I'll tell you my story. I'll tell you my family story. We're, we're gonna do that in the coming months. So get that word out. We'll tell you a lot more about it. Again, thank you for stopping by. Jesus is Lord