Too Many Lockdowns: It’s Time to Push Back

“Being thrown out in the middle of the ocean on a raft that’s deflating. And underneath you is a school of sharks just waiting for you to float down to the bottom.” — Brian Rowe, formerly incarcerated, describing how it feels to be on prison lockdown

Incarcerated people are confined to their cells during a prison lockdown, often up to 23 hours a day. Lockdowns can apply to a unit, an entire facility, or, in some cases, an entire prison system.

Lockdowns can mean little to no medical care, drastically reduced hygiene, increased violence, no phone or email communication with families, and zero fresh air. No access to exercise, work, educational or rehabilitative programs. Beating on windows to get attention if there’s a crisis — to no avail. Barely enough food each day for a child, much less an adult. And alarmingly, prison lockdowns are on the rise across the country.

Dion Walker, now free after nearly 20 years in prison, describes how it begins. “You’ll be in your cell and 5:30 in the morning will come, and everybody’s up waiting to get out of their cells. And the doors just don’t open.”

Terrance Stanton, also recently released under clemency, recounts a similar situation. “You expect for the doors to pop, and then you look around, and then when the officer comes around, he just be like, ‘Y’all locked down. I don’t know why, I just work here.’”

That’s the way life on lockdown often starts — with no warning or explanation. It’s the first day of an especially brutal facet of incarceration that can last up to months. The days can be likened to those endured during solitary confinement.

“The most lockdowns that I experienced in one facility was in USP Leavenworth,” says Dwayne White, who was released on compassionate release. “And yeah, there’s nothing going on. There’s no movement. You’re fed bran flakes in the morning and bologna sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for your other two meals. Probably get a shower maybe once every four days or so. It’s like you’re having the few rights and privileges that you receive as an inmate stripped away from you through no fault of your own.”

Indeed, many of the nation’s lockdowns are tied to staff availability — particularly as prison systems across the country struggle to recruit and retain officers.

Rachel Tobak, freed on clemency, describes an especially horrific experience she endured. “We were on lockdown because there was not enough staff. It was on a weekend, and in C unit there was no staff. Locked doors, no staff, and everybody was freaking out. There was not a single officer in our unit. Anything could have happened and it would’ve been a sad situation. There was not any way to get help if we needed it.

“There were also staff appreciation days where they would lock us all in and celebrate the staff with elaborate meals or events for them — so there was no staff to work on the units. We would just sit in the unit and police ourselves.”

In many facilities, there is no air conditioning, and a terrible situation is made even worse. Sincere Allah, formerly incarcerated in the Virginia state prison system for 24 years, recalls coming back from working his prison job outside all day to lockdown. “I’m drenched in sweat, I’m dirty, I’m stinking. And you and your roommate may be in the same position, and we’re sitting there waiting and waiting to come out to take our showers, and they’re like, ‘No coming out. Lockdown.’ We may not come out for a couple of days, which means now we got to use the sink to wash up and take what we call a bird bath.”

Dwayne also recounts the “bird bath,” during which “we would put a sheet around the sink and our cellies would respectfully face the wall, and we would wash ourselves in the sink and wash our clothes out in the sink and hang them to dry on a line across the cell.

“Prison is already as grim as anybody can imagine,” Dwayne says. “There are only a few privileges that you look forward to, like you look forward to being able to talk to your child and help them with their homework. You may be looking forward to calling your mom and seeing what she’s cooking for Sunday dinner so that you can have those 15 minutes of mental escape. Then lockdown takes that from you. It definitely sucks the life out of pretty much everybody.”

Mental health care is practically non-existent during lockdown. While incarcerated, Dwayne witnessed rape, suicide, and assaults. “Officers would come and ask us how we are holding up and a lot of times we would say, ‘Man, we just need somebody to talk to,’” he says. “And they’ll be like, ‘Okay, we’ll write your name, ID number, and cell number down and someone will come around.’ But nobody ever came around.”

Most prison systems are not required to report lockdowns or notify people outside of the prison, including next of kin, that the facility is on lockdown or give incarcerated people a reason for or estimate the duration of the lockdown.

Families suffer greatly along with their incarcerated loved ones. There’s zero phone or email communications, and families are left in the dark with nothing but fear and anxiety. Additionally, many families find themselves in the position of having gone to great expense to visit their loved ones, only to find on arrival that the prison has in fact gone on lockdown.

Dion remembers that his family “would travel by air from Indiana to Florida by flight — they did all that just to be told to be told that we’re on lockdown. That happened four or five times. They just lost all the money they’d spent to just turn back around.”

Now free, Brian, Dwayne, Dion, Sincere, Rachel, and Terrance are committed to exposing the crisis that is the rise of lockdowns in institutions across the country, trying to get lawmakers to see how dangerous and inhumane lockdowns really are. “Who better to hear it from,” Dion says, “than somebody who was just there. We know.”

“I want people to know lockdown is brutal,” says Dwayne. “I want people to know that a lot of people commit suicide during lockdown, not because they want to die, but because they just don’t want to deal with the experience anymore. It hurts even the strongest people.”

“I think that it’s important to know that it shouldn’t be used as a tool to punish or contain,” Rachel says. “First of all, inmates are already contained. They’re already behind a locked door. So adding a further lockdown element to that already locked-down environment is detrimental. It’s unsafe, it’s unhealthy, and it’s counterproductive.”

Lockdowns should be reserved for circumstances where there are legitimate security issues that cannot be resolved while the facility is fully functional. Lockdowns cannot and should not be used as a long-term solution to staffing issues.

And for Brian, it’s hard to even talk about the trauma of lockdown that he went through. “It’s really stressful even to come back and revisit it. In my mind it’s like I get lost for words because there’s, there’s really no way. I tell people all the time, there’s no way to describe it, that’s how bad it is.”

The post Too Many Lockdowns: It’s Time to Push Back first appeared on Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation.