I’m a prisoner in solitary confinement, and I’m suing the state to end this torture

I attempted suicide on my first day in an isolation unit in a Pennsylvania prison by making a noose out of my T-shirt and tying it to a vent in my cell.

When I informed the guards about my suicidal ideations, they said, “Go ahead and kill yourself.”

I tried three more times that night.

I had been placed in this isolation unit at a state prison in a remote Western Pennsylvania town. There, I and 40 other men stayed locked in our cells, alone for 22 to 24 hours a day, under lights that were never turned off, with guards banging on our walls to ensure we couldn’t sleep. (Sleep deprivation has been condemned by the United Nations, which has called on the United States to ban the practice.)

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections states that the unit is intended to house gang members, but I was not a gang member. And the unit’s policies and procedures are kept confidential.

As a result of this secrecy, I had no idea why I was there or when I would leave; instead, it felt like the unit was their way to isolate, abuse, and control us under the guise of safety for an indefinite amount of time.

Mental health experts have shown that solitary confinement has long-lasting and detrimental effects, including higher rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety. What’s more, solitary confinement can be a death sentence: A 2019 study showed that any amount of time in solitary increases someone’s risk of death by 24% within one year of being released, especially by suicide.

» READ MORE: How solitary confinement changes people | A More Perfect Union

I am 31 years old. Since I was sentenced to prison in 2013, I have spent 10 years in solitary confinement — one-third of my life. I can attest that all of the negative impact of this type of imprisonment is 100% true.

After I arrived in prison, I was diagnosed with anxiety, antisocial personality disorder, depression, and PTSD. I needed competent mental health treatment, but instead, when I reached SCI Fayette, I was sent to solitary confinement — known as the Security Threat Group Management Unit — where, not surprisingly, my mental health issues worsened exponentially. I began behaving in ways familiar to torture victims: I was awake for two to three days at a time, experiencing delusions and hallucinations; I banged my head against the cell walls and cut my wrists and ankles.

It was clear no one knew what was happening. The Security Threat Group Management Unit was so secretive that even other incarcerated people in the prison did not know how we were being treated, much less the outside world.

Over the course of six months, I and some of the other prisoners in solitary — Ronnie Johnson, Kareem Mazyck, Angel Maldonado, Xavier Pagan, and a few others — began trying to communicate. The only way we could communicate was by shouting from cell to cell. Over time, we decided to write a lawsuit to challenge the cruel and unusual punishment we faced in the Security Threat Group Management Unit. We took turns using our limited time outside of solitary to go to the prison’s law library, often missing our only opportunity to see sunlight to read case law.

The only way we could communicate was by shouting from cell to cell.

All the while, the conditions were so horrific that many of us attempted suicide. We tried to encourage each other to continue on.

Battling through insomnia and hallucinations, I completed the final draft of our legal argument, painstakingly writing it out by hand until it was 23 pages long. With our legal evidence, the entire lawsuit was 300 pages long. In it, we said that the Security Threat Group Management Unit’s torture and abuse of people with serious mental illness constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.

We mailed our handwritten legal argument outside of prison to a friend, Tyree Little, who was also formerly incarcerated. Little filed it with the court in October 2022. We also reached out to law firms experienced in litigating against the Department of Corrections and asked them to support us. Now we’re being represented by the Abolitionist Law Center, the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, and Dechert LLP.

Since we filed our lawsuit, the Department of Corrections has reduced the Security Threat Group Management Unit to less than 10 people — but there are still more than 1,000 people in Pennsylvania prisons suffering in other solitary confinement units.

Take me, for example. While I was transferred out of the Security Threat Group Management Unit in May, I’m now in solitary confinement at a different state prison. The site may change, but the torture and abuse of indefinite isolation remain the same.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections can end this torturous practice today. And it can do it while saving money: Legislators estimate that we can save nearly $75 million a year if we end solitary confinement.

It can follow the United Nations’ “Nelson Mandela Rules” on the treatment of prisoners, which prohibit more than 15 consecutive days in solitary confinement. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are all states that have taken the lead in limiting solitary confinement, and a federal bill has been introduced to ban the practice in federal prisons across the nation.

We filed this lawsuit because we needed the torture we were experiencing to end. We had to fight for our freedom. From inside these prison walls, we urge Pennsylvania to cease the assault, torture, and violence on thousands of incarcerated people and end solitary confinement now.

Montana Bell is the lead plaintiff in the suit Bell v. Little and an advocate and organizer to end solitary confinement in Pennsylvania. He has spent 10 years in solitary confinement and 12 years in prison.