Editor’s Note: The letters in this article were adapted from Texas Letters, an ongoing anthology featuring writers in solitary confinement. Volume 2 was released this month. (Another version of James’ essay was published by the Dallas Morning News.)
I have friends in hell. They send me pain-soaked letters every month that feel like a punch to the gut when they land in the mailbox. They are some of the rawest and truest letters because they come from a place so devoid of hope as to bare any veneer.
This veritable inferno is solitary confinement in Texas—the epicenter for long-term isolation with more people spending 22-24 hours a day in a bathroom-sized cell for three years or longer than every other state and the federal government combined. More than 500 people have endured this torture for a decade or longer in the Lone Star State, despite the fact that the UN has declared it torture and that it’s a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Most European countries consider it a human rights violation to lock up someone for more than 15 days in solitary. In Norway, solitary confinement is almost never used or tightly restricted to 8 hours. Unsurprisingly, violence is rare.
