Life in Solitary Confinement: 12,775 Days Alone

By Brooke Shelby Biggs, AlterNet. April 17, 2007

Americans shamefully imagine that spending a life sentence in solitary confinement could only happen in faraway countries. But two men in Louisiana's Angola prison know otherwise.

Around midday today, Central Time, two men in Angola Prison in Louisiana will quietly mark the moment, 35 years ago exactly, when the bars of solitary confinement cells closed behind them. They will likely spend the moment in their 6 by 9 concrete cells reading, or writing letters to their hundreds of supporters around the world. And most of America and the rest of the world will still have never heard of them, or that in the United States of America, it is still possible to spend a life sentence in solitary confinement without interruption and without any real means of appeal. Americans shamefully imagine such things happen offshore in places like Guantanamo, or in totalitarian countries half a world away. Not here, though. Certainly not here.

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