Much of the discourse…has focused on what are referred to as
‘collateral consequences’: the structural barriers erected by
institutions that bar people with criminal convictions from voting,
housing, employment, welfare assistance, and other factors critical to
ensuring success upon release. Rarely is there discussion of the direct
impact that prison conditions have on a person’s cognitive, emotional,
social, and behavioral functioning and therefore, on that person’s
ability to function as a member of society post-incarceration.

Psychologist Dr. Terry Kupers makes the comparison between
prisoners who have just been released from solitary confinement in a
supermax facility and persons who were recently on suicide watch. The
most likely and dangerous time for violence, acting out, or another
crisis to occur is immediately after one is released. Dr. Kupers says,
“Whether a prisoner leaves the isolation unit and gets into trouble on
the yard or ‘maxes out…’ and gets into trouble in the community, we are
seeing a new population of prisoners who, on account of lengthy stints
in isolation units, are not well prepared to return to a social
milieu.” This is an institutional and systemic problem that is created
by the conditions of incarceration…

The participants reported that they would often avoid the areas
where the few available social service agencies, transitional homes,
and homeless shelters are located, because these are areas where they
made poor choices previously. Likewise, available shelters offer very
little in the way of privacy, are always crowded, and difficult to get
into. For prisoners who have spent years in isolation, such an
environment would be the last place they would want to turn. While
deciding to avoid problem locations would usually be considered wise,
the reality is complex–in these cases, it renders the individuals even
more isolated and lacking any support networks or services. Here, the
self-inflicted social isolation that was created by the extreme
isolation in prison is most noticeably debilitating.

In describing his life on the outside, one participant who avoided
old neighborhoods and contacts said that “life is way harder out here
for me than it is in there.” He is not alone in this nostalgia for
prison life and for the isolation of the supermax cell. A female
participant, also homeless and barely getting by at the time of the
interview, said almost ashamedly, “The worst thing that I can honestly
say about trying to get back into society is I miss my cage more and
more everyday. I just can’t function out here.” When asked, “Do you
want to the small cage back or the big cage?” she replied, “The smaller
the better. I can control everything in it.” They make repeated efforts
to avoid people, for example moving to the edge of the city or living
alone in a tunnel. It is strikingly reminiscent of the social
withdrawal that Craig Haney describes as endemic to persons held in
isolation for long periods, except now they are outside the supermax
cell, in the great wide open of supposed freedom, which terrifies them.

Thoughts of suicide permeated many of the participants’
interviews, especially when the conversation turned toward plans for
the future. At least 10 of the male participants (50 percent) from Pima
County had considered suicide between their release from prison and
their first interview. Each participant who reported suicidal thoughts
mentioned them in more than one of their interviews. Strikingly, some
of these men had been out of prison less than one week when the first
interview took place. They reported the inability to see a viable way
to remain out of prison, yet at the same time could not imagine doing
more prison time. By their final interview, three of these men stated
that they considered suicide on a daily basis, but had yet to act on
these considerations. A few also considered committing some crime that
would land them back in prison and allow for more time to devise a
better strategy for handling life on the outside.

Anyone leaving prison is faced with an unwelcoming social
landscape. The simultaneous necessity and absence of housing and work
are experienced immediately. The freedom of release is truncated by
limited housing options, partially as a result of neighborhood bans on
people with felony convictions, and a job market that has very little
inclination or incentive to hire former prisoners. Add to this reality
significantly higher rates of mental illness; tendencies toward social
withdrawal; lack of support networks or family to rely on due to the
added social distance of a supermax prison; and no transition services
after spending years in the most extreme isolation, and the experience
of a former supermax prisoner begins to take shape. More notably it
begins to demonstrate the compounded effects of supermax confinement
and the additional limitations once released. In the same way, one
prisoner’s perceived ease of life in prison compared to his experiences
of life on the outside, as well as another’s longing for a space she
can control even if it is a cage, demonstrates precisely the extra
layer of difficulties created by prolonged isolation.