Washington inmate shares the dangers of being in solitary confinement since he was 13 years old
Apr 27, 2016, 7:06 PM | Updated: Apr 28, 2016, 10:41 am
(AP)
(AP)
Kyle Payment went to jail for the first time when he was 11. Now 30, he’s been incarcerated nearly that entire time, much of it in solitary confinement. He says solitary has made him so mentally ill, he attacks guards and fears he’ll never get out of prison.
Payment listens to the Ron and Don Show from inside an 80-square-foot cell at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen. He just got his radio privileges back several months ago. Payment lives in solitary confinement, which means he’s in his cell alone, every day, for 23 hours at a time.
“Basically, I do nothing but read and write,” Payment said over the phone. “As far as interactions go, I go to the yard by myself, I go to shower by myself. Any interactions you’re yelling through the doors, yelling through the vent at somebody.”
With the exception of about 40 days, Payment has lived this way, in solitary confinement, for the past 12 years.
“The first time I was arrested I was 11 years old in 1997. It was for stealing another kid’s bike and I was given a 10-month sentence. I went to Echo Glen which is like the juvenile prison,” he said.
Payment spent much of his youth in solitary confinement and says he would attack the guards to entertain himself.
“They would come in and take all your property out of your cell. Including your mattress, your blankets, your books, your papers, everything. You would be left with a pair of socks, sandals, shorts, underwear and a T-shirt. The cells were freezing,” Payment said.
“We would languish like that for weeks, sometimes months on end. We weren’t schooled,” he said. “We were supposed to get an hour out a day, but basically, they’d take your hour away. There were times I didn’t come out of my cell for weeks on end.”
Payment was listening to the radio in January when he heard me telling a story about President Obama banning solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. He had his then-girlfriend contact me to see if I’d talk to him about what it’s been like to spend most of the last 20 years in solitary confinement.
“I haven’t been on the street since I was 13 years old. On March 11, 2000, I was 13, I got arrested for a stolen car and selling drugs. I got three years for that. So far I’ve had 18 extra years added on to my sentence for assaults that happened while in solitary,” he said. “I’m going to court right now, in two different counties, where they’re trying to give me another 25 years.”
Payment has assaulted several guards in prison, which is why he’s continuously kept in solitary. He says he doesn’t want to be violent, but he can’t control himself.
“I’ve had two different evaluations done on me since I’ve been in solitary because I’ve been charged with assaults on the guards. Both of them say I’m a product of what is called the SHU Syndrome,” Payment said. “They wonder why I’m acting the way I’m acting. It’s because I’m in solitary. I’m unable to exhibit forms of self-control when my anxiety starts going up or I start getting too stressed out or feeling like I’m being pushed into the corner.”
SHU Syndrome is a well known psychological condition that affects inmates kept in solitary for too long. It can make them angry, violent, scared, they can’t control their thoughts or behavior. They basically go insane.
Payment was evaluated by psychologist Dr. Stuart Grassian, the nation’s top SHU Syndrome expert, who has evaluated hundreds of inmates over the past 30 years. Dr. Grassian describes the symptoms he’s seen.
“These people were so clearly ill, frightened of how ill they were,” Dr. Grassian says. “Things like suicidal attempts, periods of confusion and disorientation. The symptoms they were describing were really unusual. They weren’t the kind of things you see in ordinary clinical practice. Symptoms of stupor and delirium, disoriented, confused, agitated, paranoid, hallucinations in multiple spheres, feeling bugs crawling up their skin.”
After speaking with Payment for two and a half hours, he issued a 33-page psychiatric evaluation to the State of Washington, in September 2015, that concludes with this sentence:
Continuing to confine Mr. Payment in the psychiatrically toxic environment of solitary confinement would be both tragic and inhumane.
He learned that Payment was abused as a child and grew up in an unstable family environment.
“My parents taught me how to be a criminal,” Payment said. “My father taught me how to steal a car when I was 9 years old. The only thing that was ever done with me was that I was always locked up. I never was given treatment.”
“I never was given any kind of program. (Just) lock him up and send him to the juvenile prison,” he said. “Everybody that I knew to call would basically take me from one drug house to the next drug house.”
Dr. Grassian says the worst thing to do to a kid like that, is to lock them up alone as punishment, without any stimulation or interaction.
“Ninety-five percent of them approximately are going to get out,” Dr. Grassian said. “And if you put them in long term solitary you’ve succeeded in making them as dangerous, as out of control, as violent, as incapable of managing in the broader society as you could possibly have achieved. It’s almost inevitable they’re going to commit a crime.”
“This is the worst thing we could do for our community to keep ourselves safe,” he said. “We’re paying twice as much a day to keep them in solitary and we’re doing everything in our power to make their behavior more and more out of control – and then they get out. It just makes no sense.”
He says the country is starting to reform, and many states have pulled back on solitary confinement, but people like Payment haven’t benefited.
“I’m not innocent. I’ve done my fair share of wrong,” Payment admits. “I acknowledge that. But at the same time, I think there’s a bigger scheme going on, as far as solitary confinement goes. That’s what I’m hoping to give you. Perspective on that from somebody who’s been there.”
Payment hopes he’ll be out by 2020, but fears more years will be tacked on. When he gets out he wants to speak to kids, to get to them before the criminal justice system does.
