Currently, the United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world (Statista, 2021). In mid-2020, there were 1.8 million people confined to a jail or prison in the United States (Kang-Brown, et al 2021). This is triple (Calabrese, 2010) the number of people since the 1980s and includes a staggering 775% increase in the number of women (Sentencing Project, 2018). The rise of incarcerated people begins with disproportionate police contact with African Americans (Sentencing Project, 2018). The ongoing systemic racism and dehumanization inside the criminal justice system fuels recidivism. These practices traumatize individuals and their families and need to be seen as a collective issue. As Mika’ ilDeVeaux, Sociologist at the City University of New York, argues, prisons are a site for trauma, and “the condition of a person returning to their communities should be of great public concern because the environment in which people are confined affects the psychological condition in which they return” (DeVeaux, 2013).
The following interview reflects on the personal experiences and recovery of Eldra Jackson III, who served 24 years of a life sentence, recognizing that incarceration is perhaps, by its design, not just traumatic but a system of torture. Mr. Jackson is now the Co-Executive Director of a non-profit organization that helps empower system-impacted people, leading change from within and providing opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to heal and serve themselves and others. They are committed to reducing recidivism and all forms of violence - physical, emotional, and psychological -within the American prison system and their communities through peer-to-peer support.
Trigger Warning: This contribution is transparent and discusses certain opinions and experiences of prison life; some language and content may not be suitable for all readers.
Voices Against Torture:Hello, Eldra. It’s a great honor and pleasure to connect with you today; thank you.
Eldra Jackson III: Most welcome, thank you.
VAT: Ok, let’s get right to it. One understanding of torture can be thought of as “violence against you by the very institutions that are supposed to protect you (schools, hospitals, police, military) because of who you are” (VAST, 2021). How would you say that the prison system at large falls into this definition?
EJ: Torture in the American and Californian prison system begins with segregation. It starts with forcing the idea that people are different. They perpetuate the division with rules and guidelines. Literally, the administration uses the term classification. You are classified. And in that classification, it's sort of like a cattle auction. You go through and, you know, classified by age, by background, by race, by county of origin. And you're placed into cells or communities based on those categories. If you're black, you go over here. If you're white, you go over there. If you're Hispanic, you go over there. If you're anything other than those three, like Indigenous Peoples, East Indians, or Asiatic descent, you are labeled Other. There are only four labels. It's Black, White, Hispanic, and Other. And those are the labels that you carry for the duration. And it can be deadly for me, you, or anybody else. If you fail to adhere to these classifications if you fail to adhere to this system, it doesn't matter where you come from, what your background is — you could have been raised in the most communal Pollyanna-ishShangri-La on the face of the planet — but once you walk into the prison system, you are re-introduced to racism, and you have to participate in this system that is reinforced by the system. It’s about dehumanizing you and the other. That is the beginning of torture.
Then the isolation tactics. One is already isolated from society. It’s supposed to be 23 hours in the hole but often goes more than 24 hours —even 3-4 days of not getting out to have a shower. Pelican Bay State Prison, the supermax facility in California, utilizes intense sensory deprivation; windows are fogged over, you can’t tell if it’s daylight or nighttime —this is also a form of torture.
VAT: Why can't you see outside the windows?
EJ: Depending on the level of prison that you're at. If you're in administrative segregation issue or some supermax prison, then there's a window in the back of the cell that is maybe four inches by four feet, and it's frosted over from the outside. There's like white paint or something on the outside of the window. Looking out of that window, it always looks the same, whether it's midnight or it's high noon. And then everything on the interior of these maximum-security buildings faces inside, so you don't see outside.
Correctional authorities have studied prisoners of war and war techniques, such as the Viet Cong, in their sensory deprivation tactics and techniques that they used to abuse. You know, you've got folks that have been in isolation in these administrative segregation units or SHUs for decades. People are in these security housing units suffering from sensory deprivation, where they don't see the sun, and their human interaction is slim to none for 20, 30, 40 years.
A lot of those folks are doing life, but not everybody. So, you have folks that are released directly from that environment. There’s no step-down. There's no reintegration. You walk out of prison, and that's what you walk into society from-so now the sun is beaming, is shining down on you. You haven't seen it in 10, 15, 20 years. You're around crowds of people, you know, expected to show up to appointments, get on a bus, you know, going to Wal-Mart, buy your toiletries and things like that. And folks are suffering from now sensory overload. You know, from all of the voices, all of the people, all of the jostling around and bumping into you. And it can be …horrendous.
For somebody to be thrust into something like that all of a sudden, told and expected to conform and function in a way that is acceptable, without the knowledge or the skillset or having time to decompress would be like taking a caveman, out of the deepest, darkest caves of the Caucasus Mountains from way back in 2000 B.C. and then thrusting them into Burning Man.
VAT: Were you in the hole more than once?
EJ: Yes, I was in the hole several times. Multiple occasions.
VAT: How did you survive that?
EJ: I knew it was a system that was designed to break people. I watched people break, folks who reached their breaking points and who turned into other people or committed suicide. I was always somebody who was too stubborn to be broken, or at least that's what I believed. You know, I had the mental capacity to convince myself, to not allow myself to be broken, not like this. And so, a coping mechanism that I utilized was to steel myself against that, to learn to detach in a way from certain parts of my own humanity. To be able to not just survive but thrive, I learned to cut off my feelings — don’t care about things, don't feel certain things, let certain things go. Be able to just be cold. Any sort of longing or desire, those are the sorts of things that can be crushed; those are the sorts of fires that can be extinguished or used against you.
So, it was best to either not have those things or to hide and bury those things away so deeply that there was no flicker for anybody on the outside to catch the glimmer and grab hold. So, what I did, I guess, as I say it out loud, is I learned to exist right there on edge, not quite dead, but not quite alive, kind of like in a holding pattern of the underworld.
VAT: What I hear you say is, you recognized different parts of yourself, and it sounds like it was an empowering and conscious choice on what you brought forward?
EJ: Which parts can handle this, and which parts may not be able to handle this.
VAT: I've also heard you mention how you practiced a kind of mindfulness, exteroception awareness based on the movements of the prison and as a way of figuring out the time?
EJ: They have three watches; the first watch begins at 10:00 p.m., second begins at 6:00 a.m., third begins at 2:00 p.m. And you can tell when they're getting ready to switch watches because you can hear the buzz of the door open and then the guy or girl in the gun tower letting their relief in. And then you can hear, you know, the weight of the belts and all of the equipment that they're using, changing it and swapping it out, checking the guns and releasing a live round from the chamber of the rifle to make certain that it's ready to go. You can tell when the officers are walking down the tier, passing out mail, whether they've done this before or just after the count. Everybody in the state is getting locked down at the same time because they have a 5:00 p.m. count that has to clear in each prison statewide.
What you got to do is watch the movements of the prison, watch the movements of the guards, watch the movements of this little ecosystem, and that informs. When the guards walk, I know, OK, they just passed down the mail. They came on at 2:00 p.m. for the third watch; they've got to come to get debriefed on what happened on the first two watches. Then they get everything together and unlock the slots. It's 2:45 pm. They’ll come back around, open up the slots and pass out the mail. We got 30 minutes to do whatever you need to do before they hit the tier again because they'll be back at four o'clock count. Boom, they're done until count clears statewide, and then you hear a horn go up boom. Anywhere between 4:45 pm and 5 p.m. If the horn doesn't go off between 4:45 and 5 pm, that means somewhere in the state, and the count is fucked up. That horn won't go up until all of the nearly 40 prisons and camps across the state have cleared and everything has been called into a central location in Sacramento. Boom, that horn goes up. OK, now they're getting ready to start letting people out to go to work, go to chow halls, and things like that.
VAT: You've spoken to me before of another form of assault being utilized in prisons based on food restrictions.
EJ: Another form of assaulting the senses is what we call the dog food diet. This is something that's promoted and perpetuated by the system. It comes in like a dog food bowl and is just enough to keep an individual alive. The mash-up is like a loaf, I want to say meatloaf, but that’s not what it is. You know, if you were to serve a dog meal out of a can, that's what it looks like. It's supposed to have all of your nutrients blended up into it. And it's served twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening, as long as you are on the dog food diet — anywhere from 72 hours to over a week. They send medical personnel around to check your vitals. So, if it's supposed to have all of the nutrients to keep me alive, and to keep me functioning, and to keep me healthy, why do you need to check my blood pressure and check my heart rate on a regular basis around the clock?
I still don't know why they do that, but what that tells me is that something here is amiss. Something about this can hurt me, and they know this —they don't go around checking anybody else's vitals while they’re having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why is it that someone who's on this dog food diet has to have their vitals checked on a regular eight-hour cadence by medical personnel?
VAT: So, just to be clear, this dog food diet is actually used as a way of punishment and control?
EJ: Yes. A particular form of discipline. And they're very forthcoming; if we don't like X, Y or Z now we're going to punish you and give you this shit. Yes, you piss them off because you committed some act, you broke some rule violation — and usually, it has something to do with an alleged assault, or you did something to tick off the wrong officer. If somebody in power deemed you to be particularly disruptive, we're finding you guilty — and as a part of your punishment, you will lose this sensory privilege.
They're not just doing this with people over 18; I’ve seen this in juvenile halls. This goes on in youth prisons and detention facilities as well. I started doing time when I was 14 years old. I’ve seen this punishment from juvenile hall all the way up through the CDC [California Department of Corrections].
VAT: BJ Miller, the renowned palliative care physician, who has served as an Executive Director of the San Francisco's Zen Hospice Project, once said, “as long as we have our senses, we can still feel human.” As you know, I just supported my mother’s end-of-life, and in that experience, I witnessed the ultimate breakdown and loss of her senses and the challenging process of having fewer and fewer choices….death. And now, as I pause on what you just said, these institutions by this perspective — the lack of humanism, the extreme lack of choice-making, and by controlling the felt experience of the senses are indeed ways of inflicting a kind of death upon a person.
EJ: If this model is built on depriving one of their senses, what is that doing to the feeling of being human? If I'm depriving you of the ability to connect to your human senses and all of the auditory and other feeling sensations that go along with being human; if I place you in a position or a system that is designed to deprive you of that, then I'm in essence depriving you of your humanness.
VAT: I've heard stories where all of a sudden someone will be told they have to pack up and move to another part of the prison, losing his/her established community and, again, the locus of control feeling far outside of oneself. How can these ongoing experiences not reinforce trauma?
EJ: I don't know how it cannot. I'll give you the term, and you can put it with this piece, living in a correctional setting puts a lot of people in a state of battle readiness. Always ready to do battle, and that battle is not always physical. Just what you were describing, pack your stuff, now you're moving over here. OK, time to go. Time to move. Get your stuff. Let's go —everybody has a method for packing their stuff on the fly. There's always a state of, it's going down, and I'm ready for it when it happens, always in a perpetual state of preparing for war.
VAT: Can you talk to us about the strip search and how it may also reinforce trauma?
EJ: OK, the strip search. If you're talking about stripping someone of their dignity, this is it. You hear the term safety and security of the institution —that’s a catch-all phrase that pretty much gives permission for the safety and security of the institution to do anything, carte blanche, anything goes. And strip search is a big part of safety and security.
It is, of course, on the books to make certain that contraband is not moving, contraband is not being introduced into the facility, not being trafficked around. So, their job is to look for weapons, injuries and not following some sort of altercation. And what happens in a strip search? You get all the way down until you’re butt-ass naked. And it doesn't matter if it's 110 degrees outside or in some prisons where the snow can be 3-4 feet deep. If something happens, that disturbs the safety and security of the institution, under the burning sun or in the snow, or in torrential rain, you strip it down.
I've experienced all of them. And in the process of the strip down, you have officers standing in front of you giving instructions, you know, raise your arms, wiggle your fingers. They are looking at the armpits and, in your mouth, lift up your tongue, grab your junk turn it around, and raise the bottom of your feet. So, they can see you don't have anything in your toes or taped to the bottom of your feet. You got to do three deep knee bends; bend over, grab your cheeks, spread them open, and cut a deep cough. They want your sphincter-like opening-up, you know, they got flashlights, and they're looking in. And you can be in an all-male prison, but you got women guards, they're around. They're not supposed to conduct the actual strip search of the opposite sex, but they are there.
If you have a particularly brutal individual, a sadistic officer that you're dealing with, and I've seen it happen, they’ll strip search you in a particular order. I've seen the guard tell folks intentionally, grab your junk, you know, grab your scrotum, grab your penis, raise it up. Now you've done that; then they’ll tell you, OK, now run your hands through your mouth…there you go. I've seen folks do it, and I've seen other folks buck against it and be like, man, fuck you, I'm not doing that. And now you've got a confrontation here. You are getting ready to get beat down with Billy clubs and shit like that, hog-tied handcuffs on your wrists behind your back, handcuffs on your ankles, picked up like a piece of luggage, and taken somewhere because I don't want my dick in my mouth.
VAT: According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article. 25), everyone has the right to dignity and wellness.
EJ: Yes, ma'am.
VAT: In your own healing and recovery, do you recall a single moment that was like a whole-body-yes, this is happening?
EJ: There was a single wave that washed over me, like a sinking-in, into the bosom of spirit, which allowed for knowing who I am that wasn’t based on ego. And I was open to learning it.
This moment came while inside a Circle for the very first time and graced with the opportunity to witness humans holding space for one another without judgment getting in the way. These were humans that society had already given up on as hopeless and incorrigible, labeled killers and convicts, and they were willing to let me be exactly who I was, in my own space and time to figure out my shit. They showed me what real freedom was.
VAT: Wow, that is vivid. Certainly, not everyone notices that wave, and not all people are ready. I do find it curious the stories of how the world heals and how communities and individuals do it. You know, what does that look like? Personally speaking, sometimes, when I’m invested in a particular outcome or idea, I get frustrated, and my response is, well, that’s their choice, and there's nothing more I can do. But you’re saying there’s still something you can do — you can be present with them. That’s a real powerful offering; would you like to speak more to that?
EJ: Certainly, you're asking about me speaking to being with someone where they're at, in spite of how my ego may judge them. You know, this person should be doing this or should not be doing that and or wanting them to get what I judge as healing. Everyone has the right to be where they are at.
This is about the availability of holding space for an individual to experience freedom. And to experience their right to that freedom and to experience what it is to be loved, nurtured for exactly who they are. Not because of what they have, not because of what they can be or should be, or any expectations just because of who you are right now in this moment. That's what I'm learning and attempting to practice. That's what love is. Love is not conditional. It's unconditional. And it is not something that I, as a human am always able to give to another person. But I definitely want to strive for being with another person and having them know that at least at this moment with me, who you are is perfect. We can just be together right here in this moment. I think everybody at some level wants that and desires that. I definitely believe that everyone deserves that.
VAT: And the irony is, would you not say, where nothing needs to change is where does healing happen?
EJ: That is where healing can begin to occur because there's a safe space to be, to stop fighting and to stop defending and to take a breath and just fucking breathe. The hope is to lean into what's possible and start to look around and assess, ok, is this working for me or not? And when I get to that place where I'm able to settle and rest and assess what is and what is not working for me, then I can start to look at trauma, and I can start to look at the possibility of developing a different relationship with that trauma— which is moving into a space of healing. But if I'm always frantic and running around, holding tight, fighting and defending, there's no space for that connection.
VAT: You've also talked about how not meeting someone where they’re at or how coercing someone into change can also reinforce trauma and can, on some level, even feel torturous.
EJ: Yeah, if I'm trying to have interaction and you are consistently telling me how to be, what I should be, what I am not doing correctly, what I need to be doing, and how I need to be doing it —moments like that can be very stressful on my mental state. That’s very stressful on my emotional state because, again, I'm always on guard. It can be just like someone who is being physically beaten. You know, always waiting for that next blow, not a physical blow but an emotional or verbal blow. A mental blow or energetic blow can be torturing because now it's ingrained in me that this is coming. I'm living in a constant state of fear. I'm constricted. And that's doing something to me on a cellular level, which is affecting my lymphatic system. If I’m in a constant state of fleeing or fighting, that’s not healthy. Resulting in no space for me to be in a relationship with myself, with the truth of Self. So, I don't have the space and or the time to be who I am. I don't have a landing spot.
VAT: I’ve heard you and other folks associated with your organization use the term “hurt people, hurt people.” I find that to be an incredibly systemic statement. It reminds me also of similar language from a former teacher of mine, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote in his book, The Body Keeps the Score,
“I wish I could separate trauma from politics, but as long as we continue to live in denial and treat only trauma while ignoring its origins, we are bound to fail. In today's world, your ZIP code, even more than your genetic code, determines whether you will lead a safe and healthy life. People's income, family structure, housing, employment, and educational opportunities not only affect their risk of developing traumatic stress but also their access to effective help to address it. Poverty, unemployment, inferior schools, social isolation, widespread availability of guns, and substandard housing all are breeding grounds for trauma. Trauma breeds further trauma; hurt people hurt other people.”
EJ: It says it all right there. It’s very apparent that trauma is trauma, but I don't like to try to qualify trauma and say that trauma in Beverly Hills is different or less than or better than, you know, trauma, in South Central Los Angeles. Or that trauma on the south side of Chicago is different than trauma on the other side of Michigan Avenue because the hurt is hurt.
With that being said, the reality is that in the environment in which the trauma is experienced, the response to the trauma is different. The availability of resources to address the trauma is different. The public perception of the trauma is different. What is put in the news media about the trauma is covered in a different light? And that in and of itself is traumatic, not only for the folks who are receiving the trauma, but us collectively as a society because it informs our perceptions about people. It informs how we deal with people, how we think about people, and how we talk to people. That can serve to re-traumatize us all over again.
If you have an individual who looks like me, you know, black folks, African Americans, however they choose to identify themselves, they’re portrayed in the news media that is of an animal, you know, always engaged in black-on-black crime and shooting and killing each other. They don't know any better, you know, on and on of these stereotypes. And then I hear about a school shooting, like Columbine or someplace else; they may be white or hear about a case of someone going into a house and killing his entire family. It’s tragic. And there’s a very different tone, how did this happen? How did we miss the signs? There's a very different picture that's painted. No one talks about how black-on-black violence is portrayed in the news media vs white violence? Why is it no big thing in the news media about white-on-white violence? Why is black-on-black violence a big thing? We are traumatizing these communities all over again and dehumanizing them while they are already dealing with tragedy and hurt and pain. And culturally, that affects us all, that traumatizes us all, black, white, whatever your background. It traumatizes us because it creates separation. It creates a space where we don't see one another as humans. We lose the opportunity to see the light in all of us and lose the opportunity to see the commonality in all of us.
VAT: If the likelihood of a trauma diagnosis can be linked to your Zip code, so can then the healing. Tarana Burke, the American activist dubbed, The Silence Breaker, who started the #MeToo Movement, has said, “The people who are experiencing, who are closest to the pain, who are closest to the trauma, who are closest to the experience, their oppression, whatever it is, should be at the forefront of creating solutions.” Can you give us a take-away about the power of peer-to-peer support?
EJ: I call it peer-to-peer healing. To sit in Circle, I must have the willingness to be vulnerable. Go do therapy and pay $600 per hour if that’s what you want, but in Circle, you must be willing to be vulnerable. In peer engagement, the space is created for engagement and empathy on the basis of equality. We are not separate, we are in this together, and the pain I have recognizes and can hold the pain you have; and the light I have recognizes the light in you.
VAT: That’s the work.
EJ: That’s the work.
More information, talks, and ways to engage can be found at the following links:
The Work: www.youtu be/cca5QWdSTMQ
Peer-to-Peer: Inside Circle has a pen pal program that links people on the outside to incarcerated persons throughout California. This peer-to-peer exchange program is centered on mutuality and reciprocity — forming trusted confidants, sharing stories, and “checking in" by hand. As participants, everyone is both giver, the talker, and the receiver, the listener, and encouraged to do so without judgment. When inmates receive mail, it is a message to the prison staff and other prisoners that they have support and are not forgotten. This can be a valuable way of reducing violence in prison (Inside Circle, 2021). More on how it works: www.insidecircle.org
Ted Talk:www.go.ted.com/eldrajackson
Eldra’s Story:www.topic.com/video-eldra-s-story