Episode 5: Solitary Confinement

Episode 5: Solitary Confinement is State Violence

Solitary confinement is harmful to all, but it is still regularly implemented in Washington state prisons. In this episode, we confront Washington state’s use of solitary confinement and its impact on our communities, as well as the tensions around harm reduction legislation and state oversight.

Content Note: This episode includes people discussing their experiences in jails and prisons that do not meet the minimum standards for human rights set by the United Nations “Mandela Rules,” including the institutional use of drugs and shaming to control people, people suffering mental distress and suicidal ideation. Please take care while you listen.

Show Notes

This episode features an interview with Anthony Blankenship and testimony from Derek Collier. From the Inside Out is hosted by Ralph Dunuan, produced by Megan Ybarra, and edited and mixed by Anvar Hassanpour. This podcast was supported in part  by a Scholar-Activist Project Award from the Antipode Foundation and the UCSD Communication Department.

Image credit for background in cover art: Memorino, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

Sitthivong, F (2024) “Washington State Prisons Suppress Cultural Awareness Groups,” Prism, https://prismreports.org/2024/07/17/washington-state-prisons-suppress-cultural-awareness-groups/, published July 17, 2024

Unlock the Box Campaign: https://unlocktheboxcampaign.org/ 

WA Department of Corrections Solitary Confinement Transformation Plan FY2024 Supplemental Budget: https://www.doc.wa.gov/docs/publications/200-GU024.pdf 

WA Office of the Corrections Ombuds Solitary Confinement Research Team (OCO-SCRT) Solitary Confinement: Part I. https://oco.wa.gov/sites/default/files/OCO_SolitaryConfinementReport_Part1_June2024.pdf, published June 30, 2024

WA Office of the Corrections Ombuds Solitary Confinement Research Team (OCO-SCRT) Solitary Confinement: Part II. https://oco.wa.gov/sites/default/files/Solitary%20Confinement%20Part%20II_0.pdf, published September 30, 2024

Transcript

Elizabeth [00:00:17] Welcome to CHOICES, the podcast that dives deep into real issues surrounding the currently incarcerated and survivors of mass incarceration. We're here to help share the stories of those navigating the challenges of life inside the Washington prison system, focusing on struggles, transformations, and rehabilitation. Join us on CHOICES to hear voices for a liberated purpose, presenting and archiving issues that impact indigenous peoples and communities of color on both sides of the walls.

Ralph [00:01:01] Hello everyone, this is your host, Ralph Dunuan

Megan [00:01:03] And Megan Ybarra

Ralph [00:01:04] with From the Inside Out by CHOICES Media, coming to you from the Washington Corrections Center. So, Megan, we gave folks a lot to process in this first season, a lot about how the criminal punishment system works in real time and the work to abolish it piece by piece. I know that we're working through each episode and working through these issues, concepts, and in general educating folks about the criminal punishment system. With educating people of mine, we have been trying to define as much as we It's the top. That not everyone would get terms like SRA, close custody or good time. I think you have been doing an amazing job reminding me that folks, not interacted by the carceral state might not understand certain terms or acronyms with that, we'll get into a little bit of a background.

Megan [00:01:53] Okay, yeah. So, as a researcher, I know that all these details, all these terms, like ad seg and everything else, it's really important. But then I looked over the two giant reports that the OCO Ombud put out. And what I walked away thinking was like, well, each of these are different ways to slice and dice the larger story of state harm that solitary confinement does. As a teacher, as a community member, I want to make sure we don't get lost in the acronyms and the data in ways that distract us from the overall picture. Like one example that I learned about in reading that report is there's this cute term that they pronounce "puh-leez", which is how DOC uses to classify people in terms of their mental health, taking people who have the highest need and actually placing them in solitary and taking away their property. That's like, you don't need to know what "puhl-leez" stands for to know that it's a problem. So I want to strike a balance here. And before we get into, you know, the conversation with folks who have experienced it, can you tell us what the state is of solitary confinement? What does that mean in Washington state?

Ralph [00:03:05] Yeah, so what solitary confinement is exactly is. When we on the inside use the term solitary confinement, it's a general term like the hole being we are isolated from the general population for some reason or another. In the hole, you get only a specific amount of time out of yourself. Some people may have heard rappers or movies use the terms "23 and 1". What they're referring to is you're locked down in a concrete box for 23 hours a day with one hour of recreation time or rec time. Now, what that looks like for folks in Washington prison is five hours a week of rec time and three of those days you will be allowed to shower. So there are two days out of every week in which there is no movement within the solitary confinement unit to Washington state.

Megan [00:03:58] Yeah. I want to just think a little bit about what that experience means as someone who's never been in solitary. What I see overall is within official solitary confinement, there's this whole scale of what they are calling privileges. So people are only going to be out of their cell for maybe four hours a day. They only get three showers a week, but they might also lose access to all of their property, including tablets that they use,  phones, in some cases they'll lose access to clothes or a blanket, and any semblance of privacy because the lights are on 24-7.

Ralph [00:04:39] Yeah, you know, and when we think about most people don't think about having a light on for for that amount of time. But when we talk about sleep deprivation and things like that, you know, it's an actual weapon that's being used to, you know, induce mental warfare upon one's mind. And when you go into that place, it's the whole concept of solitary confinement is to break the human psyche down in order to build them into something more malleable. You know, it's a state, it is a concept that the military is used all the time. However, in solitary confinement, most people don't come back from that. Most people have to be drug induced in order to cope and deal with, you know, the PTSD of isolation and things like that, you know, so they come out a lot worse than what they came in as. And when we think about that... Most of these guys are going back to our community. So why would we be okay with allowing folks to deteriorate like that intentionally and then allow them to get back out to our

Securus [00:06:03] Thank you.

Ralph [00:06:04] Now, by no means am I saying keep these folks locked up. What I'm saying is that we need to use different practices in order to help people heal and really move towards a process that makes them better than what they came into the system as.

Megan [00:06:20] After the state legislature failed a few years ago to pass any meaningful reforms to the use of solitary, they did ask the Ombud, which is like the oversight for the state agency, to investigate what's happening with solitary. It's worth noting that they've come out with the first two of three reports and in part one, they were very clear that a lot of the DOC data was incomplete or incorrect, particularly in terms of attempts around things like suicide. In June 2024, they released a report with some important findings that we'll link to in the show notes, but here's an overview. More than 3,000 people have been officially in solitary, which is more than 20% of the prison population of 13,000. Most people who get sent to the hole do a lot more than a supposed maximum of 30 or 45 days, even without the ways that DOC tries to minimize how long they're in for. In fiscal year 2023, DOC threw people into hole 6120 times. What that means is a lot of people are going in repeatedly over and over again. At least one person was thrown in the hole more than 25 times.

Ralph [00:07:30] Yeah, when we think about those reports, what folks aren't being told is that they have these things called transfer pods and when we look at when they do these reports and try to collect the data to see who's in such a situation, once your status is deemed transferable, then you're no longer considered. Someone that's in the hole, it’s just pending transfer. So, like, folks can sometimes sit there for a long time in isolation. They're still in the hole. But essentially, they'll be sitting there waiting to be transferred. But on paper, it looks like those numbers are lower, when in actuality, they're higher.

Megan [00:08:25] Yeah, so the numbers we have from the Ombud are the minimum numbers, and the Ombud doesn't really have a lot of meaningful suggestions for change, at least so far. That's supposedly what Part Three is. Today we wanted to focus on sharing stories with you for the people who understand the experience the most because they've been in solitary in Washington

Ralph [00:08:47] Yeah, so we're going to hear from different people who want to share in solitary confinement. First, you'll hear myself and Anthony Blankenship, then we'll hear testimony from Derek Collier on the solitary confinement bill, which is House Bill 1137.

Megan [00:09:03] It's a heavy topic, but it's worth thinking about as long as we've got 700 people every day in solitary in Washington state --  until they're all gone. We gotta keep thinking about it, we gotta keep working on it, and we gotta keeping locking the system down. So stay with us as we go into Ralph and Anthony Blankenship.

Ralph [00:09:32] How's everybody out there doing today? Uh, I got somebody that's really with the program, the movement, trying to help folks get out and he graciously blessed us with his time and his knowledge. Say what's up to the people out there.

Anthony [00:09:54] Hi, hey, what's up everybody? My name is Andy Blankenship. I am a community organizer,  formerly incarcerated, been at this work for about three or four years now, trying to make change in Washington state prison system. Happy to be here. Thank you so much, Ralph, for speaking out to me. It is a blessing to be able to be part of the community out here as well as being able to support y'all in there in your creative ventures, as well as all the good work that y'all are doing to drive change. As I say, it's like, it takes the people who are the most impacted to really make these important changes that we need in our community. So I'm just trying to be a support for y'alls energy in any way I can.

Ralph [00:10:47] Oh yeah, absolutely. So one of the topics today is solitary confinement. And I know a lot of people say it's a necessary evil, but I tend to disagree. Now you have been instrumental in the work to abolish solitary confinement, alongside Disability Rights Washington. Why are you so passionate about solitary confinement and why is it a harmful practice to our community?

Anthony [00:11:10] Yeah, so I've done a little bit of time in solitary. You know, I agree with you. There's nothing positive about it. I definitely understand their safety aspects of trying to keep our community behind bars safe. But what's the cost? And also, who's being wrapped up in it? I went in solitary confinement because, and this was just in jail. But still, it's the same thing. Lights are on 24 hours. You don't get nobody to talk to. And there's no programming for you that's readily available that's actually helpful. Why I think it's important that we take a look at this from a health perspective and not so much as a punishment perspective is because. Can you imagine what it would be like for somebody to get out after 10 years of being in solitary confinement, go straight into the community after that, being able to hug anybody, being to talk to people in a very limited fashion. Half the time you are just being told what to do and all your choices are taken from you, right? Ralph, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. When we talk, you've done... It's  like you've done quite a bit of time and when we talk about what needs to happen to make these changes, then you can get, right? I mean, you asked one of the most important questions is how do we relate the work hard and create for somebody in this system to the broader change? I would love to hear your perspective on this.

Ralph [00:12:58] So, for me, my first exposure to what they consider a long-term program, which is a specific amount of time that the Department issues you to spend in solitary confinement and it demotes you to max sentence, right? An altercation happened at Walla Walla, back in 2001, a chain of events, and in the process of that, I went in there for this altercation. On the way in, they started telling me, we're going to break you. And I laughed at them. I said, you ain't got it in you to break me. An,d at the moment, I thought the dude was full of it, right? I mean, he's just trying to scare me.

Ralph [00:14:01] These people tried to break me. Stripped me naked, left me in the cell for 30 days, and then Walla Walla’s four-wing [segregation unit]. In November, it's cold, there’s no heating up for it. This place is old, this is an 1800s prison. And they would parade me around up and down the tier, no smock, no nothing, which is in the law that they're supposed to give you at night. None of that. Well, it's walking up to the showers and back naked with a dog leash, on a handcuff and to top all that off. I publicly disclosed that? They wrote on the paperwork, No, no sanction was ever given. Until my next presence, when they explained that none of that ever happened. So fast forward. Then they put me next to somebody that was mentally unstable. This individual for six months pounded on his wall, pounded on his floor, pounded on his toilet at all hours. I mean, it was two o'clock in the morning and two o´clock in the afternoon, it didn't matter, he was pounding. That's what they did to try and break me the first time I went in that place. I feel like when we talk about the psychological warfare, the mental warfare that goes on in the system, I think there needs to be a really aggressive look at the harms that are committed by facilities intentionally. Like these things are done intentionally. When you paint a yellow line on the floor, if you're not standing on that line, that's what we call mainline? You ain't getting nothing. You don't get to eat for that time. Now keep this in mind, this is what I ask everybody in the community to keep in mind. Some of these folks in there are taking medication so they can deal with that place. So, they're taking drugs like anatriptaline, they're taking medication to put them to sleep, medication to wake them up. So, some of these guys are pretty drugged up. And this is an environment that the Department of Corrections creates.

Ralph [00:16:26] So I think examining the practices. If these people aren't willing to change their practices, then they shouldn't be doing this job. If you have an issue with change, then you definitely shouldn't work for the state. Because, like you said... We want people to come home better than what they came in as. The need, from my perspective, is actually stop treating people like animals. It's not having empathy for people that are going through a lot of trauma, whether it be generational, whether it be institutional, whether it be, you know, whatever else it might be, every bar is a word. The real cause is people in those places should be empathetic to that. And we need to understand that we're trying to help people be better. 80 to 90% of people incarcerated are going home at some point or another. So, if we don't examine these issues and we don t really take the time to help people understand that they are human, they make mistakes, but let's learn from them and let's look at how we can coexist. If gangs can do it on a prison yard, then anybody can do this. I really think taking a real look at evil, from the ones that quote unquote have the power to send us home. That needs to change first. And if we don't change that, those places will never change. And neither will mass incarceration.

Anthony [00:18:15] You said it all right there. I'm just thinking back to, you're not one of one. Your story's not one-of-one, right? Of them trying to break you and strip you naked and all of that. Like, you know, they were telling me to kill myself while I'm, you know, you know what I mean? And in the jail I was at, they had the, you know, I was in Pierce County Jail. They had the... The microphone, they was telling me to kill myself, right? Just do it, just do this, right? These are guards telling me do that. Like, you know, so it's like, that, who's the monster, right, who the monster?

Ralph [00:19:00] Yeah.

Anthony [00:19:01] Who's the monster? The person who does like a crime of passion or someone who is torturing somebody every single day, a system that's torturing somebody every single day. We use the system as an excuse for abuse, right? All the time is, you know, you can't pinpoint the person who's doing the harm because the whole system is doing harm, right? But you can. You can hold these individuals accountable and you can make a change. As you said, nobody like that should be working for the state. We shouldn't be paying people to abuse others like that, yet we are. They got more accountability for police than they do for the guards, right?

Ralph [00:19:43] No, yeah, so like, for myself, out of 26 years that I've been incarcerated, close to 10 has been done is solitary confinement throughout the various intensive management units in Washington state. You know, like you said, through that experience, I had just done a two years in solitary and then when I was really back to general pop, I had a visit from my mom and when she went to hug me, I like froze and she looked at me and she was like, boy, what's wrong with you? I said, I'm not used to being touched. Like, let me know you're going to do that first. And she didn't understand or couldn't comprehend why I reacted that way, you know. And, and then there's been times where they, they put me in, in a solitary for something that happened somewhere else, it wasn't even for something that I did, they just wanted me off the main line, you know? So, I hear exactly what you're saying. So you know, moving forward, what do you think alternatives to solitary confinement look like?

Anthony [00:21:01] Yeah, we are working on them. We're working hard on creating pathways that are alternatives to solitary. But to be honest with you, it's a step process. We come up against the Department of Corrections. They were like, you know, they had a press release and they were like well, we're trying to reduce solitary by 90%. Like, OK, great goal. We want to reduce by 100, but we'll take, you know, we'll take whatever y'all are working with. We'll work with you and that's the starting place, right? But what they also said was that they need $228 million to do so. And they weren't trying to close down facilities. They weren't trying to, or, you know IMUs, or you know Maximum Custody facility. They weren't trying to do none of that. All they were trying to do was get people out of the solitary cells. And that's not what we're after, right. We want people to not go in. It's December of 2024 and I think we got a report that said 700 people are in solitary confinement right now, right? Like that's absurd. And so, we're expecting these people to get out into our communities and be healthy. You know, when I was talking with leadership of Department of Corrections with legislators in the room. This person has said, there are people in there who hasn't talked to people in over a year and they don't want out of solitary. What are we going to do with them? The problem then lies in is, what did we do to that person to make it so that they don' t want to communicate with anybody? So, these alternatives, we really need to take a mental health approach to what alternatives look like. You know, we have our legislation and what our, and we're, we found like, because we couldn't, we couldn’t rock with this, uh $228 million budget, right? Like our goal is to ultimately close down prisons, not, not pull, you know, more money into them.

Ralph [00:23:08] You said that there's only like 700 people in max custody, but I'm curious as to how many are also in those transfer pods because now they're just saying, oh, well, they're in a transfer pod. So their custody level is reading something different than where they're being housed, but it's still IMU, it's still an intensive management unit and they're still being treated the same, even though off paper it says their custody was different, there had just been a transfer pod. So how do we generate awareness around that?

Anthony [00:23:44] This is this is one of the things I keep on asking them. To be honest with you is I ask DOC all the time. And I just had a meeting with them, you know last week and we were talking about this bill and another important part about this bill is we're also trying to change the burden of proof, you know? Because as you know, like it right now is "some evidence" standard. So, it can be a guard saying one thing, you know? And you have five other people, uh, close to the medic, right? Being like, no, that didn't happen. They can still, you now take away everything from you, right. And, um, because that's "some evidence" standard is very low. You know? We've heard people being able to saying like, they got video evidence. It's doing one thing. Yet they still give somebody an infraction, right? And so having that higher level of uh of standard to a preponderance of evidence [is crucial].

Ralph [00:24:43] In relation to carceral state. And, and, you know, when we talk about mass incarceration, you know, I think that this issue of solitary confinement is a stepping stone to addressing the real issue and the harms that the carceral state or the prison industrial complex imposed on our communities. So, when we sit there and have that conversation around solitary confinement, I think this really needs to be something fruitful for when we talk about how do we do away with prison. Cause I mean, I, I don't, I know how I feel that from my perspective is prison shouldn't be the answer to our social problems. You know, for, for... Hundreds of years now, they've been locking people up and the majority of them have been people of color. And it hasn't changed anything, right? It criminalizes the communities more by writing more laws that target our communities, right. Sentencing practices and sentencing mechanisms that target all our communities. So I think the question is, how can we use this solitary confinement conversation in regards to the system as a whole? How do you feel we can utilize that?

Anthony [00:26:16] What we're hoping to do is by being able to reduce the population of people that are in solitary confinement, then we can start giving them like some mental health services that they need. Can you imagine? Like if, you know, you reduce that 700 number to, you, know, 50, 60 people, right? And then you give them the, and then, you give them actual care because i mean you probably had to do this what's that what's the program uh that they give you the little business that they gave you while you uh in solitary

Ralph [00:26:53] CAGE YOUR RAGE!

Anthony [00:26:56] Come on now, come on now, and that's been the same for the last 20 years.

Ralph [00:27:06] They switched it now, it's Positive Behavioral Change. It is the same program, it's the same exact stuff, it just got to, you know, they wrapped it in something different, you know they just wrapped it with wrapping paper.

Anthony [00:27:23] Yeah they're synonymous with each other, right? Like if we're talking about a system that's supposed to be of correction, right, we have to start correcting the worst part of our system first. We really do. Like let's name it for what it is, right? It is a system of punishment and it is a system of harm. You go in, the type of food that you eat kills you. The and the pressure wall that you're in, the guards and how they treat you, and the society, how they look, at you, know prisons... It's all built on a system of harm, right? And so we're trying to take a look at how we can change these systems and changing the systems of healing. We have to take a look at what's the worst harm that we can cause, let's mitigate that first, right? Let's start mitigating the harm that we can cause and one way of doing that is through trying to end solitary.

Anthony [00:28:25] Like, let's say, let say I am, you know, I'm getting an infraction and I'm getting a infractions because I, because I'm hoarding my clothes, right, like there's people in there with like five or six pairs of pants or whatever and they think that that's too much. Right? And so they throw them in the hole for something like that, right? And for something that seemingly like a non-issue, would that be a nonissue if he was in the community to say, hey, man, I got a, I got drawers for every day of the week, right. That's not an issue. That's health. That is good health, right, like, and yet, and yet you're being punished for that. You're being punished because you have too much toothpaste, or you got too much you know, things in your room. And on top of that let's just say somebody and, I could, we could go out and just say, somebody has 30 pair of clothes. I'll tell you I got 30 pair of clothes in my place. I'm not a hoarder but like in that little tiny space that you have there, like, um... You know, I can understand, I could understand why having too much. But if somebody has a mental health issue where they're hoarding something or they're collecting things that they shouldn't necessarily have, like, punishing them is not going to help the problem, right? Like, these are people that have dealt with real trauma. Like, I mean, come on, man, like I've been shot at multiple times. I know that, you know, I know the majority of people I know have dealt with, and prison has dealt with some serious trauma, you know, and it's like, is that going to help me? I go inside and then I'm being threatened by guards all the time. I'm going in and I'm watching the opportunities for rehabilitation.

Anthony [00:30:22] The mental health professionals that go in, they're forced to use whatever systems available to them to help you out. And in limited fashion, only at some facilities, and only you get a minimum amount of time to be able to work with a therapist, right? That's wild in itself that we really do not have a good mental health care system for people in prison, because those are the places that they, you know, these are the people who've dealt with some of the most trauma. And if we don't look at them as survivors and victims of trauma, then we're never going to be able to help them though. We're really hoping that we can get some support from the community, support from the administration to really move this thing forward. But it's not going to stop there, right? Even if we pass this bill, we really just cut out a small piece of the sliver, right. We're not talking about, it's going to do a whole bunch, right, it is not going to like reduce the number of people in solitary by that 90%. It's not gonna do that. But what we can hopefully do is bring those numbers down. Hopefully we can start to bring different pieces of legislation forward over the next couple of years to help tackle this issue. That's what we're finding is why we've been trying to hit grand plans, we're trying to change this and do big picture. There are some states that have accomplished it, they're just, you know, but they had the money. We don't have the money to do that, so we're really going after it from this step approach. And we need people. We need people's stories. We need people, you know, we did a rally at the Northwest Detention Center because Ralph, like, I'm, I mean, it's wild. It's not just, it not just prison, right? It's prisons, jails, mental health facilities, youth prison, youth jails, the immigration detention center, right? Like it is pervasive, right? Like, this model of isolating people and putting them in holes and treating them like treating them terribly is not something that's just a prison problem. It is a problem that we have throughout many systems. And it's been going on since the 1800s. Right? You know, so it's wild. We have a lot of work to do. We're not just expecting this over, you know, to just change things overnight. So, you know, our coalition is Survivors Opposing Solitary...

Ralph [00:33:25] Hey, I really appreciate your time and, uh, you know, I added your knowledge to this fight and giving folks a perspective that normally they might not get, right? And because that's the goal of CHOICES, is to really give perspective that mainstream media doesn't always give people, you know, because informed decision is when we make fair decisions. And I think to sum everything up, you know, our people are people. And we need to stop hurting people. We need to heal and we need to find ways to move forward. Anthony, thanks man. I appreciate you.

Megan [00:34:20] Someone who I deeply respect through his work with the TEACH Program and Nuestro Grupo Cultural, Derek, got thrown in the hole around the same time as some other leaders who experienced political retaliation for their work in cultural groups. Felix, for example, spent almost a month in solitary and was released due to community support and we'll link to his article about it in the show notes. NGC does not have the same support network from citizens who speak English, so Derek spent months in solitary. Let's listen to his support in favor of House Bill 1137 in the House Public Safety Committee on January 14th, 2025.

Rep. Goodman [00:34:57] Let's hear now from Derek Collier. Mr. Collier, I believe, is at the Clallam Bay facility.

Derek [00:35:05] Good afternoon, Chair Goodman and members of the committee. My name is Derek Collier, and I am testifying in support of HB 1137. In June of 2023, I was placed in IMU at Stafford Creek Corrections Center for a nonviolent infraction. This occurred after officers took several items from my cell that they said appeared to have suspicious residue in order to swab them with a detected cam presumptive test. One of the items that was swabbed, a Chapstick, turned blue, which indicated a possible presence of MDMA or methamphetamine. The results of this presumptive test were never verified from a lab, despite me requesting this in writing multiple times. Although no actual drugs were ever recovered, I was found guilty of introduction, sanctioned to 75 days loss of good time, six months loss of communication, lifetime loss of visitation with my fiancé, Nicole, and two years in close custody. I was held in solitary for many months, both leading up to and after my hearing. A medical hold was placed on me, which I never asked for. And routine medical appointments were scheduled, then canceled and rescheduled on my behalf, without my knowledge, in order to extend my stay in IMU. During this time, I was unable to place any phone calls, not even to an attorney or to Ombuds. I asked to speak to mental health on multiple occasions and was never acknowledged. None of this should have happened to me. I was found guilty because of a swab test which has been proven to show false positive 38% of the time and has been banned in other states. No evidence ever linked my fiancé to anything, and still DOC was able to take away all visiting privileges from the love of my life and my biggest source of support. Hearings officers should have to consider and weigh all the evidence before finding someone guilty. Some evidence means they are able to choose which facts they want to look at and which they want to ignore. And there's virtually no accountability in the disciplinary process. It is my hope that changes can be made so that this does not happen to others. Please pass HB 1137. I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you.

Megan [00:36:58] The two bills that would have forced the Washington Department of Corrections to meet a minimum standard of evidence both died this year, not even passing out of the House. At the same time, Survivors Opposing Solitary and nationwide projects like Unlock the Box are not giving up. Building up these coalitions, including with people in solitary confinement right now, are crucial to letting them reclaim their humanity.

Ralph [00:37:22] Yeah, having spent so much time in solitary confinement over my 20-plus years of prison, we need to find a way to change this practice. It's only hurting our communities, not the communities that our captors come from. It's crazy when you think about it that in every aspect of society, Indigenous people are underrepresented except for incarceration. And even a greater number is sentenced or impacted by solitary confinement within that percentage. So yeah, if we want to say present stronger communities and we must stand together for that endeavor, it's us who are impacted that should have the say in what the solutions are for our communities.

Ralph [00:38:04] So in our next episode, we'll hear from Ben Brockie, the first known Indigenous person to be released on clemency in Washington state. We'll close out our season thinking about intergenerational trauma, healing and the work of coming home to a community. I hope you all stay tuned in and learn with us how groups of people are finding identity and self-liberation. This episode was produced by Megan Ybarra and edited and mixed by Anvar Hassanpour. Thanks to Anthony Blankenship and Derek Collier. From the Inside Out, this is Ralph Dunuan sending out our best to all and in solidarity for liberation and the community we want.