WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OHIO PRISONS?

People incarcerated at OSP spend 23 hours aday in their cell; two days each week they arenot released from their cells at all.

When they leave their cell it is either for a 15-minute shower three times a week or for one hour of recreation five days a week. Recreation can be either inside or outside, weather permitting. At OSP, indoor recreation is simply leaving one cell to enter a different one about 50 feet away. Yeah, I go to rec but what’s the point of me going to recreation when it ain’t nothing but me leaving my cell and go into this cell? -Bobby Williams, prisoner at OSP Each time a person is taken out of their cell to visits, to sit in a programming cage, or to medical care, they are stripsearched in a cage before being placed back into their cell. Each time a person exits their cell, they are handcuffed, put in leg shackles, and both wrist and ankle shackles are connected to a belt around the stomach. If a person needs medical care, they are placed in a medical cage. 

Imagine you are locked inside a prison cell the size of your bathroom for 23 hours a day. You are released from this cell for one hour a day, when you are escorted to a different cage the size of a walk-in closet meant for recreation. Sometimes, perhaps on a weekend or when the weather is bad, you don’t get out at all. You eat your meals in this room, just a few feet away from your toilet; you have limited access to books and televisions. This is solitary confinement in Ohio. 

Solitary confinement goes by many names in Ohio – restrictive housing, local control, disciplinary control, protective custody, or administrative segregation. No matter what you call it, solitary confinement is extreme isolation in a cell for 21+ hours a day. Solitary confinement is often used as a first resort for minor rule violations like making too much noise, talking back to a corrections officer, testing positive for drugs, possessing too many items, awaiting transfer to a different facility, or even as housing for people who have attempted suicide.