FAILURE TO OBEY:
Inside Solitary Confinement in Arkansas
Reported & Written by DeMarco Raynor and Anna Stitt
Before you start—please note that this series covers some intense things,
including bodily fluids, abuse, and suicide. To the extent that is possible for you,
we hope that you can stay with the story as something that’s happening now,
right nearby, in the name of public safety.
But please take care of yourself as you move through.
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ARRIVING
CHAPTER ONE
Letter from DeMarco Raynor, in solitary confinement at the
Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, Arkansas:
October 5th, 2020—
When COVID-19 hit the Cummins prison in Arkansas in spring of 2020, DeMarco Raynor decided to go public about the conditions. He talked to Arkansas media. The New Yorker. Mother Jones. He asked them to use his name. He didn’t want to let the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) win by intimidating him into silence or anonymity.
His voice aired on public radio in June, and prisoners huddled around the radio. Guards paged them to the front of the unit. But at the risk of punishment, they stayed to listen.
In September, guards came and got Raynor and shipped him to solitary confinement inside the Tucker Maximum Security Unit.
While he was there, he sent letters to Anna Stitt.
Letter from Demarco Raynor:
November 1st, 2020—
I’ve witnessed 3 senseless incidents where guys were pepper-sprayed and they posed no threat to security, themselves, or other inmates—not to mention that they’re in a one-man cell… One of those guys was taken out of the barracks with absolutely no clothes on (NAKED)…nothing but handcuffs… You have to have a strong mind to make it through this unit without losing it and I truly mean that.
A guy hung himself Tuesday night and the guards allowed his body to hang in the door for several hours before cutting his body down…
His name was Adam Green.
[Photo of the sheet Green used to hang himself and the cellblock where he lived.]
Letter from DeMarco Raynor, continued:
The things I’m telling you I know sound like a book or movie but these are absolute truths of what’s transpiring behind the walls of the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC).
This four-part series is a collaboration between Anna Stitt (outside) and DeMarco Raynor (inside). It’s a blend of investigative reporting, first-person accounts sent to Stitt from Raynor and other people incarcerated at the Maximum Security Unit (lightly edited and published with consent), and analysis.
Our focus is solitary confinement in Arkansas. Our goal is to deepen dialogue about what it will take to end the violence of the prison system.
Solitary confinement is not a term used by the ADC. Instead, it uses the terms restrictive housing, punitive housing or isolation, and supermax. They’re all different—one hour outside the cell every 24 hours vs. two, a slit of a window vs. none, access to approved books vs. access to only one religious text like the Qur’an or Bible. But they all fit the United Nations' definition: “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.”
The harm of solitary confinement is well-established. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations have said that long-term solitary is torture and against international law. Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office has raised concerns. We know prolonged solitary frequently
pushes people over the edge into psychological crisis and self-harm.
It’s difficult to keep an accurate count of how many people have lived through solitary confinement in the U.S. But in 2019, a U.S. survey of state and federal prisons showed more than 75,000 people in restrictive housing. (They didn’t include jails, youth detention facilities, or immigration detention facilities, so the actual number is higher.). Arkansas consistently has one of the highest percentages of state prisoners in solitary confinement (at least 11%).
In every strategic plan since 2015, the Arkansas Department of Correction has set a goal of reducing the number of people in restrictive housing. But in 2022, the ADC tightened the disciplinary guidelines so that people can officially be sent to solitary for things they couldn’t before, like having red eyes (even if a urine drug test comes back clean).
And, also in 2022, the Arkansas legislature gave the ADC $75 million for prison expansion, which the Board of Corrections said they planned to use to build one- and two-person cells. On October 31st, 2024, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the next phase of this endeavor, the purchase of an 815-acre property for $2.95 million in Charleston, Arkansas
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Just like policing, the U.S. prison system is a collective problem that impacts all of us in various ways. But while cell phone cameras and social media have helped increase the visibility of police brutality, incarceration is still a largely invisible crisis.
Knowledge of solitary confinement is even more limited since people in isolation often lose access to their support networks, try to get their needs met in ways that are punished by guards, receive even more time in isolation, and end up disconnected from other prisoners and society overall.
We invite you to engage with the series with this question in mind. Why, when we know solitary confinement seriously harms people, is it still expanding?