Six by Ten

by Mateo Hoke

  It’s very easy to get dehydrated in the SHU. They have this toilet and sink combination in the cell. One big metal thing. It deters you from drinking the water from the sink since it’s like it’s coming out of the toilet. And you don’t have lotion or anything, so your skin gets dry. It’s almost like being out in the wilderness, in the elements with nothing.

  My time in the cell was supposed to be twenty-three hours a day. But I did a lot of twenty-four-hour days. Rec for people in the SHU is in a big steel cage. You’re cuffed, taken out, and walked to this twenty-by-thirty-foot outdoor cage. There’s nothing in it like a table to sit at or a ball to play with or anything. But I didn’t go every day. The guards would do little spiteful things, like, it’s fourteen degrees, but they’ll say, “Oh, we don’t have coats today.” You can go, but you’ll just be in your standard-issue short-sleeve shirt. One time they took me out in the morning when it was raining freezing rain. And they didn’t give me a coat or anything. I was in my short-sleeve prison greens.

  I passed the time by reading a lot of law books. A guard would come by sometimes with a book cart, but they didn’t have much besides law books. When you have nothing but time, you can go through a book pretty fast. So I started filing a lot of lawsuits! There’s really nothing else to do.

  Other than reading, I was sleeping. The more you sleep, the more you want to sleep. You don’t know if it’s day or night. In the SHU, hygiene is on the back burner. You might shower three times a week, but that’s only if they decide to let you.

  I saw my family on visit days. At first, I wrote them a lot, but after a while, there was nothing else to say. How many times can I tell you that I’m doing nothing? Mentally, nothing happens in the SHU. That’s the problem. You can entertain yourself for a little while. And when you run out of things to make up—there’s no stimulation. None. Time stands still in there. Everything just stops. I created dreams in my head. I don’t know. You run out of ideas, and that’s when you start questioning your sanity.

  I made a couple of games. I was allowed to have manila envelopes and folders and a pen. So I tore them up to make a deck of cards. But once I altered the envelopes, they were contraband. I wasn’t allowed to have those cards, so the guards took them. I also made a little peg-jump game out of one of my legal folders. They took that, too. I played tic-tac-toe with myself for a couple of days. I don’t remember who won. I got beat a lot! I could write piano and keyboard songs on the paper. That was okay. They never took that.

  The guards did random cell searches. Their system was that every day they picked two cells in every corridor to randomly search. But I was on a corridor where there was only one occupied cell—mine. So I got “randomly” searched twice a day. The objective was to keep you in nothingness.

  TO THEM I WAS ON HUNGER STRIKE

  Then I stopped eating. One day I got my food and my rice was green. I didn’t trust it at that point. When I stopped eating, I was still taking the tray of food. One day, I was out on a visit when my food came, and when I got back the meal was just sitting in my cell. I think it was supposed to be waffles, but it was mashed up into this mountain of I don’t know what. I told the guards, “It would be really fucked up if I actually wanted to eat this, right?”

  I started refusing the tray of food altogether. And when I started refusing the tray, then to them I was on hunger strike. They’d have a nurse in my cell five times a day taking my urine and checking my blood pressure. I went months eating very little food. When I had my visit on that Saturday or Sunday, I would eat all I could eat from the vending machines on the visiting floor. Every now and then, if there was bread that came in that was untainted, I would take the meal and maybe I’d eat the bread. They told me they’d get a court order to force-feed me, but they never did it. I started eating again when I got transferred out of Albion.

  In October 2012, four months after she began her first yearlong sentence in the SHU, Tonja was given two additional 180-day sentences. The first sentence was for allegedly falsely reporting a sexual assault by one of the guards outside her SHU cell. The second was for an incident two weeks later in which Tonja mailed a sample of her food to the US District Court in Buffalo as evidence in support of a lawsuit she had filed.

  They transferred me down to the Bedford SHU from Albion. I was never told why, but it happened soon after I went for a medical check and they found that I’d lost over eighty pounds. Then I was in the Bedford SHU for almost seven months. It was better than Albion. Even down to the rec. When I did get to go to rec I had at least some interaction with other inmates, some human contact. Back at Albion I’d been in an isolated cage.

  At Bedford, sometimes there’d be another three or four people. There was a basketball, a table. At Bedford the contact with the officer was more frequent. Every now and then an officer would actually come to the door and have a conversation. Some were genuinely concerned—“You alright?” Any conversation makes a huge difference. I don’t know if it keeps you sane, but it helps. My family would visit once a week, and that helped.

  Mentally and physically I was a lot better at Bedford. It’s still a SHU, and SHU is a world of its own. You just sit idle. That’s just pretty much it. Being in SHU at Albion had even affected my eyesight. My depth perception was gone. I couldn’t make things out more than six feet in front of me.

  In other ways, Bedford lagged. Bedford was notorious for turning away visitors. I’d talk to my family on the phone after they missed a visit, and I’d say, “I was told you didn’t come.” And they’d tell me, “Oh, really? Because they refused to let us in.”

  I got out of SHU with about a year left on my sentence. Going back to the regular prison population was a trip. I wanted out of that SHU cell so, so badly, but then when I was out I almost couldn’t deal with it. If all I can drink is water and then you give me the opportunity to drink something else—I’m like, yeah, I could, but I think I’ll just settle on the water. I didn’t know how to act at all, it’s like, Damn I’m dealing with people now. Really delicate. The normal everyday feelings that people have, you don’t have that.

  So even though I was out of SHU, I kept getting tickets and they’d give me “keep lock”—where they lock you in your regular cell for twenty-three hours a day. It’s better than SHU in some ways, like you have your stuff and see people moving about, but worse in other ways because you are so close to other activity but have to just sit in your cell. I guess that creates more of a yearning to participate in whatever is going on around you. I think I spent about eight months of my last year in prison in keep lock for various lengths of time, a month here, two months there.

  THE EFFECT OF RELEASE WAS IMMEDIATE

  I got out March 28, 2014. The effect of release was immediate. You’re used to being in a cell by yourself, and that’s what your brain has accepted, that’s what you’re conditioned to. And you’ll also feel like anyone else that’s in that cell is a threat to you. I was fine coming home, until we hit Grand Central station. I couldn’t deal with the people, there were too many people. I was like, Okay, I really can’t do this. I spent the first night at home. I reacted poorly to the presence or attention of another person. I didn’t know I’d react that way. You can’t go to that from not being around anyone. It was an issue with everything, including my marriage.

  To this day, there are a lot of things that I’m still dealing with. I have developed zero tolerance for anything. I wasn’t like this before. And there have been certain times when my sons are like All right, calm down. I’ll explain my logic and it makes sense to me, but they say, “Really?” They don’t know what I’ve been through. There’s a way that I react to things because I’ve been subjected to this for so long. There are times when I’m living and I’m like, Damn, do I really want this?

  I often say to anyone who offends me: you know something? Swing on me and hit me. It may hurt, but that wound will heal, and I’ll get over it. But if you say some
thing to me, it’s going to resonate in my mind forever. I’m never going to get over it. And solitary, the effect is like those words that resonate forever. No matter what, I can still remember the first day they put me in, the first hours of that feeling. That feeling is probably stronger than any other, and that’s the smallest part of my solitary stint.

  When it comes to solitary, I don’t think anyone is thinking about the consequences. If someone is a menace to society, and you isolate them, yes, you are going to make it safer for everyone else, but eventually you’ve got to let them out. Yes, the public is safe for that time, but now you have this menace who is developing a shitload of other problems. It’s like taking a dog, putting it in a cage and mistreating it for years, and then letting it loose in a playground with children. It’s going to act exactly how you’d expect it to act.

  WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS WHOLE DAMN LAWSUIT?

  In August 2017, Tonja was rearrested on new charges stemming from allegations made by her former girlfriend and reincarcerated with a new four-year prison sentence. We spoke with Tonja shortly after she arrived at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, where she had been placed back in solitary confinement pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing.

  I’m bugging right now. On the outside, I was making progress—I got into a relationship, I had somewhere to live. When I ended the relationship, allegations were made, and the court told me I couldn’t go back there anymore. Then I got another case. I had all the odds stacked against me. I already have a criminal record, you know? The judge told me she was going to give me the max, like fifteen years or something. So now I have four years, but I’m fighting from the inside to overturn this conviction.

  I just got served with a ticket and they put me in SHU. This ticket does not warrant me being in SHU. Even if I am found guilty of all three of these charges, the maximum I can get is thirty days in keep lock. So why do they have me in SHU? Isn’t that what we fought against? What was the point of this whole damn lawsuit? The system has the upper hand.

  * * *

  38. Starkville is a town of twenty-five thousand people.

  39. Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women is a maximum-security prison in Westchester County, New York, fifty miles north of New York City. It’s the only women’s maximum-security prison in New York State.

  40. The “bing” is slang for a solitary confinement cell in Rikers.

  41. In 2015, New York City ended this practice, known as the “old time policy,” where anyone who left Rikers prior to serving their complete solitary confinement sentence would be forced to serve the remainder if they were ever returned to Rikers. In December 2017, the city agreed to pay $5 million to individuals held in solitary confinement under the policy.

  42. Albion Correctional Facility is a women’s prison in Albion, New York, approximately 350 miles northwest of New York City and 35 miles west of Rochester.

  LEVI STUEY

  age: 35

  born in: Vallejo, California

  interviewed in: Stockton and Vallejo, California

  Levi Stuey is built like an armored vehicle—tough and compact. He has light, short-cropped hair, plenty of scars, and his nose has been broken at least once.43 A front tooth is chipped, giving his frequent smile the look of a kid who just started losing teeth. He’s covered in tattoos, including white power symbols on his arms and neck.

  When we first meet, Levi is wrapping up a year spent living in a halfway house in Stockton, California. Levi grew up in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, California.44 After getting introduced to drugs at a young age, Levi became accustomed to juvenile detention and the California state prison system, often spending months in solitary for various offenses. During our conversations, Levi discusses the politics in California prisons and the reasons it’s better for many to be placed in solitary for committing an assault on another prisoner than to be in protective custody for having been assaulted.

  THEY WOKE ME UP OUT OF BED, GUNS DRAWN

  I was born in 1983, in Vallejo, California. I didn’t know my dad—I was with my mom at first. I grew up with a big family around me when I was young, and we all lived within a few-block radius of each other. My grandma’s house was like the main hub, and then a block north up the street was my cousin’s and my uncle’s house, and then maybe another two blocks to the east was my aunt’s house. Growing up in Vallejo was alright. I mean, it wasn’t completely harsh when I was in grade school. I had a lot of friends. I was popular.

  When I was with my mom, I was a single child, and I had everything I wanted—toys, food, clothing. But when she got pissed off, then it was a whole different story. She could get violent. I don’t know if it was toward everyone. I know it was toward me. Like if I had toys lying around or something, she’d get mean and say, “I’ll beat your fucking ass. Pick your shit up.”

  I was hit, that’s for sure. I wasn’t spanked. I was hit. Sometimes it might be a kick. Sometimes it might be getting hit with a toy. I remember one time, we were supposed to go somewhere and I was just shoving my toys out of the way, getting the floor cleared, and she came in out of nowhere and was screaming at me to clean up my mess. And as she’s telling me to clean it, she’s throwing shit all over the place, throwing shit toward me, and trying to smack me. And I’m crying and trying to pick everything up while she’s tearing my room apart and telling me to clean it up. But she’d always be nice in front of other people.

  Then one night when I was in second or third grade, the cops came in. They busted down the door. They completely tore the house apart. They woke me up out of bed, guns drawn.

  I’m a baby still, you know what I mean? And I get woken up by a police officer. I’m told to get dressed. I get dressed. I’m like, “Where’s my mom?” I remember walking through the house and it looking like if you were to take a dollhouse and shake it with everything in it, and then see where everything lands.

  My aunt—my mom’s sister—came and picked me up. I’m asking, “What’s going on? Is Mom okay?” And my aunt told me it was all a misunderstanding. Everything was going to be okay. It was kind of pushed under the rug, and I’m a kid so I wasn’t really asking a lot of questions.

  My mom didn’t go to jail, but after that, I went and lived with my grandma. My mom had an apartment down the way, too, but I was never really there. I was mainly living with my grandma and going to school, which I didn’t like. I just didn’t want to be there, you know? I’d wait for the day to go by and then go home and play. I’d want to go to the creek and jump around in the water and crawl around and fish and shit like that. Have fun.

  I LEARNED HOW TO BLEND IN

  I was nine years old when I took my first hit of meth. It was at a friend’s house, on Christmas. My grandma was in the hospital. My uncles and aunts and everybody were there with my grandma. So I went and stayed the night at my friend’s house, and in the middle of the night, his older brother was like, “Hey, you want to smoke some shit?” And I was like, “Alright. What’s it going to do?” So me and my friend’s mom and his brother got high. This was in their apartment in downtown Vallejo, in the mom’s room. It was weird. I mean, here I am hanging out with somebody much older than me, doing something I’m not supposed to do. But I felt cool. I still didn’t even know my own body yet. I just knew whatever was going on, I liked it.

  It fucked me up. I don’t remember much, but I know it kept me up—I don’t know—five days or something like that. After being up for five days, my friend was like, “You look like shit.” With the amount that we smoked that night, if I were to smoke that today, I’d be able to go to sleep. But being so young and having such an underdeveloped body, it had ten times the effect then than it would have on me now.

  I wanted to smoke meth again. But even though I’d smoked it, I didn’t really know what meth was or how to get it, so I didn’t have access. That was about it. I don’t think any
body really noticed. It wasn’t like I was smoking and smoking and smoking. In a way I was still innocent because I was really into sports. I was a star football player. I played football, boxed, raced BMX bikes, all nine yards. So I still did all that. But smoking that first time definitely changed me.

  I’d say one thing was that experience opened my eyes to what was going on within my own family. I got curious about my own realm. I already thought my mom was weird. As a kid I was always wondering, Why’s she acting like that? But after hanging out with my friend and seeing how his mom was, things started clicking. I mean, not everybody in my family was using meth, but there were people close to me using. I understood right away that my mom was using. It was like, Oh, okay. I get it. She’s one of them. That’s why she’s acting the way she’s acting.

  The end of grade school, around fifth grade, is when it started getting a little rough. I had a bunch of older cousins, and they just really weren’t the best influences in my life. I started drinking, smoking cigarettes. Then one uncle had this little lawn chair that he always sat in outside, and the lawn chair had a cup holder in the armrest, and I’d find doobies in the cup holder. I’d take them and I’d smoke what was left. I met some older kids who would sell me a little. My cousins would catch me smoking, and then instead of saying, “What are you doing?” it was like, “Why are you smoking that shit? Try this instead.” So it just progressed, and I got used to better weed.

  Around that time, I was with some kids from the neighborhood, and one of them had a neighbor across the street who had this gold model plane that we could see through the window of the house. The kids I was with dared me to go through the window and grab the plane, so I did. I took it, then I went home. Hours later, the Vallejo police were at the door. They took me to the police station, booked me, and then my uncle had to come get me. I ended up in juvenile hall for breaking and entering.