For Clinton Terrell, dog-eared copies of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Homer’s Odyssey, slipped to him by an older inmate, just about saved him when he was in solitary confinement. Were it not for the classics, Terrell — who just transferred from Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz to UC Berkeley — might still be incarcerated.
But this is no Orange Is the New Black comedy-drama. Terrell served hard time in some of California’s toughest penal institutions for residential burglaries and auto theft, mostly to feed a heroin habit. A 15-month stint in a windowless 8- by-6-foot cell in Tehachapi State Prison’s SHU, or security housing unit, left him with social anxiety that, to this day, makes him dread being touched.
“I got so comfortable being alone that I would get panic attacks when they took me out of my cell,” says Terrell, who has been crime- and drug-free since his release in 2011. “Having a correctional officer handcuff you, touch you, and then walking past the cells with everyone looking at you. I definitely lost my social skills.”
Overhauling solitary confinement
As California embarks on reforming solitary confinement policies in the wake of a landmark settlement that was reached in September, Terrell and thousands of other current and former prisoners continue to suffer from the lingering effects of being isolated in cramped cells 23 hours a day while serving sentences that can stretch from months to years.
A federal class-action suit, filed on behalf of Pelican Bay inmates in 2012, successfully argued that sustained solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. As a result of the settlement, one-third of the state’s 3,000 prisoners who were relegated to isolation – many for suspected gang affiliations – are gradually being transitioned back into general prison populations.
UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, who studies emotion and social interaction, was among the expert witnesses in the case known as Ashker v. the Governor of California. In his brief, Keltner outlined how mammals ranging from rats to chimpanzees to humans learn nurturing, trust, compassion and cooperation through touch.
His is among a broader body of research that helps explain how social isolation might trigger or exacerbate mental illness, causing some prisoners to withdraw so deeply inside themselves that they suffer a form of social death.
“The science is clear. Depriving humans of the ability to touch another human being denies them a basic form of social interaction critical to the functions of soothing in response to stress, creating a sense of safety, and fostering cooperation,” he wrote in his expert witness brief.
From incarceration to academia
Terrell, 30, is among a dozen or so ex-convicts who belong to UC Berkeley’s Underground Scholars Initiative, a 2-year-old campus support group for current and prospective students who have transitioned out of incarceration and into academia.