"It Felt Hopeless, Like You Were Going to Die” — The Abuse in Miami Correctional Facility’s Dark Cells

Content warning: This blog discusses abusive prison conditions, psychological trauma, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts.

Imagine living not only in solitary confinement but also in near-total darkness, unable to tell day from night or even see your hand in front of your face. You can’t move safely around the cell without hitting the metal toilet or the bunk. You can’t properly clean the floor around you, even though it may frequently be flooded with sewage. You wait days for a chance to shower or leave the cell, and then only for 15 minutes. One prisoner described it as feeling like “being in a casket, with noises, screams, and silence.” Another said it felt hopeless, like he was going to die.

That is what our clients endured in the dark cells at Miami Correctional Facility.

The ACLU of Indiana recently finalized settlements totaling more than $1.2 million on behalf of 31 people who were held in those abusive conditions. The settlements are the result of lawsuits we filed against the Indiana Department of Correction after many clients came forward with strikingly similar accounts of the serious physical and psychological harms they suffered in the dark.

The first litigation began in early 2021 with a case filed on behalf of Jeremy Blanchard, but we began hearing from numerous men held in these dark, dilapidated, and dangerous cells as early as 2020. Our lawsuit alleged that Blanchard was unlawfully moved into one of these dilapidated and dangerous cells – and left there for weeks despite repeatedly alerting staff to the conditions. His story was not unique; it was part of a much larger pattern that had already begun to emerge.

What they described was horrific. In these cells, the lights did not work, and air from outside entered through the edges of the steel plates that covered what had once been windows, leaving people to endure frigid temperatures in the winter. In the summer, the cells became oppressively hot and filled with bugs, forcing people to hear and feel them in the dark without being able to see them. And all this time, the cells remained in near-total darkness around the clock. Some of the small windows in cell doors were cracked or blocked. Several people described not being able to see well enough to move safely around the cell, clean the floor, or tell whether it was day or night. The conditions went beyond darkness alone: wastewater often flooded the unit, many cells had dangling live wires, and some of the men reported painful shocks while they were held there. Experts also documented that prisoners went many days without showers, lacked cleaning supplies, and were denied recreation and other necessities.

The psychological toll was just as devastating as the physical conditions. Our clients described panic attacks, hallucinations, paranoia, deep depression, self-harm, and thoughts of suicide.

One individual said,

Another said,

Expert reports make it clear that prison officials were warned about the impact these conditions were having. According to one plaintiff, the warden told the men that if they missed having daylight, they could “draw the sun on the steel plates.” The reports also include descriptions from mental health staff who witnessed the brutality. One staff member said, “COVID became an excuse to not treat these people like human beings,” adding that he feared his co-workers more than he did the prisoners.

Even experienced corrections officials were appalled by the conditions. A former Washington state corrections leader who reviewed the conditions as an expert witness said he had never seen “such a blatant and systematic application of isolation and sensory deprivation, deviating from correctional standards and common sense.”

Lawsuits like these are hard to file, expensive, and incredibly time-consuming. Because of that, and the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which severely limits the attorneys’ fees that private attorneys can recover in cases for prisoners, people experiencing a range of abuse and neglect in prisons rarely get any measure of justice. The ACLU of Indiana receives 700 to 800 requests for legal help from Hoosiers each month, and about 62% come from people being held in Indiana jails or prisons. Despite our small legal department, we continue to prioritize as many of these cases as possible, because no other organizations in the state have the resources or expertise to take them. Communication with people in jails and prisons is difficult, gathering facts is complicated, and federal law blocks many potential lawsuits from even getting off the ground.

One of the most prominent barriers is the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), passed in 1996, which significantly narrows the ability of incarcerated people and their lawyers to seek relief for abuse or neglect in our nation’s jails, prisons, and juvenile detention systems. The ACLU has long called for the repeal of the PLRA, and we continue to do so because it is one reason abuse and neglect remain rampant in correctional systems across the country.

We also call for decreased use of incarceration through the decriminalization of failed laws, like the prohibition on marijuana, expanded alternatives to detention, an end of mandatory minimum sentences, and greater use of executive clemency. Overcrowding and the warehousing of people in jails and prisons are two more drivers of the abuse and neglect we hear about far too often.

But even once these reforms are won, the ACLU of Indiana will continue to prioritize the constitutional rights of people who are incarcerated. The Eighth Amendment does not allow abuse and neglect to become part of a person’s punishment. When our institutions fail to uphold that basic principle, seeking justice is one way to insist they do better.