con_to_dev

My personal feelings about getting 3 years of solitary for marijuana possession are that I got screwed because of a failed social experiment, to be honest.

It is rather common for inmates to read in prison, there is virtually nothing else to do. However, we were only allowed to have 12 books at a time, so I had to mail many home as I acquired new ones to study. I was 20-23 in solitary, and 18-28 during my sentence.

Short term stays are not so bad, the person is stressed, but not showing signs of any real disturbance. The longer term stays are where you see the worst. You will generally notice that the person is just off in some way. They may stare into space rather than at you when you talk to them, pace around and mumble, have twitches or obsessive tics, etc. You will immediately notice who has been there awhile. Some simply have a psychotic break and this is quite obvious as well.

I'll also say that I was speaking rhetorically, you generally can't visit a prison and certainly not the hole. This should be allowed though, people need to see what this does to people.

Possession of marijuana while in a correctional institution. My case got dragged out and I was in solitary until it was resolved.

EDIT: I'll add to this that marijuana was one of the things that helped me in prison. It really did function as a medicine at times, letting me drift away from the craziness of my situation and think about myself and what I wanted to become and the person I wanted to be. I think that helped me to internally rehabilitate myself and become the person I am today.

I read and solved most of the problems from Walter Rudin's Real and Complex Analysis, Stephen Willard's General Topology, and a small collection of other books I bought with my limited funds and had shipped to me. I mostly bought from Dover, which has a very nice collection of quality math texts for very low prices, I will say.

My learning method was to try to get up to three texts on the same subject, so I could compare different treatments of the material. This was beneficial because if one text was unclear, I could compare with how the other texts explained this concept and it would hopefully dawn upon me what is right and makes sense. Other than that, I can say that I was at it 8 to 10 hours a day and in many respects, it was my one form of entertainment. I solved PDE's or proved theorems like other people did sudoku or crosswords. I looked at the problems as puzzles and tried very hard to solve them because it was all I had that was amusing. I also became very aware of how beautiful mathematics is and I truly began to love it. That passion helped a lot.

Anonymous account because my employers don't know this. I spent 3 years in solitary confinement in Virginia during my 10 year sentence and the experience definitely changed me, though probably was actually beneficial in a strange way. I spent the time focused on mathematics and actually became a decent analyst near the end of it. I continued studying math until my release, after which I went to college and eventually got a PhD in it. After deciding not to pursue a career in academia, I became a developer and have recently moved into data science, which I like better because I get to use my mathematical skills along with programming.

My experience is obviously atypical though. I saw many people mentally deteriorate, attempt suicide, and essentially give up hope in life while under this sanction. What is worse, the state at that time was imposing a truly inhumane punishment on the rastafarian community within prisons. Due to the rastas not following prison grooming habits by refusing to shave off their dreadlocks, the prison system moved a group of them into the hole. When I left it, some had been there for 10 years straight. I can assure you that many of these men were deeply disturbed.

I was lucky in that I have a psychology that can endure this sort of abuse and come out of it stronger, but most people are not wired like this. Given what I have seen, this really is tantamount to torture. I wish so much that normal US citizens would tour a prison and see what this does to people, because maybe then this would be outlawed.