--- title: Albert Woodfox: Former Inmate Describes Hell of Solitary Confinement description: Graves, who was exonerated in 2010, describes his time in solitary—and why the system needs to change canonical: https://time.com/3915168/solitary-confinement/ author: Anthony Graves article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-10T15:02:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:59.021Z article:section: Ideas og:title: I Spent 16 Years in Solitary Confinement Hell. It Needs to End. og:description: Graves, who was exonerated in 2010, describes his time in solitary—and why the system needs to change og:url: https://time.com/3915168/solitary-confinement/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5f11a31fe86fad53/698853caa988ca13d96b2f29/prison.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Interiors Of A Prison og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Spent 16 Years in Solitary Confinement Hell. It Needs to End. twitter:description: Graves, who was exonerated in 2010, describes his time in solitary—and why the system needs to change twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5f11a31fe86fad53/698853caa988ca13d96b2f29/prison.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # I Spent 16 Years in Solitary Confinement Hell. It Needs to End. > Sponsored content. 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Chris Carney, an ex-convict, rebuilds a life in the real world after landing a job as a building superintendent_ by [Anthony Graves](https://time.com/author/anthony-graves/) ## Anthony Graves Jun 10, 2015 3:02 PM UTC  Interiors Of A Prison Interiors Of A Prison Getty Images by [Anthony Graves](https://time.com/author/anthony-graves/) ## Anthony Graves Jun 10, 2015 3:02 PM UTC Whatever you think hell is, that’s what solitary confinement is—365 days a year, 24 hours a day. It’s a system that seems designed to break a man’s will to live. I spent 18 and a half years in prison, 12 on death row, for a crime I did not commit. Sixteen of those years were in solitary confinement. I was exonerated and released in 2010. Because I was innocent, I never let myself feel like a death-row inmate. I tried to think of my years in solitary confinement as a kind of boarding school to prepare me to come out and be a messenger for justice today. But by no means was it easy. The way they treated me was dehumanizing. It was like I was an animal. I had 60 square feet, with four walls that seemed to close in on me every day. I could sometimes hear guys screaming. The routine was always the same: I would get up in the morning at 3 a.m. for breakfast, which could be a cold egg, a biscuit, and an expired pint of milk. Around 5:30 a.m. the guards would come, make me strip, handcuff me, and lead me 30 steps to a larger room for an hour of rec time by myself. Then they would make me strip, handcuff me again, and take me to the showers. Lunch started at around 9 a.m. It was food you wouldn’t feed to your dog, even if he tore up your best pair of shoes. Then I’d write letters and work on my case. At about 3 p.m. I’d get my final meal—the last food I’d have until the next morning. As the death-row guards would say, they aren’t there to feed you; they’re there to keep you alive until they kill you. Solitary confinement plays tricks on your mind. You’re bound by four walls, you’re cut off from society, and you’re left with just your own thoughts. Sometimes you start to feel like, if they treat me like this, I’m going to act like this. And then you risk becoming the kind of person that it seems like they’re trying to tell society that you are. Human contact was what I missed most—something that told me that I was still loved, and that I was still able to love. We don’t realize how important human contact is. When we give hugs and shake hands, it’s because we need to. I don’t know how to explain the emptiness it leaves when you are not allowed human contact anymore. It felt like they were starving me to death. When I got out, the first person I hugged was my attorney. We hugged, and we cried—for what happened to me, for what my mother went through, and for my children, who hadn’t touched their father in 18 and a half years. And then I went home and hugged my mother. The day that I was released, Oct. 27, 2010, I walked out of solitary confinement and into the free world. I’ve been able to transition with a lot of support around me. But many inmates don’t have that kind of support. Freeing an inmate from solitary can be risky. You’re taking someone who has had no hope, no tools to succeed in this world, and you’re putting them back in society and asking them to do the right thing. Sometimes they’re so angry and hopeless that they commit another crime just to go back in. Solitary confinement is designed to keep you in it; it’s not designed to get you out of it. Sometimes you do need to separate inmates. But we need a system that’s designed to counsel them and help them transition back into society—not keep them locked up alone for years, driving them out of their minds. Solitary confinement has no place in our criminal justice system. It’s time we acknowledge that. If we’re going to be a better society, solitary confinement has to go. ## Transcript [00:00] >>You [00:02] know when you're incarcerated it's all you dream of to [00:03] have is a good cup of coffee, not the instant stuff. You [00:09] know what everyday something will remind [00:13] you of being in prison. It can be the silliest things from [00:17] the commodities in prison which is cigarettes, sugar, [00:20] and coffee to getting up in the morning time with [00:25] my girlfriend and my stepdaughter and I look and the [00:28] coffee is running low and I'm like yes, I gotta stock up [00:31] on some more coffee and it reminds me of hoarding [00:33] coffee in prison and things like that. I can't lock any [00:36] gates. You get all eyes on you everywhere. You know [00:40] today putting the lock on the gate, you know, made me [00:42] think about being in prison. My name is [00:47] Chris Carney. I'm 41 years old. I'm originally from [00:51] Boston, Massachusetts by way of New York, you [00:56] know, being a felon there's not many employers that [00:59] will employ somebody and put the keys to a [01:03] multimillion dollar building in their hands. [01:06] >>All the windows have a little that you can open [01:10] on the top. [01:11] >>Here I am enrolled as superintendent. I've got 114 [01:14] apartments, an 11- storey building. We [01:18] have affordable housing in the building and we have [01:23] formerly incarcerated living within the building and [01:27] the nice thing to say what do I see with the interaction, [01:31] I see there is no barriers. [01:34] >>And I'm as big are them. I don't care how small the [01:38] critter is and you have to see me try to get up because [01:40] it was when I was like oh no. [01:40] >>You tell them get back to your garden and get out [01:44] of my apartment. I [01:49] picked up a gun on a Friday night. I knew a [01:54] bookie that you could place bets with in the city who [01:58] ran a spot out of a liquor store on the lower East side [02:00] and I rolled in, robbed them. In [02:05] a couple of minutes of not thinking and [02:09] committing a crime, I almost put myself in prison for [02:11] the rest of my life. [02:12] >>Yes. [02:12] >>Okay. You look just like the woman in that new [02:15] apartment and that's the stuff we'd-- [02:16] >>Right. [02:16] >>You know I didn't advertise my history when I was [02:20] meeting people, but I have some different things in the [02:24] building with my picture up from different things I was [02:26] involved with. I've had people pull me aside and asked [02:29] me Chris, were you incarcerated? It's [02:35] getting over the scare factor, you know. You don't [02:37] wanna say listen. I'm your super. I was formerly [02:39] incarcerated and you know I'm the guy with the keys [02:43] who's gonna be coming and doing repairs at your [02:45] apartment. You can't come at them like that. [02:47] >>Thank you. [02:48] >>Thank you. [02:48] >>All right. [02:51] >>It's one showing them who you are, you know. I live [02:54] here with my family. My family, my daughter plays with [02:58] the kids in the building you know. We're all in the same [03:01] building. We're all neighbors. People that were [03:05] formerly incarcerated make better employees. [03:08] >>Hey, Chris. Are you with Ms. Page? [03:11] >>No. Ms. Page is just separated-- Why? Because [03:15] they have more to lose. They've been through [03:19] it as far as knowing that they're at a stage of their life [03:23] they need to keep employment. Somebody who is [03:26] incarcerated, who has the ability to take job training, [03:31] to take college classes, that is a person that when they [03:34] get out is going to be a successful person. That is a [03:37] person that is going to be a taxpayer. That is a person [03:41] that is not gonna be in the front page of the paper who [03:43] is reoffending going back to prison. Going up. [03:46] >>Up. [03:46] >>All right. [03:47] >>What's up? [03:51] >>You know and they look at me and they say that's [03:55] one of the guys, he's never done a day in prison, you [03:57] know. And I might not tell them at first when I mention [04:00] that to them and you know we got something in [04:03] common. We came from the same place. [04:04] >>The shop. That's what I used for all of it. [04:06] >>You are a success story until you have either [04:11] relapsed, failed, or something's happened. So you [04:14] know I don't wanna be that, you know. We used to [04:17] have this super Chris here and, you know, he was [04:20] doing a good job and something happened. I'm trying [04:24] to do the right thing and it's basically, you know, [04:27] getting up every day, you know, and realizing that I'm [04:31] free. I'm out. 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