life in the
REFORMING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
FIVE OMAR MUALIMMAK STANDS AT A LECTERN in the Jacob Burns Moot Court Room speaking to
a packed house of students, faculty, activists and admirers. “People asked me, ‘How did you survive in solitary for over 40,000 hours?’” The former Rikers Island inmate pauses for a moment, catches the eyes of a few audience members, and then looks back down at his notes before continuing. “The truth of the matter is that nobody survives. The truth of the matter is you leave with a level of deterioration.” The hole. The box. Administrative segregation. Protective custody. Mualimmak, who spent 12 years in prison for charges including drug trafficking and possession of an illegal weapon, lists the different ways people refer to the punishment. In the end, he says, it amounts to the same thing: Torture. “Solitary is a small … six-by-nine space, about the size of a bathroom or elevator,” he tells the crowd. He spent around five years in solitary confinement, completely cut off from contact with other people, and he talked to himself “to the point that my voice gets annoying and I had to start talking inside my head.” The audience can only sit in stunned silence.
BY ANDREW CLARK
Pictured: students in the Youth Justice Clinic who worked on the report “Rethinking Rikers.” Page 39: Clockwise from top left, Michelle Kornblit ’14, Dinisha Fernando ’14, Nadia Jean-Francois ’14, Lindsay Melworm ’14. Page 41: Clockwise from top left, Todd Neuhaus ’15, Melody Berkovits ’14, Karina van Ginkel ’14, Casandra Tolentino ’15