For 13 years, reporter Kevin Johnson and his colleagues at USA Today have tracked nine people who were released from solitary confinement in Texas on the same day in 2002. All vowed never to return. All suffered from a form of “sensory paralysis” that impacted their ability to adapt to life on the outside. And all eventually found their way back to solitary for another stretch. (via The Marshall Project)

Kevin Johnson | USA Today | November 4, 2015

IOWA PARK, Texas — Silvestre Segovia had vowed many times over that he would never return to solitary confinement.

Languishing in the vast Texas prison system’s solitary confinement wings for more than a decade had exacted a heavy emotional toll. And there was so much to discover about a new world that confronted him on a much-anticipated exit that chilly morning, Nov. 15, 2002. A loyal girlfriend waited 255 miles away. There might even be a market for the catalog of detailed sketches that he had created to pass the years of numbing isolation.

But where to begin? Continue reading »