The Box: Spending 27 years in solitary confinement | Fault Lines Documentary

ready [Music] into general population hi Dennis pretend I don't know anything about this practice how would you explain it to me it's um and it's an extreme form of isolation I think it's designed to break you you feel it there's a part of you that's gone and there's always that fear of you know losing your mind there were things that I would do to try to

make sure that I was in touch with you know reality and sometimes well sometimes I would bite my ACT that's right and just see you know just how far I bet like that it let me know that I'm alive that I can feel pain I don't know I don't like to admit it those are some so that's what I was kind of afraid this might happen

Dennis Wayne hope spent 27 years in solitary confinement what kind of impact does that have on someone solitary confinement is very damaging there are psychological changes but also new Pathways being laid down that change the way the brain functions and those changes can be permanent Dennis was kept in isolation for so long after two daring prison Escapes in the early 1990s he is the only person

in Texas that's ever escaped from a non-escapable prison he embarrassed him so bad on that that that's why they have held us against him all these years solitary confinement has different names administrative segregation the whole the Box a recent study revealed that more than a hundred and twenty thousand prisoners are kept in isolation in the United States On Any Given night in European countries it's considered

a violation of human rights for someone to be locked up for more than 15 days in solitary confinement that's 15 days and we're locking up people here for 20 or 30 years Dennis petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case arguing that his treatment violates the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment what is there to stop a prison official from just putting someone in solitary

confinement for the rest of their lives right now not very much it's part of the reason we think this case has so much urgency there's no safeguards on the use of this form of torture on this episode of fault lines the extraordinary case of Dennis Wayne hope and his effort to change how solitary confinement is used in American prisons he has figured out a way to

survive and to remain mentally stable which is very impressive 27 years is just beyond comprehension [Music] Dennis Wayne Hope was born in Little Rock Arkansas in 1968. his father suffered severe PTSD after returning home from the Vietnam War and abandoned the family his mother was largely absent so his grandmother raised him how would you describe his early life oh totally neglected totally neglected his mother I

wish I could tell you more but I don't want to put it on camera but she neglected those kids completely he worked at the service station of his grandfather he would pump gas he was six years old at that time Dennis was kicked out of the house when he was 16 and left to fend for himself It's just sad that he couldn't have had a decent

childhood there's no telling where he would be today yeah in his early 20s Dennis began robbing grocery stores he was arrested in 1990. while he was being transferred to court he unlocked his handcuffs with a key he made out of a pen and ran off he was captured a week later and eventually sentenced to 80 years in prison for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon Dennis

was sent to the Darrington unit one of the toughest maximum security prisons in the state but that didn't deter him four years into his sentence Dennis orchestrated another daring escape this time with two other prisoners the thing about Hope was he was prepared for this thing you know he covered a lot of bases he knew and figured out how to cut the power to the unit

and so it was Pitch Black they knew it would take time to cut through the entire fence so he was able to figure out how to pre-cut the fence he did get a map that showed him the immediate area so he kind of knew what direction he was going when he left the unit and then he was smart enough to go on the day after Thanksgiving

the other assistant wardens and I we were all gone officials launched a massive Manhunt to capture them the dogs were out of the kennel and on the ground with people behind them within 30 minutes of the Escape that's what we call a hot track and Dennis Wayne came out of the woods and saw a truck running and just got in it and drove away and so

a lot of it was planning but some of it was luck the two other men were caught near the prison but Dennis evaded capture for two months he continued to Rob grocery stores for cash that just must have been a nightmare scenario for you yeah it was a pretty good cause of embarrassment for the state this was one of the few escapes where I could tell

he'd put a lot of thought into it and uh he was successful at least for a while police eventually tracked him down in Tennessee and brought him back to Texas officials designated him in Escape risk and moved him into administrative segregation or ad set the term Texas uses for solitary confinement you can see by what he did when he was in general population he was able

to probe and find the weak spots of the unit because he had access to move and that's why he's in I'd say at the time I was placed in solitary I was 26. I was young immature I think the hardest part is when you're first placed there it's the adjusting to being alone how big is the cell how do you move around um it's a small

sale from my bunk I can take three steps then you're at the door and you turn around it's three steps back it's designed really for you to lay down and that's really what they want you to do you eat in the cell you do your legal research in the cell everything you do is in that cell Dennis says the extreme isolation made it difficult to keep

in touch with reality the hallucinations were the scariest part some of it was visual because I would see images and then you'd jump up and you turn on the light and you oh man that's just where the paint peeled on the wall and sometimes I would hear things and then you know you you slowly start to question yourself hallucinations are bred by a lack of reality

testing so if you're alone in a cell and there's a lot of noise but it's not meaningful what starts happening is you start talking to yourself and there is sensory Distortion going on you start thinking that there's someone else in the cell to talk to so you start losing a sense of reality Terry Coopers is one of the world's foremost experts on how solitary confinement impacts

the brain he's interviewed more than 500 prisoners held in isolation and found that many resorted to cutting themselves they say why did you do that and they say the bleeding made me feel relief I was feeling that I'm just not very human sitting here in the cells like I'm an animal in a cage I cut myself I saw the blood or I felt the pain and

it convinced me again or reassured me that I'm a human being the only place that I'm aware of where men in large number harm themselves in that way cutting mutilating their body is solitary confinement in 2007 Dennis was moved to the polonsky unit in Livingston Texas which houses death row prisoners all of whom are kept in solitary I had brought out a Dennis showed us one

of the ways he maintained his sanity when I keep a germ and a journal is also to help me keep track of time he documented every gruesome incident that he witnessed I think probably the worst one I've seen that did as far as self-mutilating was that he took a razor and he just cut his face and when he came out of that cell I mean he

had blood just all over his face his he's also seen fellow inmates in solitary take their own lives one guy that I saw him they brought him out of the cell and his neck was probably a good foot long where he'd been hanging so long his neck had stretched out of all the suicides that happened in prison fifty percent of them happen in solitary confinement there's

only five percent of the prisoners on average in solitary confinement so this is a phenomenal statistical finding they just decide I'm never getting out of here there's nothing I can do to change my situation the officers are intent on brutalizing me so what's the use of going on I think about it but I don't think about just killing myself I think about what would it be

like I mean it's nothing that I've considered you know over the last few years but there there have been times where I I seriously thought it wasn't just the isolation that weighed on Dennis but the fact that it continued year after year with no end in sight officials are required to review a prisoner's file every six months to determine if they should be moved out of

solitary as time went on it was clear Dennis wasn't getting out but he wasn't exactly sure why bill it would probably be best if you didn't even think about them releasing me from solitary confinement it's beyond our control Bill Mitchell is Dennis's best friend in the Free World how many binders do you think you have almost 40. 94 to 2004 he kept all of their correspondence

from the last 29 years dearest buddy it doesn't make any sense for a cell to be this cold Bill also safeguarded important records so this is a grievance against the TDCJ TDCJ all right I think it's important to document everything so that you have evidence because other than that it's just you know a tear side uncovered form showing that on two different occasions a review panel

decided that dentists should be let out of solitary but that didn't happen he should have been let out 15 years ago and that's not just not thinking that is what the facts should be we shared the forms with his lawyer so these records that we obtained from 2007 and 2010 they showed that the state classification committee decided to release hope out of solitary decades before he

actually was released [Music] I'm not surprised but it's stunning to see it in black and white this way Mr Hope Has maintained all along he said eight different people at various points have told him he's going to get out of solitary confinement only for it not to happen and for him to be told it's been overruled I don't know who made this decision it's beyond me

this letter from 2010 shows that his Escape risk status had been removed from his record but since his case was unusual and difficult he wouldn't be granted release from solitary you could take the position he put himself there and he certainly did but over a period of time you know people change and I think we need to be open to that Warden Treon had previously opposed

releasing Dennis from solitary but as the years went by he had second thoughts back then he was definitely Escape risk but at what point does his age factor in and his continued ability to follow the rules and he's never been an extreme actor other than running off he sent this letter to me realizing that he wasn't going to get out through the system Dennis reached out

to Trion who is now retired asking him for help requests he be released to a step-down program Dear Mr Trion I don't know whether they will release me or not regardless of the decision so I called the director of classification who I knew I said you know Dennis Wayne hopes she goes I sure do I said are you all ever going to let him lose she

goes oh no he'll never get out of sick the truth of it is is always going to be some guys that are in administrative segregation because of who's ever making the decisions and what their personal bias is I think the right decision is not always made retaliation that's exactly what it has been all along retaliation he's being persecuted for escaping and making fools out of them

we sent detailed questions about Dennis Hope's case to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice they told us in a statement that the agency has reduced the number of people in isolation and that it only accounts for three percent of their total inmate population they didn't address any specifics about Dennis Hope's case or their review process the way they set it up is they've said we know

this is a really severe thing that we're doing to prisoners but trust us because every six months we're going to review it and so to hear that potentially that's not true that actually Mr Hope was never supposed to get back in a general population if Texas had its way really makes me mistrust their justification for being allowed to use isolation in Texas today there are more

than 3 000 people in solitary confinement 500 have been there for more than a decade the agency needs to have a way to separate those people that they see as a risk to the general population that makes sense where things become more complicated is why does it have to be such a punitive deprived harsh environment for those people [Music] here Mr Whitmire I'm reaching out to

you in hopes that you will promote and bring about positive changes for you certainly possess the power to do so there is no Overstock with regards to the place and had said another place Dennis Wayne hope looked for Relief was the Texas legislature which has oversight over the state's prisons he wrote numerous letters to Senator John Whitmire a powerful Democrat who chairs the criminal justice committee

[Music] I sent letters to Senator Whitmire long before I ever instituted a lawsuit trying to get him to make these changes to stop driving people crazy we requested an interview with Senator Whitmire but he declined so we waited for him outside of the hearing room so I wanted to talk to you about the case of Dennis Wayne hope does that sound familiar I just got out

with three hour meetings so he's been in solitary confinement for 27 years I'm sorry and I'm wondering if you consider that to be cool circumstances is it well you can protect the him from others it doesn't seem like not either of those this is a letter that he wrote to you in 2016. I'm not familiar with the case well this is a copy of the letter

you've had multiple letters and your staff has spoken to his friends and advocates for years does that not sound familiar to you Dennis William hope there's 125 000 inmates this morning unfortunately so I'll I'll review it but I'm not familiar would you like a copy of these letters okay thank you senator earlier this year prisoners at 11 facilities in Texas went on a hunger strike to

protest their treatment in solitary confinement one lawmaker introduced a bill to limit solitary confinement to 10 days but it never got off the ground unless they're willing to come to the table and make changes in the conditions that they subject the people to and for how long then I'm not going to stop fighting without help from the legislature Dennis decided to take matters into his own

hands he studied the law and filed the federal civil rights lawsuit in 2018. his 23rd year in isolation it was dismissed by a judge but it caught the eye of experienced litigators who decided to petition the Supreme Court to take his case what was unusual about Mr Hope's case was not only had he been subjected to something that was so extreme but he had also been

able to package it in a way that preserved all of his legal rights stunningly just one week after the petition was filed in January of 2022 the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did what they previously were unwilling to do they moved Dennis out of solitary I teared up he talks about what it felt like to shake someone's hand again the kinds of things I take for

granted and can't imagine losing for decades on end if you ask me I think their timing is suspect they don't want the court to hear this case they don't want the court to rule on whether or not solitary confinement is unconstitutional because it has the potential to make All State agencies throughout the country to stop using solitary confinement the way that they are Texas went on

to argue that Dennis Hope's lawsuit is moot because he's no longer in solitary the Supreme Court declined to hear his case he has pledged to keep going with his legal fight taking his case back to the lower courts [Music] a letter to TDCJ requests to leave at seg 2011. I would like to have contact visits with some mother and Grandma before they pass away at minimum

I'd like to be able to call them on the telephone long-term solitary confinement Dennis didn't have access to phone calls or in-person contact visits with his family your mother passed away in 2013. I'm wondering what it's like to experience the loss of a loved one in solitary it's hard um I had asked please let me out before it died because I need a contact visit with

him their dad Natalie let me out cookie I'm sorry all of Dennis Wayne Hope's immediate relatives have died except for one his younger brother Brian hope we were able to track him down in Oklahoma outside he was nervous to meet with us go go he hasn't spoken to his older brother in decades remember from your childhood of you and Dennis and your siblings can you tell

me about that yeah putting a rock in the snowball and hitting him in the head and then he chased me and I ran to my grandmother's and then he beat me up still that's what I remember did you guys get along yeah we got along he was 16 or so whenever he left and that would put me at 13 so there's the memories are short and

a journal is also to help me keep track we showed Brian parts of the interview we'd filmed with Dennis in prison it's hard to accept the death when you don't have other family members or something to console you because I mean I was uh all of them except my brother I think the the one that was the hardest for me was my sister that was that

was a tough one didn't see it coming so he knows she died I buried her [Music] my sister was the one that was speaking to him and kind of you know what I mean she was the glue but uh yeah I know it's me I'm just the last one in the family that he's got period even though I don't talk to him don't go there whatever

I'm still the last one [Music] and I know that as a result of our interview Brian plans to see his brother soon it will be Dennis Hope's first in-person Contact visit in nearly 30 years [Music] dozens of states have taken measures to reduce the number of prisoners in isolation Colorado and New York have banned solitary for more than 15 days even though 86 percent of American

voters support restricting its use solitary confinement is still widespread and in Texas Dennis vows to keep fighting and why is it important for you to continue to fight for those men who are who you left in solitary who are still back there year after year right now I have the means I have the legal representation to make that difference you're risking being put back in solitary

Yourself by going against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice because the law hasn't changed I am but what can they do to me that they haven't done you know they tried they did it for 27 years and the only reason I think that they stopped was because you know there was judicial oversight you know I'm afforded a few more privileges out here but to me I

think it's worth losing those privileges if that's what they chose to do just to see that the change is made what are we as a country going to do about this because it's not just Mr hope it's the thousands of prisoners around the country who spent a year or more under solitary confinement this is going to take someone more powerful than him to try to make

a change in the way that this country thinks about solitary confinement