My name is Tracie Bernardi, I am an ACLU Smart Justice Leader and The CO-founder of Once Incarcerated… Once Inc… during my twenty-three years in prison I served seven long years in solitary confinement. I can tell you without a doubt- solitary confinement still exists in Connecticut. A rose is a rose by any other name. Just the same as Solitary Confinement is still Solitary no matter what alias they assign it. Restrictive housing, solitary confinement, close custody, administrative segregation, detention, punitive seg. The SHU or RHU.  23 hours locked mostly alone in a cell is cruel and unusual punishment.

It drives the human spirit to despair. Allowing prison a private place to punish people only promotes abuse within corrections. Guards in live under a cloak of secrecy that enable them to deny inmates human rights and dignity. The most abuse happens in the darkest places.

DOC like police have to have accountability for the way they treat  the people that the state entrusts into their care.

 I went to jail at 19 was already sentenced to thirty years. I entered Solitary at age 26, I did not see the light of day until I was 32 years old.

 I nearly went crazy, I even hung myself. That’s how bad it got.

I spent seven winters alone, seven springs alone, seven summers alone and seven falls alone. 7 consecutive years without human contact.

What would you do if it was your daughter or sister or friend being caged endlessly like an animal?

 For many of those years I took 3 showers a week if I was lucky- in handcuffs, I received food not fit for a dog through a slot in my steel cell door and then had to deal with the guards threatening they may or may not have spit in one of our trays. We’d starve ourselves afraid to eat their flem.

 So yes there needs to be oversite and an independent ombudsman.

We need to ensure that the people in CT prisons are not being abused and retraumatized.

Because even people with thirty year sentences come home and when we do- society will be safer if we come home better not worse. Now that you’ve had a first hand account of solitary you can’t pretend you DON’T know.  You must DO THE RIGHT THING and Pass SB 1059.

ACLU Smart Justice supports SB 1059 and we appreciate the great work that Stop Solitary CT has been doing in the past years to push this forward.