The cruelest punishment

Solitary confinement in Iran nearly broke my spirit, says Shane Bauer. America’s prisons are even worse.

IT’S SEVEN MONTHS since I’ve been inside a prison cell. Now I’m back, sort of. The experience is eerily like my dreams, where I am a prisoner in another man’s cell. Like the cell I visit in my sleep, this one is built for solitary confinement. I’m taking intermittent, heaving breaths, like I can’t get enough air. This still happens to me from time to time, especially in tight spaces. At a little over 11 by 7 feet, this cell is smaller than any I’ve ever inhabited. You can’t pace in it.

“So when you’re in Iran and in solitary confinement,” asks Lt. Chris Acosta, my guide at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, “was it different?” His tone makes clear that he believes an Iranian prison to be a bad place.

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