I ran away, didnt want to deal with anything. Just wanted to be me, myself, and get my head right. Narrator tonight on frontlinlast days of solitary. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the ford foundation. Working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from laura debonis. distant howling and yelling howling and yelling pounding loud knocking and pounding howling this is the maine special management unit. Its a segregation unit for the state prison. What we have here is, we have the prisoners who are down here to do segregation time for disciplinary reasons. pounding time to take care of this. They are locked down 23 hours a day for the most part. While theyre down here, theyre angry, they flood their cells, they could be upset about the littlest things, and they just turn to violence. The other thing that they do from time to time is, they will selfinjure themselves. They can bang their heads, punch the doors with their fists to break their hands, they can resort to razor blades that they find, and they will cut themselves. pounding men yelling kidd. I think he passed out. Kidd, you need to cuff up. You might as well talk to me now, because youre going to bleep me sooner than later. Why dont you take that stuff off your window. I have three windows covered right now, and one of them appears to be selfabusive. Obviously he is, because theres blood on his toilet paper. I attempted to look through the tray slot to see if i can get a visual on him, and hes got it covered with a mattress. Kidd so my only other hope before i have to extract him and bring him out of there, since he refuses to talk to me or cuff up, is that i can see him through the back of the window. If i cant see him from the back window, im going to have to go in and take him out for his own safety. radios squawking lets see if he is smart enough. Hes got it all covered. So now we have to pull him out. radios squawking officers talking softly pounding you know you got to come out. Theres a smart way to do this, and this is not it. pounding and yelling bleep elevator dings radios squawking pounding monsters this is what theyve made in here. Hell and monsters, and then they drop you into society and tell you, go ahead be a good boy. This is what they create in here, monsters. radios squawking you cant conduct yourself like a human being when they treat you like an animal. Copy that, 114. man talking on radio pounding chatter on radio man coughing howling man coughing this place is like an insane asylum. You cant even imagine, i dont even know how many times ive seen this tier filled with blood from these guys cutting their arms and their necks and their balls, cutting their ball sacks out, all types of crazy, craziness, and, uh, and thats because theyre stuck in here with nothing to do. officer speaking man yelling if you dont have a strong mind, this place can break you quick. A lot of guys, they dont even have reasons why. They just snap out. Thats what this place does to you, it makes you mean, makes you violent, and it bleep a lot of peoples heads up. This is solitary confinement. radios squawking my names todd michael fickett. My prisoner number is 93262. Im here for arson, in prison for arson. man yelling radio squawking down here, makes you feel like youre being buried alive. Youre some place alive, but youre no place anybody wants you. Im down here in solitary confinement for, like, six months for hitting an officer in the kitchen. Thats what you get to do, sit there and think about your thoughts all day, pace back and forth. Pretty much 24 7, like, you come out, i think its twice a week for a shower, you know. Change clothes when you want, but you know, but youre still stuck in a cell every day. My, my mental, my mental state will probably go downhill like it did last time. pounding i go pretty crazy. Were not supposed to do it, but we do it. Its kind of funny. Were just bored. We got to have something to do. We want to make sure somebodys around. We send notes, letters, medications, and sometimes razor blades. Thats a razor blade todd. Whats going on . We got a bleeder we got a bleeder hey, fickett. Fickett. radio squawking fickett, talk to me, man. Hey, whats going on, man . Talk to me. Uh, i cant do that. How come . Ive got bleep six others talking in my head, smartass. Okay. Why dont you take this stuff down . Whats going on, man . Come on. Can you grab a camera and come in here, please . Thats what Mental Health you get for not doing their job. man squeaking how bad are you cut . Let me see it. Let me see it. We need to get medical. Yeah. Like, a lot. Yeah. Okay. Hey, fickett, do me a favor. Put your, that towel over there on your arm, okay . Lets at least slow that bleeding down. men yelling drip some of your blood, fickett. Come on. Were going to help you. Here we go again first step is, we got to get that arm taken care of, then we can get you some help, okay . Put this on your arm. men yelling hes a pretty serious cutter. Ive known todd for quite a while now, and his history of selfinjurious behavior is pretty significant, so he does a pretty good job when he does cut. So, i mean, hell go right for a main artery or that, you know. Hell tap into something that produces copious amounts, and, you know, puts his life at risk. So basically right now im going to see if i can move him to one of our two cells that i have that are designated for constant watches. They have cameras built in, they got full glass doors. man talking its inevitable. You put us in here with nothing to do, bleep going to hit the fan. Another day on the job. Thats a real cleanup right here. Real cleanup. We probably average about 20 of these a month, so. Yeah. In the last year, ive become an expert on blood, i guess. It doesnt just mop up, does it . No, it doesnt. It coagulates. Generally i try and saturate it with a germicide, and then i use a sheet to mop it up, and then afterward, i try to scrub it down. My heart goes out to everybody down here. Ive been behind these doors, so i know what its like to stay down here for years. You know, being behind these walls, they get to everybody, and everybody deals with it in their own particular way. As you can imagine, someone being 18 years old in a setting like this, you know, its not really. It does a lot with your mind. My belief is the use of segregation has its place when you have real dangerous prisoners, but from my perspective, it is overused throughout the United States. For the normal person who doesnt work in a facility like this, theyre going to be thinking, if you punish them, youre going to make them better. And the reality is, the exact, the exact opposite happens. Come and get it, mother bleep putting them in confinement and forgetting about them is essentially going to make them worse, theres no question in my mind. yelling if i have somebody that comes in with a fiveyear commitment, you could have them do their whole time in segregation. But i dont want him living next to me when we release him. pounding and yelling i think we need to make every attempt at moving them out of, of those cells and moving them into general population. I want you out on the other side of that door. Because thats good for you, to be on this side of the door and not that side. All right . All right. So weve got to find a way to get you out so youre not fighting with people. We have some very, very dangerous prisoners, so on the surface, it might look crazy, but the reality is that 80 of these inmates are going to be hitting the street, okay . So we can either make them worse, okay . And create more victims when they go on the street, or we can rehabilitate them. intercom playing bugle call im Adam Brulotte, 102817. Ive been in prison since november 28th of 2012. Got into a lot of fights in school, started drinking at 17, getting into huge fights at parties, like, threeonone, and winning. And everybody thought i was the coolest kid, so i just kept on doing it and doing it, and then i went too far and i broke a kids jaw in seven places with one punch. That landed me an aggravated assault. Local 613. All right . Yep. Secure bravo 101 local, secure, please. I just went overboard. Thats why im down here. I freaked out. I was screaming, and i started punching stuff. And i got maced and tackled. And theyre trying to say i started a riot. And they brought me down here. Ive been down here two days now. I like seg. I can handle being locked down 23 hours a day, because i can read, i can write, i can do pushups. Most of the time i just chill. You got to relax. You cant get yourself wound up, because you cant leave that room. Sounds good to my standards. laughs im always at this window, so i like the window to be clean. My face touches it, my hands touch it. Yeah, it sucks, but i think im doing good. Good, thats a good place for you to focus on. Bravo 225, open bravo 22. man talking loudly i dont know what i can do. My mind races all night. I got hardcore a. D. D. , and im about to leave in five months. I dont know where im going to go, i dont know where im going to work. I dont know how im going to get a car. I still got 1,000 to pay with no car, no job. When youve settled down in your room and you really just start thinking, and just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, all at once. And i need to try to get some medication to slow that down for now, but. Thats really the problem. This really kind of bleep with my head. bleep look at that. Its decomposed, its compost why are you pissed off . Because theyre bleep bleep with peoples portions. yelps men yelling and laughing scumbag thats a milliondollar shot, there thats what they call a milliondollar shot oh, its long. pounding hey, what is all this stuff on the floor . Probably urine and toilet paper and food. yelling whats going on, adam . In a halfhour, im going to let that loose itll be in the hallway. Prisoner, theres no need for this, man, you know that. If you make a mistake. men yelling never bleep ends. radio squawking cant do anything unless you talk to me. You know that, come on. bleep no . man yells if we just leave brulotte in segregation, hes going to become worse. Were going to end up with an inmate that probably will attempt to starve himself, without a doubt, at some point, begin, begin demonstrating some selfabusive behavior. So now by introducing programs, well work with the inmates until eventually they become less dangerous, and then we could look at moving them back to general population. Good morning, good morning. Well talk about that after. Oh, here he goes. No, no, no, no, i just want to get started, because we only got a little bit of time. Class is going to go the same way we always go. Aint nothing going to change for nothing, no reason. These inmates have been significantly violent and theyre truly a danger to self or others, so this is going to be a slow process. We had brulotte initially in cuffs and shackles. After we developed a little more confidence, hed be attending the groups just in cuffs. Develop a little more confidence, hed attend the groups without cuffs and with just one other inmate. And we would gradually work him so that hed leave that group, from segregation into general population, where his program would continue. So how does pride affect us . I show pride, i try to go, like, too far, and i start to get hardheaded. And you go from pride into doing what everybody wants now. Oh, yeah, ill be so much cooler if i break this guys eye socket. Then i go do it. Then i go higher. bleep you got to find a different way of dealing with your anxiety, your anger, and all that other stuff that comes with sitting in that cell all day. I dont know, when i get angry, i dont think before i act. I usually dont take responsibility for myself and i just blame other people. But im doing this program. Im going to start taking responsibility. Im the one bleep up, so i cant be pointing the finger at this anymore. That sounds, that sounds fantastic. Number one, honesty. Ive seen it work. Im an absolute believer in it working. It is our job, to the extent that we can, to rehabilitate them so they can become successful productive citizens in the community. door closes my legal names samuel caison. I prefer to be called sam. Im currently here for a class a aggravated assault. Most of my familys been in and out of prison their whole life. I grew up around this. I first drank and smoke pot about ten years old. By age 14, i was shooting heroin and had already done a couple juvenile sentences. The first time i got in trouble, i got sent to a mental hospital. Then i got sent to a juvenile facility for a year. I spent nine months in seg by myself when i was 16. That was the worst, you know. It was torture, pretty much. I would bang my head on doors, cut myself. Um. Pretty much anything i wasnt supposed to do that i could do with the very little bit i had in my cell. I turned 18 and i got sent up here and pretty much spent the rest of that sentence in seg. Me personally, when i spend too much time inside my head, its a dangerous thing. Also open bravo 120, 120. Cell extractions are like a game. Its our opportunity to get back at c. O. S. They mess with one person and spend the rest of their shift doing cell extractions. men yelling as dumb as it is, the cell extractions and people cutting up is our tv, so to speak. I cut because its my only way to escape. Obviously, being locked up, you dont have control of nothing. And cutting myself makes me feel in control. Since i came to population, i just tried to bury myself in programs, but i dont know how any of thats going to work out. After doing a lot of time in seg, im not a person that likes to talk. It breaks you. When im inside my head too much, i get paranoid about things and ultimately get depressed. Depression is not a good thing when youre locked in your cell 23 hours a day. Solitary confinement has the most fascinating history in the United States. The United States was actually the leader in modern times of introducing solitary confinement to the world. It was actually introduced by the quakers as a noble experiment in rehabilitation. There was a belief that you could put a prisoner in his own solitary cell, freed from the evil influences of modern society, and if you put them in that cell, they would become like a penitent monk, free to come close to god and to their own inner being, and they would naturally heal, heal from the evils of the outside society. It was a noble experiment that was an absolute catastrophe. By the 1830s, statistical evidence began to accumulate that there was an inordinate incidence of psychosis, of suicide, and that people just deteriorated. By 1890, there was major condemnation of the institution by the United States supreme court. And so the experiment with solitary confinement gradually diminished as evidence became unmistakable that this was causing disastrous psychiatric consequences. on tvin our special segment tonight, the subject is overcrowding prison overcrowding. The state has the nations largest prison system and also one of the most overcrowded. Outdated, overcrowded, and near a state of crisis. With three times as many inmates as. So after the quakers experiment, the United States abandoned the use of solitary confinement. But then in the 1970s, we began to put unprecedented numbers of people in prison. And so you had terribly overcrowded conditions and prisons that looked like they were about to become out of control. Prison populations reachedn alltime high in this country last month, and one prison burst under the strain. Inmates set fire to 13 buildings and then attacked prison guards. The other thing that happened is that there were increasing numbers of mentally ill prisoners coming into the prison system. Their behavior was harder to understand, it was harder to control, prison systems didnt have the resources to properly deal with them. Marion, americas toughest prison. Conditions are so tense, officials now say that the prison is in a virtual state of siege. In october 1983, two inmats already serving life sentences murdered two guards in the same cell block the same day. Well, in 1983, there were two officers within 24 hours that were killed by the aryan brotherhood. The staff at marion were completely demoralized. They felt that we had to do something to protect them from these inmates, and we had to do something to protect inmates from these inmates. The Bureau Director got involved and said, lock it down. It wasnt just a day, it wasnt a week. It was a permanent lockdown. The entire prison was lockd down. That is, every man was confined to his cell to restore order. Now there is nearly one guard for every inmate. Unruly inmates can be chained to their concrete slab beds for hours, even days. The high security, the lockdown, was created out of necessity to maintain control of the inmates, confidence, and protection of the staff that have to face these kinds of individuals on a daily basis. We never wavered our belief that this was a necessity. Their response to it was to employ very largescale solitary confinement, put a ton of people in solitary, which took away opportunities for programming, opportunities for social interaction. And that model of utter total control and harsh punishment took off in the United States, so that over time we developed more and more supermax prisons, where everyones in solitary confinement. bugle call playing over intercom i think segregation to a point does correct behavior. For the people who felt we were too hard or harsh, well, what alternative did we have . What choices did we have . Our job is to protect the inmates and the staff and to allow people to get through their time and go out as respectable citizens, that type of thing. But what are you going to do with those people who dont want that to happen . If youve got a better answer. I wish we did, i always said, you know, i wish we had some social medicine or a magic wand that we could use to correct peoples behavior, but theres no such thing. man yelling you guys get to go home ive got to stay the bleep in here. What were going to do with todd is introduce an individualized program in the Mental Health unit. Were going to have a clinician working with todd until were successful at reducing the cutting behavior. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you know, well look at reintegrating todd back into the general population. We still believe that he presents a significant danger to the staff and the other inmates. Todd ended up in segregation for a very serious assault, so essentially we need to be reassured through programming that the likelihood of him engaging in that type of behavior is significantly reduced. Have a seat there. You must be mr. Fickett. So next is to figure out how youre doing and plan our next steps. So fill me in. Still dont feel very good. Can you tell me a little more about. You feel like bleep , what does that mean . You still want to what . All right. Without even knowing the guy very well i dont i can tell you, he doesnt enjoy this. The intent isnt to engender any sympathy. The intent many times is to make an officer do things. They feel totally controlled and this is what they learn, and its a learned behavior, is that you can control others with this. But it is kind of a pathological way of control, because it doesnt gain them anything. It just. Just for the briefest of time, they feel some sense of control, and then, then theyre left stuck again and usually in worse physical shape. Were just at the beginning. Hes still struggling. Hes still going to have to do his seg time, and he doesnt want to do it. So theres that kid side of him that just doesnt want to have to. You cant make me kind of thing. And id like to help him through that process. Thats not right singing ive been down here 40 days now. Im not eating or drinking. Theyre going to tell me to drink something, and im going to say no, and theyre going to be, like, well, just give him what he wants. Education, deck of cards, and medication. Not even, not even medication i could even possibly abuse antidepressants and something to slow me down. A day in this cell is like three days out there. It drags. I want my education. Youre going to be getting your g. E. D. , okay . Well, i want to bleep do some testing tomorrow. Thats okay. I havent drank or ate anything, and im not going to. Okay. You can put me in the. I want a bleep g. E. D. Absolutely. Or ill snap. You know what . Thats, thats, thats a legitimate request, but you snapping isnt going to get it to you. What you need to do at this point is, let me try to help you. Im bleep , im done. Im this close okay. bleep close okay. Believe that bull bleep . Im not bleep believing nothing. Brulotte is a young man. Brulotte is impulsive, and essentially, hes going to have to engage in programs, hes going to have to demonstrate the behaviors that were looking for, before were ready to reintegrate him in general population. Hes going to have to show us and demonstrate to us that the likelihood of him being involved with an assault or a crime has diminished significantly. Listen, you got four months left. You start behaving and well figure something out. You know, let me tell you that if you put some behavior together, then well take a look at, at some point moving you out of here so you can be released. pounding that is bleep bull bleep man yelling you treat us like animals, we will act like animals do you want to come out and talk, brulotte, about all the stuff thats going on . I will after i fight men talking on radios pounding and whistling well, right now we have an inmate whos covered his window. We cant see in. Hes actually plugged his toilet, flooded the toilet out, pushed feces out the cell doors. Uh, hes covered our back window, so we cant look into the back window and see him, either, so we have some concerns for what hes doing in his cell for his own safety. man speaking on radio we have a prisoner that has boarded up on the lower quarter, refusing all staff orders. man responding on radio unit manager allen will be conducting and operating the extraction team. I will be assuming incident command, tenthree . Tenfour. pounding pounding and ululating thunderous pounding mr. Brulotte, how are you feeling today . Better. Thats good to hear, all right . Its freezing in that room. Theres only the door and theres a crack in it this much. Okay. I can barely sleep down here. My mind just races and races and races. I mean, i do pushups, i eat, i bleep , i bleep jerk off, i do all i can to keep busy. All i really want to do is go to school. Im leaving in, like, 170 days. Yep. Im down to days now. Yep. Weve got staff on board that can help you. No, i need bleep bleep to do. I need to go to school. And i want my g. E. D. Thats all i ask. Okay. Im not going to go out there and scram for another job selling drugs and bleep because i dont have no education. Thats fair, okay . I told you at your door yesterday, give me a shot, give me a chance. If i fill you full of bleep , then you do what you think you got to do, okay . And well do what we got to do, all right . Well do our best to get you the help you need, okay . But i need you to do your part, okay . You need to keep your head screwed on straight, okay . Thanks for coming out and talking, all right . Yep. man yelling secure 101 bravo. Solitary confinement is toxic to mental function. There is a particular illness that results from being in solitary confinement. Its a delirium. Its a neuropsychiatric, almost a medical or neurologic disease. And what we see in humans, we see it in animals. I mean, we see it in mammals. Now, suppose that in addition to an environment that is merely strange, we produce one thats really frightening. Dr. Harry harlow in the 1950s did some experimentation with monkeys, studying the effect of social isolation, and one of his experiments involved taking monkeys who had been raised with other monkeys, so they were socialized and okay, and then putting them in a, what was, amounted to a solitary confinement chamber. Distressed, he may die for want of love. Youd see them rocking and shaking and sort of ritualistic compulsive behavior. And after some period of time, they brought them out and put them into a cage with other animals, and these monkeys were massively impaired. They were frightened, hiding. crying and shrieking oh, my god and then they would have sudden aggression, attacking each other. pounding very different behavior, very abnormal behavior. There was no recovery. These animals didnt recover from this. One of the important clinical findings with solitary confinement is that people deprived of an adequate level of stimulation become actually intolerant of stimulation. They overreact, they become hyperresponsive to it and they cant stand it. Thats why you see guys getting out of solitary and they just hide in their rooms. They just cant stand stimulation. There has been a recent study that actually showed that this is a reality in the brain. It was a study from the balkan conflict, in which it looked at Prisoners Released from confinement and looked at their brainwaves. Some of these guys had hyperresponsive reactions, had spike reactions to a visual stimulus, and they looked at who those fellows were. Semistarvation . No. Length of time in prison . No. Beatings . No. There was only two things that predicted it head trauma to the point of unconsciousness and a period of time in solitary confinement. howling and pounding you lose all feelings. You become immune to everything. Youre not the same after spending so much time by yourself in those conditions. I dont care who you are. You dont come out the same person. I did 11 months in a seg unit and went from there straight home. I tried to tell my mom and everybody i didnt want anybody around. And i got home, there was five people there, and i felt like there was 5,000 people there. And ultimately for my first couple of months, i locked myself in my camper until my mom and everybody tried to explain to me im not in prison. I shouldnt live like that. crying i ultimately tried to force myself to live like i was still in seg. Because i didnt know what to do. And then when i stopped, i was out of control. I didnt know what to do with myself. I went from the most restrictive place ive ever been to no restrictions at all. And ultimately, i ended up shooting somebody and coming back. sniffs indistinct conversations names Richard Stahursky, 29297. I was convicted of robbery in a crime of violence, and possession of a stolen firearm. They sent me here. man yelling i was always getting in trouble as a kid. Pretty much i grew up around violence. And when i was real young, i was in a place for young kids who have, like, behavior problems and whatnot. And then when i was 17, i went to a regular prison. I did most of my sentence in seg. I think it had an effect on me because it made me where i dont care, doesnt bother me none. And then it just progressed from there. Got out, went in, got out, went in. Then i end up in seg here. In 2003, i was out in population and i stabbed an inmate 23 times. I got placed in segregation and stabbed another inmate out here in the rec cages, and assaulted a bunch of c. O. S, lit a couple of fires, escaped out of my cell. You name it, ive done it. And then they let me back out into the population. And to be honest with you, i was weirded out. Because youre in a cell 23 hours a day, youre not used to people walking behind you, talking to you real loud. And getting out felt really weird. Kind of like first day at a school, except, like, 100 times worse. You know what i mean . Its weird, being around groups of people after being so segregated for so long. How you doing . You get my letter . child babbling so how are you and mom doing . I got to finally talk to my daughter for the first time ever, and she actually said, hi, daddy, i love you, so. That, that was good. How did it make you feel . It made me feel like a new guy. Wouldnt say man per se, because im only 21, but it made me feel like a new guy. Made me feel all fuzzy. Mr. Ficketts somebody who tries to elicit that hes not helpable hes just into being a nasty guy. But i dont believe that, and ive told him that. So hes. Sometimes try to test me and see if i can be, be brought down to believing that hes a really horrible human being. No, i mean, hes too young to throw away. I like puzzles, so i got one for you, kirkley, and griffin. Im going to each give you something to do. I think youre going to enjoy this, and see if you guys. But its on a piece of paper, so im going to get a piece of paper for you. All right, let me get this piece of paper. Now were into puzzles time, oh, my god. Were going puzzles. You see how enjoyable these guys are . I mean, they really are. They are. They dont want to be grumpy, they dont want to be upset. They want contact thats meaningful. I got a, i got a present for you. There we go. laughs this is a good one. No conferring with each other, either. So the idea is, then, to see if theres a way to keep Mental Health in their cell without having to be there. So we use a transitional object, something that represents me. Well see if you got that by monday. If you noticed, i didnt just hand them pieces of paper, i made contact with each of them. Weve had a nice interaction, so, so. And ive got them off the grumpy kinds of, im upset and everything, and reconnected with them, engaged with them. And then ill be there to follow up with this piece, and theyll be all excited, especially if theyve accomplished this thing. Now once you go in one direction, coming back the other ways another line. Thats what i say, yeah. The other thing that theyre unaware of, is, the actual thing that theyre working on has a clinical component attached to it that ill be then using in the next time i meet them, because the solution has to do with other ways of looking at problems. Its very healthy to struggle. Theres nothing wrong with struggle. So what have you got . How does a ball go in one direction, stop, and go back in the opposite direction without touching anything at all, after it leaves your hands . Oh, my goodness, okay. You want me to tell you . Or you want to try to figure it out . Oh, i always want to try to figure it out. We cant just bury these guys. As a psychologist, im looking into whats effective, what works, why do we keep doing things that dont work or make things worse. Why dont we figure Something Else out . So every time i meet with them, you know, its much more of an uplifting kind of thing. Well goof with each other. Goes in one direction, stops. Comes back in the opposite direction. Comes back in the opposite direction. Without touching anything at all. Im not there to judge him. And i dont have him just as being this nasty kid. He doesnt want to end up where he knows hes going to end up. Hes a kid. Smart guy. Theres no question in my mind that were actually seeing some positive effects of what were doing. I can tell you that the number of fights have dropped, the number of use of weapons has dropped, transports to the emergency room have dropped, the use of constant watches has dropped, so overall its had a positive impact, but were just beginning. The reality is, is, were just beginning. Prison systems around the country are very, very slowly beginning to see that solitary confinement is not a panacea. That in many instances, it creates many more problems than it solves, its very, very expensive, and that there are much more costeffective and intelligent ways of addressing these problems than the supermaxsolitary confinement solution weve been using. The federal bureau of prisons has started a review of solitary confinement at all federal prisons. Colorado, maine, and georgia are already scaling back. New york state has agreed to place unprecedented restrictions on the use of solitary confinement in its prisons. The president says, quote, solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. In each place, the consequence of depopulating the segregation of supermax units has been a very positive one. Its actually resulted in an overall reduction in the amount of violence in the larger prison system, which is something no one, no one predicted. After a series of reforms, the number of mississippi inmates in solitary confinement is down 75 . Closing unit 32 saved mississippi 6 million a year. Let me tell you what i think may be going on, which is that the existence of solitary confinement has allowed correctional systems to deal with problems by putting people in the hole, by sending them off to solitary confinement, and never having to think it through beyond that. The absence of having that as a quick solution forces them to take a different attitude about things, to deescalate problems before they get to be too severe, to try to get to the bottom of why it is theres conflict between prisoners, and im going to get to the root of the problem. Youre going to actually try to address the problem in the here and now, rather than saying, well, theres always supermax. pounding yelling pounding yelling you guys are running out of time. I told you im trying to do it the easy way, but. Ive been down here too long to keep playing their bleep games. I started this sentence in 1997. Capital murder. I was a crazy young kid. 21 years old, didnt care about nothing. I been down in isolation for about a year now. pounding if i dont get some answers by 3 00, im covering my window. And if i dont get good enough answers after that, theyre extracting me. Itll be a miracle if i dont get extracted today. It will be a miracle. Theyre going to be calling with my windows covered. The only way you ever get anything around here is to act up. I sit back, being good for a year, aint bleep working. All im getting is smoke blown up my bleep ass every which way i look. Howre you doing . Um, pretty pissed off. You got a couple of assaults in 17 years. How hard is it to move me . So i got to be out of here pretty soon. Because of what youve done here, you know, were going to move you out very slowly, okay . What i need to know is, when i move you out there, are you going to be safe . Am i going to be safe . Youre going to be safe. I need to know that the other inmates are going to be safe, as well. I got no plans to go after anybody, but you got me down here for a year, im all set with the stabbings, im ready to go out and try to enjoy myself a little bit. Okay. Im willing to look at moving you along, but its going to be a while. We got to work the process, and im not interested in burying you. Im already, im already buried, though. Ive already been down here a year. Well evaluate it and well look at moving you along. And well talk next week, okay . All right . Um. Have a good weekend. Come on, i got some answers for you. Where are we going back to . indiscernible i think its page 32. You open up to 32, all right . Oh, attitude. You explained openmindedness last week. Youll be tested on it again this week, but tell me how you see openmindedness. Where does it fall for you . Why is it a problem for you . I dont have too much openmindedness for the rules in here. And tell us why. Theres always a reason, so let us know. Just, like, because im a criminal and i dont like the rules that you guys have. What happens when you follow the rules . Tell us. Youre not as happy. laughs honestly, i mean, you want me to tell you the truth. That program is bull bleep . Everybody knows it. Do you want to change . Change for what . Change into what . Im here forever, theres nothing for me to. Im a criminal, i mean. Im not going to jump on the other side or anything, so i am what i am. You know, im not going to. I dont even want to do this program. I just want to get out of seg. I think my characters pretty good overall. If you dont want to change, you aint going to change. Make sure you have my smokes. Gordon perry. Right now he is doing everything we ask for him to do. He comes out and cleans, he doesnt give my staff a hard time, he does group. I dont have any problems with him. Does he want to come out . He does. Yeah, in fact, i looked at his journal book the other night. Hes fully engaged in his journal, hes actually completed the first one. Youre going to get my recommendation for him to go. Hes ready. You got to remember this guy is a predator, somebody you got to watch everywhere. Im not keeping him there. If hes showing that hes behaving and doing what he needs to do, were going to move him along. At some point, you got to give somebody a second chance. If theyre doing what were asking them to do, theyre moving through the system. All right, lets do it. Hes ready. Yeah, he is. Yeah, im taking these out. Perfect timing. They said they want me to leave. You know, hes a very dangerous individual, but our obligation is to continue to provide him with the opportunity to change. And i dont hesitate on that decision at all. All right, you guys, somebody got to get the door. You never can tell whats going to change somebody around, whether its a fiveminute discussion or 300 hours of therapy. Essentially, i still believe that we can change him. Im happy, content, but if i stab somebody and i get shipped out all over again, i really dont care. My realistic, honest plan is to live as good as i can in here. That is my plans. Im just hanging out, thats what im doing. Hanging out, making the best of a bad situation. Im done trying to be good. Im going home in 90 days. All i have to do is 90 more and im done, im going home. Yeah, my Mental Health diminished. Slowly but surely. It would do it to anybody. I lasted a while. Now i just think, bleep it. They put me in the coldest cell in this whole prison as punishment. I dont know. This is america, not russia. Its bleep cold in here. laughs all i can do is bleep open a vein and throw blood all over myself and refuse medical attention till i get a warmer cell. Make myself bleed a little bit. pounding yelling i have an inmate with selfinjurious behavior. I need a and b responders and medical, please. man responds on radio we got a bleeder men yelling we got a bleeder brulotte. bleep . I want a bleep warmer room im bleep sitting there in this icebox. Put your hands up here, ill cuff you up. No, bleep you, i want to go to a warmer room this is bull bleep will you just put your hands up to the tray slot . Stop stop calm down. No, ive been bleep calm. Ive been asking you all day. Im not going to sleep in a bleep cold room. At this point, at this point, hollering all that stuff. Im trying not to. tapping at window that blood is pouring out of him in the back. You need to bring him to medical, man. This is bull bleep , you need to stop the bull bleep . Immediately. Leave me alone. bleep medical, i want a bleep warm room. I hate the cold. Shouldnt have to bleep do this. Bring him to medical. Hey, red man, how do you feel . bleep pissed. They bleep put me in a bleep icebox. men shouting weve seen Adam Brulotte deteriorate since he arrived in seg. Is segregation the right place for a person like adam . Well, you just defined why we dont like to use segregation. But sometimes, its necessary. Mr. Brulotte was engaged in some very, very serious behavior while he was in general population, so without a doubt it was the right place for him. radio squawking did he spend too long in seg . You know, thats a real hard question to answer. Theres a lot of grey area in some of the decisions that we make. Theres no exact science to any one of these guys. You have to try to figure them out as we go along. But ultimately, when were moving him back into the general population, you know, we have to be certain that the staff are going to be safe, that the other inmates are going to be safe, and that hes going to be safe. Before you went to seg, did you ever imagine that you would cut yourself like that . No, never. I didnt even know what it was. I seen a couple people doing it, so then i started doing it. Im trying to be normal again. Just, the routine every day gets to you. Ive been down here four months, and ive gotten in trouble, like, 30 times. Ive been extracted umpteen times, flooded my whole room out a couple of times. Just stuff to pass the time away, and i guess they dont like that, they think im crazy for it. But you got to do something. men yelling we have some inmates that are incredibly dangerous, but even those inmates, we got to work with them. Weve been able to reduce our segregation population by 50 . Weve saved about a Million Dollars a year. Im very confident that this process is going to work. And obviously, if theres any negative outcome, were going to look at the negative outcome. But frankly, im absolutely convinced that what were doing is going to work. And it is working. State police have formally charged a Maine State Prison inmate with murdering another inmate. The police say Richard Stahursky took two makeshift knives and stabbed a convicted child molester. How is it possible a murder can go unnoticed an inmate, beaten, tied up, and stabbed 87 times. Investigators say stahursky used a piece of metal bedframe as a makeshift knife. Ive been locked up a little over 14 years and ive been in seg a little over 12. What does that tell you . I did six years in seg. You know what they do . They take me, put me right back out in population. Instead of integrating me out there, just threw me out there. You know how i felt . I felt so weird just being around people. I never felt like that before, you know, you know what i mean . Just having people walk behind me, having them. Its like, i dont know. It kind of felt like real paranoid. Like, oh, is this dude going to try something . Maybe i should get him first. Ive never hurt anybody that i felt that didnt deserve it. Staff members . Any staff member i ever put my hands on . I didnt stab any of them. I had multiple opportunities to. I have not done that. When i was done, i walked up to the desk. The female that was on had her back to me. I threw the two shanks on the desk and i told her, i said, im not here to hurt you. I held my hands up like this, and i go, im going to turn around, put my hands behind my back, cuff me up. I turned around, put my hands behind my back. She froze up. I think she was kind of a little in shock. She just didnt know what the hell was going on. Shes, like, is that your blood . Is that somebodys blood . Is that yours . I said, hello, dont ask no questions, just cuff me up, and call your co. Am i a violent inmate . I can be, yes. You put me in certain situations, i am going to be like that. Thats not no secret, though. Anybody knows that. We take an event like that extremely seriously. But at the same time, we recognize, given that were working with a very highrisk population, the key is not to overreact to an incident like that and change an entire system, or take a giant step backwards out of fear. My background is in training as a clinical psychologist. It is an unusual situation to find a psychologist overseeing or running a prison system. And as a psychologist, i think the mission of the department of corrections cant just be about management or control. Its got to be about mitigating risk. And to mitigate risk, you need treatment and programming. To have treatment and programming, individuals cant be locked down. Theyve got to be interacting. So i think the key around that homicide, which was horrific, was to treat it appropriately, hold the offender accountable, but not sabotage a system that was moving in, in an appropriate direction. All right . Theres going to be mistakes, theres going to be missteps, theres going to be major incidents, but i do think its working. Were seeing a reduction in assaults and the numbers have continued to go down in the seg unit, so that tells me that were doing a better job at keeping people out and of getting them out sooner. I also think that were doing a better job of equipping them when they leave so that they, they have more of a chance of being successful when they return to their housing unit. But quite honestly, even as a psychologist, ill tell you that were never going to compromise safety and security for the staff or for the offenders in the name of treatment. It has to be a balancing act. I do have a different attitude from two years ago. The program that ive done since ive been in prison taught me how to change my frame of mind. These groups arent just something to occupy your mind, though. These groups are supposed to help you change yourself, so i can, i can, i can say part of it is to give me something to do, yes. But these groups have also helped me see a better person in myself than i was before, so. Actually, going back a couple of years ago, my mind would go into these little circuits where its like, id be aggravated real quickly or id be, go into a depression real quick, like, and ive been trying to work over the past two years to change that. And as of right now, i can probably tell you, i will never cut again. I dont plan on it, i dont want it. Some days, do i actually think back on what i did . Some days ive thought and said, hey, yeah, i wasnt only hurting me, i was hurting some of these c. O. S. I was hurting inmates who had problems with it, just staring at the blood. Ive hurt my family. I dont think it was right for me doing any of it, but, like i said, the past is the past. You cant change it. So. Things just plain had to change. We just plain had to change the way were doing business. Selfinjurious behavior in segregation hadnt stopped, but wed significantly decreased it largely by, by just not punishing it. So that was the first change in culture that, that, you know, punishment doesnt work. Now its all about treatment. How do we Work Together so you get better . And we will do whatevers necessary to make you better. Thats very mature. Mature . Yeah. Mature . Its not machure, its mature. I tell everybody that. Mr. Fickett was still pretty young, so you still had a chance to look at some potential change for him. So do you feel the same . I figured, yeah. So hes been in seg for four times, five times, but each time he leaves, hes moved further. Hes really kind of getting it, and realized we didnt send him to seg to really show him whos boss and kick him in the ass. Its been in seg because you really messed up. Were not going to let you hurt people. Were not going to let you do this. Thats not helpful to you as a human being, its not going to get you out of here. And were going to stop you, and well stop you every time. And then were going to move you forward again. Mr. Fickett, how are you . Obviously, we know the reason why im down here. Three years ago, i assaulted an officer. Ive done my time, okay . The past year, i was trying to move on with changing myself. I had put in for several groups to better myself, to get out to my family, to do my time. Ive come from a long ways of fighting, of assaulting, cutting up, of doing stupid things, to now. Because im trying to change, im trying to move on. Okay, what kind of programs have you done . Since ive been down here, ive done challenge program. Ive done psychology incarceration, coping skill groups, and a couple of anger management groups back when i was in medium, so ive done groups over the years. When was the last time you cut . Last time i cut was april 17, 2014. Okay. I think that youre sincere in your willingness to change, is that true . Yes, it is. Yeah, and i think that youve been wellbehaved he has, i guess since youve been down there. Yes, sir. Our decision is that youll be referred to the structured living unit. Okay. Good outcome . It was a good outcome. All right, so dont prove us wrong. Take advantage of the programming that we have for you, and do the best you can. Yes, sir. Good luck and work hard, okay . Yes, sir. Thank you. On a scale of one to ten, where you sit now, where do you feel that you are in terms of openmindedness . Probably a two. A two . You know, while we may be willing to change and be. We are creating a unit where were putting very dangerous individuals in very close proximity and giving them a significant amount of freedom to interact, and so we almost have to be a little bit more on our toes that this is a highrisk population. So what you really need to do is create incentives, get away from the punishment model, create the incentives that will start to keep them moving in the right direction. But there may be individuals that dont make it in that unit, someone who defies the rules and decides, i dont want to get healthy. And you have to make some hard decisions sometimes that that individual might not be appropriate for that unit, and they could find themselves back in segregation. radio squawking im happy im not in seg because ive been down there so long. But as far as this being a place where you can better yourself, i think its the exact opposite. I think its a place that just breeds better criminals. In order to survive and live good, you have to kind of, you have to break rules, you have to learn how to be a better criminal so you dont get caught and you can kind of live a little bit. You know, figure out ways to make money that help you survive in here a little bit better. It is tense on the unit now. We had a pretty severe assault where an inmate actually ended up striking another inmate with a padlock about 15 times. It made it very difficult with the number of inmates in the pod for us to secure that scene, also protect the inmates that were involved in the incident. We have some very dangerous guys in there, and putting those types of personalities all in one area, it can be extremely challenging to manage. It can be extremely challenging to, to do in a safe manner, as well. Um, im pretty much bleep . laughs once again, i am in seg. Theyre trying to tie me into that assault. Something about, im the big factor of it all. Yeah. laughs theyll probably jam me up. Wouldnt surprise me. I mean, i expect the worst. Theyre going to screw me the best they can, and the best they can is keep me here for a couple two, three, four years whatever they decide they want to do. We locked the unit down, we searched everybody. During that search process, we discovered six inmates that had tattoos dm on them, which meant deadly minds. Prisoner perry was actually the one leading that little crew, and out of the last five assaults in here, four of them were done by people with the dm tattoo, so we would have to say hes definitely influencing younger prisoners to be involved in a gang and to assault other inmates. Whats your opinion on perry . Is he somebody who can change . Probably not, probably not. I havent seen any change in him, but that doesnt mean that we stop trying to do that. We try to give them, you know, the best chance to change we possibly can. And sometimes were successful, sometimes were not. You know . door closes i cant live with minorities. Theres a list of people i cant live with. Im a violent person. But, monday morning. Im getting released to the free world. This sentence is the first sentence that i havent spent 90 of my time in in seg. Ive done a lot of programming. I guess its the first sentence where i realized this isnt the life that i want to live. I mean, ive been in and out, in and out since i was nine. Sometimes i wish i wasnt going home, because the anxietys so bad. For somebody like me thats spent most of my life locked up, its easier to say, all right, im going back to prison for however many years. Its not easy to go back to the streets. I definitely think that all the solitary time ive done, its changed me. Maybe not permanently, but it wont be easy to change back. I mean, as far as functioning in the real world, i think its affect me in extreme ways. You know, i was out for six months, and i still couldnt go into walmart without either being high or having a panic attack. Like, it may just be because ive spent so much time out of the real world, but my honest opinion is because its, its because ive spent so much time in a cell by myself. Is that your pup . Yep, that is my dog. Thats the one, huh . I feel like i, i still carry it, but i dont feel like its going to affect me as much as it has in the past. Dont forget that item on your way out today. Yeah, tenfour, i havent forgot it. Things have changed a little bit, but its still. I dont want to come back here again. All i can do is take it one day at a time, try to do the right thing and hope that it works. inhales ive been out a while now. It was kind of rough starting out. You go from a little cell and nobody around and its just you, and you look out this little window and see life go by as the guards go by, they go home, they come back, youre still there. And then they finally let you go. Now youre surrounded by everybody, and theyre all in your face. Even if theyre ten feet away from you, youre still aware of them and looking, even though they have nothing to do with you because theres just too many people. The last time i interviewed you, you said you were going to try and be normal again. laughs yeah. Try. I think ive done an allright job, i guess, i dont know. Ask other people, i think im pretty normal. At least im not in a home or something, crazy people, which i thought id end up at. But you definitely feel paranoid when you get out, at the beginning. It was too much for me. It was way too much for me. I ran away, didnt want to deal with anything, dont think i could at the time. I met up with my cousin mikey and we bought a tent and some camping equipment, and went out in the middle of the woods and camped there for, like, six months because i couldnt handle it out here. Couldnt handle getting an apartment, couldnt get a job, so i had no money, no transportation, no nothing. A week went by, we had a nice little fortress made up out there, all camoed out, and i dont know, just makes you totally relaxed sitting out there. No way in hell someones going to show up out there, unless theyre lost. Dont have to answer to anybody. Me and one other person, pretty much your cellmate out in the woods, is what we called each other, cellies. I just wanted to be me, myself, and get my head right, and i couldnt do that with people around, so the woods helped. I was lost, so. Life has been pretty good to me this past year. I have a job and ive got a place to live and i have a girlfriend thats supportive. And the people around town have kind of forgiven me and, and know that ive changed. Im a lot happier than before. And it feels good to go to work every day and make a paycheck and. Byebye come home and be able to relax and. Ive been in a relationship for a year with my girlfriend, taylor. Im definitely thinking of the future much brighter than before. Im just hopeful, very hopeful for him. I know hes not going to go back to jail again. Ive been adamant that i dont want that to happen anyway. Yeah, she tells me all the time, never go back, never go back, so that helps, also. She supports me a lot in that category. If i go back, shed be mad. I know he doesnt want to, either, so that helps. The both of us dont want him to go back. I know he wont. But it helps hearing it, though. Every once in a while, you need to hear it. Seg definitely damaged me. I dont like to. I dont like to have people screaming around me at all, because thats all you hear in there and its. Anxiety, ive never even had that before. I had to deal with that when i got out to even realize what it was. And. Just. It leaves a scar in you that you wont forget, and you cant heal it, no matter how good you are. You can try and block it out. But its still going to be there. You still think about it. You get flashbacks. pounding get anxiety and you got to walk away. Just get away from people. Yesterday, cops showed up at my door with a warrant for my arrest for unpaid fines. Its, like, the fourth time its happened. No matter how good ive been, it happens every time. I was doing fine yesterday, nothing. Just fine. Just ate supper, lay down with my girlfriend, then knock, knock, knock. Oh, cops randomly bring you to jail for no reason at all. No justified reason, anyways. All the good things ive done is for what . Ive had to sit here and think about that all night. Theyre still going to come and arrest you. Theyre still going to bring you to jail. Ive done nothing wrong. I got, i got to come up with 900 to get out of here. Almost 1,000. I cant pay it. Theres nothing i can do about it. Thats the worst part. So now im angry. Anxietys going through me. Im kind of sad because im crushed of all the good things ive done. It just Means Nothing to anybody, besides me and my girlfriend. I could possibly lose my job. Thats going to be damn near impossible to get again. I cant even sleep because im sweaty and im bleep , hearts racing and i cant get comfortable at all. And im stuck in this pod. General population. I dont like being surrounded by people anymore. It gives me anxiety. I dont like big crowds. I think they just kept me in my own cell for so long, its hard for me to be in general population. Cant trust anybody, you dont want to talk to anybody. I just want to sit by myself. Risk doing something stupid in here, because surrounded by stupid people, youre going to do something stupid. Just a matter of time. Its, like, you have no one in here. Youre lost, surrounded by people that have no idea who you are and think they know who youre going to be and. I will fight anybody right now that comes up and bursts my bubble, because im not in the right state of mind. Its fightorflight mode. Instant anxiety, instant get the bleep away from me. I cannot handle this. Man, when is it going to end . I dont think ill ever be the same as before i ever went to seg. It just never leaves you. You dont forget it. Theres certain people who are just so dangerous, and you have to respect that. They need to know, we cant afford to put you elsewhere because you will hurt people, including us, if we let you out. With true psychopaths, who have killed people and will do it again, i dont know that there is any good definitive treatment in the world thats been developed. Thats a clipon. Its not even a real tie. Are you going to strangle me with my tie . I would never do that. Mr. Stahursky has no problem killing. There have been those that ive met where literally, it doesnt matter, they would see you as just a hunk of whatever and dont recognize that when youre killing someone, youre killing another human being. Do you think youre a psychopath . laughs no. I dont think im a psychopath. I think i made some serious dangerous decisions in my life. I guess everybodys like, oh, man, hes real dangerous. So i cant go anywhere around here without them thinking im hannibal lecter. They dont trust me as far as they can throw me. I dont blame them. But no, i dont think im a psychopath. I aint crazy. Im just misunderstood. laughs on february 26, our last review with him. He was here six months, so we had a sixmonth review. Whats the next step . Well have a chat with him, proceed with caution. I mean, the concern is, theres a lot of big players in that pod right now. There are. There shouldnt be one more. Yeah, there are. We all know that. Bring stahursky up next. Okay. Good morning, have a seat. Youre here for your review. What do you have to say . I take full responsibility for my actions. Im not blaming the administration for me being in seg, you know what im saying . Im not blaming anybody for all the crimes that i committed in this facility, all the assaults. You know, i mean, that should count towards something, right . And it does. Keep putting in the effort. So, i mean, id like to know, where do we go from here . You know what i mean . Im not looking for opportunities to be stuck here. My whole point is to move forward. I think we take one step at a time, and the next step is, well work the case plan like weve talked about, with some of this more specific programming and education. The step down the road is potential outofstate placement at some point, but we got to go one step at a time. Were not going to make all these decisions today. This future aint, like, ten years down the line. No, its not that. Ive done a long time already in seg, in here. I guess what weve said here today is, were not quite there yet. Continue with the College Education programming, good behavior, and then well look at you again in six months. Okay . All right. Keep doing what youre doing, youre doing the right things, okay . Very good, thank you. Thank you. man shouting . Cop loving bleep ultimately, over the last couple of years, weve kind of gone through our system. You find out its a relatively small group of guys who are extremely dangerous, and where you have to keep them isolated from other human beings or theyll hurt them. You got your hotpot. Its on right now . Right there. You have to protect the rest of the community. You cant just say, well, well try stuff out and, jeez, over a tenyear period, hes only killed three. You have to make sure your communitys protected. So there will always be certain individuals within seg who are just plain dangerous, and should stay there, but thats a very small number. I got arrested may 31, and ive been sitting here in max ever since. Things unraveled faster than they ever have. I mean, i dont know if its just my seg time or all the time i spent locked up, but if i feel like somebodys trying to intimidate me, its like a switch turns on. Im a violent felon. Im not somebody that should ever be left to his own thoughts. Addicts feel that the drugs call their name. I feel that that razor calls my name. I still think that the best thing for me is treatment, some kind of help, because i overanalyze everything and i think everybodys out to get me, and then i start cutting up. Its nobodys fault but my own. Im the convict, im the man with the violent record. I cannot turn off the prison mentality. I know that i dont think like a normal person. Go to pbs. Org frontline for an immersive Virtual Reality tour of life in solitary. I didnt realize that i would be spending four to five years of my life in solitary confinement. Learn more about efforts around the country to reform the use of solitary. So how does pride affect us . I show pride, i try to go, like, too far and. Connect to the Frontline Community on facebook and twitter, then sign up for our newsletter at pbs. Org frontline. An adventurous experiment what if i ate fish every meal for a year . Woah to explore the connection between the health of our waters the number of wild salmon has been reduced dramatically and one of these reasons is salmon farming. And our own health. Opening my omega3 results. The moment of truth. An eyeopening journey from ship to shore. We need to transition to a completely different relationship to our seas. The fish on my plate. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the ford foundation. Working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from laura debonis. Captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org for more on this and other frontline programs, visit our website at pbs. Org frontline. Frontlinelast days of solitary is available on dvd. To order, visit shoppbs. Org or call 1800playpbs. Frontline is also available for download on itunes. Youre watching pbs. Ive been getting used to waking here come and play with us. Onward and yonward yeah yeah [ imitates explosion ] good ideas open up a whole new world of possibilities. The more you know about history, the more you know about yourself. The sky is the limit. Anywhere i go, there you are Jussie Smollett funding for afropop the ultimate Cultural Exchange is provided in part by the corporation for public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the arts. Hey, im Jussie Smollett and welcome to afropop the ultimate Cultural Exchange. My africa is, a new documentary series changing the way we talk about the african continent. Tonight on afropop, we bring you two short films my africa is and native sun. This is afropop the ultimate Cultural Exchange, an independent documentary showcase exploring the presentday realities and contemporary lifestyles