Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [181]
After my first court appearance, when I was transported to the Johnston County Jail in Smithfield, North Carolina, the U.S. Marshals ordered my jailers to put me in the one place I feared most: “the hole.”
I couldn’t believe it was happening. Shuffling toward that door in leg irons and shackles, I resisted every step. Time itself seemed to slow down. I knew then that the main thing that had kept me on the run for the past three years was my fear of this place. I didn’t think I could take being in there again. Now here the guards were, leading me right back into my nightmare, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
The last time, in 1988, they’d put me in solitary confinement for more than eight months to get me to do what they wanted: as soon as I signed their plea agreement, they put me in with the general population. And this time, the government wasn’t shoving me into this hellhole to protect the public from me, or me from other inmates. It was coercion, pure and simple. The message was clear: all I had to do was agree to the prosecutor’s demands and waive certain rights, and agree to only call my immediate family and legal counsel, and they’d be more than happy to let me out of solitary, into the general population.
I wish I could describe the sinking feeling I had as I stepped inside. After living in dread of “the hole” for so many years, it took everything I had not to totally lose it when they locked the door behind me. I would rather have shared a cell with a tattooed, whacked-out drug dealer than find myself locked up alone like this again.
The rap about computer geeks is that we spend countless hours in small, dark rooms, crouched over the glowing screens of our laptops, not even knowing whether it’s day or night. To a nine-to-fiver, that might seem like solitary, but it’s not.
There’s a huge difference between spending time alone and being thrown into a disgusting, dirty coffin that is your home today, tomorrow, next month, with no light at the end of the tunnel, controlled by people who are doing their best to make you miserable. No matter how hard you try to reframe it in your head, being in the hole is grim and depressing twenty-four/seven. Solitary confinement is widely condemned as torture. Even now, the United Nations is working to have its use declared inhumane.
Many experts say that extended solitary confinement is far worse than water boarding or other forms of physical torture. In the hole, prisoners commonly suffer from lethargy, despair, rage, and severe depression, and other forms of mental illness. The isolation, idleness, and lack of structure can easily start to unravel your mind. Without anyone else to interact with, you have no way to rein in your thoughts or keep your perspective. It’s far more of a nightmare than you can even imagine.
That’s why every study of solitary confinement of more than sixty days has shown damaging psychological effects. Sometimes they’re permanent. I was afraid of that. It had been over six years since I had been in solitary, and it still haunted me. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.
A week after I was thrown into solitary, the Federal prosecutors offered a deal to move me into the general population if I would waive my rights and agree to:
no bail hearing
no preliminary hearing
no phone calls, except to my legal counsel and a few family members.
Sign the agreement, they said, and I could get out of solitary. I signed.
My Los Angeles attorney John Yzurdiaga and his partner Richard Steingard helped me make the deal. Since I had been arrested in Raleigh, both attorneys graciously donated their time to work on my case. John had volunteered to represent me pro