This might be the worst thing happening in Texas right now.

I was standing in a containment cage, a contraption smaller than a telephone booth made of steel and mesh wire. It was standing room only in the cage, with no toilet or sink.

This was a regular part of life for a prisoner in solitary confinement in Texas. Every time I was transferred to a different prison facility, I found myself in one of these containment cages while the prison administration assigned me to a cell. This time, I’d spent the past 23 months in solitary confinement for possession of a contraband cellphone. Prison administrators had approved my release back into the general population, and I had been transferred to the William McConnell Unit in South Texas.

There were two other prisoners standing in the additional containment cages, one six feet to my left and the other six feet to my right. A small-framed young Latino kid named Sam was in the left containment cage, and Mike, a frail, elderly Black man with an unkempt gray beard was to my right. The moment my shackles and handcuffs were removed, Sam began telling me horror stories about McConnell. (I am using pseudonyms to protect the prisoners mentioned.)

Sam explained that he was enrolled in the McConnell Unit’s self-harm program because he expressed suicidal ideations. He had attempted suicide multiple times, and each time the prison administrators tossed him into a containment cage. On average, Sam spent four days in a containment cage before being transferred to a mental health facility.

This time, Sam had been in a containment cage for six consecutive days, without a single opportunity to access a toilet. Turning sideways inside his containment cage, Sam pointed at a pile of brown substance on his floor. It was dried feces. When I expressed my disbelief that he had been forced to relieve himself within his cage, Sam informed me that the feces belonged to the prisoners previously in the cage.

I stood in complete shock. Then I gazed quickly toward Mike’s containment cage. Eight cereal cartons lined the inside perimeter, each filled with liquid. Before I could ask, Sam answered my question; it was urine. Mike had been there four days after a failed suicide attempt. Instead of urinating on the floor, Mike saved empty cereal cartons from breakfast. The brown bags that lunch and dinner came in doubled as waste containers.

Sam and Mike both were placed on a prison protocol called CDO, or constant and direct observation. Suicidal prisoners were placed in this protocol until they were cleared by the prison’s mental health department or transferred to a mental health facility, a process that often took days.

Housing prisoners in containment cages for days is a widespread and unchecked practice in certain Texas prisons. At the other prisons where I had been held, suicidal individuals were placed in empty cells that at least had functioning plumbing and bunks, and space to move around. A guard was stationed outside of their cells to monitor the prisoners’ behavior patterns until they were cleared or transferred. Solitary confinement itself was horrific, but these containment cages were catastrophic. Even if the floors had not been littered with other prisoners’ feces or cartons filled with urine, there was no room to lie down.

As a prisoners’ rights advocate and journalist with two decades of bylines dedicated to the Texas prison system, I knew the system was antiquated and inhumane, but this shocked me to my core. These were the most dehumanizing conditions I had experienced within the Texas system. This was 2022, and these living conditions reminded me of conditions experienced by enslaved people in the 1800s. They infringed upon every protection afforded by the U.S. Constitution and on basic human morality.

Psychiatrist Terry Kupers affirmed in an interview that the practice of holding people with any kind of mental health conditions in any form of solitary confinement meets the definition of torture provided by the United Nations. Kupers argued that it violates the Eighth Amendment as well. From a clinical standpoint, Kupers believes placing individuals suffering from a mental health crisis in horrid conditions of isolation is a flagrant human rights’ violation.

“What sense does it make to place suicidal prisoners in containment cages if the aim is to helps them examine and resolve suicidal inclinations?” Kupers asked me. “The containment cages make prisoners more prone to eventually take their own lives,” he said. According to Kupers, the containment cages are worse than a solitary confinement cell, and are antithetical to crisis intervention and suicide prevention.

When I assumed it could get no worse, Sam told me about the “dungeon” located at the back of the administration building. The administration of the McConnell Unit had taken an unused empty utility closet and retrofitted it with seven containment cages, stacked next to one another, to house suicidal prisoners.

In the dungeon, Sam told me, there were daily shouting contests between suicidal prisoners who suffered from schizophrenia, hallucinations, and other mental illnesses. Obscenities and threats were tossed relentlessly between prisoners at unbearable volumes in the tiny, windowless utility closet.

“Those arguments last for days without interruption,” Sam said. Oftentimes, verbal disputes turned physical. Feces, urine, and other bodily fluids would fly through the containment cages’ mesh wire. The prisoners in the cages in between feuding parties had no escape from these disputes, and no sink to clean themselves afterward. The guard assigned to the unit would sit in the hallway out of harm’s way.

Through luck, Sam and Mike narrowly avoided placement in the dungeon as the unit had no capacity. The prison administrators had no option but to house them in the additional containment cages sprinkled throughout the administration building hallway. It was Sam’s belief that prisoners suffering from mental illness enrolled in the self-harm program in hopes of finding treatment at a mental health facility. However, prisoners who had previously spent time in one of the containment cages preferred death over being placed back into those dehumanizing living conditions.

The stories I heard from prisoners locked in the containment cages convinced me I needed to see the atrocity known as the dungeon for myself. I met a prisoner who worked in the chapel and was responsible for delivering religious pamphlets to prisoners in solitary confinement. He agreed to escort me through the solitary confinement administration building.

The administration building looked like any other government building. The walls were neatly painted with the state of Texas emblem, with the words “Protecting Our Own” inscribed across the top. American and Texan flags were prominently displayed everywhere. The fresh scent of Pine-Sol penetrated my nose. The floors were polished with a shining coat of wax.

We were greeted by a row of tidy offices with large windows. Civilian clerks sat behind wooden desks, and a security control picket was manned by a single prison guard. A monitor provided security footage of the entire building, next to an arsenal of chemical agents and riot gear.

The guard buzzed us through a solid steel gate to give us entry to the main hallway, with the dungeon located at the end. After we passed a security office, we arrived at two adjoining hallways that veered off to the solitary confinement cell blocks where I was previously held. The closer we got to the dungeon, the more the administration building deteriorated. The polished floors slowly turned into dull tiles. The paint became increasingly bare. An intolerable odor overwhelmed the scent of Pine-Sol.

By the time we reached the end of the main hallway, the building was unrecognizable. Deafening screams bounced off the walls. A guard sat outside the doorway and eyed us with suspicion as we approached him. The entire room, including the ceiling and floor, had been painted royal blue. Dried and fresh feces hung from the mesh wire of each cage. The entire floor was flooded with urine. There were red blood spatters on the walls. An elderly Black man in the first cell gave me the most heartbreaking look of despair.

This practice is not exclusive to the McConnell Unit. At least two other Texas prisons, the Gib Lewis Unit and the John B. Connally Unit, have their own version of the dungeon.

A 2023 complaint to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice made by the Texas Civil Rights Project and Texas Prison Reform requested an investigation into the practice at the Gib Lewis Unit. The complaint alleged prisoners at Gib Lewis were being held in containment cages without the ability to lie down fully or access bathrooms. On multiple occasions, prisoners were forced to urinate in bottles and defecate in bags, or on the ground of the cages, with one prisoner claiming he endured this treatment for over a week.

TDCJ has been historically known as one of the most dehumanizing prison systems in the country, especially when it comes to its mental health care and solitary confinement policies. For decades, TDCJ administrators have resisted national trends on limiting the use of solitary confinement, specifically for mentally ill or suicidal individuals.

For example, in 2017 the state of New Jersey passed legislation expressly prohibiting the housing of “vulnerable populations in solitary confinement,” which included prisoners with a history of mental illness or those exhibiting recent conduct like self-mutilation. The same year, Colorado terminated its practice of housing mentally ill prisoners in solitary, and replaced it with deescalation tactics and psychiatric care. Several other states have followed suit and implemented similar provisions to ensure solitary confinement is not utilized for prisoners with serious mental illnesses.

However, Texas continues to place mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement. In fact, the programs designed to “treat” mentally ill suicidal prisoners often involve psychologically crippling isolation. During the 23 months I spent in solitary confinement, I witnessed TDCJ staff disregard prisoners’ mental health. Few of us were given regular mental health evaluations. Countless requests for mental health treatment were denied or completely ignored. Mental health providers bullied prisoners placed in CDO asking for care.

It is no surprise that TDCJ has recorded 638 suicides since 2005, according to the Texas Justice Initiative, a watchdog group that monitors deaths in Texas prisons. Out of those 638 confirmed deaths, 85 percent (or 544 of them) were from hanging or strangulation.

In addition, there is a lack of transparency from the prison system regarding the regulations for suicidal prisoners. The Prison Policy Initiative requested the TDCJ provide the official policy regarding the treatment and housing requirements for suicidal prisoners for this story. The prison passed the request on to the Texas Medical Board, which rejected it, citing patient confidentiality. So the official policy is still unknown.

The TDCJ did not respond when contacted for a comment.

But for prisoners like Sam and Mike, and for the haunted souls I encountered in the dungeon, official policies hardly matter. What matters is the suffering they endure—day after day, hour after hour—in cages that would be deemed unfit for any animal, much less for highly vulnerable human beings.

This article was supported by a grant from the Ridgeway Reporting Project, managed by Solitary Watch with funding from the Vital Projects Fund.