Inside Prison for the Most DANGEROUS Women: WORSE Than Death Row!

11 by 6 feet, smaller than a parking space.  A narrow window that doesn’t open, and on the other side of the concrete door—23 hours a day of absolute silence.  There are women who have been locked up like this for 5, 10, 20 years. In her cell 23 hours a day, handcuffed and shackled with every movement.

  This is the maximum of maximum security .  There are women here.  They are crazy. This is not the story of one crime.  This is the story of a punishment that, according to the United Nations itself, becomes torture after just 15 days, and which is still applied to American women for months, and sometimes years.  Often for such minor infractions as defiant responses to a correctional officer .

  To understand the seriousness of this, we will trace in detail the story of a woman who, according to the officers who worked with her , is one of the most talented manipulators to ever pass through an American prison, and who has been in solitary confinement for almost five years.  Not for the double murder she was convicted of, but for one day in 2008.

Block One, America’s Most Wanted Woman.  Sarah Pender was about 25 , had five years of college and a whole life ahead of her when she was convicted of two murders in Indiana. The prosecution never alleged that she pulled the trigger.  It was her boyfriend, Richard Gall, who was shooting. But according to the charges, it was Sarah who bought the murder weapon, helped dispose of the bodies, and, behind the scenes, moved everyone around her like pawns on a board.

I have a broader worldview, and I think that, um, I’ve managed to glean more wisdom than the average person.  Uh, I’m generally more educated.  I have, I have 5 years of college.  Um, why did you choose the path that brought you here? It was an emotional attachment. I have a broader worldview.  I think I’ve managed to gather more wisdom than the average person.

  This is how she describes herself.  Sitting in prison, serving a 110-year sentence.  110 years—the sentence she heard, and which she still describes in one word: shocking.  But the crime she was convicted of is n’t even the reason she’s in isolation now.  The reason is what happened in August 2008. The officer helped me, um, in what way? I am He Oh, this is so embarrassing.

  Um, Um, Uh, he took me out.  They have these transport vans that come to refuel.  It’s like they have their own little gas station.  And we planned everything like this: when he arrived to fill up, I got out and got into the van. In 2008, Sarah convinced a guard to take her out of a maximum security prison by hiding a gas station in the back seat.

She didn’t ask him directly.  For months, she methodically and patiently built an emotional dependency on him.  She pretended to care, promised to be everything he lacked at home, and used this connection to pass on forbidden items, gradually funding her escape plan.    He had problems in his family.  And she took advantage of it.

  She played on his feelings.  She made him believe that she would save him, become everything to him, replace what he didn’t have, and he was so vulnerable.  He was led to do so.  So he did everything she asked.  He fell in love with her.    Did he fall in love with her? Yes, but of course she did n’t love him.  She used it to get what she wanted, which was to escape Rockville.

And you would explain this by her ability to manipulate.  She…I’ve seen a lot.  I have been working here for over 20 years.  Sarah is one of the best manipulators I’ve ever met. The officer who helped her escape, Scott Spitler, was sentenced to 7 years in prison. Sarah, who was 29 at the time , was in hiding for over 4 months, even making the FBI’s 15 Most Wanted list, and the national press dubbed her “the female version of Charles Manson.

” When she was caught, she gave an interview, smiling and mocking the whole situation. Everyone is thinking about escaping .  They just don’t want to admit it. Knowing what you know now, would you do it again? If my state of mind then was the same as it is now, absolutely not.  I ran away because I lost hope.  And when you lose hope, despair comes.

What were those 4.5 months while you were in hiding like for you? It was wonderful. Simply. You never posed a threat to anyone . No.  Never.  The worst thing I did while I was free was lie to people about who I was.  I worked, had a real job, an apartment, and used public transportation. If you could talk to Jamie Long or Scott Spitler today, if you had a message for them, what would you want them to know? Just thank you.

  You know, thank you for standing up for what you believed in. Do you have any hope that you will get out of this prison? Of course, legally.  Everyone needs hope. Sarah was placed in solitary confinement. According to reports, the administration itself told her family the official reason: she was too smart for the institution.

Em. What kind of weapon was that? It was a gun used for hunting, apparently birds.  I don’t know. I didn’t choose her. But in the end, it was not used to hunt birds, but to shoot two people with whom he had a conflict. Yes.  Well, he actually had no conflict with this woman.  He said he only shot her because she was a witness.

    The very fact is that you purchased a weapon that was used in the murder of two people. Almost 5 years later, longer than any other female inmate in the state, she is still there.  Second block.  What happens in solitary confinement? Sarah Pender is an exception only in the degree of manipulation she demonstrated.

  What is happening to her physically and psychologically is painfully common among thousands of other women imprisoned in the United States. Stress hormone levels can spike, and over time, this stress becomes chronic.  Social interactions and meaningful activities are important for emotional stability.  This may be because they provide us with what researchers call a social reality check.

  A kind of indicator by which we can assess how rational our perceptions are.  So when someone is deprived of such communication and tasks, their sense of identity and reality is threatened. In the first days of isolation, the level of stress hormones increases sharply. Over time, this stress becomes chronic.  People depend on social interaction and meaningful tasks to maintain their own sense of reality.

Researchers call this a social reality check— a kind of compass we use to check whether our perceptions still make sense.  When this compass is taken away, a person’s identity begins to crumble from within.  Thoughts are getting out of control.  Impulses prevail.  And the soil becomes fertile for depression, obsessions, suicidal thoughts, and in extreme cases, real delusions and hallucinations.

This prolonged arousal can cause the limbic system of the brain, which regulates fear and stress , to become particularly sensitive and hyperactive. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s center for logic and moral judgment, can shrink, impairing concentration, memory, and thinking.  In general, the balance shifts from rational thinking towards emotionality.

  And as the person remains in this state, the imbalance becomes entrenched, making them more prone to anxiety attacks, rage, and irrational actions. With prolonged arousal, the limbic system of the brain, responsible for regulating fear and stress, becomes hyperactive. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for thinking and moral judgments, begins to physically shrink , harming memory, concentration, and cognitive abilities.

  The entire balance of the brain noticeably shifts from rational thinking to a purely emotional state. The body also pays its price.  Loss of sense of time, insomnia, heart palpitations, headaches, hypersensitivity, and weight loss due to digestive problems related to extreme stress. Pray and think about how to help yourself. Pray to God, which I did, and ask him why he was punishing me like this if he knew I was innocent.

In New York, a prisoner known only as Candy spent nearly 2.5 years behind bars awaiting trial for a crime she was never convicted of. She spent most of this time in isolation in a block that the prisoners themselves call “horror.” Having no psychiatric problems before getting there, Candy fell into a destructive cycle.

  The more the isolation destabilized her, the worse she reacted, and the worse she reacted, the more time in solitary confinement she received as punishment. She once cut herself on broken glass and was sentenced to an additional 90 days of isolation for possession of prohibited items.  When she was denied sanitary pads, she used her own clothes to stop the bleeding, which also resulted in a punishment for damaging prison property.

Solitary confinement is one of the most effective ways to make people unable to control their impulses, to make them paranoid and afraid that they are surrounded by enemies, even when they are not. Block three, why women are punished differently.  There is a structural difference, documented by researchers, in why men and women end up in solitary confinement.

Men typically need to commit serious offenses, such as assaulting an officer, attacking another inmate, or stealing property, to end up there. Women, according to numerous studies, are often isolated for minor, non-violent infractions.  Aggressive response, refusal to follow an order, argument with a security guard. You are being sent to detention for a fight.

People are sent to detention for stealing food from a guard.  You are being sent to detention for spreading malicious rumors about the staff. But most people end up in solitary confinement for “relationships between girlfriends.”  It could be a hug, you could hug someone, it could be a kiss on the cheek, in fact, even a simple “high five.

”  It all depends on how they want to formalize it. One theory put forward by researchers is worrisome.  Women prisoners are subjected, even if unconsciously by the institution itself, to a rigid standard of femininity— the expectation that they be passive, submissive, and caring.  When a prisoner violates this pattern—out of anger or simply not conforming to the expected image of a woman—the punishment is usually disproportionate.

There is an even more serious pattern. Women who report abuse by guards are often placed in solitary confinement themselves, officially for their own safety. In practice, this means that the person who was harassed ends up paying for it, while the officer in charge continues to work.  We go through mental, emotional, and spiritual stages.

At first you arrive angry, disoriented, paranoid. Gradually, I began to perceive this camera as my safe place.  What will happen next year when this camera is taken away from me ?  This phrase alone sums up one of the most brutal and least discussed consequences of prolonged isolation.  For some women, the very isolation, the very space that destroys them, gradually becomes the only place where they still feel safe.

  Block four, what remains after that.  We return to a prison in Indiana, where another inmate, Edie Harts, who is only 25 years old, is serving time for armed robbery.    I just have terrible anger issues, so I always let it get the better of me . Even looking at you now, I find it hard to believe that you are capable of such a thing.

I am quite capable of this. Eddie has two young daughters at large, and she describes her greatest fear: repeating with her daughters the same cycle that her mother went through, also imprisoned and convicted of a violent crime . I just don’t want them to repeat this path.  It’s like my mother was in prison, you know?  It’s the same.

For what? Attempted murder and armed robbery . So, it wasn’t the best start to your life, was it? No, it wasn’t. At the other end of the same prison, Martha Serch is preparing to be released after almost 20 years in prison. She doesn’t even know what an iPod is.  She never used a cell phone that wasn’t wired to the wall at home.

  One of her daughters stopped visiting her in 1999.  The other one was in 2005, because she could no longer bear the thought of having to leave there without her mother. Martha, how long have you been here?  Almost 20 years.  The thought of liberation must be exciting. Yes. But you’re probably also worried about returning to the world after so many years.

Yes, I’m worried, but this time has allowed me to discover things in myself that I didn’t have before , such as patience.  And I know it will be difficult.  It will be a little difficult, but I live one day at a time and I just want to see how the world will change in these 20 years. The last block.  What international rules say and what the United States actually does.

The practice of isolating prisoners in solitary confinement originated in the United States in the 18th century, introduced by Quaker groups.  Quakers are members of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian movement founded in England in the 17th century by George Fox.  They reject hierarchies, formal rituals, and paid clergy, basing their beliefs on the desire for a direct connection with the divine.

  They created it as an alternative to corporal punishment. The idea was that isolation would lead to reflection and repentance .  This is where the word ” penitentiary” comes from, which is still used today.  Charles Dickens, back in the 19th century, called this practice worse than any physical torture. The use of solitary confinement declined for decades until the 1980s, when stricter crime laws led to a rapid increase in the US prison population.

Overcrowded prisons became fertile ground for uprisings. And isolation was once again widely used as a tool of control.    The United Nations, through the so-called Mandela Rules, recommends that solitary confinement should never exceed 15 consecutive days and that it should not be used on women at all.

  None of these recommendations are mandatory, and according to the US Department of Justice itself, tens of thousands of prisoners, both men and women, remain in solitary confinement on any given day of the year for significantly longer.  Women who have been through solitary confinement are three times more likely to suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder upon release.

They report personality changes, anxiety and paranoia even in completely ordinary situations, and difficulty concentrating and communicating with other people throughout their lives.  Meanwhile, Sarah Bender remains in solitary confinement in Indiana, serving her sentence in solitary confinement, concurrent with the 110- year sentence that already keeps her behind bars for the rest of her life.

  According to her, the crime that brought her there was that she trusted a dangerous man too much.  What keeps her isolated to this day, according to the officers who know her, is her ability to make people trust her too well. So, the question this video leaves is: Should we continue to use solitary confinement as a tool of control in American prisons, knowing the harm it causes, which has already been proven by science?  Isn’t it high time we started treating this as what the UN itself calls torture?  Leave your opinion in the comments.