I have been out of prison for 10 years, but my eight years in solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay Special Housing Unit still haunts me.

It affected the very core of my being. The sensory deprivation was extreme; there was no stimulation for my senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Mankind is stimulated by nature — the flight of a bird, the smell of a rose — but Pelican Bay SHU is nothing but concrete. There was nothing to motivate my creativity. ...

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