Solitary Gardens: Cultivating Humanity and Abolition

By Madyson Mendez

Solitary Gardens are an agricultural and artistic project dedicated to raising

awareness of mass incarceration rates and advocating for the abolishment of solitary confinement, while simultaneously allowing prisoners to reconnect to humanity and nature by providing a healing and therapeutic outlet.

The guest speaker, Dr. Ana Croegaert, expressed how solitary confinement is recognized as a form of torture, with no rehabilitation effects, but rather deep lasting psychological effects.* I felt this emphasized the goal of the project: while it may not be directly aligned with policy change, it pushes for the abolition of solitary confinement and the mass incarceration system, in line with Angela Davis’ perspective.

Solitary Gardens is inspired by the ideology that the mass incarceration system and solitary confinement are not institutions that can be reformed, only completely dismantled and abolished.

This perspective is further supported by the statistical discrepancies in who the mass incarceration system implicates and imprisons. For example, people in state prisons grew up facing serious family, housing, economic, and educational challenges such as family disruption, homelessness, low-income families, educational exclusion, and arrest as youth. The prison-industrial complex systemically targets vulnerable people, especially young people, as rather than offering support and rehabilitation to these people, they are, in turn, criminalized.

Statistics prove most people in prison are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color.

Therefore, people of color and women are overrepresented in the prison-industrial complex, not because they may commit more crimes but because they are targeted and profiled due to their socioeconomic status and/or cannot afford the ability to maneuver the mass incarceration system, such as inaccessibility to adequate legal representation or posting bail. I was especially overwhelmed by the information that 80% of women in jail are mothers and menstruating incarcerated women could not access sanitary products if not for commissary.

How does the prison-industrial complex, the mass incarceration system, or solitary confinement seem humane? Especially, if these prisons are privately funded by bureaucratic institutions that exploit and abuse prisoners, through means of solitary confinement and forced prison labor, which I learned about in "Social Change," a course I took last semester.

Additionally, the researcher detailed experiences of getting mail correspondence sent back because they couldn’t send drawings or doodles in letters, letters not in black ink, or photos in color, as letters are regularly checked and returned to the sender if they violate these regulations.

This level of hyper-surveillance is dehumanizing to both the prisoner and those outside communicating with them, as their mail is always read and censored by prison staff.

Dr. Croegaert further highlighted the extremities of the surveillance of prisoners as incarcerated individuals in 'supermax' prisons do not have access to email, and phone call privileges are unsatisfactory as they are short and censored. Finally, she conveyed how COVID-19 restrictions minimized the very little privileges these incarcerated individuals had to begin with by eliminating the hourly leisure time incarcerated individuals had outside. The prisoners had immediate reactions, including the usage of profanity and fear-mongering.

The Solitary Gardens project proves how solitary confinement is inhumane.

Solitary Gardens is successful in its mission as it educates people on the stories of the incarcerated, such as Jesse Wilson and Tim Youngs. The project has turned solitary confinement cells into garden beds, whose contents, including plants, flowers, and herbs, are curated by prisoners in solitary confinement. Jesse Willson, who was charged and convicted, served time in ADX Florence, the federal ‘supermax’ in Colorado, from 2007 to 2019 until he was reclaimed by New Orleans, and spent a collective 20 years in solitary confinement. Wilson engaged in the project to reconnect with feelings and experiences of his family and childhood, specifically memories of gardening and planting with his mother. Eventually, his wife, stepdaughter, aunt, and other family members traveled to visit his garden in New Orleans.

Solitary Gardens challenges the dehumanization and isolation solitary confinement thrusts upon incarcerated individuals through the project’s emphasis on nourishment.

I found it beautiful that while the project is not an alternative to solitary confinement, it’s a symbol of hope, transformation, and healing, which can be cemented through abolition.

The lecture on Solitary Gardens can directly connect to our Research Methods class given that the guest speaker emphasized how ethics is a continuous responsibility of the researcher. For example, Dr. Croegaert let the participants use pseudonyms instead of their real names. A participant contributed to the research using the name, Sparkles, their incarcerated mother’s working name. Another participant contributed to the research using the name Frances, which was the participant’s maternal grandfather’s name. I felt this aspect illustrated how the researcher conducting these interviews and case studies builds intimate and trusting bonds with their subjects.

It’s crucial for a researcher to truly see the humanity of their subjects and empathize

with them.

Furthermore, this shows how a disadvantage of only using statistical evidence is that statistics can often create a sense of anonymity, which makes it difficult to empathize with people in these positions.

Solitary Gardens is a collective and tangible project that restores the individuality and humanity of prisoners.

*The lecture by Dr. Ana Croegaert was held on March 10, 2025, and was organized by the Institute on Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and Dr. Alana Glaser from the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at SJU.

Madyson Mendez is a B.A./M.A. Sociology student at St. John's University. Her aspiration is to become a social worker, advocating for women, children, Latinx and LGBTQ+ issues.