DecARcerate Releases "Failure to Obey," a Multimedia Report on Suicides in Solitary Confinement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 12/5/24

Zachary Crow, Executive Director of DecARcerate

[Phone]

zachary@decarceratear.org

www.decarceratear.org

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.: As Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders tries to move rapidly forward on the construction of a 3,000-bed prison that is expected to significantly increase the Arkansas Department of Corrections’s capacity for solitary confinement, DecARcerate is releasing an in-depth multimedia report on current conditions entitled Failure to Obey: Solitary Confinement in Arkansas Prisons.

Authored by currently incarcerated writer DeMarco Raynor and award-winning journalist Anna Stitt, the report weaves together letters from Raynor and others while inside solitary confinement, first-person accounts recorded by the state police after one man’s suicide, photographs and video from other death investigations, and other documents provided by the Arkansas Department of Corrections in response to data requests.

In 2021, DecARcerate released a report that told the story of solitary confinement through data, finding that suicide was much higher in solitary confinement than in the general population and that solitary confinement often causes serious mental illness.

In March 2024, the Arkansas Department of Corrections released its own study on suicides in Arkansas prisons, citing a 2014 report that found “that the risk of suicide among those in a single cell in isolation is more than 400 times greater than those in a double cell in generational population.” The report also asserts that “Despite this well-established literature [on suicidality among incarcerated people], suicide remains a problem in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.”

Failure to Obey goes beyond this data to tell the human story of a crisis that is critical but rarely visible to anyone outside prison.

DecARcerate is a nonprofit working to affirm human dignity by confronting unjust systems. They envision a world where equity, healing, and reconciliation replace systems of punishment and oppression. For more information on decARcerate, visit www.decarceratear.org. DeMarco Raynor is a social/criminal justice writer and activist serving life in prison for a crime that occurred before he reached the age of 21. DeMarco is originally from Allport, Arkansas, and attended high school in Humnoke. In 2018, DeMarco founded an organization called DeMarco Raynor's Forgiveness, Reform, and Freedom Movement to bridge the gap between victim and offender and bring about reconciliation. He is currently working on his first screenplay.

Anna Stitt is a journalist and documentary producer who grew up in the Arkansas Ozarks. She has worked with outlets ranging from KNWA News in Fayetteville to WIRED Magazine. She has spoken at universities, including UCA, Ouachita Baptist, Georgetown, and NYU. Stitt has reported extensively on prisons, and her 2020 National Geographic / public radio series, “COVID-19 Inside Arkansas Prisons,” won a Society of Professional Journalists Diamond Journalism Award for investigative reporting. She is currently an executive producer and editor on the Audible Originals documentary team.

Report co-author DeMarco Raynor said, “The things I have experienced or seen take place in solitary confinement would make the strongest person break down. Suicide and the throwing of feces by inmates, physical and verbal assault by staff are forever etched in my memory. The injustices I witnessed while working in the restricted housing area and the time I spent locked down compelled me to share my truths about the horrors of solitary confinement. My hope is for society as a whole to be made aware of the inhumane treatment that's taking place daily in solitary confinement at every facility under the Arkansas Department of Corrections umbrella.”

Report co-author Anna Stitt said, “It can be easy to look away from things as grim as what’s going on in solitary confinement. But I hope we can collectively look toward it. How the state treats people who are considered expendable by society sets the standard for our collective humanity, and how social control is exercised in prisons lays the groundwork for the rest of us to stay in line. In these ways, solitary confinement isn’t too far away from any of our lives.”

Executive Director of decARcerate, Zachary Crow said, “The fact that Arkansas continues turning its attention to expanding prison, which if realized could mean thousands of additional Arkansans are held in solitary confinement—a practice recognized as torture by the United Nations—is deeply troubling. The abuses uncovered by this report help remind us of what is truly at stake if we continue down this road.”