Darrius Fields has been in and out of correctional facilities in Illinois since he was 12 years old. He is now 28. When he was first locked away as a teenager, he experienced a series of psychotic episodes: hearing voices in his head and undergoing strong feelings of paranoia. His condition, left untreated, Fields says, ultimately led to a juvenile criminal record.

Like so many other young black men in this country, he never received adequate mental health support and instead found himself facing the brunt of the criminal justice system.

For the last several years, Fields has been held in solitary confinement at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois. The practice, which international standards define as the physically isolated incarceration of individuals in a cell for 22-24 hours per day, constitutes a form of torture according to a recent report from a committee of the United Nations human rights council.

Fields has had several run-ins with prison staff over the years. He says he has been targeted by administration for “defending his humanity.” At various time in the past, he has not only fought with prison guards, but also staged hunger strikes and filed formal grievances against individual officers.

These actions, he said, only got him extended time in solitary confinement. He says he has found himself trapped in constant darkness, minimum access to food, little mental health services and only a limited amount of outside interaction.

The Uptown People’s Law Center says there are an estimated 8,000 Illinois prisoners being held in some form of solitary confinement and in the US as a whole around 100,000.

Outcry against the inhumane conditions of prisons comes from both policy reform advocates and from movements of resistance within the prisons themselves. While prison uprisings are not a new occurrence, they are often an indicator of turbulence within systems of incarceration.

In February, inmates at Smyrna, Delaware, took four corrections department workers hostage. The inmates involved listed a number of motives among them concern with the Trump administration: “We know the institution is going to change for the worse.”

They requested more access to educational resources: “We want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget.”

The incident lasted two days and ended after police forces stormed the building.

Many have criticised such actions by prisoners, but often their pleas for help from the inside go unheard.

When we visited Fields at Menard last month, he claimed to have gone several days without food or water after an altercation with a prison guard. Fields said that guards claimed he had spit on one of them and then taken all of his belongings: “I’ve been without any clothes or sheets for four days,” he said. “I had to roll the mattress over me to stay warm.”

Erica Meiners, a professor in the College of Education at Northeastern University, told People’s World in an exclusive interview that there is a popular misconception that solitary confinement is only used for the “worst of the worst.” It is often inflicted on some of the most vulnerable inmates: “They have been held for a broad range of reasons, from being LGBTQ to having mental health issues,” she said.

That seems true in the Fields case — he has now spent over a half of his life locked away without, until recently, receiving proper medical attention for the mental health issues he says he faces. “Someone once told me that if I had received the therapy that I’m getting now when I first needed it, I wouldn’t be here.”

The prison system is only one of the institutions that failed Fields. An underfunded education system, a lack of public housing and the overall neglect marginalised communities in Chicago combine to funnel too many people like Fields into a life in the criminal justice system.

In 2012, the city’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel shut down six of 12 public mental health clinics and the shortly after, the city’s Board of Education started the largest school closures in Chicago history directly affecting 40,000 students predominantly in the black communities of west side.

“We know our prisons have become de-facto mental health services in our nation. When we defunded mental health institutions, we did not provide the support for the community that is needed,” Meiners says.

There is, however, a growing movement that advocates for alternatives to prisons. The ultimate goal for some grassroots activists is the complete dismantling of all prisons and systems of policing.

This abolition movement demands community-based healing and restorative justice processes that invest in actual solutions to the social issues faced by the black population.

“More borders and more police is not the road to public safety,” Meiners claims. “Some people think it’s radical, but it’s actually common sense; we know what’s making our blocks stronger and we know what makes our communities strive.”

In the meantime, public policy can play a role and where there is public pressure on lawmakers, policies are beginning to shift toward bringing about an end to the use of solitary confinment.

Lawmakers in Illinois are currently working on a Bill that would significantly limit the amount of time someone can be held in solitary — it will be voted on sometime in the next several months.

There are a number of organisations campaigning for the bill, including the Chicago chapter of the national LGBTQ prisoners’ advocacy group Black and Pink, Uptown People’s Law Center and Stop Solitary Illinois. Republican co-sponsor David Harris, Democratic Representative Sonya M Harper and chief co-sponsor Will Guzzardi are among a number of politicians are also supporting the Bill.

Last year a similar Bill lacked proper support and was subsequently killed before any progress could be made. This time, however, grassroots organisations say they have worked closely with one another to create a state-wide push in support of the Stop Solitary coalition in Illinois.

Illinois is not the first state to make such a move. In 2013, almost 30,000 inmates in California launched the largest nationwide hunger strike in protest against solitary confinement and other prison conditions.

The strike eventually resulted in a settlement which ended indeterminate-length sentences in segregation.

At the national level, the Obama administration announced in 2016 a permanent ban on the use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in the federal prison system.

As momentum against solitary grows nationally, legislation such as Illinois’s could set a precedent for stopping the practice being applied to adult inmates as well.

While abolition remains a long term goal for some activists, inmates are left to challenge the injustices of this practice in the present.

With only their voices left to express their discontent and fear, Fields and fellow inmates keep pushing back, even if it means more time in disciplinary isolation.

Fields says he hopes there will be a time when he can focus on getting better outside the walls of Menard and reconnect with the family and friends he left behind so many years ago.

“I don’t want to die here,” he says.

• This article first appeared at www.peoplesworld.org.