Content warning - prison, racism, suicide, self-harm, medical neglect, chronic illness, trauma

This is part two of a workshop that explores herbalism, incarceration and abolition. This particular section introduces the health impacts of incarceration, looking at medical neglect in prison, as well as what makes incarceration so traumatic.

About the workshop: This workshop explores the role of herbalism in supporting prisoners, families and communities affected by incarceration, and herbalist roles in the abolition of these systems of oppression. There are more than 11.5 million people incarcerated worldwide, including a massive 2.2 million in the so-called United States. Most are completely excluded from herbalism yet many can find plants cracking through the concrete. These plants can bring hope, connection and health support to people experiencing the worst of state violence.

In this workshop we will explore the health impacts of incarceration, and look at herbal strategies to support people experiencing traumatic stress and PTSD. We will look at some practical uses of plants commonly found in prison yards and what practicing herbalism in prison can look like. The workshop explores ‘abolition’ as a framework and the role of herbalists within these movements.

Links & resources from this episode

• You can find the workshop videos, PDFs and slides for free at: https://solidarityapothecary.org/product/herbalism-incarceration-abolition-workshop/
• Herbalism, PTSD & Traumatic Stress Course
• Herbalism, PTSD & Traumatic Stress Course Waiting List
• The Prisoner’s Herbal book
• Request a free copy of the Prisoner’s Herbal for someone in prison

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Let's get started.

All right, welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

I hope you had a listen to part one in this series, which is kind of introducing the whole workshop series.

So this is basically a, a section of an online workshop I gave all about herbalism, incarceration and abolition.

I'm not going to read the blurb of the, about the workshop because I did last time and you can also find it in the show notes.

But this

of part two, I just want to introduce that.

So this section is introducing like the health impacts of incarceration, looking at medical neglect in prison, as well as what makes incarceration like so traumatic.

I just want to say like with all of these parts that like Yeah, it was like hugely ambitious to fit in so much content into like a kind of 90 minute workshop, if that makes sense.

So these are just introductions to like vast, vast areas of work and struggle and learning.

But I hope you find it interesting.

And again, just a content warning that it includes all the things prison, racism, suicide, self harm, medical neglect, chronic illness, other forms of trauma.

Yeah, okay, and yeah, just like I mentioned before, but you can actually watch the videos of the workshop and download the PDF slides from my website.

There's a link in the show notes, so feel free to sign up for that for free.

Take care.

All right, now we're going to be looking at the health impacts of incarceration.

And again, this is just like literally a whistle stop tour of You know, you could talk about the health impacts of prison for, like, days, weeks, months, years, like, seriously.

So I just wanted to say that prisoners experience, like, intense medical neglect.

You know, whether it's you've got a simple headache and you need a paracetamol, it might be that it might not be possible to see the nurse, you might have missed the meds queue, might be too long, you might, you know, not be allowed.

You know, you might be pressing your buzzer, like, in your cell for hours on end before someone comes out.

Like, that's how people have had, you know, miscarriages, for example, in prison, and not been you know, people haven't turned up to check on them.

My best friend, Sam, has had three heart attacks in prison.

One time she was pressing the buzzer.

and then lost control of her bladder and was on the floor and she was waiting for several hours before the healthcare team came out to check on her, wasn't taken to hospital.

Yeah okay, and yeah, there is research that people living inside like correctional facilities, I mean I hate that name, right, but yeah, are more likely to have HIV or AIDS Oh, excuse me.

More likely to have hepatitis C and tuberculosis.

We've already talked about COVID in the previous video with the statistics.

Chronic illness is a real challenge in terms of managing chronic illness.

For example, getting longer term medications, getting diagnoses.

And you know, also naming like the kind of chronic illness after prison, you know, what happens in terms of consequences of longer term imprisonment on the body, you know, whether that's being in chronic fight or flight or having like horrific nutrition, horrific environmental circumstances, you know, leading to things like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, for example.

Yeah, and there is just this like absolute lack of autonomy, right?

You're absolutely dependent on officers.

For like, you know, most basic needs, whether it's a toilet roll or a paracetamol or medication that you really need for like seizures or, you know, cancer.

So yeah, like it's, you know, extremely difficult being in prison because you have very little in terms of self care tools, right, to take care of yourself.

Healthcare, especially in the UK context, is like really commonly privatized.

It's like outsourced to, you know, sometimes it is outsourced to sort of local NHS trusts.

Trust, but more recently it's outsourced to kind of privatised health services.

Sometimes they're, you know, like social enterprises.

But often the quality of care is really terrible.

My best friend Sam, who I've mentioned already.

She had, well, is, you know, cancer is like an ongoing thing, right, but for several years we were trying to get her cancer treatment and the private prison she was in at the time, they cancelled nine surgeries, like, to have her cancer removed because of short staff or whatever.

And NHS, like, the team, the specialist units, like, specialist anal cancer unit, would assemble an entire theatre team waiting for her, and then just have no idea where she was, and then finally speak to the prison who said they're not bringing her, and then all the while, like, me and Sam didn't know what was going on, because You never get told when you're going to be taken out to your hospital appointment.

So again, it's like this absolute lack of certainty, lack of control, lack of autonomy.

And yeah, prison is obviously full of people with different disabilities and prison itself is incredibly disabling, right?

Like is creating disabilities, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Okay.

And then I just wanted to talk about the kind of trauma of incarceration in terms of health impacts on our bodies, like holistically, like mind, body, soul.

Okay, so, these are some slides I actually put on Instagram about the trauma of incarceration.

So I'm just gonna read them, basically, but like, fear and threat to life.

So, prison is like a state of prolonged, repeated trauma with an inability to escape.

You know, incarceration is an overwhelming experience that can significantly change people socially, emotionally, and physiologically.

While all prisons are different, it is extremely common to experience, like, an ongoing threat to life, you know, to fear for our safety due to the frequent violence from officers, bending up people, so that's basically, like, attacking people you know, dragging them down to seg, like, an alarm will go off and, like, bloody 20 officers will come running and then just jump on someone, pin them on the ground, you know, sometimes that person can't breathe or they go unconscious, sometimes, you know, more often than not, the officers are getting, like, a good punch or two in.

And you're just, you know, you witness, like, this is completely normal, like, you're just witnessing it left, right and centre all day long, like, you just hear that noise and you know it's happening, so there is this, this kind of, like, frequency of violence, right?

You know, and prisoners obviously also attack each other, there's threats of sexual violence.

And people surrounding us may be, like, frequently self harming or trying to take their own lives.

This was something that I really struggled with PTSD wise, was, you know, flashbacks of people trying to kill themselves and, yeah, that's like a daily reality for most people in prison.

Powerlessness.

So.

Prison is designed to create a dynamic of like overwhelming powerlessness.

This is like a critical kind of trauma dynamic.

People are commonly forced to violate their own moral principles.

And you know, there is a surrendering to the violence against us and others, which can kind of like rupture what it means to be human.

You know, when I had counseling eventually after prison, like one of the things that I couldn't quite get over was the fact that I'd witnessed so much violence and I didn't get involved, you know, like if.

Someone was getting attacked by officers, you, you know, you kind of freeze like it's so Normalized, you know that if you even try and get involved, you're not really gonna achieve anything You're just gonna get pulled off.

You're gonna get dragged to save yourself.

You're gonna get beaten up And, yeah, like, it creates, like, a feeling of horrific compliance to so much injustice, and for someone with a kind of anarchist identity, like, that really screwed me up, you know, because I'd like to think I'm always someone that stands up to bullying and oppression and, you know, like, will get involved if I see, like, You know, if I'm a bystander on the street and someone's getting arrested or something, like I'll always try and do something and yeah, prison is very overwhelming in terms of how powerless it can make you feel.

Okay, lack of control.

So people in prison have like an unrelenting lack of control over their lives.

I've already mentioned this, like from the smallest thing, like accessing more toilet paper to when they will access parole, nearly every decision is controlled by others, right?

So lack of control and consistency create uncertainty and havoc for the body, mind, soul.

You know, this, there's been so many studies around what makes an experience stressful and it's often like lack of control and like uncertainty that are like some of the most like stressful traumatic things for human beings.

Hypervigilance and immobilization.

So prison forces people to live in a state of hyper arousal.

and hypervigilance for sometimes years on end.

The fight flight energy of the nervous system can be released in brief moments of release, for example, exercise or fighting.

However, in general, this surge of mobilization generally has nowhere to go, especially when people are physically immobilized in a cage or a cell.

So it's like, you know, your body is in this constant fucking stress response like all day, every day.

And.

you know, sometimes you can have almost some relief when you're, when you're locked in and you can kind of breathe out a bit and the chaos of the outside has sort of stopped but, you know, even then you can hear people kicking off on the landing or getting dragged to seg or incidents of officers or people self harming or banging their heads against the wall like it's really, you know, like constant hyper vigilance of you never know what's going to happen in the next second and I think that's like a very inhuman way to live.

But then that's combined with like so much immobilization, you know, like so much built up energy and frustration and rage.

We've just like nowhere to put it because of, yeah, being locked in a two by three meter cell.

At least that's the size of cells in England.

Okay, coercive control.

So prison is coercive control.

Prison officers gain control and power by eroding a person's autonomy.

and self esteem through acts of intimidation, threats, and humiliation.

So, you know, like, coercive control is kind of, you know, this language in this sort of domestic violence world.

It's been criminalized in England after, you know, a lot of lobbying from people around different forms of abuse not being recognized.

I mean, I'm not going to go into the whole prison system and carceral feminism and like, is this effective and stuff, but I think it is worth naming that prison is like abuse, right?

Like, it is an abusive controlling environment.

Okay, so coercive control is a pattern of behavior which seeks to undermine a person's self esteem or sense of self and restrict or remove their liberty or freedom.

It describes a variety of controlling acts including manipulation, intimidation, sexual coercion, gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory and sanity.

So every single aspect of this is present in prison, often from multiple people, including several officers and sometimes other prisoners, right?

So there is no escape.

It's like, you know, I went from living with an incredibly abusive man as a teenager or, you know, a series of abusive men through my childhood, but it was when I was in prison that I was like, holy shit, they're everywhere.

Like, they are literally like, this is the same feeling as a kid, but you have no ability to escape and go and sleep at your friend's house.

You have to you know, surrender this control to, you know, mostly male officers who are, you know, incredibly controlling, like sexualizing of you, putting you down, you know, like gaslighting your reality.

Like, it's really like, the second that someone goes into prison, in my opinion, like, they are They become a survivor of abuse, right?

Okay.

Severing from support.

So, prison disconnects.

People are severed from sources of support.

Calls and visits are a lifeline, but many people are deprived from these due to economic and other circumstances.

There are exceptions, but many people feel abandoned and cast alone, increasing the traumatisation of imprisonment.

So, it's been shown time and time again that Support is what reduces traumatisation, like even for example, someone having a car accident, if someone is there, like a bystander who can soothe them, who can hold their hand, like, they have a much lower chance of developing PTSD.

And I think prison is no exception to that, like, prisoners that have consistent support, you know, whether that's support campaigns, or a loving partner, or friends, like, they're gonna get through their sentences in a much better state than people who have no one, right?

And I hate to say it, but most people in prison really have no one.

Okay, dissociation.

So, in order to endure imprisonment, dissociation is absolutely necessary.

For some, this can be through substances, like in prison and afterwards.

You know, and unfortunately before.

Prison severs a person's relationship to their body.

In order to survive, they have to disconnect from their own body.

This has long term effects after prison in their ability to live fully.

So, you know, for me, like, I really struggled with intimacy after prison.

Like, it was very emotionally difficult to experience touch from other human beings after kind of two years of, you know, being deprived of that.

So, yeah, I think dissociation is like an essential survival strategy in prison, but being stuck in that pattern really reduces your life, right, when you get out.

So, yeah, people need support with this, and I think herbalism is fucking, sorry to swear, but I think it's amazing in terms of recovery from dissociation, you know, just tasting and touching and being with plants and having that parasympathetic time outside.

Like, I think that's very healing for people who've been so dehumanized and humiliated and basically tortured, you know, in prison.

Okay, shame.

So, prisoners are considered sorry, prisons are considered natural, normal and necessary in society.

The experiences of the prisoner are normalized and justified.

For example, do the crime, do the time.

Jokes about dropping the soap and prison rape are common.

The trauma of the person in prison becomes invisibilized, unnamed and unrecognized.

People may look at issues that led to prison.

But fail to identify the traumatization of imprisonment itself.

Whatever people go through inside popular culture believes you deserved it.

Shame is a common trauma dynamic and built into the prison system.

Society hates you and you loathe yourself.

Okay, multiple layers of trauma and oppression.

So, author Karlene Faith writes that prison is a place where all injustices converge.

In addition to all the common trauma dynamics in the slides previously, prison will also magnify and enable all other forms of oppression.

For example, racial trauma.

Prisoners will be targeted with racial violence or people will experience transphobia.

Through attacks and sexual violence, people will experience ableism and all other forms of oppression, you know, so prison is like this boiling pot of different forms of oppression just kind of getting layered up, you know, in terms of, like, one of my best friend Kev's, like, this prison in the background actually is HMP Belmarsh.

In London and he, you know, he's a person of colour his heritage is Indian and he's experienced like horrific violence from officers and from, you know, organised fascists within the prison system.

I'm not going to go into examples of it but I'm just saying like his experience of incarceration is different to a white prisoner, for example, even though They both will experience oppression in different ways.

Okay, so I just wanted a little break because that's some really, really heavy slides.

And yeah, I think everyone needs a chance to kind of pause and breathe out yeah.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast.