Solitary confinement video released to The Probable Cause; inmate says video was part of ACLU lawsuit
- Jamie Duffy
- Apr 28
- 5 min read
“All these murders (at Miami), they keep people locked down with no sunlight. We have not been out for one hour for six months. Pretty soon, their mental health is…..”
BUNKER HILL, Ind. —-It was 2020, in the middle of Covid, and Anthony Parish was stuck in solitary confinement at Miami Correctional Facility.
“I lost track of time,” Parish told The Probable Cause Monday, the day news hit that 31 former and current Miami inmates had won a $1.2 million settlement from the Indiana Department of Correction for medieval-like conditions at the now-notorious Indiana prison. “I was delusional.”
During the 30 days he spent in solitary, he asked a National Guard member if he could borrow his phone to record his conditions in “seg,” a term used at prisons for the segregated housing unit, also referred to as SHU. During that time, the National Guard had been brought in to help manage the prisons.
The National Guardsman told Parish, now 36 and in his 18th year of incarceration, that he felt the conditions were unbearable and agreed to leave his phone in the cell for recording purposes.
Parish then sent the video to a friend on the outside. It was ultimately used in the ACLU lawsuit. Parish said he was one of the first to sign on with the human rights organization.
The video obtained by The Probable Cause and uploaded here shows a dark cell with a steel plate at the window, no light, bare wires coming out of an indentation in the wall, no intercom to ask for help.
At one tiny window on to what looks like a dayroom, a ghoulish green light reflects off walls painted an industrial gray while an inmate is cuffed.
“Man, I need help,” Parish says in the one-minute video.
According to an online article published by reporter Matt Christy at Fox59 in Indianapolis, IDOC agreed to pay out $1.2 million to the inmates in answer to the ACLU lawsuit brought on behalf of those inmates in 2021. Each payout is about $60,000.
The ACLU of Indiana issued a statement:
“After more than five years of litigation, these settlements bring some measure of justice to people who have endured horrific abuse at Miami Correctional Facility,” said Ken Falk, Legal Director at the ACLU of Indiana. “The Eighth Amendment protects people in state custody from cruel and unconstitutional conditions, and our clients showed enormous courage in coming forward with their experiences.”
Parish said he’d wanted to hold out for more money, but reluctantly settled. The Department of Justice, the feds, sent an investigator.
“He (DOJ) walked around the facility and said it was the most inhumane situation he had ever seen,” Parish said.
The 30-day stretch in solitary wasn’t the only time Parish spent in isolation. After he was incarcerated in 2009 on a murder charge and sent to the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, he got stabbed “by some Mexicans” and was kept in solitary from the age of 20 to 28, Parish said.
“I spent all of my 20s in a box, almost went crazy several times and was suicidal.” To make things worse, when you get to prison “everybody forgets about you.”
What has changed in 18 years?
“All my friends are dead,” he says.
He was raised by his grandmother. His mother was “strung out on crack,” he said. Some older kids “made me feel it was cool to sell drugs and to gang bang. What you don’t know is what you don’t know.”
Now he’s founded a non profit - while incarcerated - called LMNOP - Let My Nation Outta Poverty - and has talked to youth through activists here in Fort Wayne. He’s organized donations, food drives, particularly with the youth, people like what he used to be.
He can tell youngsters he affiliated with the D-Boys, even though he went to North Side High School and played basketball and football. On the streets, he heard stories filled with false illusion. You got to prison - you got your stripes, nobody snitches.
“Prison is the worst place,” Parish said.
It’s another kind of death in an Indiana prison.
Parish believes IDOC became retaliatory after the lawsuit was filed, locking whole units down with no recreation, no showers, no programs to keep inmates from being idle. Idleness leads to violence and aggression.
When his video was released, “the institution put me into “segregation. I was scared for my safety.
“They transferred me for STG reasons. I wasn’t a part of anything.” Prison staff accused him getting the warden and superintendent fired.
STG stands for “security threat group,” a designation that often starts with a tattoo that the prison administration thinks is gang-related, no matter how old the tattoo is.
At Miami, he’s currently in one of two lockdown floors, N & P, hoping to get medical attention for a stab wound he received after aiding a staff member during an attack by another inmate, he said.
“They let my wound heal on its own. My leg goes numb. Some days I can’t walk.”
And instead of having the prison administration take care of inmates and their complaints, prison matters go through IA - Internal Affairs - who put people in “segregation” or idle, flagging them as STG.
“Ninety percent of the guys are STG,” Parish said. “All these murders (at Miami), they keep people locked down with no sunlight. We have not been out for one hour for six months. Pretty soon, their mental health is…..”
“IA has too much control over (a prisoner) getting a job, getting enrolled in programs."
At Wabash Correctional Facility, for instance, there’s structure. “If you’re STG, they’re encouraging you to go to the Plus program,” that allows you not only to have something to do, but possibly improve your chances for time cuts. “They encourage you to rehab and have a job, but here you can’t.”
At Pendleton, Wabash and the Indiana State Prison, there is a chance to rehabilitate, Parish said.
This year, the state opened a 1000-bed carve-out at the 3,200 bed Miami prison to house ICE detainees, at the behest of the federal government.
Now all the resources are going to ICE detainees where this year one ICE prisoner has already died, Parish said.
But since November, three Miami inmates have been killed, including Trinidad Ramirez in November and Shawn Booker on April 4, both from Fort Wayne
Ramirez was stabbed in the back 13 times; Booker was stabbed more than 30 times, according to his brother, Arthur Lee Booker.
Parish said Booker was in a mental health crisis and was not receiving his medications.
Add to the lack of medical care, the food served to inmates.
For those who care, the cost per meal, per “grown man” is 50 cents, Parish says. The quality has “gone down,” since Parish was incarcerated.
There are two hot meals and a sack which is a ready made peanut butter sandwich, a bologna sandwich and maybe a cookie.
Most of it is soy based which takes its toll on the body over time, Parish said.
“It’s low grade and bad for my health. I try to eat commissary as much as possible.” But commissary costs money and some inmates have no one to help fund it.
Commissary offers tuna, peanut butter, corn, chicken breasts in a pouch, summer sausage and chips.
The Probable Cause will keep updated, particularly on the responses of the governor and the state legislators who are ultimately in charge of the prisons.
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