When Ernesto Cervantes arrived at Green Bay Correctional Institution, it was the cold that struck first. Not just the physical chill seeping through the concrete walls, but a deeper, more unsettling cold. The clanging gates, the fluorescent hum, the rigid routines — all of it seemed designed to erase his sense of self. He felt like a caged animal.
That sense of erasure only intensified when he was moved to a maximum security facility and placed in solitary confinement. Alone for 23 hours a day in a bare, solid-walled cell, Cervantes felt his sanity begin to slip away.
“I was in a void,” he recalls. “I describe it as being in hell, when God turns his back on you, like you’re in complete darkness. That’s how I felt.”…