"No Beauty in This Beast" by Troy Hendrix, incarcerated for 23 years, and counting, maintaining his innocence

Troy Hendrix

For the past 23 years I have been encircled by chaos and devastation, and surrounded by 4 walls, steel doors, and barbed wire fences. At times, it feels as if the walls that surround me, are closing in around me. When I put my ear to the wall, a faint heartbeat can be heard, reminding me that prison is a beast and it’s alive. The beast has an unnatural appetite. A fierce hunger that is never fulfilled. Once it devours you, you will remain deep within the belly of the beast until it decides to expel you from its bowels. It can take days, weeks, months, or years, but there are some who remain within its rotten guts forever.

 Prison is supposedly a locale where individuals are sent for reformation. A location that was purported to be designed for the sole purpose of therapy and rehabilitation, but the reality is that prison is not the ideal place for reform. Prison is a place where violence rules, gangs thrive, and bitterness and misery are contagious. A place where drugs are in abundance, creating a paradise for drug addicts, and leaving open welcoming arms for non drug users to become drug addicts. In this penal institution, personalities clash daily, anger consumes you, hope becomes frazzled, insanity replaces sanity, and connections and love with people in the outside world oftentimes diminish. The strain of incarceration is distressing and immensely taxing on the emotional, mental, and sometimes physical wellbeing.

Mental illness is a spider web that many find themselves entangled in, and prison is full of cobwebs. This place will damage you beyond measure, and most times beyond repair. It is the breeding ground for mental illness, and exacerbates already pre-existing mental illnesses. Many individuals are in denial about being mentally ill, or they simply do not want to accept it. While others acknowledge that they are ill, but do not seek treatment because they fear being judged, they are too prideful, and/or they are too embarrassed to admit it out loud. Even if they did seek help, the treatment available to them is less sufficient than it should be. There are routinely scheduled sessions with mental health staff, but their overwhelming caseloads prevents thorough therapy sessions from occurring. Especially since time restrictions cause sessions to be hastened.

At most, minimum security facilities there are housing units that are supposed to provide care to individuals with serious mental illness. Dreadfully, there are countless individuals in general population who are mentally ill who should be housed in one of these special units. They should have access to a heightened level of care, but they are excluded from these housing units because they are deemed to be not mentally ill enough, or there is just not enough space to accommodate them all. However, no matter where individuals are housed, the remedy offered to everyone is medication. Instead of helping them work on the core root of their issues, they are prescribed psychotropic medications that keep them tranquilized. Escaping the reality of their problems becomes easier to do with the ingestion of these drugs, but their problems are not eradicated, they just fester and grow. They become dependent on medication, and prefer being sedated in a foggy minded condition instead of making attempts to untangle themselves from the spider webs that entangle them.

The lack of adequate mental care is a mirror image of the inadequate medical care available in prison. The horror stories of medical malpractice and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs are endless. Over the course of my 23 years incarcerated, I’ve been confined to over 8 different correctional facilities, and at each of these locations I personally witnessed and/or experienced medical staff negligence. The horrific accounts are incalculable. There are things that I’ve seen and experienced that will never fade from my memory. Things that still rattle me to the core whenever I mull over them.

For the first 3 years of my imprisonment, I was housed at the notorious Rikers Island, and this is where the painted portraits of my horror stories begin… on my 3^rd day there, I witnessed several burly guards enter someone’s cell and viciously pummel him. His piercing screams resonated loudly throughout the unit, and his repetitive pleas for them to stop enraged me. It enraged us all. We were locked in our cells, so we were unable to intervene, but I would have given a lot for the opportunity to do so. Instead, we all banged on our cell doors, and shouted at the guards, telling them to cease their infliction of pain on the helpless captive, but they ignored us and continued to assault him. They pummelled him until he lost consciousness. They left him in his cell for 5 hours without any medical attention, and he was unconscious the entire time. Finally, the nurse was brought to the unit, and upon entering his cell we heard her giggling uncontrollably. Once her giggle fit subsided, she told the guards that he looked like a black rag doll, and this remark triggered a roar of laughter amongst all of them. Eventually she proceeded to persistently command him to “stand up,” but he remained unresponsive so she told the guards to “drag his black ass to the clinic.” When he was dragged out of his cell, the sight of him pushed my anger past its boiling point. His face was covered with blood, and his eyes were puffy and swollen shut. His left arm was bent in an awkward angle as they dragged him to the clinic. After that day I never saw him again, and it was later uncovered that he had a broken arm, broken ribs, a fractured eye socket, and a concussion. The guards who assaulted him were never penalized for their brutal attack because the nurse covered up his injuries in her report. In her report, she also claimed that she witnessed him attack the guards first, despite her never being present when the assault on him occurred.

On countless occasions, I was subjected to physical abuse by the guards and then denied medical care afterwards. On one occasion, I was assaulted by 4 guards, and they busted my lip, broke my right hand, and broke one of my ribs. I was denied medical care for 6 days, and the nurse covered up my injuries by writing in her medical report that I had slipped and fell in the gymnasium. This is something that was recurring at most correctional facilities throughout the years, and it still occurs today, just less frequently now, and not as blatant. Mainly due to the installation of cameras. They were installed to prevent this sort of abuse from occurring. Unfortunately, the installation of cameras has done nothing to prevent medical staff’s negligence, and the deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. Lack of knowledge, competence, and/or just plain disregard are what prevents them oftentimes from providing adequate medical care. Besides Rikers Island the poorest level of medical care that I witnessed and experienced was at Elmira Correctional Facility.

On two separate occasions I witnessed individuals complain about having severe chest pains, and the nurse simply told them to drink more water. They both had heart attacks soon after. I witnessed an individual complain for several months about his painfully swollen testicles, and the nurse jokingly tell him to drink more water and stop masturbating so much. He was diagnosed with cancer, and it spread rapidly due to the lack of treatment from the onset to prevent the spread. I witnessed nursing staff blatantly deny individuals medical care, simply because the guards did not like them.

I, too, experienced deprived medical care. In 2016, I had a minor ingrown toenail that became infected because no treatment was provided from the onset. After 30 days with no treatment the condition of my toe worsened and I was sent to an outside hospital to have a surgical procedure. I had to have surgery again in 2020 because the infection returned. Even till this day I frequently experience swelling, pain, and numbness in my toe. All because I was denied adequate medical care that could have been remedied from the onset.

There are medical and mental health staff members that do perform the duties at the highest level possible, but oftentimes their professionalism is overshadowed by their colleagues’ unprofessionalism. Reforms are needed to ensure that better quality of medical and mental health care is provided to everyone in prison. The quality of care that I witnessed throughout the years was horrendous and unnerving.

The belly of the beast is a rotten and cobwebbed place where mental and physical erosion is frequent, and its inflicted damage is permanent. The beast is abnormal. The beast is unloving, uncaring, and its torment is unyielding. The beast is horrible and overflowing with ugliness. There is no beauty in this beast.

By Troy Hendrix

Read more on Troy's claim of innocence at:

Why Troy Hendrix is an innocent victim of wrongful conviction and imprisonment