Micaela Romero received Trevor Hendrix’s first letter in 2021.
The two were friends as teenagers, and Hendrix, who was incarcerated, asked his mother to deliver the letter so the pair could rekindle their friendship.
The letter sat untouched on Romero’s counter for three weeks before she finally opened it in December 2021. When she read Hendrix’s words, she broke into peals of laughter.
“I look like the Walmart version of Noah from ‘The Notebook,’” Hendrix wrote.
She remembered this man from years ago and imagined how a long period of incarceration might have lengthened his blonde locks into shaggy strands. Miles away in prison, Hendrix stared at blank white walls. He was originally convicted of home invasion robbery and burglary in the first degree, and faced many long months in his cell.
In Hendrix’s 12 square-foot solitary confinement cell at Washington State Penitentiary, the glaring white lights kept his nervous system on high alert. But he finally had something to look forward to: his letters with Romero. Over time, they fell in love—but this isn’t a traditional love story.
When they first began corresponding, Romero was studying biology and epigenetics at Washington’s Green River College. But Hendrix’s experiences in solitary confinement highlighted a new need in her field.
Compelled by Hendrix’s experiences, Romero began to study the effects of isolation on the brain, working with bumblebees to research the myriad negative effects isolation has on social creatures.
What she learned alarmed her. Her research is now helping advocates make the case for changing Washington’s use of solitary confinement.
“Anxiety-like behavior”
For decades, the international community has maintained that solitary confinement is a form of torture that has devastating psychological effects. People in solitary are seven times more likely to self-harm and six times more likely to die by suicide than those held in general prison populations, according to a 2014 study.
Because of these deleterious effects, the United Nations enacted what are known as the Nelson Mandela Rules. Named after the visionary anti-apartheid activist and former president of South Africa, the rules restrict the use of solitary confinement to a maximum of 15 consecutive days and prohibit keeping people in cells lit 24 hours a day.
The Washington Department of Corrections has employed the use of solitary confinement for decades—often in violation of the Nelson Mandela Rules. For example, in 2023, the Washington Office of the Corrections Ombuds found that more than 3,000 incarcerated people spent over 120 days total in solitary confinement, some for more than 45 consecutive days. The nonprofit organization Disability Rights Washington previously detailed the horrific conditions that shape life in solitary, noting that the concrete cell where incarcerated people are caged alone for up to 23 hours a day remains constantly lit and is roughly the size of a small bathroom.
Of his nine years in prison, Hendrix spent a total of five in solitary confinement. Most of his stints in solitary spanned consecutive months. His longest stretch was 11 months—and that happened twice.
Hendrix’s time inside led Romero to start working with bumblebees because there was already a foundation of credible research that used bumblebees to study social isolation. The bees’ vast intelligence and complex social behaviors, coupled with large social networks and shorter lifespans, made them the ideal candidates.
Romero’s work builds on the research of Z Yan Wang, the principal researcher at the ZYWang Lab, which studies death and dying through research with octopuses and bees.
During her time as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University beginning in 2019, Wang completed studies on isolated bumblebees, with one initial study showing that social isolation significantly disrupts brain development and alters bees’ social behaviors, as these animals rely on social environments and cooperation to survive and thrive.
She and her research team were also surprised to find that bees they housed in groups of four, away from their natal colonies, still showed developmental patterns similar to those raised in a communal nest. This suggested that early social environment exposure is important for brain development and behavior in social animals, and that even a little bit of social exposure “is enough to provide resilience against those detrimental effects of complete isolation.”
Romero’s work builds on these findings. She has completed two related studies working with bumblebees, largely inspired by “horror stories” about solitary confinement. She was particularly moved by testimony from Kyle Payment, who has spent a majority of his life in solitary confinement. Romero first learned of Payment’s experience in 2023 through an advocacy trip she took with the survivor-led coalition End Solitary WA.
Romero originally went on the trip to advocate for the release of Hendrix, who was by then her fiancé. However, she found herself unable to speak after listening to Payment’s testimony about how an arrest at the age of 13 put him on a path that ultimately led to more than two decades in solitary confinement. Equally striking was countertestimony from the Department of Corrections (DOC), which strongly implied that Payment deserved inhumane treatment because he allegedly assaulted prison staff.
“Kyle Payment never leaves me. … He is what I fear for our communities and my son,” Romero told Prism. “I can’t say I blame Kyle for that.”
Romero’s first study, completed at the University of Washington in 2024, compared the behavioral and molecular changes between a group of four bumblebees subjected to 24-hour lighting and completely isolated bees subjected to the same conditions. She found myriad problematic behaviors in the isolated bees, including unprovoked aggression.
In her second study, Romero isolated some young bumble bees for nine days while placing others with groups of adult bees. If the baby bee was placed within a different colony of adults, she became socialized. Those who were isolated remained isolated.
On day 10, Romero reintroduced the bees to their original mini-colonies and was horrified to realize that the isolated bees engaged in what was now an all-too-familiar behavior: compulsive grooming, the same she witnessed in Hendrix after he was released from prison in July 2025.
“It’s like an obsessive‑compulsive grooming, and it doesn’t socialize with other bees,” Romero explained. “If other bees come up and try to socialize with it, it just grooms more emphatically [as] an anxiety-like behavior.”
Wang explained that because none of the bumblebee studies directly deal with humans, it’s impossible to use them to make direct claims about human behavior. But that doesn’t mean the findings aren’t telling.
“What I will say is that our work in bees … shows that isolation causes profound changes in behavior in animals whose nervous systems evolved in highly social environments,” Wang wrote in an email, noting that isolation takes “something fundamental away” and has “profound biological consequences.”
“Out in the real world”
The Washington State DOC released Hendrix on July 23, 2025, unceremoniously depositing him into the world without access to therapy or transition services.
Shortly after going home, Hendrix went into crisis.
Though he slept through the first night, he experienced insomnia for most nights after.
“Releasing from solitary was very rough, to say the least; it was very overstimulating. Going from a sparse, spartan living to the real world was a culture shock and a nervous system shock too,” Hendrix wrote to Prism. Rather than a phone interview, he opted to respond to questions via email, which allowed him to step away if the conversation felt too difficult.
While he’s been out of prison for a year, the trauma he experienced is still alive—and against the odds, so is he. Those forced to endure solitary confinement are more likely to die by suicide or a drug overdose within the first year of their release.
I had never done anything longer than a couple months in jail before, so after doing [nine] years it was jarring and shocking to try to catch the speed of the real world. Reality was distorted to me.
Trevor Hendrix, formerly incarcerated at Washington State Penitentiary
“I had never done anything longer than a couple months in jail before, so after doing [nine] years it was jarring and shocking to try to catch the speed of the real world,” he recalled. “Reality was distorted to me.”
A few days after his release, Hendrix awakened Romero around 2 a.m. She found herself staring at someone she almost didn’t recognize. Hendrix had meticulously removed every single piece of hair from his head and face. He had even shaved his armpits.
“I knew he was in crisis,” she said. “I was [already] so worried he was going to kill himself.”
In humans, the extreme, compulsive removal of body hair is called trichotillomania. As the pair sat and discussed why Hendrix removed all of his hair, he explained that he was anxious about the legal action he was taking to co-parent his children with his previous partner.
Hendrix isn’t the only person to exhibit overgrooming behaviors in response to stress. One of the couple’s friends has to take medication to deal with trichotillomania that he, too, developed as a result of his time in solitary. Romero said she knows several formerly incarcerated people who overgroom. When one friend got out, he shaved every inch of his body. Another got a full-body wax, because “he wanted all of DOC off of him,” Romero recalled.
Overgrooming was just one of the distinct individual behavior patterns shared by isolated bees and people who are subjected to solitary confinement.
When she reintroduced bees to their original colonies in her second study, Romero found that socialized bees appeared better able to adapt to the colony’s movements without disruption. Isolated bees didn’t show the same adaptive behavior. Instead, they moved in random directions from their larger colony.
Once, when Hendrix helped clean the house, he started with the entryways. To Romero, it didn’t seem logical to sweep the busiest areas of the house that they would repeatedly traverse while cleaning. But then she remembered how the reintegrated isolated bees moved within a colony. She realized Hendrix was just trying to stay busy when he didn’t actually know what to do.
“It’s like this social structure of how to prioritize, how to know what I’m supposed to be doing when things are happening around me,” she explained.
Across her studies, Romero also watched as socialized colony bees tried to flee from isolated bees. When exposed to the isolated bee, colony bees displayed what is known as “fanning,” or beating their wings to cool down the air around them—just like humans do, when they become stressed, Romero explained. However, the isolated bees displayed significantly more aggressive behaviors, such as opening their mandibles and wrestling with other bees.
Hendrix could relate. He said he often felt anxious around people, leading him to constantly size up those around him to assess if they were a threat.
“I was ultra-paranoid that everyone around me was an enemy,” he said.
Things have slowly improved, though it’s required months of therapy and medication “to get back on track out in the real world,” Hendrix told Prism.
Washington DOC did not respond to questions from Prism regarding the agency’s continued use of solitary confinement and its effects on incarcerated people. Instead, spokesperson Christopher Wright referred Prism to DOC’s restrictive housing information page and the department’s interim report on its Solitary Confinement Transformation Project, the agency’s 2023 pledge to reduce the use of solitary confinement by 90% over five years.
Surmounting “the human condition”
In recent years, legislators have introduced numerous bills to reform the use of solitary confinement in Washington.
State Rep. Strom Peterson has introduced most of them. But in his efforts to end the torturous practice, he has repeatedly hit the same stumbling block: His fellow legislators often appear to believe that the DOC subjects specific people to solitary confinement: those who were somehow born bad and therefore deserve it.
“I think that has always been a default in … American culture. You blame [the people behind bars]. So whatever happens is their fault,” Peterson said.
This is why Romero’s research is proving to be so important. A bee is “neutral,” according to Peterson; it is not an imperfect human being who others can judge as good or bad. “I think that helps open people’s eyes,” Peterson said.
Peterson first met Romero in 2023, and through her work, he said he finally sees a light at the end of the tunnel: the potential end to solitary confinement.
At the beginning of her presentations to lawmakers and DOC officials, Romero notes that she studies bees because it is illegal to keep lab rats in the conditions humans are allowed to be subjected to in solitary confinement. More broadly, Peterson said Romero’s visceral visuals of blameless bees in distress very effectively illustrate how isolation causes mental and physical harm.
“[In Romero’s] research, really, almost minute by minute, you can see the demise of a creature that is very communal,” he said. While the state representative doesn’t have any personal connection to solitary confinement or even prison, he told Prism he simply believes that “when we incarcerate somebody, they are our responsibility,” and it’s the state’s responsibility “to treat people humanely and to give them an opportunity to reenter society successfully.”
During the last legislative session, he and other legislators introduced a bill that would have raised the evidentiary standards necessary for DOC officials to put someone into solitary confinement. It was a scaled-back version of a bill they first introduced in 2023. Though both bills failed, he found new bipartisan support among his colleagues.
“Little by little, we get a few more people that support it. I think the big pushback on these bills has been really from an appropriation standpoint,” Peterson said. The DOC states that its “ability to fully achieve solitary confinement reform is dependent on secured funding,” but it also declined to support Peterson’s 2023 bill.
Peterson plans to reintroduce the bill during the next legislative session, and he told Prism he believes that Romero’s findings will only further bolster support.
“[We’re] trying to get a little bit closer to the international standards for solitary confinement,” Peterson said. “Personally, I think [ending solitary confinement] would be beneficial to the Department of Corrections. I think it would actually save them money and create safer working conditions for the corrections officers and better conditions, obviously, for incarcerated people.”
The limitations of research
In the year since Hendrix came home, he has been hospitalized twice. He was also recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, which he does not believe he had prior to being incarcerated. (Experts only recently began to research whether prison can cause mental illness, but the evidence is clear that incarceration can cause lasting damage to mental health.)
Hendrix understands that it will take a long time for him to heal from the many years he spent in solitary confinement, though he’s already making strides with treatment.
“Now that I’m on medication and can correctly identify the real from the fake in my head, I’m much better equipped to work my way through life,” Hendrix told Prism.
Before he had access to medication, Hendrix said he had an “out of control” inner voice that made him feel “extremely paranoid” and made life outside difficult to navigate. Hearing a mundane conversation between strangers, for example, would trigger memories of a time in prison when he felt slighted or threatened. During these episodes, random signs and advertisements became symbols that Hendrix would imbue with deep meaning.
“[It was] like my compass was set for prison living out here in the real world. In prison everyone can be a potential enemy, and out here, [people are] mostly indifferent or friendly,” he said.
Hendrix has also noticed he can no longer see anything in low light, likely a byproduct of the 24-hour lighting in solitary confinement destroying his eyes. A court in Washington previously ruled that the DOC’s refusal to turn off the lights in segregation cells amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
There are many ways in which the trauma caused by prison continues to linger in Hendrix’s life. In addition to visually assessing whether a person could be a threat, Hendrix doesn’t like to sit with his back facing a door because he can’t see who enters the room. He also locates and counts exits.
Despite the physical and emotional fallout, Hendrix admits he’s “ambivalent” about his time in solitary. He can see the logic in short-term use, but he said that the DOC doesn’t tend to utilize solitary confinement on a short-term basis.
“On the one hand, I totally agree with its usage and its necessity, as I earned my way [to solitary] a few times and without it, I feel like I would’ve continued on a path to ruin,” he said. Being in solitary for a short time can allow a person to contemplate their life, Hendrix said.
“But on the other hand, it also can be used as a form of torture to people who aren’t … mentally equipped to handle the extreme solitude and psychotic outbursts of those around you who have already broken down all the way,” he said.
As Romero helps Hendrix navigate reentry, she is also considering how best to move her research forward. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. and ultimately wants to start her own lab.
But Romero also struggles with the limitations of research. While she’s proud of becoming the scientist her community needs, she is also finding that the science isn’t enough. At times, she said, she has felt like “a corrections officer for bumblebees.” Mostly, she’s eager to get legislation passed that reforms the use of solitary.
In the meantime, nothing can change what solitary did to Hendrix inside—and what it has and will do to countless others.
Hendrix originally found it difficult not to nurture the “hate” he developed for the DOC. Even so, it’s sometimes hard to shake the memories of so many years spent in total isolation—an experience he says did not prepare him for reentry.
“Psychologically, it caused me to isolate myself and develop a face to show to others while being depressed and melancholic on the inside,” he wrote. “It was, and still torments me to this day. There’s behaviors I developed to not lose my last marble I was clinging on to dearly.”
Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor