http://www.vera.org/...
Not only do we incarcerate too many people and for far too long, we also have a corrections system that employs, all too frequently and—at times, too casually—the most extreme form of confinement as a routine management strategy; this persists despite decades of evidence pointing to the manifold negative impacts of subjecting people to such conditions.
the experience for the person placed in solitary confinement is the same: confinement to an isolated cell for the overwhelming portion of each day, often 23 hours a day, with limited human interaction and minimal, if any, constructive activity; an experience that all too often leads to harmful outcomes for the person’s mental and physical health and the well-being of the community to which he or she returns.
“…[I]t’s anything but quiet. You’re immersed in a drone of garbled noise—other inmates’ blaring TVs, distant conversations, shouted arguments. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and was left feeling twitchy and paranoid. I kept waiting for the lights to turn off, to signal the end of the day. But the lights did not shut off. I began to count the small holes carved in the walls. Tiny grooves made by inmates who’d chipped away at the cell as the cell chipped away at them.”
When an incarcerated person is placed in segregated housing, he or she is confined to a cell (either alone or with a cellmate) for 22 to 24 hours a day. The cell is typically six by eight feet, smaller than a standard parking space. It is furnished with a metal toilet, sink, and bed platform. Reading materials are either strictly limited or prohibited altogether. Natural sunlight in the cell is limited to a very small window or does not exist at all, and fluorescent bulbs light the cell, often throughout the night. Recreation is limited to one hour a day, five days per week, which is taken alone in a cage outdoors or an indoor area (sometimes with a barred top).
The most commonly understood justification for segregation is as punishment for a violation of a prison rule. While this practice, known as disciplinary segregation, is used as a response to behavior that is violent or dangerous, Vera’s experience in the field has shown that disruptive behavior—such as talking back, being out of place, failure to obey an order, failing to report to work or school, or refusing to change housing units or cells— frequently lands incarcerated people in disciplinary segregation.26 In some jurisdictions, these “nuisance prisoners” constitute the majority of the people in disciplinary segregation. Before collaborating with Vera, Illinois found that more than 85 percent of the people released from disciplinary segregation during a one-year period had been sent there for relatively minor infractions, such as not standing for a count and using abusive language.
Vera’s review of the data regularly shows that incarcerated people who are not violent or overly disruptive stay in segregated housing for long periods of time, ranging from months to years and even decades.
Suicide rates and incidents of self-harm (such as banging one’s head against the cell wall) are much higher for people in segregation than those in the general prison population.56 For example, in California, where an estimated five percent of the prisoners are placed in segregated housing, 69 percent of the suicides in 2006 occurred in those units.57 In Texas, incarcerated people in segregation are five times more likely to commit suicide than those in the general population.58 In New York, between 1993 and 2003, suicide rates were five times higher among incarcerated people in segregation than among those in the general prison population.
Much of this research affirms the objections expressed by the United States Supreme Court 125 years ago in its landmark case of In re Medley. The court declared that solitary confinement is not “a mere unimportant regulation as to the safe-keeping of the prisoner.…[A] considerable number of the prisoners… f[a]ll, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition…[while] others bec[o]me violently insane; others still, [commit] suicide; while those who st[an]d the ordeal better [are] not generally reformed, and in most cases d[o] not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”
This of course is torture, but for some bizarre reason has been ignored as such. Some of our children are in this way being tortured, many to suicide -- for years, for an indiscretion as trivial as swearing or unintentionally violating a rule.
Something needs to be done.
Thu May 14, 2015 at 5:51 PM PT: Need to go offline for a while. Back as soon as I can.