Just got off a conference call with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), where among many agenda items was legislative movement against solitary confinement in some state legislatures.
The most prominent right now is Colorado, as reported in The Colorado Independent, Legislators Take Aim at Solitary Confinement.
A bill to reduce the numbers of mentally ill and developmentally disabled prisoners in solitary confinement was introduced Monday by Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder.
Working with the ACLU of Colorado, the pair say they want to improve treatment services to those inmates and help them become better integrated into society after incarceration.
The bill would ensure those individuals receive a health evaluation to determine if treatment is being properly provided to them while incarcerated and to determine if solitary confinement would exacerbate their condition, among other provisions.
SB 176 looks to address the findings of the 2008 Department of Corrections’ report, “Administrative Segregation for Mentally Ill Inmates.” The report found that 37 percent of those found in solitary confinement are mentally ill or developmentally disabled.
NRCAT has a fact sheet and action items at Solitary Confinement in Colorado - SB 176 (we're fer it).
Similar legislation in Maine, on which the Maine Council of Churches took the major initiative, failed to pass last year, but various faith groups will be pushing for passage of the legislation again.
NRCAT Maine Legislative Initiative.
On the conference call with NRCAT I was on, they mentioned similar legislation in Texas, but it's not on their website, and I haven't been able to find anything with The Google Machine. If any Texans know anything about this development, please pipe up in the comments.
From the Texas Observer, Solitary Men
Imagine spending 23 hours a day in a cement enclosure the size of a bathroom. Now imagine sitting in that small room nearly all day, every day without respite, for a year, five years, even 10 years. How long before you become restless and lonely? How long before you start pacing and talking to yourself? How long before you lose your mind?
For more than 300 inmates on Texas' death row, these aren’t hypothetical questions. Their lives are confined to 60-square-foot cells in which they languish 23 hours a day, alone in a featureless room, behind a solid steel door, cut off not only from what they call “the free world,” but from nearly everyone. Inmates endure this isolation an average of 10 years—though some have been on death row more than 30—until their appeals are exhausted and their sentences are commuted or carried out. Or until they’re killed by disease, old age or another inmate. Or until they kill themselves.
Looks like things might be moving in the right direction: Texas Sees Solitary Confinement Numbers Decline.