cqr solitary confinement - online resources · a growing number of federal court decisions prohibit...

Solitary ConfinementIs long-term isolation of prisoners inhumane?

Debate is growing over the isolation of U.S. prison

inmates in virtually round-the-clock solitary con-

finement. When the practice began booming in

the late 1980s, politicians and some prison ad-

ministrators — many supporting the construction of special “super-

max” facilities — said prison safety demanded that “the worst of

the worst” inmates be held in prolonged isolation. But even some

supporters of long-term solitary acknowledge that many prison

systems have used the strategy to warehouse mentally ill inmates.

A growing number of federal court decisions prohibit placing the

mentally ill in strict isolation, citing evidence that it aggravates

their condition. Recently, some states have reduced the number of

prisoners in long-term isolation. But in Illinois, guards protesting

the planned closure of a supermax argue that transferring inmates

to a conventional prison poses grave danger.

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I

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THE ISSUES ....................767

BACKGROUND ................773

CHRONOLOGY ................775

CURRENT SITUATION ........780

AT ISSUE........................781

OUTLOOK ......................783

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................786

THE NEXT STEP ..............787

THISREPORT

Relatives of inmates at the Tamms supermax prison inIllinois support Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close the

facility. Union officials representing prison guards sayclosure would cost 250 jobs and raise the danger level

in institutions to which Tamms prisoners would be transferred.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc.

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CQ Researcher • Sept. 14, 2012 • www.cqresearcher.comVolume 22, Number 32 • Pages 765-788

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE � AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

766 CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

767 • Does long-term solitaryconfinement constitute torture?• Is separating the “worstof the worst” from otherprisoners beneficial?• Does long-term solitaryconfinement make normalprisoners mentally ill?

BACKGROUND

773 Repentance in IsolationEarly prisons adopted solitary confinement to encourage penitence.

774 Supreme DispleasureIn 1890 the SupremeCourt said a condemnedman couldn’t be held insolitary.

774 Institutionalizing SolitaryAlcatraz, opened as a federal penitentiary in1934, was the forerunnerof supermax prisons.

778 Constitutional IssuesA judge’s 1995 ruling ex-coriated isolation policiesat California’s Pelican Bayprison.

CURRENT SITUATION

780 Fight Over SupermaxA legal battle is ragingover efforts to close Illinois’Tamms prison.

780 New LitigationLawsuits challenge supermaxprisons in several states.

OUTLOOK

783 ‘Losing Favor’Prison experts think use ofstrict isolation will continueto decline.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

768 Solitary Confinement UnderScrutiny NationwideLawsuits and prison officialsare challenging policies.

769 Tight Quarters and TotalIsolationSupermax prisoners are generally kept in their cells23 hours a day.

775 ChronologyKey events since 1787.

776 Controversial Study FuelsSupports Use of SolitaryInmates claim no ill effects,but critics cite flaws in theresearch.

778 Some States RethinkingSolitary ConfinementTrend began with inmatelawsuit over Ohio supermax.

781 At IssueShould solitary be limited toone year?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

785 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

786 BibliographySelected sources used.

787 The Next StepAdditional articles.

787 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

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Solitary Confinement

THE ISSUESB rutal aggression. Un-

bridled rage. Self-mutilation. Desolation

and despair. Descent intomadness. Texas prisoner An-thony C. Graves saw it allamong inmates locked downin extreme solitary confine-ment — an ordeal he him-self endured for 18 yearswhile awaiting execution formurders he later was exon-erated of committing. * 1

“I would watch guys cometo prison totally sane and inthree years they don’t live inthe real world anymore,”Graves told a Senate Judi-ciary subcommittee in June.“I know a guy who wouldsit in the middle of the floor,rip his sheet up, wrap itaround himself and light iton fire. Another guy wouldgo out in the recreation yard,get naked, lie down and uri-nate all over himself. Hewould take his feces andsmear it all over his face.” 2

Accounts of bizarre andself-destructive behavior byprisoners have multiplied aslong-term solitary confinement has be-come commonplace in the U.S. prisonsystem over the past two decades. Men-tal-health experts who have interviewedprisoners in solitary disagree on whetherprolonged isolation robs mentallyhealthy people of their sanity. But vir-tually no one doubts that prisoners al-ready mentally ill when they enter soli-tary tend to deteriorate severely.

Questions about psychological ef-fects are part of a larger debate incriminal-justice and human-rights cir-cles over whether confining anyonefor long periods in strict isolation ishumane and whether isolation is ef-fective in keeping order in prisonswhile protecting prison workers, otherinmates and the public once prison-ers are released.

Prison officials impose solitary con-finement in a variety of ways and undera variety of names. The best-knownmay be short-term confinement forrule-breaking — often known as “dis-ciplinary segregation.” 3

But debate centers onprolonged solitary confine-ment, or “administrative seg-regation,” which is used inso-called “supermax” prisons,though long-term solitary con-finement also is used in con-ventional prisons. Supermax-es are built specifically tohouse inmates considered ex-tremely dangerous. The pris-oners are locked in individ-ual cells, usually with solidsteel doors, for 23 hours aday. They are fed in theircells, through a slot in thedoor, and chained andguarded when they leave forany reason. Like Graves, someprisoners spend a decade orlonger in isolation, with evenout-of-cell exercise takenalone in cage-like settings.(Supermaxes may also holdprisoners who are not keptin strict solitary.) 4

“Increasing the use of high-security segregation is coun-terproductive, often causingviolence inside facilities, con-tributing to recidivism afterrelease,” Sen. Richard J.Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of theSenate Judiciary Committee’sConstitution, Civil Rights and

Human Rights Subcommittee, said inopening the June hearing. 5

The controversy over solitary con-finement has gone international. Lastyear, Juan E. Méndez, a former seniorstaff member for Human Rights Watchwho is now the United Nations HumanRights Commission’s investigator onmistreatment of prisoners, * concludedthat long-term solitary confinement canamount to torture in some circumstances.He proposes a time limit of 15 days. 6

BY PETER KATEL

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

Anthony C. Graves is free after 18 years in solitaryconfinement in Texas for a crime he didn’t commit. “Iwould watch guys come to [isolation] totally sane, andin three years they don’t live in the real world anymore,”Graves told a Senate subcommittee in June. The rise insupermax prisons in recent years has sparked questionsover whether extended strict isolation is humane and

effective in keeping order in prisons.

* Graves was convicted as an accomplice inthe 1992 murders of six members of aSomerville, Texas, family. Recanted testimonyby the admitted killer, along with prosecuto-rial misconduct, led to his exoneration in 2010.

* Méndez’s full title is special rapporteur ontorture and other cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment or punishment.

768 CQ Researcher

Virtually round-the-clock isolation ex-isted before supermaxes started goingup. But the U.S. controversy over long-term solitary confinement began duringa supermax boom starting in the 1990s.By the early 2000s, supermaxes in atleast 44 states were estimated to holdabout 25,000 prisoners. Experts believethat number is now declining becausea series of court decisions — as wellas the higher expenses involved inrunning super-secure institutions —are leading some states to reduce orend supermax use. 7

In June, Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn,a Democrat, announced the imminentclosure of his state’s supermax, TammsCorrectional Institution, though that po-litically controversial move was delayed

by an Illinois state judge in early Sep-tember. (See “Current Situation,” p. 780.)

And in recent years, following liti-gation over conditions in long-termsolitary, Mississippi reduced its super-max population by 89 percent, andOhio by 85 percent. Maine, whichhadn’t been sued but faces potentiallitigation, reduced its long-term soli-tary population by about 70 percent.Joseph Ponte, Maine’s correctionscommissioner, said the new policy re-sulted in “substantial reductions in vi-olence,” reductions in use of force,chemicals and restraint chairs, and “re-ductions in inmates cutting [themselves]up — which was an event that hap-pened every week or at least everyother week.” 8

Supermax supporters describe suchprisons, and their use of strict solitaryconfinement, as essential for public safe-ty and management of potentially ex-plosive prison populations. Strict solitarykeeps highly dangerous inmates in con-ditions in which they’re less able to harmprison staff or other inmates or induceother prisoners to commit violent acts.

“It takes someone whose behavioramounts to a threat and incapacitatestheir ability to do such things,” saysEugene Atherton, a consultant on prisonmanagement who was warden of twoColorado prisons and assistant direc-tor of the Colorado prison system.“Physically, they can’t put their handson other people, and it’s easier tomonitor their communications if theyare about sending directions to otherassociates to do harm.”

But like other prison professionals,Atherton acknowledges that supermax-es in many states have expanded be-yond their intended purpose, makingwhat should be, in his view, a standardprison-management tool a matter of con-troversy. “A lot of wardens were lock-ing guys up who were headaches butmanageable under normal circum-stances,” he says. “That’s a huge error.”

Some supermax critics agree that asmall number of extremely dangerousprisoners should be isolated fromother inmates. Federal courts, thoughthey have placed some restrictions onlong-term solitary confinement, have notoutlawed it.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruledunanimously in 2005 that prison in-mates have a constitutional right tochallenge an order transferring themto a supermax because, the court said,strict, long-term solitary confinementisn’t ordinary imprisonment. “Almostall human contact is prohibited, evento the point that conversation is notpermitted from cell to cell; his cell’slight may be dimmed, but is on for24 hours; and he may exercise only onehour per day in a small indoor room,”Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the


Alaska

Hawaii

Solitary Confinement Under Scrutiny Nationwide

Lawsuits by inmates in a number of states are challenging solitary confinement practices, while in other states penal authorities are reviewing policies on prisoner isolation.

Sources: Various news reports and court documents

N.Y.

Ohio

Texas

Va.

Minn.

Iowa

Mo.

Calif.

Nev.

Ore.

Colo.

Wash.

Idaho

Mont.

Utah

Ariz. N.M.

Wyo.

N.D.

S.D.

Okla. Ark.

La.

Ill.

Miss.

Tenn.

Ga.

Conn.

Mass.

R.I.

MaineVt.

W.Va. N.J.

Del.

Md.

Ala.

Fla.

Wis.

Mich.

Ind.

N.C.

S.C.

N.H.

Kan.Ky.

D.C.

Neb.Pa.

Arizona — Inmates suing state over medical care and other issues affecting general prison population and those in solitary.

Illinois — State revising system to send fewer prisoners to solitary. . . . Temporary restraining order bars closure of state supermax; prison guard union argues closure would be dangerous.

California — Prisoners suing over inmate placement in long-term solitary and conditions in isolation units.

Colorado — Prisoners in federal supermax suing over alleged long-term solitary confinement of mentally ill inmates. . . . State prison system cuts population in solitary and closes new prison designed mainly for solitary.

Ohio — Prison system redesigns solitary confinement to ensure prisoners receive behavioral programs.

Maine — Prison system reduces population in solitary by nearly 70 percent, to 45 inmates at most, and slashes time spent in solitary to days instead of months.

Mississippi — Prison system director lauds massive reduction in long-term solitary population.

Washington, D.C. — Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights holds first major congressional hearing on long-term solitary confinement.


court. Along with the fact prisonerswere sent to supermax for indefiniteperiods, “These conditions impose anatypical and significant hardship.” 9

Whether supermaxes necessarilysuppress prison violence remains amatter of debate. In Mississippi, prisonsystem officials acknowledged that theyhad gone overboard in assigning pris-oners to the notorious isolation wingof the state penitentiary at Parchman.The wing, known as Unit 32, pro-duced more instead of less violenceamong prisoners, as well as assaultson staff. “From May in 2007 to August2007, three homicides,” the state’s cor-rections commissioner, Michael Epps,told Durbin’s subcommittee. “Highlyunusual. One suicide. That’s highly un-usual in any prison environment. Inaddition to that, inmates was throw-ing urine and feces on staff.” 10

Though the facility’s purpose wasto prevent exactly those sorts ofevents, experts later said that the ac-cumulation of hostility by prisoners —including seriously mentally ill inmates— housed there unjustly, along withsecurity lapses, allowed the violenceto happen. The events persuadedEpps to begin working with prisoner-rights lawyers to massively reduce hisstate’s strict isolation population. 11

(See sidebar, p. 778.)Mississippi aside, hard data don’t exist

on whether supermaxes reduce prisonviolence, researchers say. “What statesdid was assume that violence stemmedfrom what certain inmates were doingor incited others to do,” says Daniel P.Mears, a criminology professor at Flori-da State University in Tallahassee. Thatcase is unproven, he says, partly be-cause standards for tracking prison vi-olence are inconsistent. “The leewayabout whether an incident is record-able or not is considerable,” Mears says.“It might be recorded as simple assaultor aggravated assault,” depending onthe prison or the officer.

Also unclear is the average lengthof stay in isolation. While some in-

mates are isolated for only days orweeks, others spend years alone in theircells. A class-action lawsuit filed thisyear by a group of prisoners at Cali-fornia’s Pelican Bay supermax reportsisolation periods of 11 to 25 years. 12

Only a handful of states have gath-ered figures on time spent in isolation,as well as other key prison statistics. InColorado, prisoners with no mentalhealth problems spent an average of19.5 months in isolation according to2011 data; inmates with mental healthneeds spent about 14.1 months. Nation-wide, “Basic data as to the functioningof systems for isolation — the reasonsfor admission, the duration of stays, theprevalence of mental illness and re-cidivism rates — are unavailable,” twoYale Law School professors wrote to

the Durbin subcommittee. 13

Still, a wealth of evidence exists onthe effects of long-term solitary on peo-ple with mental illnesses. The evidencehas persuaded a number of federaljudges who have ruled in prisoners’lawsuits against supermax conditions.“Every federal court to consider thequestion has held that ‘supermax’ con-finement of the seriously mentally illis unconstitutional,” David C. Fathi, ex-ecutive director of the ACLU NationalPrison Project, wrote in 2004. 14

The ACLU prison project is repre-senting inmates at the federal super-max at Florence, Colo., who have suf-fered from severe mental illness andspent long periods in the prison’s high-security unit. According to the lawsuit,one of them amputated some of his

Tight Quarters and Total Isolation

Long-term solitary confinement differs from prison to prison, but its common denominators are isolation and maximum security:

Sources: Urban Institute; Journal of Law and Policy; National Institute of Corrections; California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, June 19, 2012; Oklahoma Department of Corrections; Michigan Department of Corrections; United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility.

• Prisoners are generally kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, let out only for exercise — taken alone — and showers.

• Cells measure 6 or 7 feet wide by 8 to 10 feet deep. Some have a barred door that allows a view of immediate surroundings. Others have a solid steel door with only a small opening for meal delivery.

• Some prisons allow televisions in cells, possibly restricted to educational or behavioral programming. Rules on reading material, visits and other diversions vary. At the Florence, Colo., supermax, prisoners in the highly restricted Special Housing Unit can talk with family members or other approved visitors by video only and are escorted to the visiting room in hand and leg restraints, including a belly chain.

• In federal supermax prisons, prolonged solitary is considered a disciplinary measure for grave misconduct, such as murdering another inmate, or for being an “extraordinarily extreme” flight risk. In California, gang members and suspected members are auto-matically placed in long-term isolation. In states such as Michigan, Mississippi and Oklahoma, prisoners considered a threat to staff or other inmates are locked up in long-term solitary.

770 CQ Researcher

fingers, a testicle, scrotum and earlobes.Acts by other prisoner-plaintiffs in-clude: swallowing a razor blade to per-suade medical staff to amputate hisright leg, where he suffered a gunshotwound long ago (he succeeded); am-putating a finger, adding it to a bowlof ramen noodle soup and eating it;and swallowing broken glass. 15

Federal Bureau of Prison lawyershaven’t yet responded to the lawsuit.But episodes of extreme self-harm, aswell as feces-smearing, are commonenough among mentally ill prisonersin solitary that mental-health profes-sionals have developed explanations.

Jeffrey Metzner, a psychiatry pro-fessor at the University of Coloradomedical school in Denver, says self-mutilation seems to be an attempt tofeel something, in a setting in whichoutside stimulation is nearly absent.

Feces-smearing is a way of assertingcontrol by doing something that au-thorities are unable to stop. “It’s also away of expressing significant anger,” saysMetzner, a critic of long-term solitaryconfinement of the mentally ill who hasreported on mental-health conditions inprisons on assignment by federal judgesand court-appointed monitors.

That issue resonates beyond su-permax cell walls. Contrary to whatmany in the public may think, a largenumber of prisoners who have servedlengthy terms in solitary are releasedfrom prison. In a comprehensive studypublished in 2006, Mears reported thatTexas alone released an average of1,400 prisoners a year directly fromstrict solitary to the street. 16

“If I were locked down 24-7 formany years, with little human contactand little to do,” says Chase Riveland,former corrections director in Coloradoand Washington state, “I’d probably bea little bit angry when I got out.”

As judges, penologists, prison offi-cials and human-rights activists debatethe role of solitary confinement in pris-ons, here are some of the questionsthey are asking:

Does long-term solitary confine-ment constitute torture?

Last year’s U.N. report avoided cat-egorically denouncing solitary con-finement as torture, but it said solitaryimprisonment that lasts for years, andthat includes severe restrictions on allhuman contact, can legitimately be de-fined that way.

“The longer the duration of solitaryconfinement or the greater the uncer-tainty regarding the length of time, thegreater the risk of serious and irreparableharm to the inmate that may constitutecruel, inhuman or degrading treatmentor punishment or even torture,” wroteMéndez, the special investigator. 17

Similar concerns led the AmericanBar Association to propose in 2010that “only the most severe disciplinarycases” should lead to solitary con-finement of more than 30 days, witha limit of one year in all cases. 18

In Wisconsin in 2006, three federaljudges on the Seventh U.S. Court ofAppeals likened long-term solitary con-finement to the inhumane world of alabor camp in the former Soviet Union.

Writing in a decision on a prison-er’s lawsuit, the judges described theinmate’s harsh existence : “Stripped nakedin a small prison cell with nothing ex-cept a toilet; forced to sleep on a con-crete floor or slab; denied any humancontact; fed nothing but ‘nutri-loaf;’ andgiven just a modicum of toilet paper— four squares — only a few times.”The judges, ruling in the prisoner’sfavor, added: “Although this might soundlike a stay at a Soviet gulag in the 1930s,it is, according to the claims in thiscase, Wisconsin in 2002.” The prisonerwas kept naked for his first three daysof isolation, and then for two moredays, for alleged misconduct. 19

Some human-rights advocates insiston defining long-term solitary, as prac-ticed in the United States, as tortureplain and simple. They have backingfrom some physicians, among themAtul Gawande, a surgeon, professor ofhealth policy and management at Har-

vard School of Public Health and ajournalist-author. He and other med-ical professionals point to evidence thatprolonged isolation from human con-tact does deep and lasting psycho-logical damage.

“In much the same way that a pre-vious generation of Americans coun-tenanced legalized segregation, ourshas countenanced legalized torture,”Gawande wrote in The New Yorker in2009. “And there is no clearer mani-festation of this than our routine useof solitary confinement — on our ownpeople, in our own communities.” 20

But prison administrators deny thetorture allegation, arguing that prison-ers in solitary are, in fact, in regularcontact with prison staff. “We seek toensure that these inmates are not com-pletely isolated as that term may betypically understood,” Charles E.Samuels Jr., director of the Federal Bu-reau of Prisons, told the Senate Judi-ciary Committee in June. 21

Atherton, the former Colorado war-den and state prison official, also re-jects the torture label. “What you aredescribing is a version of solitary con-finement created by prison reformgroups out of California, and HumanRights Watch, that have chosen isolat-ed confinement as an issue for thelast 20 years,” he says. “They have fab-ricated every possible mythology ofwhat confinement means.”

American prisoners in solitary con-finement “are not really isolated at all,”Atherton says. “They communicate withstaff constantly. They have case man-agers, medical providers talking to them;that is an American Correctional As-sociation standard.” Atherton spokefrom Afghanistan, where he is a StateDepartment contractor advising theAfghan and U.S. governments on theAfghan prison system.

Prisoner advocates counter thatthose communications are cursory atbest, however. “Three times a day, aguard comes through and slides a foodtray through the slot,” says the ACLU’s



Fathi. “You may occa-sionally have a mentalhealth person come byand shout through thecrack between the steelcell door and the doorframe; in my experience,mental health checks areoverwhelmingly con-ducted that way.”

The issue of actualcompliance with poli-cies and standardsaside, “What’s damag-ing about solitary con-finement is not the ab-sence of literally allhuman contact,” Fathisays. “What’s damag-ing is the lack ofmeaningful human in-teraction. A prisonercan go weeks, monthsor years without mean-ingful human interac-tion.” As with physicaltorture, he says, the ef-fects can damage aprisoner for life.

Riveland, the formercorrections boss in Col-orado and Washingtonstate and now a con-sultant on prison issues,argues that it’s a mis-take to apply the “tor-ture” label across theboard. “I’m sure thereare instances wheresome people haveundergone treatmentthat you would labeltorture,” he says. Butmisclassification of pris-oners is a more widespread problem,Riveland says — “widening the net toomuch on who stays in solitary andhow long, without a serious profes-sional review on, ‘Can we get this per-son into some other setting?’ ”

Others argue for keeping the focuson conditions they call inhumane. “I’m

not given to hyperbole,” says FredCohen, co-editor of the penology tradejournal Correctional Law Reporter andeditor of Correctional Mental HealthReport, “but I see things so bad thatit’s not too much to say that it’s whole-sale torture being practiced, in somestates more than others.”

Cohen, who has servedas a court-appointed moni-tor in litigation over prisonconditions, cites prisonersconfined in solitary for adecade or longer. “One guytold me, ‘I don’t know whoI am.’ You’re surrounded bypeople smearing themselveswith feces, eating their ownflesh. I met a guy in Illinoiswho ate his own shoulder.”

Is separating the“worst of the worst”from other prisonersbeneficial?

The rationale for con-structing supermax prisonswould seem clear andstraightforward. As someprison officials and politi-cians pose the issue, cer-tain prisoners are so dan-gerous to other inmates andto staff that there is no wayto house them in generalprison populations.

As examples, prison pro-fessionals often cite gangleaders who order murdersand gang members whoare sworn to carry out thoseorders. “Perhaps the mostsuccessful gang-controlstrategy, from a viewpointof reducing violence anddisorder, has been the iso-lation of gang members,making it more difficult forthem to influence and preyon the general prison pop-ulation,” three Texas uni-versity criminologists wrote

in the American Correctional Associa-tion’s monthly magazine in 2006. 22

Nevertheless, the strategy has draw-backs, wrote Chad R. Trulson and So-raya K. Kawucha of the University ofNorth Texas and James W. Marquartof the University of Texas at Dallas.A missing gang member can be

Former inmate Chris Marcum shows scars from cutting himselfwhile in isolation at the Tamms supermax prison in Illinois.

Several states recently have reduced their supermax populationsfollowing litigation over conditions in long-term solitary. InMaine, a prison official said the state’s new policy reducedviolence and instances of inmates cutting themselves. JeffreyMetzner, a psychiatry professor at the University of Colorado

medical school, says self-mutilation seems to be an attempt to feelsomething in a setting where outside stimulation is nearly absent.

AP Photo/Belleville News-Democrat/George Paw

laczyk

772 CQ Researcher

replaced, they noted. And there maybe better ways to deal with “periph-eral or inactive” gang members, thescholars said: Encourage them to re-nounce their affiliation, transfer themout of state or enroll them in behavior-change programs. 23

But academics may not make thebest guides to the realities of prisonadministration, argues Gary W. DeLand,former director of the Utah correctionsdepartment. “If you have actual knowl-edge of a serious threat to safety, orderor to an individual, and you fail totake action, you are liable,” he says,citing a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court rul-ing that found that federal prison of-ficials had acted with “deliberate in-difference” in failing to protect atranssexual prisoner from rape. 24

“What happens if you know you’vegot a heavy risk, if you know youhave people who are dangerous tostaff and to other prisoners?,” DeLandasks rhetorically. “What do you dowith them? Put them in suspended an-imation?” Segregation and isolation isthe only practical solution, he argues.

Yet, Florida State’s Mears, who haswritten a series of detailed studies ofsupermax confinement — includingan evaluation of results — argues thatthe case for segregating the “worst ofthe worst” is less definitive than it ap-pears. 25 “I did phone interviews andstate-by-state visits and I’d hear, ‘It’sworst-of-the-worst control,’ ” Mears says.“So my response [was], ‘What outcomeswould you use to show you’re con-trolling the worst of the worst?’ ”

Supermax prisoners can still assaultguards, Mears notes, citing so-called“cell extraction” operations after an in-mate breaks rules in some way. “They’realso not incapacitated from ordering as-saults,” he says, noting that prisonerscan send out mail and may be able toreceive visits, even if they are not face-to-face. A “savvy leader” can use thoseoccasions to send out directives, Mearsnotes. And Mississippi’s experience atUnit 32 in 2007, when three prisoners

died during an outbreak of violencebetween gangs, shows that prisonerscan cause violence even when con-fined in solitary. 26

Still, some prison officials say seg-regating dangerous prisoners in su-permax-type settings has improved safe-ty for staff and other prisoners instandard prison housing. In Illinois,following the 1998 opening of theTamms Correctional Center supermax,“Incidents of inmate-on-inmate assaults,inmate-on-staff assaults, gang-relatedactivities, the number of lockdown days. . . have all gone down,” Michael Ran-dle, then the director of the Illinoiscorrections department, said during De-cember 2009 testimony in a prisonerlawsuit over conditions at Tamms. 27

Charles E. Samuels Jr., Federal Bu-reau of Prisons director, echoed Ran-dle’s safety argument last June. “If youhave individuals who have thepropensity to harm others and inmany cases who have killed other in-dividuals,” he told the Constitution, CivilRights and Human Rights Subcommit-tee, “these are individuals who haveproven that they’re going to require arestrictive form of confinement until. . . we are comfortable to ensure thesafety of the facility putting them backinto general population.” 28

Prisoner advocates don’t entirelycondemn the idea of separating ex-tremely dangerous prisoners. But theseinmates don’t account for most ofthose in supermax-type units, criticsof solitary argue. “People who end upin solitary, most of them, are not theworst of the worst, they’re the sickestof the sick,” says Fathi of the ACLU.

The result is that the supermax ef-fect on the overall safety of prison sys-tems is minimal, Fathi argues. “In everysystem you can find a handful of pris-oners who are truly dangerous andrequire physical separation from oth-ers,” he says. Despite their small num-bers, “They are the only justificationfor building these cruel and extraor-dinarily expensive facilities.”

Does long-term solitary confine-ment make normal prisonersmentally ill?

Many prison professionals say long-term solitary confinement is no place formentally ill prisoners — but that theyoften end up there anyway. “Every class-action case I’ve ever worked on, they’reover-represented in segregation,” saysSteve J. Martin of Austin, Texas, a lawyerand ex-prison officer with long experi-ence as a court-appointed prison mon-itor. “And they’re over-represented interms of use of force and disciplinaryinfractions. Those things are all linked.If you engage in the type of behaviorthat requires staff use of force, that typ-ically leads to long-term segregation.”

Moreover, Martin says, the contro-versy over long-term solitary growsout of the increased use of supermax-type confinement for mentally ill pris-oners. “American prisons have alwaysheld a certain number of prisoners in22- to 23-hour-a-day lockup,” he says.But the widespread use of it for men-tally ill prisoners is relatively recent.

A string of court decisions and set-tlement orders has barred about a half-dozen prison systems from sendingmentally ill inmates to long-term soli-tary. These started with a 1995 feder-al court order to remove mentally illinmates from the Security HousingUnit of California’s Pelican Bay super-max. (See “Background,” p. 777.)

More recently, U.S. District Judge G.Patrick Murphy of East St. Louis, Ill.,went further, concluding that super-max confinement could psychologi-cally damage any prisoner. Murphysaid in a 2010 ruling concerning TammsCorrectional Center that “a number ofinmates who testified to experiencingsevere depression and other distur-bances while confined at Tamms tes-tified also to significant improvementin their mental health after being trans-ferred to the less restrictive conditions”at another state prison. 29

Murphy wrote that prisoners wereentitled to hearings before being sent



to Tamms. Conditions there “inflictlasting psychological and emotionalharm on inmates confined there forlong periods,” he wrote. 30

The issue is on some politicians’minds as well. “Some [inmates] are al-ready seriously mentally ill before they’reconfined” in isolation, Durbin said atthe Senate Judiciary subcommittee hear-ing in June. “Others who may not havehad any psychological problems beforeisolation can be driven into a psychosisor a suicidal state.” 31

Durbin was echoing the conclusionsof one of the subcommittee’s witnesses,Craig Haney, a psychology professorat the University of California, SantaCruz, and a veteran researcher on theeffects of long-term supermax-type con-finement. Extreme cases of self-muti-lation aside, Haney testified, “Solitaryconfinement places all prisoners ex-posed to it at grave risk of harm.” 32

All prisoners in solitary, Haneysaid, may find “this environment . . .so painful, so bizarre and impossibleto make sense of, that they createtheir own reality.” In addition, “Thedeprivations, restrictions, the totalityof control, and the prolonged absenceof any real opportunity for happinessor joy fills many prisoners with in-tolerable levels of frustration that, forsome, turns to anger, and then evento uncontrollable and sudden outburstsof rage.” 33

Nevertheless, some supermax de-fenders dispute the idea that long-term solitary confinement can do last-ing mental health damage to apsychologically fit prisoner. “I’ve seennothing, and I’ve been in this busi-ness now for about four decades,”says DeLand. “I’ve yet to run into any-thing that one could solidly point toas a person without serious emotionalproblems being affected in a negativeway by being isolated.”

During his stint as Utah correctionsdirector, DeLand says, systematic au-dits he ordered to spot problems thatcould lead to lawsuits never picked

up evidence of solitary confinementdriving prisoners into mental illness. “Iam not familiar with any study that’sbeen done that would indicate thatbeing locked in isolation for some pe-riod of time is going to cause mentalhealth problems.”

Cohen of Correctional MentalHealth Report says he is not awareof any studies that objectively assessthe mental health of people beforeand after solitary confinement. But,he adds, “In the last 25 years, I’vebeen to probably 100 prisons. I haveseen guys that I have known beforethey went in [to solitary] who becamehopelessly mad.”

Some prisoners could be faking in-sanity, Cohen acknowledges. But hesays that would be hard to imagine“for guys who come in from the streetas dudes, who are fastidious, whosmear themselves with feces.”

But Metzner of the University ofColorado, who also has a long trackrecord in prison work and opposessolitary confinement for mentally ill in-mates, argues that prolonged isolationdoesn’t induce mental illness, exceptin unusual cases.

Long-term solitary can make anyonedepressed, Metzner says. And “that canbe harmful even without mental illness.But it’s uncommon for people to be-come psychotic if they’re in segrega-tion, absent existing mental illness.”

BACKGROUNDRepentance in Isolation

L ong-term solitary confinement asa penal strategy dates back to the

formation of American prisons.In 1787, the Pennsylvania legisla-

ture ordered that a wing of a jail onWalnut Street in Philadelphia be con-verted to a “penitentiary house,” where

convicts would be held in isolation forthe length of their sentences. Law-makers believed that without the dis-traction of cellmates, prisoners couldreflect on their errors and repent forthem — hence the term “penitentiary,”which eventually passed into commonusage as a synonym for prison. 34

In 1821, New York state adoptedthe isolation strategy for a recentlybuilt prison at Auburn, about 35 mileswest of Syracuse. Eighty convicts con-sidered in special need of repentancewere locked in dark isolation cellswith only a Bible for company.

Whatever progress the prisonersmade in repairing their souls, their bod-ies suffered. By early 1823, five haddied of consumption, as tuberculosiswas then known, and 41 were grave-ly ill. Others lost their minds.

Auburn shifted to a system in whichprisoners were allowed out of theircells to work, though they weren’t al-lowed to talk to each other. “Industry,obedience, silence” was the institution’sdoctrine.

Elsewhere, the idea of redemptionthrough isolation still appealed to stateofficials. When Pennsylvania built East-ern Penitentiary outside Philadelphiain 1829, the idea was to keep all pris-oners — not a select group — in total,permanent isolation.

Isolation at Eastern was so com-plete that prisoners were brought inwith black hoods over their heads, sothat they’d be unable to see even theprison grounds. The prisoners neverleft their cells, until death or end ofsentence.

Unlike modern solitary, prisonerswere required to work. Looms or work-benches were part of cell furniture.Still, a prisoner’s separation from otherpeople was all but total. Food waspassed through a slot designed so thateven glimpsing the guard deliveringthe tray was impossible. The only ex-ceptions were occasional visitors —not family or friends, but officials anda few foreign researchers.

774 CQ Researcher


Among those researchers were theFrench social thinker Alexis de Tocquevilleand his friend, Gustave de Beaumont.They visited Eastern in 1831 during anAmerican tour that produced Tocqueville’sclassic two-volume Democracy inAmerica (1835, 1840). Tocquevilleseemed impressed by what he saw.One prisoner told him and Beaumont,sincerely or not, that he considered“being brought to the Penitentiary asa signal benefit of Providence.” 35

Another prisoner sobbed incessantly,Tocqueville reported. The man said hehoped he would be accepted backinto society upon release.

For their part, the prison’s officialinspectors defended solitary as re-demptive. “The sense of shame andfeelings of remorse drives them to somesource of consolation,” they wrote, “andthe ordinary means of stifling an ac-tively reproving conscience being de-nied by reason of their solitariness, thecomforts of the Bible and the peaceof religion are eagerly sought for.” 36

The British novelist Charles Dick-ens, who spent a day at Eastern in1842, took away a different impres-sion. He concluded, “This slow anddaily tampering with the mysteries ofthe brain [is] immeasurably worse thanany torture of the body . . . becauseits ghastly signs and tokens are notso palpable to the eye and sense oftouch as scars upon the flesh.” 37

Supreme Displeasure

I n September 1889, a Colorado juryconvicted James J. Medley of mur-

dering his wife the previous May. Hewas sentenced to hang. 38

The sentence, handed down in No-vember of that year, included a provi-sion called for by a newly enacted law:Medley was to be held in solitary con-finement until his execution. 39

Colorado’s new homicide law hadbeen enacted in April 1889. But underthe Colorado constitution, laws took

effect 90 days after passage. Thus, thecrime had been committed when theprevious homicide law was in effect— a law that didn’t require solitaryconfinement for prisoners awaiting ex-ecution.

Medley’s lawyer filed a habeas cor-pus petition seeking the prisoner’s re-lease. It reached the U.S. SupremeCourt in 1890. The high court decid-ed in Medley’s favor, ruling that theconvicted man’s sentencing violatedthe constitutional prohibition on “ex-post-facto” laws, which apply a newstatute to an offense committed whena previous law was in effect.

The court cited a history of “seri-ous objections” to solitary confine-ment. In Pennsylvania and other statesthat followed its example, “A consid-erable number of the prisoners fell,after even a short confinement, into asemi-fatuous condition, from which itwas next to impossible to arouse them,”the court said, “and others became vi-olently insane; other still committedsuicide while those who stood the or-deal better were not generally re-formed.” 40

The court also called solitary con-finement “an additional punishmentof the most important and painfulcharacter [that is] therefore forbidden”under the Constitution’s ex-post-factoprovision. 41 Moreover, because thehomicide law in force when Medleycommitted his crime was no longer ineffect, the Supreme Court reasonedthat it could not simply send him backfor a new trial. “James J. Medley is en-titled to have his liberty.”

Accordingly, the court ordered himfreed from prison.

To this day, solitary confinement crit-ics quote Medley’s passage about theeffects of solitary confinement. Most re-cently, Hope Metcalf, director of YaleLaw School’s Arthur Liman Public In-terest Program, and Judith Resnik, aYale law professor, cited the descrip-tion in testimony to the Senate Judi-ciary subcommittee hearing in June. 42

Nevertheless, Cohen, the Correc-tional Law Reporter co-editor, notedthat the high court didn’t reject soli-tary confinement as inherently un-constitutional. “It was merely found tobe sufficiently harsh to be an ex-post-facto (that is, not then authorized)punishment,” Cohen wrote. 43

He further argued that Medley suf-fers from a built-in weakness. “The ma-jority’s reliance on the much olderPhiladelphia system of silence and themental suffering it caused seems quitemisplaced where a death sentenced in-mate was to be kept in mandatory soli-tary for about four weeks, with guar-anteed access by various visitors, andwith no mention whatsoever of the par-ticular conditions of confinement.” 44

Institutionalizing Solitary

T he country’s first prison for thehardest of hard-core criminals was

a federal prison opened on Alcatraz Is-land in San Francisco Bay in 1934. Itsinmates included the Prohibition-eragangster Al Capone and other notori-ous criminals, as well as prisoners knownfor escape or for assaulting fellow in-mates or officers. Alcatraz is “commonlyrecognized as the forerunner of today’ssupermax facilities,” wrote Riveland, theformer Washington state correctionsdirector, in a 1999 guide to supermaxadministration. 45

Even so, Alcatraz prisoners werehoused one to a cell but weren’t con-fined nearly full-time to those cells, asare many supermax prisoners in today’sinstitutions. Round-the-clock solitaryconfinement was used as punishment— limited to 14 days, with an intervalof 14 days required before officials couldimpose it again. 46

The U.S. government closed Alcatrazin 1963 because it was nearly threetimes more expensive to run than anyother federal prison, due to its islandlocation. 47

Continued on p. 776


Chronology1787-1842Round-the-clock isolation ofprisoners begins in Pennsylva-nia and New York in the beliefthat enforced solitude encour-ages repentance.

1787Pennsylvania turns a wing of aPhiladelphia jail into a “peniten-tiary house,” where prisoners arekept in their cells.

1821New York imposes isolation regimeat a new state prison in Auburn.

1829Eastern Penitentiary, designed tocompletely isolate prisoners, opensoutside Philadelphia.

1842British novelist Charles Dickensvisits Eastern and reports thatlong-term solitary confinement was“immeasurably worse than any tor-ture of the body.”

•

1890-1963 U.S.Supreme Court expresses skepti-cism about solitary confine-ment but doesn’t reject it.

1890High court frees a Colorado mansentenced to hang for his wife’smurder, saying he’d been punishedwith solitary confinement under alaw that shouldn’t have been ap-plied to him.

1934Federal government opens prisonfor hard-core prisoners on AlcatrazIsland in San Francisco Bay, con-sidered the predecessor of super-max prisons.

1963After Alcatraz is closed as too ex-pensive, the government opens areplacement in Marion, Ill.

•

1983-1998Supermax era begins as prisonsare built to hold the “worst ofthe worst” in strict solitary con-finement; prisoner-rights lawyersbegin challenging the strategy.

1983Prisoners kill two guards at thefederal prison at Marion, prompt-ing a lockdown of all prisoners.

1989California opens Pelican Bayprison with Security Housing Unit(SHU) designed to hold prisonersin their cells for 23 hours a day.

1995Federal judge in San Francisco pro-hibits confinement of mentally illprisoners at the SHU and concludesthat conditions were close to intol-erable even for the mentally healthy.

1998Illinois opens Tamms CorrectionalCenter, which became a target ofprisoners’ litigation and a center ofpolitical controversy.

•

2001-2012Prisoner lawsuits, combinedwith tightened finances forstates, increase pressures to re-strict supermax confinement.

2001-2002Supermax prisoners in Ohio, Mis-sissippi and Wisconsin sue overtheir conditions of confinement.

2004Nationwide, 44 state supermaxeshold an estimated 25,000 prisoners.

2005U.S. Supreme Court rules in Ohiolawsuit that prisoners have a rightto challenge orders transferringthem to supermax and to qualifyfor release from solitary.

2006U.S. Appeals Court ruling on Wis-consin suit likens supermax condi-tions to those in the Soviet gulagin the 1930s.

2007Violence in Mississippi’s supermaxprompts state immediately to laygroundwork for reducing super-max population.

2010Ruling on a lawsuit by Illinois su-permax prisoners, federal judgewrites that conditions at the prisoncause lasting psychological dam-age. . . . American Bar Associationproposes one-year limit on strictsolitary confinement.

2011U.N. investigator says long-termsolitary confinement can amountto torture, proposes 15-day limit.

2012Prisoner-rights lawyers file lawsuitsalleging inhumane conditions atfederal supermax in Florence,Colo., and state supermaxes inCalifornia and Arizona. . . . Senatesubcommittee holds hearing onlong-term solitary confinement. . . .Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn ordersTamms supermax closed. Prisonguards’ union says decision threat-ens safety at prisons to whichTamms inmates are to be trans-ferred. . . . Illinois state judgetemporarily blocks Tamms closing.

776 CQ Researcher

Its replacement was the federal prisonat Marion, Ill., which opened in 1964.There, the only prisoners initially keptin their cells 23 hours a day were thoselocked in the prison’s “control unit,”which was reserved for 35 inmates con-sidered especially dangerous. 48

In October 1983, during a periodof rising tension, two control unit pris-oners killed two guards in a 10-hourspan. Each prisoner was being escortedto his cell when he turned on a guardand stabbed him to death. Rules thenin effect didn’t require control-unit

prisoners to be handcuffed when out-side their cells. 49

After the killings, the federal Bureauof Prisons put Marion on permanent“lockdown.” When an inmate was letout of his cell, he was chained, hand-cuffed and escorted by three guards.Visitors saw inmates only through aPlexiglas window and spoke to themover a telephone. Work programs ceased.(Today, Marion is a medium-securityprison, without permanent solitary.) 50

The killings prompted a call to re-establish a federal death penalty,which the U.S. Supreme Court had re-

jected in 1972. “Locking some men upwill not stop them from injuring oth-ers,” Bureau of Prisons Director Nor-man Carlson said shortly after the homi-cides. “They use virtually anything tomake deadly weapons, and theyspend their days plotting murder. Wecan keep them in their cells for 23hours a day, but we can’t weld thebars shut. For these few, the deathpenalty is the only answer.” 51

Congress passed a new federal cap-ital punishment law in 1988 and ex-panded its application in 1994. Amongpoliticians, the debate over that move


Continued from p. 774

Until recently, supporters of long-term solitary confine-ment had little academic research to back up whattheir experience told them: that placing inmates in iso-

lation for long periods — is an indispensable tool in runninga prison system.

Now, a controversial study based on research among Col-orado prisoners is filling the gap — at least as far as advo-cates of solitary confinement are concerned.

The results, published in 2010 by the Justice Department’sNational Institute of Justice, are based on psychological testsadministered to about 250 Colorado prisoners — some men-tally ill — in both solitary and in the prison system’s generalpopulation. The average length of a stay in solitary in Coloradois two years, but the study doesn’t say how long each studyparticipant in solitary had spent there. The tests included pris-oners’ self-assessments of their own psychological condition. 1

A report on the study, co-written by Maureen L. O’Keefe,research director for the Colorado Department of Corrections,concluded that “there was initial improvement in psychologicalwell-being across all study groups.” What’s more, it said “ele-vations in psychological and cognitive functioning that wereevident at the start of the study remained present at the endof the study.” 2

The report noted that researchers had not expected theseresults and that the study’s conclusions contradicted “the bulkof literature” indicating that solitary confinement “is extremelydetrimental to inmates with and without mental illness.” 3

“People who rail against isolated confinement were very dis-appointed in the outcome of the report,” says Eugene Ather-ton, a Pueblo, Colo.-based prison management consultant andformer Colorado warden. “The research showed the oppositeof what they had hoped would be proved.” Atherton, nowworking for the State Department to advise the Afghan gov-

ernment on development of a prison system, spoke from Kabul.Advocates of solitary confinement have used the study to

support their view that isolating prisoners for long periods —usually known in the field as “administrative segregation” or“ad seg” — is a legitimate form of punishment and necessaryfor maintaining control of inmate populations.

Last June, Charles E. Samuels Jr., director of the Federal Bu-reau of Prisons, told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Consti-tution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Subcommittee that thestudy found that “no negative effect on individuals in restric-tive housing has occurred.” 4

But opponents of solitary confinement argue that the studyis flawed and should not be used to shape prison policy.

O’Keefe and study adviser Jeffrey L. Metzner, a Universityof Colorado psychiatry professor and longtime expert on men-tal health in prison, acknowledged that the report shouldn’t betaken as conclusive evidence that applies to all long-term soli-tary nationwide. “This study may not generalize to other prisonsystems, especially those that have conditions of confinementmore restrictive and/or harsher than CSP [Colorado State Peni-tentiary],” they wrote last year in a professional journal, Correc-tional Mental Health Report. 5

Writing separately, Metzner said, “Such results should not beinterpreted to indicate that there is little harm associated withhousing inmates with mental illness on a long-term basis in”solitary confinement. Metzner served as an adviser on the study.Others included Jamie Fellner, a senior adviser to the U.S. pro-gram of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group that is criticalof long-term solitary confinement. 6

Despite the caveats, the report has generated a furious re-sponse from corrections experts, who have concluded that iso-lation damages prisoners who were either mentally ill to startwith or mentally healthy when their isolation began.

Controversial Study Supports Use of SolitaryInmates claim no ill effects, but critics cite flaws in research.


overshadowed, for a time, argumentsabout the wisdom, cost and ethics ofconfining prisoners in solitary for pe-riods of years. 52

In fact, the Marion lockdown be-came the template for supermax pris-ons nationwide. At the federal level,the administrative maximum (ADX)prison in Florence, Colo., which openedin 1994, was built to enable a regimeof permanent lockdown. By then, too,the Marion model had started spread-ing to state prison systems.

The best-known state supermax, theSecurity Housing Unit (SHU) of Peli-

can Bay State Prison in California,opened in 1989. SHU prisoners werelocked in their cells for all but aboutone hour a day. Massachusetts fol-lowed suit in 1991, with a supermaxon the grounds of the state prison atWalpole, where prisoners were lockedin cells for 22 hours a day. “This unitsends a message to both existing in-mates and potential criminals that dis-ruptive behavior is not going to betolerated in the Massachusetts prisonsystem,” Gov. William Weld said. 53

By 1998, about 20,000 prisonerswere housed under supermax condi-

tions in 34 states — either in newlybuilt institutions or in existing prisonsor prison wings retrofitted as super-maxes. 54

Virtually as soon as the wave ofsupermax construction began, somecorrections professionals began ques-tioning whether the facilities wereneeded, at least on such a broadscale. “Fad, trend or wise investment?,”Riveland, the former Washingtonstate prison system director, asked ina 1999 report published by the Jus-tice Department’s National Instituteof Corrections. 55

Stuart Grassian and Terry Kupers, psychiatrists with longprofessional track records in correctional mental health, argued,for example, that relying on prisoners to assess their own psy-chological conditions constitutes a fundamental flaw of thestudy. The testing materials the researchers used weren’t de-signed specifically for prison inmates, Grassian and Kuperswrote. Prisoners in the study sample were told that the pur-pose was to research adjustment to prison life.

“Anyone with a background in corrections knows that is notthe kind of information an inmate would likely expose,” Grassianand Kupers wrote. “It could harm him, even surreptitiously, for ex-ample at a parole hearing or in hearings to determine whether hecould progress to higher levels in [administrative segregation].” 7

Grassian, a retired Harvard Medical School professor, andKupers, a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif., apostgraduate clinical psychology school, also wrote that thestudy failed to evaluate test results in light of prison mental-health records. These would have provided data, they wrote,against which to assess the test results. 8

The study’s critics may have feared that it would be usedto justify maintaining or even expanding the number of pris-oners in solitary confinement. But that has not been the result,at least in Colorado. After the report was issued, the legisla-ture last year ordered the state corrections department to re-port annually on progress in removing mentally ill or devel-opmentally disabled prisoners from solitary confinement. Thebill imposing the requirement was prompted by an increase inthe number of mentally ill prisoners placed in solitary. 9

But changes in the prison system went deeper. Administra-tors have been sending fewer prisoners of any kind to solitaryconfinement. Along with a general decrease in the prison pop-ulation, partly resulting from lowered penalties for some drugcrimes, the decline in the solitary population led this year to

closure of the brand-new Colorado State Penitentiary in CanonCity. It had been used mainly for strict solitary confinement ofthe long-term type, with virtually round-the-clock isolation andlimited human contact. 10

The $162 million prison, opened in 2010 with room for 948administrative-segregation prisoners, has housed only 316 in-mates since it opened. 11

Atherton acknowledges the report hasn’t settled the issue. “Ongoes this battle,” he says, “with those who know little or noth-ing about correctional institutions and criminal behavior who areapplying their own suburban standards to prisons.”

— Peter Katel

1 Maureen L. O’Keefe, “One Year Longitudinal Study of the PsychologicalEffects of Administrative Segregation,” Colorado Department of Corrections,University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Oct. 31, 2010, pp. v-vi, 11,www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/232973.pdf.2 Ibid., p. ii.3 Ibid.4 “Sen. Richard J. Durbin Holds a Hearing on Reassessing Solitary Con-finement,” CQ Transcriptions, June 19, 2012.5 Jeffrey L. Metzner and Maureen L. O’Keefe, “Psychological Effects of Ad-ministrative Segregation: The Colorado Study,” Correctional Mental HealthReport, May/June, 2011, p. 1, www.civicresearchinstitute.com/online/article_abstract.php?pid=14&iid=512&aid=3553.6 Ibid., p. 14 and “Acknowledgements” page.7 Stuart Grassian and Terry Kupers, “The Colorado Study vs. the Reality ofSupermax Confinement,” Correctional Mental Health Report, op. cit., p. 9.8 Ibid., p. 10.9 “DOC gets report on solitary confinement review,” The Associated Press,Nov. 18, 2011.10 Kristen Wyatt, “Colorado closing Canon City prison,” The Associated Press,March 19, 2012.11 Tracy Harmon, “Reduced crime means less need for state prisons,” PuebloChieftain (Pueblo, Colo.), March 21, 2012; Tracy Harmon, “$162 millionprison opens,” Pueblo Chieftain, Aug. 26, 2010.

778 CQ Researcher

Riveland didn’t answer the questiondirectly. But he wrote that supermax-es were significantly more expensiveto build and operate, their conditionsraised ethical and constitutional issuesof inhumane treatment and effects onstaff as well as prisoners could benegative. “When there is little inter-action except in control situations,”Riveland wrote, “the adversarial na-ture of the relationships tends to beone of dominance and, in return, re-sistance on both sides.” 56

Constitutional Issues

A s supermaxes proliferated, pris-oner advocates and human-rights

activists began a campaign to limittheir use, or abolish them altogether.

The first major lawsuit over super-max conditions was a 1993 federalcase that combined more than 300 in-dividual suits by inmates at California’sPelican Bay prison. A trial featured har-rowing testimony from prison expertsabout systematic brutality and mis-

treatment of inmates throughout theprison and in its SHU supermax wing— testimony cited in detail in a 345-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Thel-ton E. Henderson in 1995. 57

Henderson ruled that prison systemofficials “cross the constitutional line whenthey force certain subgroups of the prisonpopulation, including the mentally ill, toendure the conditions in the SHU, de-spite knowing that the likely consequencefor such inmates is serious injury to theirmental health.” Another subgroup, Hen-derson ruled, was made up of inmates


T he prison world has a new buzzword: “reclassification.”High costs, litigation and controversy involving long-termsolitary confinement are prompting politicians and prison

officials to question whether prisoner isolation has been overused.As a result, some states are revamping their security classifica-tions under which certain prisoners are segregated in round-the-clock lockdown.

The reclassification trend, so far limited to a few states, gotits first major impetus from Ohio’s decision in the early 2000sto drastically reduce its population housed in long-term soli-tary with little human contact in the state’s supermax prison,the Ohio State Penitentiary. At the time, the state was embroiledin a lawsuit by prisoners challenging their transfer to the su-permax. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld prisoners’right to challenge such transfers. 1

But by the time the court ruled, Ohio already had changedits classification system. By 2008, only 53 of 533 prisoners whohad been in supermax in the early 2000s remained there. Theothers had been reclassified to lower security levels, a movethat took them out of solitary. 2

The most dramatic shift in state policy came in Mississippiin 2007. Prompting the change was an increase in violence inthe notorious isolation wing of the state penitentiary at Parch-man — Unit 32, which held only prisoners in round-the-clocksolitary — made possible by a breakdown in isolation securi-ty procedures. 3

At the time, the Mississippi prison system was being suedby prisoners represented by the National Prison Project of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The lawsuit had alreadyled to talks between prison system officials and lawyers for in-mates on changing the classification system. Following the vi-olence, officials quickly accepted changes in the system pro-posed by the ACLU’s classification expert, James Austin (whohad also worked on the Ohio revamping). A few months later,

about three-quarters of Unit 32 prisoners had been reclassifiedfor transfer to the prison’s general population. 4

Austin had concluded that under the old classification sys-tem, some prisoners were sent to Unit 32 immediately afterthey began their sentences, without having broken any rules.Many prisoners remained in the unit for years though they hadnot committed any misconduct there and should have been el-igible for transfer. “Required reassessments were not being done. . . [and] the caseload for case managers was so large thatthey could not have adequate contact with prisoners,” said astudy by experts including Austin, other ACLU staff membersand Mississippi prison officials. 5

As prisoners were reclassified, the population of Unit 32plummeted from about 1,000 to fewer than 150. 6

The Ohio and Mississippi reclassifications are now beingused as a template for other states. The Vera Institute of Jus-tice, a New York-based criminal justice system think tank andadvocacy organization, is working with Illinois, Maryland andNew Mexico on revamping their classification systems. 7

The projects are designed to develop new standards for re-leasing prisoners from segregation, strengthening programs bywhich prisoners can move out of solitary confinement and im-proving conditions in solitary. “Vera aims to demonstrate thatstates can reduce the numbers of prisoners they hold in seg-regation without jeopardizing institutional or public safety,”Michael Jacobson, Vera’s president, told the Senate JudiciaryCommittee’s Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights Sub-committee last June. The organization also hopes to create a“replicable model” that other states can use. 8

Work on the project so far shows that many prisoners aresent to solitary for minor rule-breaking, three Vera Institute re-classification specialists wrote last year. These offenses include“unauthorized movement, failure to report to work or school,insolence or talking back and disobeying a direct order,” the

Some States Rethinking Solitary ConfinementTrend began with inmate lawsuit over Ohio supermax prison.


with mental conditions — chronic de-pression and brain damage effects, amongthem — who would severely deterio-rate in solitary. In December 1995, Hen-derson followed up by ordering the re-moval of 100 severely mentally ill prisonersfrom the SHU by year’s end. 58

Nevertheless, Henderson explicitlyrefrained from concluding that condi-tions in the SHU were unconstitutionalacross the board. They “may well hoveron the edge of what is humanly tol-erable for those with normal resilience,particularly when endured for extend-

ed periods of time,” Henderson wrote.“They do not, however, violate exact-ing Eighth Amendment standards.” 59

The amendment, which prohibits “crueland unusual punishments,” is centralto analyzing the constitutionality ofprison conditions. 60

The Pelican Bay ruling led to aseries of federal lawsuits by the Amer-ican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) onbehalf of prisoners confined in soli-tary in Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut,New Mexico and Indiana. (The NewMexico case began in state court.) By

2007, those suits led to settlementsor court orders prohibiting confine-ment of seriously mentally ill prison-ers in supermax facilities. 61

When another supermax lawsuitreached the U.S. Supreme Court in2005, the justices also refrained fromdefining long-term solitary as uncon-stitutional. But the decision did up-hold prisoners’ arguments that they’dbeen denied due process when theywere sent to the Ohio supermax.Likewise, once in solitary, the courtsaid, prisoners had a constitutional

experts wrote. “Confinement to segregation is often out of scalefor these violations.” 9

The Illinois corrections department reported that Vera’s analy-sis showed that 85 percent of prisoners were in long-term, lim-ited-human-contact solitary for “less severe” infractions. “It wasalso found that those who spent less time in segregation werenot more likely to commit new violations during the first 12months of release into general prison population,” the depart-ment reported in comments that Jacobson relayed to the Sen-ate subcommittee. 10

Overall, Illinois officials reported, “The mantra of the pro-gram has been to determine if we are mad at the offender orscared of them when making recommendations for segregationtime and transfer.” 11

In Mississippi, meanwhile, reclassification has improvedconditions in the prison system, according to a top official.“When we started moving people to lower security levels, wefound that there was no increase in violence,” Deputy Cor-rections Commissioner Emmitt Sparkman wrote on the VeraInstitute’s blog. “We’ve been conditioned that 23-hour lock-downs make it safer, make it better for staff and other of-fenders and for the system. In Mississippi, we’ve found that’snot necessarily true.” 12

The Ohio story has been more complicated. The most recentprison system director, Gary Mohr, said that when he took overlast year he found dangerously high levels of violence. In re-sponse, he announced a new classification system early this yearthat would house an estimated 300 to 500 gang members andother dangerous prisoners in “control” units or special prisons. 13

Those units include cells for virtually round-the-clock soli-tary confinement. But officials made a point of stressing dif-ferences between their system and previous versions of long-term solitary confinement. They said “control” prisoners wouldbe able to earn a way into less restrictive conditions and

would be enrolled in behavioral programs. “Control prisonsare not designed as disciplinary centers,” the department saidin its annual report for last year. “Offenders in control unitswill still have access to programming designed to change theirway of thinking.” 14

— Peter Katel

1Wilkinson v. Austin, 544 U.S. 74 (2005), www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-495.ZS.html.2 “Examples of supermax prisons whose purposes have changed,” The As-sociated Press, April 5, 2008.3 Terry A. Kupers, et al., “Beyond Supermax Administrative Segregation,”Criminal Justice and Behavior, July 21, 2009, p. 4, https://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file359_41136.pdf.4 Ibid.5 Ibid., p. 5.6 Ibid., p. 5.7 “Segregation Reduction Project,” Vera Institute of Justice, undated, www.vera.org/project/segregation-reduction-project.8 Michael Jacobson, written testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, Sub-committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, June 19,2012, www.vera.org/files/michael-jacobson-testimony-on-solitary-confinement-2012.pdf.9 Angela Browne, Alissa Cambier and Suzanne Agha, “Prisons Within Pris-ons: The use of Segregation in the United States,” Federal Sentencing Re-porter, October 2011, p. 29, www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/fsr.2011.24.1.46?uid=3739816&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101142915511.10 Jacobson, op. cit.11 Ibid.12 Emmitt Sparkman, “Mississippi DOC’s Emmitt Sparkman on reducing theuse of segregation in prisons,” Current Thinking (blog), Vera Institute ofJustice, Oct. 31, 2011, www.vera.org/blog/mississippi-docs-emmitt-sparkman-reducing-use-segregation-prisons.13 “Prisoners with gang links to be isolated,” Dayton Daily News (Ohio),Feb. 15, 2012 p. A1; “Annual Report, 2011,” Ohio Department of Rehabilitationand Correction, undated,www.drc.ohio.gov/web/Reports/Annual/Annual%20Report%202011.pdf.14 Ibid., “Annual Report,” p. 4.

780 CQ Researcher


right to periodic review of their cases,with the possibility of earning trans-fer out of solitary. 62

Following the high court action, pris-oners argued in a lower federal courtthat the prison system wasn’t actuallycarrying out the due-process pro-ceedings, despite what officials hadtold the Supreme Court. In 2007, afederal district judge ruled that Ohiowas still denying prisoners an effec-tive procedure to win release from thesupermax. 63

Meanwhile, opposition to long-termsolitary confinement was intensifyingin the domestic and international human-rights community. The ACLU, in addi-tion to litigating for years over condi-tions for prisoners in prolonged solitaryconfinement, launched a campaign to“stop solitary.” Among the reasons wassolitary’s effect on mental health,among both mentally ill prisoners andthose who’d been mentally stable be-fore being locked in prolonged isola-tion. Argued the ACLU, “The clinicalimpacts of isolation can actually be sim-ilar to that of physical torture.” 64

CURRENTSITUATION

Fight Over Supermax

I n early September, Associate CircuitJudge Charles Cavaness of Alexander

County, Ill. (Cairo), issued a tempo-rary restraining order halting Gov.Quinn’s planned closure of the Tammssupermax. The action had the poten-tial to make “the prisons that remainmore dangerous for employees,” thejudge said. 65

That conclusion echoed argumentsby union prison guards and other staff,who have been fighting DemocratQuinn’s plan to close Tamms, a con-

ventional prison for women and somecenters for juvenile offenders.

The judge’s order followed an ar-bitrator’s decision upholding the union’sposition that Quinn’s decision violat-ed the employees’ labor contract. Bothsides were ordered to negotiate a so-lution within 30 days. The judge’s de-cision effectively maintains the statusquo until a deal is reached.

The legal battle between Quinn andthe American Federation of State,County and Municipal Employees union(AFSCME) demonstrates the complica-tions of the debate over supermax pris-ons. Among the big issues in Illinois:jobs, safety in the state’s remaining pris-ons, state spending on an institutionrunning at far below capacity becauseof a court ruling and longstandinghuman-rights concerns over supermaxconfinement.

Ever since Quinn began publiclyweighing the possibility of shuttingTamms, AFSCME leaders have insist-ed that the move — in addition tocosting 250 jobs in economically strug-gling southern Illinois — would raisethe danger level in institutions to whichTamms prisoners would be transferred.“Conditions are already volatile and dan-gerous in the prison system, which isjammed,” Henry Bayer, AFSCME’s ex-ecutive director in Illinois, said in earlyAugust. 66

When he spoke, the confrontationbetween the union and Quinn had beenheating up. In late July, The AssociatedPress reported that the state correctionsdepartment ordered pat-down searchesof employees as they left work at about15 state prisons. Union members allegedthat the search order was designed asretaliation for leaks to a newspaper aboutplans to transfer as many as nine Tammsinmates to prisons in other states. Unionleaders said the reported plan to senddangerous inmates out of state showedthat Illinois officials were aware that thesupermax was the only safe place tohouse those inmates within the bound-aries of their own state. 67

Among the nine reportedly consid-ered for transfer was Henry Brisbon,who entered prison on a 1,000- to3,000-year sentence for killing an en-gaged couple in 1973. In prison, hewas sentenced to death for stabbinganother inmate to death. His deathsentence was commuted to life im-prisonment when, in 2000, RepublicanGov. George Ryan declared a morato-rium on the death penalty, which theIllinois legislature later abolished. 68

Inmates classified as extremely dan-gerous may have been the only onesleft at Tamms in the wake of the 2010federal court ruling that prisoners hada constitutional right to challengetransfer to Tamms. By this year, ac-cording to a budget summary byQuinn’s office, Tamms had a prison-er population of 389, or slightly morethan half the prison’s 753-inmate ca-pacity. The prison’s annual operatingcost is $62,000 per prisoner, comparedwith the state average of $21,405. 69

When Quinn disclosed his plan inJune to close Tamms, he said hehoped the legislature would channelthe savings into the Department ofChildren and Family Services, whichhad suffered a $50 million budget cutthat would eliminate 375 jobs. “I thinkthe priority is children, not a half-emptyprison,” he said. 70

Alan Mills, legal director for thenonprofit Uptown People’s Law Cen-ter in Chicago, which represented pris-oners in the case that led to the fed-eral court ruling, says the court decisionstrongly influenced the governor’s de-cision. The judge forced a “recogni-tion that penologically you don’t needTamms,” Mills says.

New Litigation

R ecent lawsuits against federal andstate supermaxes continue a legal

offensive under way virtually since thefirst such prison opened. Lawsuits filed

Continued on p. 782

no


At Issue:Should solitary confinement be limited to one year?yes

yesDAVID C. FATHIDIRECTOR, ACLU NATIONAL PRISONPROJECT

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, SEPTEMBER 2012

“i t’s an awful thing, solitary,” Sen. John McCain wroteof his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “Itcrushes your spirit and weakens your resistance

more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” McCainspent about two years in solitary; in the United States today,many prisoners are held in continuous solitary confinement forfive years, 10 years or longer.

It’s undisputed that solitary confinement is profoundly andsometimes irreparably damaging, and the damage becomesmore severe with increasing duration. In 2010, a federal judgereviewing conditions at Illinois’ Tamms supermax prison con-cluded that “Tamms imposes drastic limitations on human con-tact, so much so as to inflict lasting psychological and emo-tional harm on inmates confined there for long periods.” Andin 2005, a group of mental health experts told the U.S.Supreme Court that “no study of the effects of solitary orsupermax-like confinement that lasted longer than 60 daysfailed to find evidence of negative psychological effects.” Someeffects, such as a slowing of brain activity, are detectable afteras little as one week.

On the other side of the ledger, there’s little proof that soli-tary confinement promotes prison or public safety, and a grow-ing body of evidence indicates that it’s actually counterproduc-tive. A 2006 study found that opening a supermax prison hadno effect on prisoner-on-prisoner violence in Arizona, Illinoisand Minnesota. Indeed, Mississippi Corrections CommissionerChristopher Epps recently testified before a U.S. Senate sub-committee that when his state slashed its solitary population by75 percent, violent incidents fell by half. And a 2004 studyfrom Washington state found that prisoners who had experi-enced solitary confinement were more likely to commit newcrimes upon release, and also committed more serious crimes,than similar prisoners who had not been in solitary.

No one denies that some prisoners sometimes requirephysical separation so they don’t harm others. But physicalseparation can be achieved without the extreme social isola-tion and sensory deprivation that are the hallmarks of solitaryconfinement. Based on the overwhelming evidence of itsharmful effects, the United Nations Special Rapporteur onTorture in 2011 recommended a global ban on solitary con-finement lasting more than 15 days. But even a one-year limitwould dramatically reduce the suffering and damage causedby solitary confinement as it’s practiced in the United Statestoday. It should be adopted without delay.no

GARY W. DELANDEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UTAH SHERIFFSASSOCIATION, FORMER DIRECTOR, UTAHDEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, SEPTEMBER 2012

i n the debate over whether solitary confinement is benefi-cial or hostile to prisoner management, legal considera-tions have received insufficient attention.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that officials havea duty to take reasonable measures to protect prisoners fromviolence. But to provide reasonable measures to protect safety,officials must be able to control prisoners’ mobility, interactionwith other prisoners and capability to harm others. Hands-onmethods of control (i.e., grappling, fighting) provide a highrisk of injury. Restraint methods such as pepper spray, elec-tronic restraint devices and restraint chairs provide safer forceoptions. Despite abundant data demonstrating the safety bene-fits, detractors are campaigning to ban their use.

Solitary confinement is effective for managing prisoners whoare a serious threat to others. However, the well-established ef-fectiveness and safety benefits of solitary — just as with pepperspray or restraint chairs — have become targets of self-styledreformers. There are many operational justifications to supportthe value of solitary confinement; however, one that justifies at-tention is the litigation threat to corrections officials if they failto protect prisoners from violence when the officials know of aserious or excessive risk of prisoner-on-prisoner violence.

The Supreme Court has ruled that if officials know of asubstantial risk of harm to a prisoner, but knowingly disregardthe risk by failing to take reasonable measures to abate it,and the prisoner suffers serious harm, the officials may befound deliberately indifferent and thus liable for the harm tothe prisoner. When officials know a prisoner is a gang mem-ber, a predator or has other violent propensities, assigning thatprisoner to general housing and permitting the prisoner tohave direct interaction with other inmates pose a strong po-tential to create a substantial threat of violence to other pris-oners. Solitary limits prisoner violence by limiting physicalcontact with other inmates and staff. Simply put, limiting orcontrolling violent prisoners’ interaction with other prisonersgreatly limits the potential for violence.

A time limit on confinement is appropriate in cases wherethe aim is to discipline a rule-breaking inmate. But when theisolation is based on a prisoner’s history of being a violentpredator or violent gang member, the time frame for solitaryconfinement should be indefinite. A few months in isolation donot change a highly dangerous individual into an easily man-ageable prisoner. Solitary confinement of such prisoners is, inmany cases, essential to the safety of other inmates and staff.

782 CQ Researcher

in recent months against the federalsupermax at Florence, Colo., the Cal-ifornia supermax at Pelican Bay andthe Arizona state prison system, in-cluding its long-term solitary unit, pre-sent a long list of charges against of-ficials of the three systems.

None of the systems has yet fileda detailed response to the allega-tions. However, Federal Bureau ofPrisons Director Samuels in effectcountered the federal lawsuit’s alle-gations that the Florence supermaxhoused deeply mentally ill prisonersand denied them effective treatment.“Only a very small proportion of of-fenders are held in more restrictedhousing, and most for only brief pe-riods of time,” Samuels said.

Referring to the strict-solitary wing,Samuels said placement “is restrictedto inmates who clearly pose an ex-treme safety risk and need stringentrestrictions to maintain safety for otherinmates, staff, institutional operationsand the public.” 71

The lawsuit against the Florenceprison, filed on behalf of five inmatesby Arnold & Porter, a prominent Wash-ington law firm, and the WashingtonLawyers’ Committee for Civil Rightsand Urban Affairs, lays out a har-rowing account of untreated mentalillness in the most restrictive of thesolitary confinement units.

“Even where prisoners . . . are prop-erly identified as having a seriousmental illness,” the lawsuit states, “manyare not given appropriate treatment,including either counseling or med-ication.” In allegedly withholding treat-ment, the bureau is ignoring its ownrules, the lawsuit says. 72

The lawsuit’s lengthy and highlydetailed accounts of self-mutilation andother self-destructive behavior prompt-ed a similarly detailed and impassioneddenunciation of the supermax by An-drew Cohen, a contributing editor atThe Atlantic magazine and a legal an-alyst for CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”

“For these inmates,” Cohen wrote ofmentally ill prisoners in strict solitary,“the prison is a gulag, a place of un-speakable cruelty and state-sponsoredwickedness, run by officials who ignoretheir own policies and seem to revelin humiliating prisoners by deprivingthem of basic human dignities.” 73

A separate but related lawsuit filedlast May centers on the suicide of anallegedly severely mentally ill inmate atFlorence in 2010. José Martin Vega, whowas serving four consecutive life sen-tences on a 1995 conviction for racke-teering and armed drug trafficking, hadbeen diagnosed as a paranoid schizo-phrenic, the lawsuit alleges. 74

Vega’s brother, Raymond, represent-ed by an Arnold & Porter lawyer, issuing warden Blake R. Davis over thesuicide, alleging that prison staff chainedVega, sometimes for 10 days or moreat a time, instead of treating him. “Thebehavior claimed by the BOP (Bureauof Prisons) to justify such abuse wasa product of Vega’s untreated mentalillness,” the lawsuit states, without spec-ifying Vega’s behavior. 75

Vega was found dead in his cell. Acoroner ruled he had hanged himself.

Treatment of mentally ill prisoners,including those held in long-term soli-tary, is also a major issue in a feder-al class-action lawsuit filed in Marchagainst Arizona prison officials for al-legedly seriously deficient medical care,including mental health care, through-out the state’s prison system. 76

Lawyers for the state deny specif-ic allegations. And, they wrote in theirfirst response to the lawsuit, they specif-ically rejected the claim that prison of-ficials “are deliberately indifferent to asubstantial risk of serious physical orpsychiatric harm” to prisoners in soli-tary. Further, they said that prisonersare kept in solitary only for unspeci-fied short periods of time, except forprison gang members. The latter, thestate said, can exit solitary by pro-viding information about gang activi-ties and renouncing membership. 77

And California’s Pelican Bay super-max is the target of a class-action law-suit filed last May that centers on gangmembers and alleged members. Cali-fornia prison policy, the lawsuit al-leges, is to confine these prisoners instrict solitary unless they “debrief” withprison staff — that is, provide infor-mation on other inmates’ gang activi-ties. Informing on fellow prisoners, thelawsuit says, would invite retaliationon the informants and their families.“Accordingly, for those many prisonerswho refuse or are unable to debrief,defendants’ policies result in ‘effective-ly permanent’ solitary confinement,” thelawsuit says. 78

Moreover, according to the lawsuit,evidence of gang affiliation for at leastsome of the prisoners is sketchy. Oneplaintiff, George Ruiz, has been in soli-tary confinement for 22 years “basedon nothing more than his appearanceon lists of alleged gang members dis-covered in some unnamed prisoners’cells and his possession of allegedlygang-related drawings.” 79

The lawsuit, filed by lawyers of theNew York-based Center for Constitu-tional Rights, followed a hunger strikelast year by prisoners in the PelicanBay long-term solitary unit. Amongother issues, they were protesting thedebriefing requirement. In response,California’s undersecretary of correc-tions, Scott Kernan, told prisoners thatthe state would assess the criteria bywhich prisoners are categorized asgang members, as well as the de-briefing procedure. 80

After the lawsuit was filed, the de-partment declined to comment. But aspokesman told a reporter that the de-partment was still designing a systemunder which prisoners could “demon-strate their ability to refrain from crim-inal gang behavior” and would un-dergo preparation for living in “housingin a less restrictive environment.” Pris-oners still in solitary would get addedprivileges if they “refrain from crimi-nal gang behavior.” 81


Continued from p. 780


OUTLOOK‘Losing Favor’

P rison experts generally concurthat supermaxes and the strict iso-

lation they represent will keep de-clining in use. “It’s losing favor as a re-sult, to some extent, of litigation,” saysMartin, the Texas-based prison consul-tant and monitor. Driving the supermaxdecline, he says, are judicial prohibi-tions on keeping mentally ill prisonersin strict solitary.

Aside from the fact that mentally illprisoners typically make up a largepercentage of supermax inmates, Mar-tin says, “There is growing acknowl-edgement by prison administratorsthat we need to be more careful inchoosing to put people in segregationand need to be more careful in howlong we keep them. Systems are learn-ing to operate without such a relianceon segregation.”

Atherton, the Colorado prison con-sultant, also sees a trend, but arguesthat it won’t and shouldn’t lead tocomplete abolition of long-term solitary.Financial pressures to close supermaxesare real, he says, and politicians maywant to close isolation units to buildsupport among prison critics. “They’llclose administrative segregation andsay, ‘Look what a wonderful person Iam.’ Or they will be judicious and pre-serve the ways in which wardens canput bad people in lockup.”

Strict solitary confinement won’tdisappear, Atherton argues. “Wardensand correctional professional associa-tions will rise up and preserve theability to provide administrative seg-regation, which by law is constitu-tional.” However, he says, “It might beused less because of the cost.”

Cohen, the Arizona penology ed-itor, also says further supermax clos-ings are likely — but only “if you

can pitch it in a way that says you’renot compromising safety inside orout.”

One danger of continuing a rela-tively high use of strict solitary, hesays, is that prisoners will come to de-pend on court rulings prohibiting thatform of imprisonment for the mental-ly ill. “You end up putting a premi-um on mental illness: ‘If it takes beingcrazy to stay out, I’ll be crazy.’ ”

DeLand, the former Utah correc-tions official and a defender of strictsolitary confinement, concedes that su-permax construction became a “fad.”But, he says, “You have to recognizeyou have certain prisoners” who re-quire round-the-clock lockdown.

“You want your very best peoplerunning these operations,” DeLand says.Under those circumstances, he says,“They work pretty well.”

Nonetheless, says the ACLU’s Fathi,financial and legal pressures to de-crease use of long-term solitary arebecoming overwhelming. “This is anenormously expensive way to housepeople,” he says. “As states are expe-riencing fiscal pressure, they are tak-ing a long-overdue second look atwhether this is an appropriate use ofscarce public dollars.”

Meanwhile, prison professionals areincreasingly recognizing that supermax-type confinement “is overused and thatthere are people there who don’t be-long there.”

Mills of the Uptown People’s LawCenter in Chicago, whose litigationagainst the Tamms supermax in Illinoishelped set the stage for the governor’sorder to close the prison, says that moverepresents an irreversible trend. “In 10to 15 years, I don’t think that more thanone or two will be left.”

Supermaxes, Mills says, “were anexperiment that never had an evi-dentiary basis in the first place. Thereis no empirical evidence that theymake prisons systems any safer. Theeconomy no longer gives states themoney to experiment.”

Notes

1 Maurice Possley, “Anthony Graves,” NationalRegistry of Exonerations, undated, www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3253.2 Anthony C. Graves, written testimony, Sen-ate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitu-tion, Civil Rights and Human Rights, June 19,2012, www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/12-6-19GravesTestimony.pdf.3 Michael Jacobson, written testimony, Sen-ate Subcommittee on the Constitution, CivilRights and Human Rights, June 19, 2012, www.vera.org/pubs/michael-jacobson-testimony-solitary-confinement-us-senate-committee-judiciary.4 Chase Riveland, “Supermax Prisons: Overviewand General Considerations,” 1999 NationalInstitute of Corrections, pp. 5-6, http://static.nicic.gov/Library/014937.pdf.5 “Sen. Richard J. Durbin Holds a Hearingon Reassessing Solitary Confinement,” SenateCommittee on the Judiciary, Subcommitteeon Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights,CQ Transcriptions, June 19, 2012.6 Juan E. Méndez, “Torture and other cruel, in-human or degrading treatment of punishment,”United Nations General Assembly, Aug. 5, 2011,p. 17, http://solitaryconfinement.org/uploads/SpecRapTortureAug2011.pd; “Juan E Méndez,”American University, faculty biographies, un-dated, www.wcl.american.edu/faculty/bio/jmendez.pdf.7 Daniel P. Mears, “Evaluating the Effective-ness of Supermax Prisons,” Urban Institute,March, 2006, pp. 1, 3, www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411326_supermax_prisons.pdf.8 Michael Jacobson, written testimony, op. cit.Quoted in Alex Barber, “Less restriction equalsless violence at Maine State Prison,” BangorDaily News, June 15, 2012, http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/15/news/state/less-restriction-equals-less-violence-at-maine-state-prison/;Lance Tapley, “Reducing solitary confinement,”Portland Phoenix, Nov. 2, 2011, http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/129316-reducing-solitary-confinement/?page=1#TOPCONTENT/.9 The case is Wilkinson v. Austin, 544 U.S.74 (2005), www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-495.ZS.html.10 “Sen. Richard J. Durbin Holds a Hearing. . . ,” op. cit.11 Terry A. Kupers, et al., “Beyond SupermaxAdministrative Segregation,” Criminal Justice andBehavior, July 21 2009, p. 4, www.aclu.org/

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images/asset_upload_file359_41136.pdf.12 Ruiz, et al., v. Brown, et al., U.S. DistrictCourt, Northern District of California, CaseNo 4:09-cv-05796-CW, Second Amended Com-plaint, May 31, 2012, www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-CA-0054-0001.pdf.13 Hope Metcalf and Judith Resnik, written tes-timony, Senate Subcommittee on the Constitu-tion, Civil Rights and Human Rights, June 19,2012, http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/hope-metcalf-and-judith-resnik-yale-law-school.pdf; “Administrative Segrega-tion and Classification System Analysis andReview Process,” Colorado Department of Cor-rections, January 2012, p. 7, www.aclu.org/files/assets/co_adseg_rept_jan2012.pdf.14 David C. Fathi, “The Common Law of Su-permax Litigation,” Pace Law Review, Spring2004, p. 681, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=plr.15 Bacote, et al., v. Federal Bureau of Prisons,et al., Case 1:12-cv-01570, Complaint, June 18,2012, www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-CO-0019-0001.pdf.16 Mears, op. cit., p. 33.17 Méndez, op. cit., p. 17.18 “Standard 23-4.3 Disciplinary Sanctions,” Stan-dards on Treatment of Prisoners, American BarAssociation, February 2010, www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_section_archive/crimjust_standards_treatmentprisoners.html#23-2.9.19 Gillis v. Litscher, et al., U.S. Court of Ap-peals for the Seventh Circuit, No. 06-2099,Nov. 14, 2006, http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1035106.html; Martha Nell, “Longtime7th Circuit Judge Terence Evans Is Dead AfterSudden Illness,” ABA Journal, Aug. 11, 2011,www.abajournal.com/news/article/7th_circuit_judge_terence_evans_is_dead/.20 Atul Gawande, “Hellhole,” The New Yorker,March 30, 2009, www.newyorker.com/report

ing/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz22sGDYqKK.21 Written testimony, Charles E. Samuels, Fed-eral Bureau of Prisons, Subcommittee on theConstitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights,Senate Judiciary Committee, June 19, 2012,www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/12-6-19SamuelsTestimony.pdf.22 Chad R. Trulson, James W. Marquart andSoraya K. Kawucha, “Gang Suppression andInstitutional Control,” Corrections Today, Amer-ican Correctional Association, April 2006, p. 30,www.aca.org/fileupload/177/prasannak/Trulson1.pdf.23 Ibid.24 Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994),http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2417836767044325448&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr.25 Daniel P. Mears, “An Assessment of Super-max Prisons Using an Evaluation ResearchFramework,” The Prison Journal, March, 2008,http://tpj.sagepub.com/content/88/1/43.abstract.26 Kupers, et al., op. cit., p. 4.27 Westefer, et al., v. Snyder, et al., U.S. Dis-trict Court for the Southern District of Illi-nois, Case 00-162-GPM, Dec. 9, 2009.28 “Sen. Richard J. Durbin Holds a Hearing. . . ,” op. cit.29 “Memorandum and Order,” Westefer, et al. v.Snyder, et al., op. cit., July 20, 2010, www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=in%20fdco%2020100720b93.xml&docbase=cslwar3-2007-curr.30 Ibid.31 “Sen. Richard J. Durbin Holds a Hearing. . . ,” op. cit.32 Craig Haney, written testimony, Senate Ju-diciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, CivilRights and Human Rights,” June 19, 2012,www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/12-6-19HaneyTestimony.pdf.33 Ibid.

34 Except where otherwise noted, this sub-section is drawn from Scott Christianson, WithLiberty For Some: 500 Years of Imprisonmentin America (1998), pp. 133-138.35 Quoted in ibid., p. 135.36 Quoted in ibid., p. 136.37 Quoted in ibid., p. 138.38 Except where otherwise indicated, informa-tion in this subsection is drawn from Medley,Petitioner, 134 U.S. 160 (1890), http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/134/160/case.html;Stuart Grassian, “Psychiatric Effects of SolitaryConfinement,” Journal of Law and Policy, 2006,pp. 329-330, http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf.39 Quoted in Medley op. cit.40 “Samuel F. Miller, 1862-1890,” The SupremeCourt Historical Society, undated, www.supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-court/associate-justices/samuel-miller-1862-1890/.41 Quoted in ibid.42 Metcalf and Resnik, op. cit., p. 9,43 Fred Cohen, “Isolation in Penal Settings:The Isolation-Restraint Paradigm,” Journal ofLaw and Policy, 2006, p. 317, http://law.wustl.edu/Journal/22/p295Cohen.pdf.44 Ibid.45 Riveland, op. cit., p. 5; Erwin N. Thompson,The Rock: A History of Alcatraz Island 1847-1972 (undated), National Park Service, pp. 387,414, www.nps.gov/alca/photosmultimedia/upload/TheRock-web.pdf.46 Ibid., p. 334.47 “A Brief History of Alcatraz,” Federal Bu-reau of Prisons, undated, www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp.48 Peter M. Carlson and Judith Simon Garrett,Prison and Jail Administration: Practice andTheory (1999), p. 255; E. R. Shipp, “KillingsTighten Rule At Tough Prison,” The New YorkTimes, Jan. 20, 1984, p. A14.49 Ibid., Shipp; “Racist Inmates Who ‘Kill forSport’ Are Suspects in Slayings,” The Associ-ated Press, Oct. 30, 1983.50 Carlson and Garrett, op. cit., p. 255; Admis-sion and Orientation Handbook, United StatesPenitentiary, Marion, Illinois,” Federal Bureau ofPrisons, updated October 2010, www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/mar/MAR_aohandbook.pdf.51 Quoted in “Racist Inmates Who Kill . . .,”op. cit.52 “The Federal Death Penalty System: Supple-mentary Data, Analysis and Revised Protocolsfor Capital Case Review,” U.S. Justice De-partment, June 6, 2001, www.justice.gov/dag/pubdoc/deathpenaltystudy.htm#feddeathpenaltylaw.


About the AuthorPeter Katel is a CQ Researcher contributing writer whopreviously reported on Haiti and Latin America for Timeand Newsweek and covered the Southwest for newspapersin New Mexico. He has received several journalism awards,including the Bartolomé Mitre Award for coverage of drugtrafficking, from the Inter-American Press Association. Heholds an A.B. in university studies from the University ofNew Mexico. His recent reports include “Prisoner Reenty”and “Downsizing Prisons.”


53 Quoted in Scot Lehigh, “Weld opens ‘super’secure prison unit,” Boston Globe, Aug 6, 1991,p. 21; Mary Bosworth, Explaining U.S. Impris-onment (2010), p. 141.54 Mears, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Super-max Prisons,” op. cit., pp. 69-70 (Tables 1, 2).55 Riveland, op. cit., p. 1.56 Ibid., p. 2.57 Madrid v. Gomez, Jan. 10, 1995, Findingsof Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order, http://ca.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19950110_0000003.NCA.htm/qx.58 Ibid.; Bill Wallace, “Conditions at PelicanBay Prison Ruled Unconstitutional, But JudgeSays Isolation Unit Can Remain,” San Fran-cisco Chronicle, Jan. 12, 1995, p. A17; SusanSward and Bill Wallace, “No More Solitary Con-finement for Prison’s Mentally Ill,” San Fran-cisco Chronicle, Dec. 20, 1995, p. A17, www.sfgate.com/news/article/No-More-Solitary-Confinement-for-Prison-s-3018055.php.59 Madrid v. Gomez, op. cit.60 Jules Lobel “Prolonged Solitary Confinementand the Constitution,” Journal of ConstitutionalLaw, December 2008, www.supermaxed.com/NewSupermaxMaterials/Prolonged-Solitary-Constitution-Lobel.pdf.61 “Solitary Confinement Called ‘Inappropri-ate’ for Mentally Ill Prisoners in Indiana,” ACLU(press release), Jan. 30, 2007, www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/solitary-confinement-called-inappropriate-mentally-ill-prisoners-indiana;Fathi, op. cit., p. 679.62 Wilkinson v. Austin, 544 U.S. 74 (2005),June 13, 2005, www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-495.ZS.html; Lobel, op. cit., pp. 127-129.63 Ibid., pp. 128-129.64 “Stop Solitary — Mental Health Resources,”ACLU, regularly updated, www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/stop-solitary-mental-health-resources.65 Quoted in John J. O’Connor, “Illinois judgebars Quinn from closing prisons,” The Asso-ciated Press, Sept. 4, 2012, www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09-05/illinois-judge-bars-quinn-from-closing-prisons.66 Quoted in John O’Connor, “Ill. Agrees tostop prison transfers temporarily,” The Asso-ciated Press, Aug. 8, 2012, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ill-agrees-stop-prison-transfers-temporarily; Sal Rodriguez, “Testimony From Hear-ing on Closure of Tamms Supermax Prison,”Solitary Watch, April 21, 2012, http://solitarywatch.com/2012/04/21/testimony-from-hearing-on-closure-of-tamms-supermax-prison; JimSuhr, “To Tamms, prison closure means pain,betrayal,” The Associated Press (SFGate, July 15,2012), www.sfgate.com/news/article/To-Tamms-

prison-closure-means-pain-betrayal-3677158.php.67 John O’Connor, “AP Exclusive: Shakedownsof prison staff ordered,” The Associated Press,July 30, 2012, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-guards-7-ill-prisons-searched-0.68 Emily Wilkerson, “Ultimate confinementdoesn’t change most violent inmate,” StateJournal-Register (Springfield, Ill), Oct. 23, 1995,p. 1, local section; “Death Row inmate receiveslife,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 12, 2003, www.chicagotribune.com/media/flash/2003-01/6205019.pdf; Don Babwin, “Illinois Death Row ShutsDown,” The Associated Press (The HuffingtonPost), July 2, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/01/illinois-death-row_n_888516.html;“Governor Ryan Declares Moratorium on Ex-ecutions,” press release, Illinois GovernmentNews Network, Jan. 31, 2000, www.illinois.gov/pressreleases/showpressrelease.cfm?subjectid=3&recnum=359.69 “Quinn Staying with Dwight, Tamms, Clo-sures,” Illinois Public Media, July 17, 2012,http://will.illinois.edu/news/spotstory/quinn-staying-with-dwight-tamms-closures/; “Effi-ciencies Fact Sheet — FY 2013 Budget,” Illi-nois governor’s office, June 30, 2012, http://capitolfax.com/63012EfficienciesFactSheet.pdf.70 Quoted in Bill Ruthhart, “Quinn’s budgetswap,” Chicago Tribune, June 30, 2012, p. A1.71 Charles E. Samuels Jr., written testimony,op. cit.

72 Bacote v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, op.cit., p. 21.73 Andrew Cohen, “An American gulag — theMentally Ill at Supermax,” The Atlantic, June 20,2012, www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2012/06/an-american-gulag-0151-the-mentally-ill-at-supermax/258818/.74 Vega v. Davis, U.S. District Court for theDistrict of Colorado, Case 1:12-cv-01144-RPM,May 1, 2012, www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PC-CO-0020-0001.pdf; Andrew Cohen,“Death, Yes, But Torture at Supermax?,” TheAtlantic, June 4, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/death-yes-but-torture-at-supermax/258002/.75 Vega v. Davis, op. cit., pp. 8-9.76 Gamez, et al. v. Ryan, et al., United StatesDistrict Court, District of Arizona, CV-20-2070-PHX-JWS, www.aclu.org/files/assets/gamez_v_ryan_final_complaint.pdf.77 “Amended Answer to Class Action Com-plaint,” Gamez v. Ryan, June 4, 2012, p. 17.78 Ruiz, et al., v. Brown, et al., op. cit., pp. 2-3.79 Ibid., p. 2.80 Rina Palta, “Civil rights group sues Californiaover the state’s Security Housing Unit at PelicanBay State Prison,” KPCC, May 31, 2012, www.scpr.org/blogs/news/2012/05/31/6410/civil-rights-group-sues-california-over-states-sec.81 Ibid.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONACLU National Prison Project, 915 15th St., N.W., 7th Floor, Washington, DC20005; 212-549-2500; www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights. Litigates on behalf of prisonersin solitary confinement and is campaigning to end the practice.

American Correctional Association, 206 N. Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314;703-224-0000; www.aca.org. Provides material on solitary confinement.

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, University of Michigan Law School, 625South State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109; 734-647-2160; http://clearinghouse.net. Nationalrepository of litigation documents, many from major lawsuits over conditions in soli-tary confinement.

National Institute of Justice, 810 7th St., N.W., Washington, DC 02531; 202-307-0703; www.nij.gov/nij/topics/corrections/institutional/welcome.htm#. Justice Depart-ment’s research arm; includes a library of studies on prison issues.

Segregation Reduction Project, Vera Institute of Justice, 1100 First St., N.E., Suite 950,Washington, DC 20002; 202-465-8900; www.vera.org/project/segregation-reduction-project. Advocacy effort that aims to lower the number of prisoners in long-termsolitary confinement, conducted with state corrections departments.

Solitary Watch, PO Box 11374, Washington, DC 20008; http://solitarywatch.com.Anti-solitary confinement advocacy group co-led by a veteran muckraking journalist.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

786 CQ Researcher

Selected Sources

BibliographyBooks

Bosworth, Mary, Explaining U.S. Imprisonment, SAGE, 2010.Writing from a critical perspective, an American criminolo-

gist at Britain’s University of Oxford provides historical con-text for the rise of long-term solitary confinement.

Christianson, Scott, With Liberty For Some: 500 Years ofImprisonment in America, Northeastern University Press,1998.A journalist specializing in criminal justice provides a nar-

rative history of U.S. prison systems.

Articles

Cohen, Andrew, “An American Gulag — the Mentally Illat Supermax,” The Atlantic, June 20, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2012/06/an-american-gulag-0151-the-mentally-ill-at-supermax/258818/.A journalist specializing in legal affairs writes a detailed and

impassioned condemnation of conditions at the federal super-max in Florence, Colo. The article is part of a continuing series.

Gawande, Atul, “Hellhole,” The New Yorker, March 30,2009, www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande.An influential article by a prominent physician-writer ar-

gues that long-term solitary confinement amounts to torture.

Goldberg, Jamie, “Prison solitary called inhumane,” Flori-da Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), June 22, 2012, p. A9.A brief report — and one of very few — on a Senate sub-

committee’s hearing on long-term solitary confinement.

Goode, Erica, “Prisons Rethink Isolation, Saving Money,Lives and Sanity,” The New York Times, March 10, 2012,www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/us/rethinking-solitary-confinement.html?pagewanted=all.A national correspondent chronicles the supermax-reduction

trend, focusing largely on Mississippi.

Goode, Erica, “Fighting a Drawn-Out Battle Against Soli-tary Confinement,” The New York Times, March 30, 2012,www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/us/battles-to-change-prison-policy-of-solitary-confinement.html?pagewanted=all.In a follow-up article, The Times reports on California’s con-

troversial policy of segregating and locking down suspectedgang members.

Smyth, Julie Carr, “Supermax lockups adjust to decreasingdemand,” The Associated Press, April 5, 2008.Toward the end of the previous decade, financial and legal

pressures were forcing the closing of supermax prisons, astate government correspondent reported.

Reports and Studies

Fathi, David C., “The Common Law of Supermax Litigation,”Pace Law Review, Spring, 2004, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol24/iss2/13.The director of the ACLU National Prison Project summarizes

the effects of major court decisions on solitary confinement.

Grassian, Stuart, “Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confine-ment,” Journal of Law & Policy, 2006, http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf.A leading researcher and critic of long-term solitary con-

finement examines the effects of isolation.

Mears, Daniel P., “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Super-max Prisons,” Urban Institute, March 2006, www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411326_supermax_prisons.pdf.In one of the most comprehensive and dispassionate ex-

aminations of long-term solitary confinement, a Florida StateUniversity scholar concludes that justifications for supermaxesare not clear-cut.

Méndez, Juan E., “Torture and other cruel, inhuman ordegrading treatment of punishment,” United NationsGeneral Assembly, Aug. 5, 2011, p. 17, http://solitaryconfinement.org/uploads/SpecRapTortureAug2011.pdf.A “special rapporteur” for the U.N. Human Rights Council

concludes that solitary confinement can amount to torture.

Metzner, Jeffrey L., and Jamie Fellner, “Solitary Confine-ment and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge forMedical Ethics,” Journal of the American Academy ofPsychiatry and the Law, March 1, 2010, www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/Solitary%20Confinement%20and%20Mental%20Illness%20in%20US%20Prisons.pdf.A wealth of evidence shows prolonged solitary confine-

ment deeply damages mentally ill prisoners.

O’Keefe, Maureen L., “One Year Longitudinal Study of thePsychological Effects of Administrative Segregation,”Col-orado Department of Corrections, University of Colorado,Colorado Springs, Oct. 31, 2010, www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/232973.pdf.The Colorado prison system’s research director found no

evidence of systemic psychological damage to prisoners, in-cluding the mentally ill, in solitary confinement.

Riveland, Chase, “Supermax Prisons: Overview and Gen-eral Considerations,” National Institute of Corrections,January 1999, http://static.nicic.gov/Library/014937.pdf.The report by a prison management consultant — a for-

mer corrections director in two states — provides perspec-tive on why supermax prisons have proved so popular andon the challenges they present for penology.


Colorado

Maes, Denise, “Solitary Confinement Reform Is WelcomeSign of Progress,”The Gazette (Colo.), Jan. 28, 2012, www.gazette.com/articles/solitary-132524-prison-confinement.html.Colorado’s decision to move 300 inmates out of solitary

confinement is safer, less costly and more humane, says thepublic policy director of the state’s ACLU office.

Mitchell, Kirk, “Inmate Isolation Reviewed,” Denver Post,Nov. 27, 2011, p. B10, www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19419191.More mentally ill prisoners are in solitary confinement in

Colorado than in any other state.

Mental Illness

Hult, John, “Release From Isolation to Public CalledRisky,” Argus Leader (S.D.), July 11, 2011, www.argusleader.com/article/20111118/NEWS/111180003/Release-from-isolation-public-called-risky.A transitional period between the isolation and release of

prisoners is essential for public safety, says a psychiatrist.

Matthews, Cara, “Mental Health Treatment at PrisonsFaces Scrutiny,” Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal, Dec. 7, 2011.New York state law requires inmates with serious mental

illnesses to be removed from solitary confinement.

Ortega, Bob, “Arizona Accused of Abuses in Prisons,”Arizona Republic, April 3, 2012, p. A1, www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/04/02/20120402arizona-accused-abuses-prisons.html.Serious mental illnesses among Arizona prisoners in soli-

tary confinement are often undiagnosed, says an AmnestyInternational report.

Results

Ortega, Bob, “Deaths in ‘Solitary’ Point to Problems,”Arizona Republic, June 3, 2012, p. A6, www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/06/02/20120602arizona-prison-suicide-rate.html.Nineteen Arizona inmates — many of whom were in soli-

tary confinement — committed suicide in the past two years.

Weiser, Benjamin, “Pondering Solitary Future for Gang-ster Held in Isolation for Years,” The New York Times,July 9, 2012, p. A13, www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/nyregion/concerns-keep-the-gang-leader-peter-rollock-isolated-in-supermax-prison.html?pagewanted=all.The leader of a narcotics gang has remained well-behaved

since being placed in solitary confinement in 2000.

Torture

Gorman, Anna, “Activists Call Solitary Confinement Tor-ture,” Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2012, p. B4, articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/21/local/la-me-0321-solitary-20120321.California treats several thousand prisoners the same way

the United States treats suspected terrorists detained in Guan-tánamo, says an attorney representing hundreds of Califor-nia inmates.

Kochakian, Charles, “Solitary Confinement May Be CruelerThan Death Penalty?”New Haven (Conn.) Register, April8, 2012, p. B3.Solitary confinement can be as distressing as physical tor-

ture, says the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Kumar, Anita, “Va. Plans to Modify Prisoner Isolation,”The Washington Post, March 31, 2012, p. A1, www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/virginia-plans-changes-in-prisoner-isolation-process/2012/03/30/gIQAMzpFmS_story.html.Virginia is reconsidering how it administers solitary con-

finement at the state’s only supermax prison amid criticismthat the practice equates to torture.

Yates, Riley, “Execution Delays Have Created a DifferentForm of Punishment,” Morning Call (Pa.), Aug. 5, 2012,p. A18, articles.mcall.com/2012-08-04/news/mc-pennsylvania-death-row-cruel-unusual-20120804_1_death-row-inmates-critics-of-capital-punishment-death-row.Several Pennsylvania death row inmates have spent decades

in solitary confinement.

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