by Mateo Hoke
The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003, is implemented, limiting the use of solitary confinement for LGBTI individuals and youth.96
Massachusetts bans the use of solitary confinement on people with severe mental illness.97
West Virginia prohibits the use of punitive isolation in juvenile facilities.98
Senator Dick Durbin holds the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement.99
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry publishes an official policy statement concluding that, due to their “developmental vulnerability,” adolescents are in particular danger of adverse reactions to prolonged isolation and solitary confinement.100
The APA issues its Position Statement on Segregation of Prisoners with Mental Illness, stating that “prolonged segregation of adult inmates with serious mental illness, with rare exceptions, should be avoided due to the potential for harm to such inmates.”101
A federal judge approves the settlement in United States v. Virgin Islands, which prohibits the housing of prisoners with serious mental illness in isolation and requires that any prisoner in segregation receive regular review with a goal of minimizing time in segregation. It also requires that prisoners in segregation receive adequate opportunities for out-of-cell time.102
2013: US Government Accountability Office issues report finding that the Bureau of Prisons has never assessed the impact of solitary confinement on prison safety or inmate mental health.103
The Justice Department issues a report finding gross misuse of solitary confinement on inmates with mental illness at Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Cresson, the first-ever such investigation and finding conducted by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.104
Nevada prohibits the holding of children in solitary confinement for over seventy-two hours.105
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) establishes a new policy that limits the use of protective segregation and requires a field office director’s approval for the use of solitary confinement over fourteen days. The new regulations apply to over 250 immigration detention facilities.106
2014: The US Department of Justice announces the results of an investigation on the treatment of adolescent males at New York City’s Rikers Island Jail. The report finds excessive use of force by staff, including “placing adolescent inmates in what amounts to solitary confinement at an alarming rate and for excessive periods of time.” Some of the youth suffered from mental illness.107
Colorado bans the use of solitary confinement on inmates with “serious mental illness.”108
As the result of a lawsuit settlement, New York bans the use of solitary confinement on inmates younger than eighteen years, becoming the largest prison system in the United States to do so.109
Senator Dick Durbin holds a second congressional hearing on solitary confinement, in which he states that solitary confinement should never be used on children, pregnant women, or people with serious mental illnesses.110
Following the second US Senate hearing on solitary confinement, US attorney general Eric Holder releases a video statement and accompanying press release strongly criticizing the “excessive” use of solitary confinement on children.111
2015: New York City pledges to ban solitary confinement for people twenty-one years of age and younger at the notoriously abusive Rikers Island Jail.112
As the result of a lawsuit settlement, Illinois agrees to limit the use of solitary confinement in juvenile facilities and will require that juveniles spend at least eight hours a day outside of their cells.113
As the result of a lawsuit, California agrees to end indefinite periods of solitary confinement and the practice of placing inmates in solitary solely because of gang affiliation. The state also agrees to review the cases of inmates currently in solitary.114
The Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA), a group composed of the chiefs of all state prison systems and large city jails, issues a report on the state of solitary confinement in the United States, and notes that “this Report both reflects and supports ongoing efforts to understand its impact, reevaluate its use, and limit or end extended isolation.”115
In a speech given at the NAACP’s annual convention, President Barack Obama denounces the practice of solitary confinement in the United States.116
In California, settlement is reached in Ashker v. Brown, a class action filed on behalf of prisoners held in solitary. California agrees to far-reaching reforms to reduce the number of prisoners in the SHUs and limit the way SHU confinement is used.117
The Bureau of Justice Statistics introduces its first-ever national study of the prevalence of restrictive housing in US prisons and jails. The study reveals that certain populations are overrepresented in solitary confinement, including younger prisoners, LGBT prisoners, and prisoners suffering from mental illness.118
2016: President Obama issues new guidelines for use of solitary confinement and new policies for the BOP. The new policies include a ban on restrictive housing for juveniles and the expansion of alternative housing options for people with serious mental illness or inmates in protective custody.119
As the result of a lawsuit, New York announces further reforms to solitary confinement, guaranteeing phone calls and more out-of-cell time for people held in its SHUs as well as measures to reduce the length of time people can be held in solitary.120
Colorado announces that it has abolished long-term solitary confinement, capping twenty-three-hour-per-day isolation to a duration of fifteen days and guaranteeing that anyone held longer than that must have at least four hours out of their cell per day to interact with others.121
On May 3, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes unanimously to end the practice of solitary confinement at its three juvenile halls and thirteen camps.122
On September 6, the parties in CLASI v. Coupe announce that they have reached a settlement that will effectively end the solitary confinement of individuals with mental illness in Delaware.123
2017: Oregon passes a law expressly prohibiting solitary confinement of youths as a form of punishment.124
Connecticut passes a law prohibiting solitary confinement for people younger than eighteen. It also requires greater transparency about the use of solitary confinement and mandates instruction for corrections employees regarding the psychological effects of segregation, as well as training in diversionary techniques to prevent situations that would lead to inmates being placed in administrative segregation.125
Appendix III. Glossary
administrative segregation/ad seg—A form of solitary confinement mandated by an administrative decision that a person is purportedly too dangerous to be housed in general population. Is often for an indefinite amount of time.
bid—A prison sentence.
the bing—Solitary confinement in jail facilities on Rikers Island in New York City.
burpee—A squat-thrust, full-body exercise.
cell extraction—A process of removing an incarcerated person from his or her cell that often involves a team of corrections officers in riot gear. Electrified shields and pepper spray may be used in order to subdue reluctant and mentally ill people who have covered cell windows, defied orders, or refused to come out of their cells for various reasons.
cellie—Cellmate.
chrono—An informational note by a prison official documenting an official action on a person housed in prison. Items covered in the note may include classification decisions, minor disciplinary offenses, and medical orders.
classification—Assigned by a jail or prison system to denote the risk level of a person housed in prison. Generally, lower levels denote minimum security while higher levels denote stricter security and fewer privileges.
classificatio
n committee—A committee often involving prison officials and mental health professionals that decides the classification level of a person in prison.
close custody—A higher-level security prison setting that is often synonymous with solitary confinement.
CO—A corrections officer or guard in a prison or jail.
debrief—To provide information to prison officials that incriminates other prisoners.
disciplinary segregation/D-seg—A form of solitary confinement in which a prisoner is sentenced for a determinate amount of time as a punishment for violating a rule.
ducat—A prison pass for movement within an institution. This pass may allow a person in prison to hold a job and work in certain areas, go to chapel, or attend prison programs.
general population/gen pop/GP—Where the majority of a jail or prison population lives, as distinguished from specialized housing units like administrative or disciplinary segregation units, medical wards, mental treatment units, and other smaller living units serving specific populations of prisoners.
the hole—Solitary confinement.
juvie—Juvenile hall.
level 1, level 2, etc.—See classification.
mainline—See general population.
Nutraloaf—A bland meal of vegetables and grains baked into a hard loaf and served by jails and prisons as punishment or for situations in which corrections officials believe normal food service poses a threat to safety. It is banned by some, but not all, prison systems.
prison politics—A silent, self-policing etiquette or code of conduct dictating behavior in prison, generally specified by one’s racial identification. It is based on fear and intimidation among those housed in prison, including how to dress and who one can interact with and where. Higher-
security-level prisons tend to be more “political,” with stricter rules and harsher consequences for those who break the code.
programming—Educational and therapeutic instruction, offered either one on one or in group sessions.
protective custody/PC—A form of separation imposed by prison officials to protect a person from threats that other prisoners in the general population pose for that person. In many jails and prisons, prisoners held in “PC” status are kept in the same cells and units as those in administrative or disciplinary segregation.
punitive segregation—See disciplinary segregation.
rec/recreation—Opportunity for exercise for people housed in prison.
report—A written description of a disciplinary infraction.
security risk group/SRG—A unilateral designation by a jail or prison official that a person is a member of a group deemed to pose a risk to prison safety. In many jurisdictions, the designation can be used as the sole basis for holding a person in administrative segregation indefinitely.
SHU (pronounced “shoe”)/Special Housing Units—Common name for the living units where people are kept in solitary confinement under administrative segregation, disciplinary segregation, or protective custody status.
step-down program—A program that gives a person increasing levels of privileges and human interaction as he or she is being transitioned from solitary confinement back to a general prison population.
suicide watch—A process in which a suicidal person is placed in a specialized cell that is usually padded and contains no furniture. The person is monitored with the purpose of preventing self-harm or suicide, usually for a period of twenty-four hours up to a few days.
ticket—A rules violation notice for inappropriate behavior in a prison or jail.
tier—The floor of a multilevel housing unit; for example, “third tier” describes being on the third floor.
validation—When a person housed in prison is officially classified as a gang member. Being validated can lead to indefinite solitary confinement. See also security risk group.
yard—Generally means group outdoor activity. Can also mean recreation time for those in solitary.
Appendix IV. Intimacy and Violence
in a Supermax Prison
Hope Metcalf
I used to refer to solitary confinement as “no-touch torture.” I found it a pithy (but by no means original) phrase to capture the popular narrative of solitary confinement, marked by the absence of human contact.
But day-to-day life at Connecticut’s supermax prison is all about human contact. For anyone who must survive at Northern Correctional Institution, the relationship between oneself and one’s custodians is physical, it is intimate, and it is violent.
So I’ve come to think that “solitary” is a misnomer. And on that front, at least, I share common ground with my counterparts at the Connecticut Department of Corrections. For the better part of a decade, I have worked with my students in a human rights clinic at Yale Law School to document violations at Northern. We have pushed for broad reforms and also have represented individual clients in efforts to get them transferred to less inhumane institutions where their mental health and other needs could be addressed. In early negotiations with DOC leadership, each time I referred to Northern as “solitary confinement,” I got blank looks or scornful shakes of the head. “It’s not solitary,” one high-level administrator told me. “These guys are no Counts of Monte Cristo. The inmates are constantly talking with each other. And the officers, they talk to these guys dozens of times a day.” He paused, “Believe me, at Northern, life is anything but solitary.”
At first, I thought this response was just a disingenuous and formalistic sleight of hand. True, our clients didn’t suffer the vacuum-sealed existence of Tommy Silverstein, a prisoner at Florence ADX, where he had endured thirty-five years in a soundproof cell, leaving it only occasionally under escort from officers who hid their faces behind full riot gear. But there was no doubt our clients suffered palpable harm from what unfolded behind Northern’s walls.
But now—after eight years and hundreds of meetings with dozens of men who wear scars on the inside as well as the outside—I see that my DOC counterpart was, in some sense, telling the truth. Solitary is not about isolation. To insist otherwise is to miss its true purpose and its devastating consequences. In the words of Elaine Scarry, the supermax is the daily “unmaking” of human life, through its ritualized humiliations and physical violence, both actual and threatened.126
The violence is etched into the very walls. Speaking in an interview in a 2012 documentary, James Kessler, Northern’s principal architect, explains that “when we were designing it, there was a desire that the first experience would make an impression.” He then explained that “the limited environment, the lack of stimulus, it’s all about the belief that these individuals can change. They put [the prisoners] through this drama. There’s nothing soft. It’s hard, and they wanted that.”127 The supermax prison’s “program,” to borrow an architectural term, is to compel its inhabitants to surrender.
I have seen how confinement at Northern distorts perception and breaks the mind. One client shielded his eyes from the bright reflection of my shoe buckle, and another complained about the deafening ticking of my watch. One man, who had spent twelve of the last fifteen years at Northern, had the habit of shouting, the vestiges of spending a decade communicating through air vents and sink drains. And one client, who spoke only Spanish, hadn’t had a conversation with anyone in his more than two years at Northern. In our first meeting, his words tumbled out, more like poetry than prose. For nearly three hours, he skittered between biblical teachings and childhood memories and the trials of the present day, his eyes looking over my shoulders, to some unseen horizon on the concrete wall.
The science is, at this point, conclusive. In the words of Professor Amanda Pustilnik of the University of Maryland, the damage wrought on the brain “make[s] solitary look less like some form of distress, and more like the infliction of a permanent disfigurement.”128 But it is a misnomer—and a misdiagnosis—to classify li
fe at Northern as a form of “solitude.” It is torture.
The sense of physical threat for prisoners at Northern is omnipresent, and it is intimate. Basic necessities—food, showers, medicine, toilet paper—are acquired at the mercy of another person. Clients have told me they were afraid to eat their meals—delivered through a metal slot at the bottom of a locked, metal door—for fear an officer may have spit in their food. They had heard threats—or were they jokes? How would they know? Other clients refused to leave their cell for weeks, and their reluctance is understandable. At Northern, each trip out—to the shower, the exercise cage, or medical, or for a legal visit—requires a strip search. Before he submits to ankle and wrist shackles, each man must bend over, lift up his testicles, and cough. Every time.
And these are just the daily requirements for survival. In this atmosphere of hyper-control over the most mundane details, it is hardly surprising that tensions between staff and prisoners often escalate from threats into violence. More than forty years ago, the Stanford prison experiment showed how quickly absolute control can deteriorate into violence perpetrated by the very people—corrections officers—who are tasked with protecting “safety and security.” The study’s designer, Philip Zimbardo, observed, “We had created a dominating behavioral context whose power insidiously frayed the seemingly impervious values of compassion, fair play, and belief in a just world. The situation won; humanity lost.”129 Disturbed by the harassment and violence against the “prisoners” at the hands of the “officers,” he terminated the experiment after just six days.
Northern, like other institutions, masks its violence to outsiders—behind walls and in jargon—while parading it before the prisoners to keep order within. Prisoners who are disruptive or disobedient face the threat of being placed on “behavioral observation status.” In practice, this Orwellian term means being forcibly removed from one’s own cell by a team of officers in riot gear and then taken down the hall to what prisoners call the “strip cell.” There, officers force the prisoners into what the official regulations call “in-cell restraints,” but what interrogators around the world call “stress positions.” Prisoners are shackled at the legs and wrists, and then a tether chain binds hand to feet. Prisoners are supposed to have freedom of movement, but countless clients have complained of officers yanking the tether just tight enough to force them into a crouched position. They will spend at least twenty-four hours, and we have documented cases up to eight days. Hobbled into the fetal position, they slurp their food from a Styrofoam cup, and, if they are unfortunate enough to have to use the toilet, they cannot even wipe themselves. One client told us how the chains were so tight he had to empty the food on the floor to reach it with his mouth. “Like a dog,” he said. Violence permeates everything, even literally emanating from the vents. I have conducted interviews with clients while covering my face with my sweater, trying not to breathe in the mace that hung in the recycled air. “What happened?” I always ask. More often than not, the client shrugs. Just another day.