When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison.

There is an extensive body of research on long-term solitary confinement and its damaging effects. Credit: Bigstock

Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too many places, black boys and black men, and Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated different under the law.”

The visit itself was described as “unprecedented” and “historic.”

But the United Nations has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being steeped in a culture of violence.

Back in 1998, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan prisons to probe sexual misconduct against women prisoners.

Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates, Michigan Governor John Engler barred Coomaraswamy on the eve of her proposed visit.

The late Senator Jesse Helms, former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blocked a proposed prison visit by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in New York, who was planning to observe living conditions in some of the U.S. prisons.

Obama’s visit has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, and the Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Seong-Phil Hong, have jointly called on the U.S. government to facilitate their requests for an official visit to U.S. prisons to advance criminal justice reform.“AI believes this external scrutiny is particularly important in the case of 'super-maximum' security facilities where prisoners are isolated within an already closed environment." -- Tessa Murphy of Amnesty International

“I look forward to working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the special study commissioned by the President on the need to regulate solitary confinement, which affects 80,000 inmates in the United States, in most cases for periods of months and years,” Méndez said early this week.

“The practice of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement inflicts pain and suffering of a psychological nature, which is strictly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,” he said.

“Reform along such lines will have considerable impact not only in the United States but in many countries around the world,” he noted.

Hong, who leads the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said a visit to federal and state institutions “will be an excellent opportunity to discuss with authorities the ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the right to anyone deprived of their liberty to bring proceedings before a court’, and to promote its use by the civil society.”

The Working Group has already drafted a set of Principles and Guidelines that “will help establish effective mechanisms to ensure judicial oversight over all situations of deprivation of liberty.”

The document will be considered by the Human Rights Council in September.

According to published reports, there have been charges of unhealthy living conditions and physical beatings, specifically against minorities, including African-Americans and Latin Americans, in the U.S. jail system.

Last month, the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District announced far reaching reforms, including the proposed appointment of a Federal Monitor to probe continued prisoner abuses in Riker’s Island, described as the second largest jail system in the United States.

Other measures include restrictions on the use of force by prison guards and the installation of surveillance cameras.

Asked whether U.N. Special Rapporteurs (UNSRs) have previously been permitted into U.S. prisons, Tessa Murphy at Amnesty International (AI), told IPS that Juan Mendez hasn’t visited any U.S. supermaximum facility prisons in his role as UNSR.

He has, however, visited Pelican Bay in California as an expert witness in ongoing litigation there.

She also said AI has called on the U.S. State Department to extend an invite repeatedly requested by the UNSR to visit the United States to examine the use of solitary confinement in federal and state facilities, including through on-site visits.

“AI believes this external scrutiny is particularly important in the case of ‘super-maximum’ security facilities where prisoners are isolated within an already closed environment. We continue to call for this access to be provided.”

She pointed out that AI has released several reports calling for access – based on an extensive body of work on long-term solitary confinement and its damaging effects.

Antonio M. Ginatta, Advocacy Director, U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS it is a momentous time in the United States as it re-examines and moves to reform its criminal justice system.

President Obama himself just spoke to the need for this reform, and specifically highlighted the harms caused by solitary confinement.

“Yet the State Department continues to fail to allow the Special Rapporteur on torture access to U.S. confinement facilities to review their use of solitary confinement. It’s as if they missed the President’s speech,” he said.

Ginatta said an invitation to the Special Rapporteur is years overdue.

“In light of the president’s speech and his visit to the El Reno prison, the U.S. Department of State should change course and immediately extend an unrestricted invitation to Special Rapporteur Mendez and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” he declared.

After his prison visit, Obama said: “My goal is that we start seeing some improvements at the federal level and that we’re then able to see states across the country pick up the baton, and there are already some states that leading the way in both sentencing reform as well as prison reform and make sure that we’re seeing what works and build off that.”

Providing details of its meetings with U.S. State Department officials, Amnesty International told IPS that in February it met with Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Director William Mozdzierz in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to emphasise the importance of facilitating external scrutiny by the SRT as well as to hand over a petition to the State Department (with over 20,000 signatures, on the same issue.)

AI said SRT Mendez has provided them with a list of prisons he wishes to visit, including in Louisiana, California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Secretary Mozdzierz, stressed to AI that the State Department has a strong national interest in ensuring that the United States lives up to international treaty obligations.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby emphasised how committed the U.S. government is in providing access for the SRT.

However, Secretary Mozdzierz emphasised that access to state prisons is dependent on the individual governors and state Attorney Generals being amenable, and there are no mechanisms by which the State Department can ensure a positive response.

He also made it clear that he would stress to state authorities the importance of facilitating the SRT’s requests. Both Directors acknowledged that BOP ADX prison in Colorado was ‘unavailable’ to SRT Mendez.

SRT Mendez, who met with AI prior to the meetings above, asked AI to seek an explanation for the reason that he had been told in correspondence with State Department that federal prisons were “unavailable” to him.

Secretary Mozdzierz confirmed that the reason federal prisons were “unavailable” to the SRT was because of ongoing litigation in ADX; Cunningham V BOP, which has been in a structured settlement process since last year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

He has not had human contact or a good night’s sleep in nearly three decades. Every single day, he wakes to the sound of metal doors clanging open and a pair of disembodied hands pushing a tray of food through a slot into his 64-square-foot cell.

L to R: Kimberly Richardson (of the Peoples Institute for Survival), Robert King (who spent 31 years in isolation), and Theresa Shoatz, whose father Russell Maroon Shoatz is also in long-term solitary confinement. Credit: Ann Harkness/cc by 2.0

For the next 23 hours, he will stare at the same four walls. If he is lucky, he’ll be escorted, shackled at his ankles and wrists, into a “yard” – an enclosure only slightly larger than his cell – for an hour of solitary exercise.

This is how Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, a prisoner in the restricted housing unit at the State Correctional Institute (SCI) Frackville in northern Pennsylvania, has spent the past 22 consecutive years.

On Thursday, Shoatz’s lawyers submitted a communication to Juan E. Mendez, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, urging him to inquire into why a “father, grandfather and great grandfather” is being held in extreme isolation despite having a near-perfect disciplinary record for over 20 years.

The appeal comes on the heels of a surge in public debate on the practice of solitary confinement in the United States, where on any given day an estimated 81,000 men, women and children are held in some form of “restricted housing” unit, according to Federal Bureau of Justice statistics.

Authorities in each state have a myriad of euphemisms for the practice: administrative segregation, secure housing units (SHUs), “supermax” facilities, protective custody. Whatever the language, critics say the basic conditions remain the same: extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for years at a time.

According to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the restrictions imposed in “maximum security” facilities often “exceed the fathomable. In Pennsylvania’s most restrictive units, for example, prisoners have all the usual supermax deprivations plus some that seem gratuitously cruel: they are not permitted to have photographs of family members or newspapers and magazines.”

Mendez has already affirmed that holding a human being in isolation for a period exceeding 15 days constitutes a violation of the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Back in 2011, his office called for a complete global ban on the use of solitary confinement “except in the most extreme circumstances and for as short a time as possible”, citing numerous studies – some dating back decades, others as recent as Amnesty International’s 2012 report ‘The Edge of Endurance’ – that have documented the long-lasting psychological impacts resulting from even a few days of social separation.

This past August, a hunger strike involving over 30,000 prisoners protesting conditions in restricted housing units at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California prompted the rapporteur to make an urgent appeal to the U.S. government to “eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement under all circumstances”, stressing that the average U.S. prisoners banished to the hole typically stays there roughly 7.5 years – “far beyond what is acceptable under international human rights law.”

Harold Engel, an attorney with over 43 years of experience and a retired partner of the global corporate law firm Reed Smith, said he co-signed the appeal Thursday in the hopes that an investigation undertaken by the office of the special rapporteur, housed at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, will bring an end to indefinite isolation.

“I first became involved in this case because my daughter told me about Shoatz’s situation and I found it abhorrent,” Engel told IPS.

“As I learned more I realised there wasn’t any clear law on the question of whether keeping someone in solitary confinement under conditions that Shoatz has been kept in violates the eighth amendment of the U.S. constitution [prohibiting the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment] – which, in my opinion, it does.”

Speaking to IPS under condition of anonymity, an inmate who spent several years in solitary confinement in a Pennsylvania prison before being released back into the general population said his life was measured out in a series of arbitrary numbers: he was permitted one hour of exercise on five days out of the week; he was allowed three meals a day but zero contact visits with his family. His cell contained a single cot and one steel sink. Showers were taken thrice weekly, overseen by guards.

“Getting through each day felt like hewing a single stone from a mountain of despair,” he said.

Bret Grote, an activist who has worked for over six years with the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) – an advocacy group comprised predominantly of prisoners’ families, ex-prisoners and their supporters – says he and others have documented “hundreds upon hundreds of instances of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment inside the solitary confinement units of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC).”

“The approximately 2,500 prisoners warehoused in solitary by the PA DOC are held in units where physical abuse, psychological deterioration, retaliation for exercising constitutionally-protected rights, food deprivation, extreme social isolation, severely reduced environmental stimulation, theft and destruction of property, obstruction of access to the courts, and racist abuse are normative features,” Grote told IPS.

As Shoatz’s lawyers await an official response from the U.N. rapporteur, they are holding out hope that a full investigation into his case could also bring some respite for the tens of thousands of others enduring such conditions.

U.S. officials on Wednesday issued strict new guidelines on the use of solitary confinement for detainees being held on immigration charges, the first federal policy decision following a strengthened public debate on the country’s unprecedented dependence on “segregated housing”.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture says solitary confinement can have detrimental and irreversible effects on individuals’ mental health. Credit: Bigstock

In a stark turnaround, immigration detainees will only be allowed to be held in solitary confinement for two weeks, with extensions requiring the consent of upper-level officials. Detention facilities will also need to engage in regular reporting on instances in which detainees were held in isolation.

“Placement of detainees in segregated housing is a serious step that requires careful consideration of alternatives,” the policy directive, released Wednesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), states.

“ICE shall take additional steps to ensure appropriate review and oversight of decisions to retain detainees in segregated housing for over 14 days, or placements in segregation for any length of time in the case of detainees for whom heightened concerns exists based on known special vulnerabilities and other factors related to the detainee’s health or the risk of victimization.”

The guidance is being widely applauded by rights groups and appears to offer a strong new – and federally mandated – model.

“This is huge news and sets a wonderful federal precedent,” Rich Killmer, the executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“The fact that ICE is saying that immigration detainees can only be held in solitary confinement for 14 days – that underlines such a significant contrast with prisoners in some U.S. states being held in solitary for decades. We will certainly be using this in our advocacy work, as an example of what can be done.”

Still, some are expressing apprehension that ICE did not go far enough.

“We are concerned that the new directive does not eliminate the use of extended solitary confinement,” Mary Meg McCarthy, the executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Centre, said Thursday, “and that the reporting period exceeds the 15 days which the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has observed can have detrimental and irreversible effects on individuals’ mental health.”

300+ per day

With some 80,000 people in solitary confinement throughout the various U.S. penal systems (as of the last available estimate, in 2005), the United States is a clear global outlier in terms of its active integration of segregated housing into its prison system, particularly since the late 1980s.

Why these numbers have climbed so high is unclear, but many experts feel that isolation is in part being used to deal with the overcrowding that has stretched federal prisons beyond their margins of safety. In such a situation, prison wardens may be choosing to put some vulnerable prisoners – those with mental health problems or even those who are underage – in segregated housing on the view that they will be safer.

While the new guidance is applicable only to those detained on immigration charges, it specifically disallows such use of solitary for a prisoner’s “own good”.

“In particular, placement in administrative segregation due to a special vulnerability should be used only as a last resort and when no other viable housing options exist,” the directive states.

“A detainee’s age, physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, or religion may not provide the sole basis for a decision to place the detainee in involuntary segregation.”

ICE runs or oversees some 250 detention centres. As part of President Barack Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on immigration-related crimes, last year the agency detained nearly 430,000 people, the highest ever.

Earlier this year, a major U.S. newspaper studied the 50 largest of these centres and concluded that an average of 300 people per day were being kept in solitary confinement just in those prisons. According to official data, half of those detainees were being kept for longer than 15 days, while some were being segregated for longer than 75 days.

Analysts estimated that around two-thirds of these detainees were being segregated due to minor infractions, while the rest were seen as either a threat or vulnerable, including due to sexuality or mental illness.

The subsequent political and public response led Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to order a review of ICE policies on segregated housing, resulting in Wednesday’s revised policies.

An ICE spokesperson told IPS that the review “included collecting quantitative and qualitative data on the use of segregation throughout ICE’s detention facilities; consultation with field office management and detention site managers; extra inspections of segregation facilities; discussions with a variety of stakeholders; and collaboration among many ICE and DHS offices on process improvements.”

Strengthened monitoring

Yet the ICE decision deals with only one part of the United States’ penal system. It does not directly affect the much-larger federal Bureau of Prisons or U.S. Marshals Service (the judicial system’s enforcement arm), both of which run parallel prison systems.

In June, the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Congress’s independent watchdog, released an excoriating report on the Bureau of Prison’s failure to conduct adequate monitoring of isolation in its jails or its impact on prisoners.

“At the federal level, the Bureau of Prisons really hasn’t done more than begin to look at its use of solitary confinement, while the U.S. Marshals Service has neither been externally reviewed nor conducted an internal assessment,” Carl Takei, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told IPS.

“The most praiseworthy aspects of the new ICE directive are its monitoring requirements – previously, the agency had very little idea of who was in solitary on a daily basis, how long or why. This move represents a significant step forward, and we’re hoping that these guidelines will be used as an example of the monitoring that the Bureau of Prisons should be doing.”

Other models have also recently arisen within the state prison systems, several of which are already drastically cutting down their use of solitary confinement.

Part of the motivation is financial, with squeezed coffers forcing state governments to figure out how to save money. Building and operating a solitary confinement unit costs 200 to 300 percent more than otherwise, while a 2007 state estimate found that it costs twice as much per year to keep a confined prisoner.

Part of this calculation also has to do with the effect of solitary confinement on the rest of society. Researchers have found, for instance, that prisoners who have been in segregated housing have higher recidivism rates than do other prisoners.

In a sign that the issue is gaining traction, a mass hunger strike in California’s prison system to protest against what inmates describe as the inhumane use of long-term solitary confinement ended Thursday after nearly two months, when two state lawmakers promised to hold hearings on the solitary confinement policy.

As a mass hunger strike in the California prison system enters its third week, advocacy groups are warning that prison officials attempting to break the strike are breaching international human rights standards.

New York City protest for prisoner hunger strikers organised by World Can’t Wait. Credit: Debra Sweet/cc by 2.0

As of Monday, 986 inmates in 11 California state prisons were considered to be on hunger strike, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Starting on Jul. 8, some 30,000 inmates in 33 jails began refusing food in protest against what they describe as the inhumane use of long-term solitary confinement.

Although this is the third such hunger strike in the California prisons since 2011, the current situation has involved more inmates and gone on for longer than previous such protests. The five central demands of the current strikers can be found here, foremost among which is ending long-term solitary confinement, which has constituted a key part of the state’s crackdown on prison gangs.

In attempting to stem the current strike, CDCR officials have recently stepped up a disciplinary campaign, including placing striking prisoners in even more restrictive isolation. Amnesty International, a watchdog group, is now warning that the CDCR has “breached international human rights obligations by taking punitive measures against prisoners on hunger strike over conditions”.

“Prisoners seeking an end to inhumane conditions should not be subjected to punitive measures for exercising their right to engage in peaceful protest,” Angela Wright, a U.S. researcher for Amnesty International, which has previously offered extensive reporting on the California prison system, said Monday.

Wright’s colleague Justin Mazzola told IPS, “At this point, further restricting these prisoners violates their right to challenge this treatment, placing them in a situation that is even less accountable than the indefinite isolation they’ve previously experienced. Placing prisoners in even more restrictive settings shouldn’t be the response to what they’re doing: calling attention to the conditions in which they’re being held, as well as to proposed reforms.”

On Jul. 11, CDCR officials released a statement noting that it is a violation of California state law for inmates to participate in any “mass disturbance” or refuse a work assignment. Any participating inmate would thus be disciplined by being placed in an “administrative segregation” unit, the statement warned.

Hunger-strikers have since suggested that prison officials have engaged in “retaliation”, including being put in the more restrictive administrative segregation, which the strikers say includes “more torturous conditions” than their previous isolation. Activists have also previously alleged that strikers are experiencing limits on their correspondence with lawyers and the confiscation of certain personal effects.

“Bear in mind that in prison you don’t have the same right to expression as in the outside world – that’s the point of prison, it’s a sanction for criminal behaviour,” Jeffrey Callison, press secretary for the CDCR, told IPS.

“That being said, the prisoners do have the ability to make known their concerns about conditions. There are formal mechanisms by which to file complaints, which are all read. Whenever a prisoner raises a legitimate issue, it’s fixed.”

Callison says that reports that striking inmates have had their legal access limited are false, stating that only a single lawyer has been temporarily barred from entering the Pelican Bay detention centre, where the current strike began, though the reason for this is confidential. He also notes that another allegation – that prisoners have been “blasted with cold air” at the PelicanBay facility – is impossible given that the centre has no air conditioning.

Indefinite isolation

California has relied on an aggressive programme of “isolated housing” since the 1980s, after experiencing the growth of some of the United States’ first and most notorious prison gangs. In an attempt to neutralise the gangs, inmates thought to be gang members were moved to isolation in so-called Special Housing Units (SHUs).

Yet critics have pointed out problems with a system in which inmates could be put in isolation merely upon being accused of gang affiliation by another inmate. Further, until a pilot project was implemented last year, those accusations could not be challenged and the identity of the accuser was kept secret.

Today, around 12,000 inmates are reportedly being held in isolation at any given time, with hundreds of inmates having been in indefinite isolation for the past decade or more, according to advocates. Inmates in solitary confinement in California receive around an hour of outdoor time per day and no direct human contact.

Multiple groups contend that indefinite isolation constitutes cruel and inhumane treatment, and thus breaches international rights obligations. That view has been corroborated by the United Nations, whose special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, in 2011 stated that solitary confinement of longer than 15 days should be “absolutely prohibited” due to its scientifically proven potential for lasting psychological damage.

Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) reiterated its support for this stance, expressing its “concern” over the causes behind the California hunger strike and the “excessive” use of solitary confinement in the United States more generally.

“The IACHR reiterates that the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment may not be abrogated and is universal,” the said. “Accordingly, the [Organisation of American States] Member States must adopt strong, concrete measures to eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite isolation under all circumstances.”

The 35-member Organisation of American States, based in Washington, includes the United States.

‘Step-down’ reforms

The years of protest against the SHU system did eventually receive a policy response from the California prison system, including recognition that the gang-affiliation accusation system was dangerously inflexible.

In October, the CDCR instituted a series of initial reforms, including a “step-down” process for inmates who show they’re no longer engaging in gang-related activities. Through late June, the CDCR says it has reviewed some 382 cases, transferring 208 inmates out of SHUs and placing another 115 inmates in the step-down programme.

Still, critics suggest that the programme is too protracted, particularly for inmates who may have been in isolation for a decade or more.

“We of course welcome anything that gives prisoners the right to challenge the indefiniteness of their solitary confinement and the solitary confinement itself, but this is a very prolonged process,” Amnesty International’s Mazzola says.

“As it’s currently set up, it would take almost two years before an individual who starts the programme would even be taken out of the SHU. So that doesn’t really address the basic concerns here.”

Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit, filed in May 2012 on behalf of several SHU inmates, is scheduled to be heard in early August.

The U.S. federal prison system’s use of solitary confinement and other forms of “segregated housing” has increased substantially over the past five years, according to new data released by the U.S. Congress’s official independent watchdog.

Inmates are held in solitary confinement for around 23 hours a day, often for months or even years at a time. Credit: Bigstock

Inmates are held in solitary confinement for around 23 hours a day, often for months or even years at a time, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is warning in a major new report. More damningly, the country’s federal prisons authorities have failed to carry out studies on the effects of this practice.

“[The Bureau of Prisons] has not assessed the impact of segregated housing on institutional safety or the impacts of long-term segregation on inmates,” the report, released Friday, states.

“…[W]ithout an assessment of the impact of segregation on institutional safety or study of the long-term impact of segregated housing on inmates, [the bureau] cannot determine the extent to which segregated housing achieves its stated purpose to protect inmates, staff and the general public.”

From 2008 through February this year, the total number of U.S. inmates in segregated housing rose by around 17 percent, to nearly 12,500 people, the GAO states. During the same period, the number of inmates under the federal Bureau of Prisons increased by just six percent.

Critics say the lack of assessment is potentially dangerous for society at large. After all, a broad body of global research – stretching back centuries – has been resounding in its findings on the deleterious impact of social seclusion on the human psyche.

“For almost all people, sustained social isolation is very damaging, causing extreme suffering that can lead to permanent psychiatric damage,” David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a watchdog group, told IPS.

“Solitary confinement is clearly very damaging and counter-productive. But we also know that people who have been in solitary confinement have higher recidivism rates than comparable prisoners, particularly those that have been released directly after their solitary confinement.”

There’s an argument to be made, Fathi says, that solitary confinement has direct negative ramifications for the rest of society.

Historically unprecedented

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons operates with relatively little public oversight, with journalists typically not allowed into its most sensitive installations. It is answerable to Congress, however, and the new GAO report, compiled at the request of three members of Congress, thus offers unique insight into some of the functioning of this massive system.

The U.S. prison system is by far the world’s largest. In a January report by the official Congressional Research Service (CRS), the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. was found to have grown by almost 800 percent over the past three decades, to around 219,000.

That’s 716 out of every 100,000 people, indicative of a growth rate the CRS said was “historically unprecedented”.

According to the new GAO report, around seven percent of those inmates are kept in segregated housing, which Fathi says makes the United States an “egregious global outlier in this area – there is no other country of any description that has made long-term solitary confinement such an integral part of its prison system.”

Still, the question of why this practice has become so integrated – which the new report doesn’t delve into – is harder to discern.

“A lot of corrections people think that solitary confinement promotes prison safety, and overall I think it just reflects an unthinking response,” Fathi says.

“Solitary confinement is where prisoners who are problematic or difficult to manage or just plain different tend to end up. In addition, this tends to be a one-way ratchet – it’s relatively easy to get in but difficult to get out.”

Others point to how overstretched the crowded U.S. prison system has become, noting that solitary confinement has become an important if questionable method of dealing with inmates with special needs.

“Problems with overcrowded prisons force officials to be more strategic with how they deal with vulnerable populations, particularly those who are mentally ill – there are just not enough resources,” Nicole Porter, director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“We don’t accept that as good correctional policy, of course, but these are pressures that correctional officers have to deal with. Isolating prisoners becomes one way to address inmates with particular vulnerabilities.”

This approach came in for some high-profile criticism late last week. On Friday, a federal investigation found that a state prison in Pennsylvania was misusing solitary confinement, keeping prisoners with serious mental problems segregated for upwards of 23 hours a day, often for years.

According to Justice Department officials, the practice violated the inmates’ constitutional rights, and a probe has now been expanded to the entire state.

States leading

Each of the GAO’s four recommendations deals with strengthening the Bureau of Prisons’s monitoring and assessment on these issues, including specifically studying the impact of long-term segregation.

Porter says it is unsurprising that the Bureau of Prisons has failed to undertake any long-term studies on the effects of solitary confinement, as “Doing so would open them up to having to actually do something about it.”

According to the GAO, however, the bureau has “agreed with these recommendations and reported it would take actions to address them”. Further, in January prisons officials authorised a study on segregated housing and at the time was also considering “conducting mental health case reviews for inmates held in [segregated housing] for more than 12 continuous months”.

While observers are welcoming these steps, it remains to be seen how independent and rigorous those assessments are.

At the same time, however, significant changes are already taking place in the state-level prison systems, the recent Pennsylvania findings notwithstanding. Three states – Colorado, Maine and Mississippi – have recently cut down dramatically on their use of solitary confinement, and other states are reportedly taking keen notice.

“In the last few years, we’re seeing a sea change at the state level,” the ACLU’s Fathi says.

“This is partly a result of concern about the effects of solitary, but also partly about cost, as solitary confinement costs two to three times as much per prisoner even as an ordinary maximum security prison. So far, none of these three states have reported any adverse impact on prison safety.”

While the Bureau of Prisons was long seen as a leader and innovator, Fathi says it is now “very much on the wrong side of history” on this issue.

“Being in isolation to me felt like I was on an island all alone, dying a slow death from the inside out,” said “Kyle B.” from California, who was placed in solitary confinement before he turned 18.

Lois DeMott visits her son Kevin, age 20, at the Woodland Correctional Facility two weeks after his release from a prolonged stay in solitary confinement in 2012. Credit: Human Rights Watch

Thousands of young detainees are being held in solitary confinement in jails and prisons across the United States, for weeks, months or even years with virtually no human contact or meaningful motivation, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released Wednesday.

The report, entitled “Growing Up Locked Down”, investigates jails and prisons in states such as Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania, among others, and is based on interviews and correspondence with more than 127 young people subjected to solitary confinement, as well as prison officials.

“Locking kids in solitary confinement with little or no contact with other people is cruel, harmful and unnecessary,” said Ian Kysel, Aryeh Neier Fellow with HRW and the ACLU and author of the report.

“Normal human interaction is essential to the healthy development and rehabilitation of young people,” he added.

The HRW and the ACLU estimate that, as of 2011, roughly 95,000 adolescents were kept in prisons and jails, comprising a large number of young inmates nationwide who find themselves in conditions of solitary confinement on a daily basis.

Out of 127 investigated young detainees, 49 have reported spending between one and six months in isolation while under age 18, while 29 said that they spent longer than six months in solitary confinement.

“Procedures and conditions for holding young people in solitary confinement vary from facility to facility and state to state,” Kysel told IPS, adding that the problem of solitary confinement affects both young men and women.

“Many facilities use it to protect young people from adults. Because there are fewer girls than boys in the adult criminal justice system, officials may be more likely to have only one girl in their jail, for example, and hold them in solitary because they feel they have no other option. But there is never a justification for holding a young person in their cell for 22 or 24 hours at a time,” Kysel added.

Numerous psychiatric studies show that long-term solitary confinement causes serious and devastating consequences, which range from mental diseases to physical health problems, undermining the process of rehabilitation for adolescents and even increasing the risk of suicide, the report warns.

Several imprisoned adolescents interviewed for the report said they had considered suicide while in solitary confinement.

They also repeatedly reported how isolation compounds the harm of being in jail or prison per se, describing cutting themselves with staples or razors, having hallucinations, and losing control or losing touch with reality while held in solitary confinement.

Moreover, young people are consistently denied visits by their parents as well as access to treatment, basic services and educational programming to cope with their psychological, medical and social needs. As people under age 18 are still developing, traumatic experiences such as solitary confinement may harm their development and rehabilitative potential.

A video produced by Human Rights Watch contains first-hand testimonies from young detainees as well as their families.

Prison isolation reflects the definition of torture as articulated in different international human rights conventions, such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture that defines it as any act “by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” to obtain information, punish for an act, intimidate or coerce, or for any reason based on discrimination.

The 141-page report offers many alternatives and recommendations to address the issue, ranging from disciplinary to administrative, protective or medical ways of treatment, while taking into consideration the rights and special needs of adolescents.

According to the report authors, young people can be better managed in “specialised facilities, designed to house them, staffed with specially trained personnel and organised to encourage positive behaviors”.

Using any short-term isolation should be a rare exception. Moreover, placing young people in correctional facilities designed to house adults should be strictly prohibited.

“In the past decade, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged that in the criminal justice context, youth are entitled to greater constitutional protections than adults,” the report states.

But “there is not currently a case pending before the Supreme Court on solitary confinement of juveniles,” Kysel told IPS, adding that, however, in a string of cases in recent years the court has said that for the purposes of crime and punishment, children are different and their youth must be taken into account.

“In July, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held the first-ever hearing on solitary confinement. This is a national problem and could effectively be addressed by a federal ban,” he said.