Solitary Confinement
What’s the problem?
Solitary confinement goes by several euphemistic names. In Maryland it’s called restrictive housing. Other terms include administrative and disciplinary segregation, the Box, and the SHU, which stands for “secure housing unit” or “special housing unit.” Solitary was originally intended to separate the most dangerous prisoners from others and to keep vulnerable prisoners safe temporarily. But in Maryland and elsewhere, solitary is used far more widely.
Prisoners who have committed rule violations, often minor, are often put in isolation, sometimes for long periods. Many of these people are mentally ill. Prisoners in solitary may spend 23 hours a day in a windowless concrete cell the size of a parking space, without phone or physical contact and without programming of any kind. The cells may be unbearably hot in summer and unbearably cold in winter. Even the few hours a week they are permitted out of their cells for recreation and bathing is often cut short. This can go on for months, years, or even decades.
A recent report by Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box estimated that on any given day in 2023, 122,000 people were held in solitary confinement in US prisons and jails. But it is difficult to get reliable statistics, which depend on self-reports by prisons themselves.
There is strong evidence from a variety of sources that solitary confinement often causes irreparable physical and mental harm, both to the individual and to others with whom they may have contact. It increases the risk of premature death after a person is released. And it disproportionately affects people of color, youth, and those suffering from mental illness.
A solution
The Maryland Alliance for Justice Reform joins with Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR) in supporting the Maryland Mandela Act—named, obviously, for Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned in South Africa for 27 years and who said that solitary confinement was “the most forbidding aspect of prison life.”
The Maryland bill is inspired by the United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules for the treatment of prisoners, adopted in 2015. “All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings. No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment…” Near-total isolation is cruel, inhuman, inhumane—in short, torturous.
The Mandela bill would cap the use of solitary; prohibit it for vulnerable people; severely limit the practice for juveniles; and allow those in restrictive housing to contest their confinement. In addition, it would require that involved staff undergo substantial training and that state correctional facilities publish a monthly report with information about those in restrictive housing.
What other jurisdictions have done
As the Brennan Center explains, “Since 2009, 42 states have established laws restricting or eliminating solitary confinement. Some states. . .have banned the punishment for whole classes of people including children, those with serious mental illness, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and pregnant people. Other states. . .have capped the amount of time a person can be isolated.”
In California, a class action suit was filed in 2012 on behalf of prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison, where more than 500 people had been held in solitary for more than ten years; 78 had been in for more than 20 years. The prisoners won the case, and these policies were abolished.
In 2021 New York passed the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement) Act, which limits stays in solitary to no more than 15 consecutive days, excludes people who were younger than 21 or older than 55, and allows incarcerated people to have an outside lawyer or a peer helping them at hearings. It also bars prison staff from sending someone to solitary for more than three days unless they had been found guilty of a serious offense.
References
Tiana Herring, “The research is clear: Solitary confinement causes long-lasting harm,” Prison Policy Initiative, 2020.
Andrea Fenster, “New data: Solitary confinement increases the risk of premature death after release,” Prison Policy Initiative, 2020.
Kayla James and Elena Vanko, “The Impacts of Solitary Confinement,” Vera Institute of Justice, 2021.
Hernandez D. Strout, “Reforming Solitary Confinement Without the High Court,” Brennan Center for Justice, 2024.
Solitary Confinement in the United States: The Facts. Solitary Watch. Unlock the Box: The National Campaign to End Solitary Confinement.
The Strike: The California Hunger Strike to End Solitary Confinement, 2015, a documentary about conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison in California.
