From the article: “A federal judge Thursday said she is likely to allow a lawsuit alleging that solitary confinement conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison amount to psychological torture, to be expanded from the cases of 10 prisoners to include about 1,100 inmates now held in indefinite isolation.”
According to the article, there are 500 men who have been held in solitary confinement (defined in the article as 22.5 hour per day lockdown) for more than a decade. Unbelievable.
Read more from the article here.
The reality is that not all solitary confinement is created equally. Speaking from my state, some segregation units are relatively humane, with inmates who have access to adequate food, lighting, recreation opportunities, reading material, and who report few concerns. Other segregation units (I am thinking of one in particular) are the not-so-good scenario, with inmates who are in a sensory-deprived environment, where they can only get books if they pay off a porter, recreation is limited, etc.
What makes the difference? Well, I can tell you. The first issue is overcrowding. Segregation is a microcosm of prison and just as on the compound, overcrowding taxes staff resources and makes staff go into “survival mode,” where they do even less than they might have otherwise done for a population that they could handle. This results in a negative spiral, as inmates’ issues are not addressed, so they become frustrated, so they act out, so staff react negatively, etc.
The second issue is the time that inmates are kept in segregation, which is not always (sometimes not even frequently) within the control of staff, particularly if inmates are waiting for a disciplinary transfer. They could be back there for months, or even a year. This results in a huge amount of frustration (understandably, in my opinion). Staff feel helpless. Again, a negative spiral.
The third issue is in fact the type of inmate that you’re housing, although in my opinion this is less of an issue than the above two. The inmate is in the most secure environment, so security classification seems less of an issue. However, it is certainly the higher security inmates who engage in the most disruption (breaking off sprinkler heads, flooding the range, creating a disturbance, etc).
So, is it always psychological torture? I would say no when you are talking about a short term stay in an under-capacity unit with a manageable population. But a definitive yes to the overcrowded, under-resourced segs where inmates just sit with nothing to do for months. The only question is, what do you do with the inmates who have legitimately misbehaved in order to place themselves in the unit?
h/t Vera Institute