Solitary confinement (also shortened to solitary) is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to discipline or separate incarcerated individuals who are considered to be security risks to other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, as well as those who violate facility rules or are deemed disruptive. However, it can also be used as protective custody for incarcerated individuals whose safety is threatened by other prisoners. This is employed to separate them from the general prison population and prevent injury or death. A robust body of research has shown that solitary confinement has profound negative psychological, physical, and neurological effects on those who experience it, often lasting well beyond one's time in solitary. While corrections officials have stated that solitary confinement is a necessary tool for maintaining the safety and security of prisons and jails, numerous medical, mental health, and legal professional organizations have criticized the practice and hold the view that it should be sharply curtailed. Due to the negative connotation around the term "solitary confinement", alternative terms are now used interchangeably: administrative segregation, restrictive housing, and close management (level 1). Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist, described solitary confinement as "the most forbidding aspect of prison life". Human rights experts have stated that prolonged solitary confinement may amount to torture, and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules) were revised in 2015 to prohibit placements in solitary for longer than 15 days.
History
The practice of solitary confinement in the United States traces its origins to the late 18th century, when Quakers in Pennsylvania used the method as a substitution for public punishments. Research surrounding the possible psychological and physiological effects of solitary dates back to the 1830s. When the new prison discipline of separate confinement was introduced at Eastern State Penitentiary as part of the "Pennsylvania" or separate system in 1829, commentators attributed the high rate of mental breakdown to the system of isolating prisoners in their cells. Charles Dickens, who visited the Philadelphia Penitentiary during his travels to America, described the "slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body." The Supreme Court of the United States made its first comment about the deleterious effects of solitary confinement in 1890, noting that the use of solitary led to reduced mental and physical capabilities (In re Medley 134 U.S. 160). Records from Danish prisons between 1870 and 1920 indicate that individuals in solitary confinement there had also experienced signs of acute mental distress, including anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. The use of solitary confinement increased greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the rising prevalence of the virus inside prisons and jails. Many correctional facilities were locked down for up to 23 hours a day, confining people in their cells with no programming, phone access, or human contact. In the United States alone, more than 300,000 incarcerated people were held in virus-related lockdowns during the early months of the pandemic.
Purpose
Extracting confessions Solitary confinement is often used to induce a confession from a prisoner in pre-trial detention. This practice has been more common in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Protective custody
Solitary confinement is used on incarcerated individuals when they are considered a danger to themselves or others. It is also used on individuals who are at high risk of being harmed by others, for example because they are transgender, have served as a witness to a crime, or have been convicted of crimes such as child molestation or abuse. This latter form of isolation is known as protective custody, and can be either voluntary or involuntary. Though proponents of solitary have often expressed the belief that solitary confinement promotes safety in correctional facilities, there is substantial evidence that points to the contrary. In 2002, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America, chaired by John Joseph Gibbons and Nicholas Katzenbach, found that "the increasing use of high-security segregation is counter-productive, often causing violence inside facilities and contributing to recidivism after release." Shira E. Gordon has argued that solitary confinement "has not come close to solving the very problem it was meant to reduce: prison violence." In support of this view, Gordon cites a 2012 study showing that the rate of violence in California prisons is 20 percent higher than it was in 1989, when California's first supermax prison opened. Gordon also cites the Northern District of California court in Toussaint v. McCarthy, which found that solitary confinement "increase[d] rather than decrease[d] antisocial tendencies among inmates" at Folsom and San Quentin State Prisons in California.
Punishment Solitary confinement is also commonly used as punishment for those who have violated prison rules or committed other disciplinary infractions. The practice is the norm in super-maximum security (supermax) prisons, where individuals who are deemed dangerous or high risk are held.
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