[Peace-discuss] NYT editorial: end routine use of solitary confinement

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/opinion/cruel-isolation-of-prisoners.html

August 1, 2011

Cruel Isolation

For many decades, the civilized world has recognized prolonged
isolation of prisoners in cruel conditions to be inhumane, even
torture. The Geneva Conventions forbid it. Even at Abu Ghraib in Iraq,
where prisoners were sexually humiliated and physically abused
systematically and with official sanction, the jailers had to get
permission of their commanding general to keep someone in isolation
for more than 30 days.

So Americans should be disgusted and outraged that prolonged solitary
confinement, sometimes for months or even years, has become a routine
form of prison management. It is inflicting unnecessary, indecent and
inhumane suffering on tens of thousands of prisoners.

The issue came to the fore most recently because of a three-week
hunger strike by inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in California
near the Oregon border that began on July 1 in the Orwellian Security
Housing Unit, where inmates are held in wretched isolation in small
windowless cells for more than 22 hours a day, some for many years.

Possessions, reading material, exercise and exposure to natural light
and the outside are severely restricted. Meals are served through
slots in steel cell doors. There is little in the way of human
interaction. Returning to the general prison population is often
conditioned on inmates divulging information on other gang members,
putting themselves in jeopardy.

How inmates in these circumstances communicated to organize the
protest is unclear, but it quickly spread to other California prisons.
About 6,600 inmates participated at its peak. California’s huge prison
system is dysfunctional in so many ways. In May, the Supreme Court
found conditions at the overcrowded prisons so egregious that they
violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment
and ordered the state to cut its prison population by more than 30,000
inmates. The case did not address the issue of long-term solitary
confinement.

With their health deteriorating, those inmates continuing to fast
resumed eating after state prison officials met a few modest demands.
Inmates in Pelican Bay’s isolation unit will get wool caps for cold
weather, wall calendars to mark the passing time and some educational
programming. Prison officials said current isolation and gang
management policies are under review. But the protest has raised
awareness about the national shame of extended solitary confinement at
Pelican Bay and at high-security, “supermax” prisons all around the
country.

Once used occasionally as a short-term punishment for violating prison
rules, solitary confinement’s prevalent use as a long-term prison
management strategy is a fairly recent development, Colin Dayan, a
professor at Vanderbilt University, said in a recent Op-Ed article in
The Times. Nationally, more than 20,000 inmates are confined in
“supermax” facilities in horrid conditions.

Prison officials claim the treatment is necessary for combating gang
activity and other threats to prison order. It is possible to maintain
physical separation of prisoners without ultraharsh levels of
deprivation and isolation. Mississippi, which once set the low bar for
terrible prison practices, saw a steep reduction of prison violence
and ample monetary savings when it dramatically cut back on long-term
solitary several years ago.

Holding prisoners in solitary also is very expensive, and several
other states have begun to make reductions. In any case, decency
requires limits. Resorting to a dehumanizing form of punishment well
known to induce suffering and drive people into mental illness is
beyond them.



-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org