Kalief Browder’s story haunts New York City to this day. He was arrested at 16 years old for a crime he insisted he didn’t commit, serving three years in New York’s Rikers Island prison pending trial. During those three years, two were spent in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement means the inmate was locked in their cell for all but one hour per day. Meals are distributed through a slot in the door, and all other activities are confined within the cell. The objective of solitary confinement is to isolate prisoners from any interaction with the exterior. In some solitary housing units (SHU), inmates see sunlight. Kalief Browder attempted suicide multiple times, before and after his experience in the SHU, and was successful at the age of 22. After his three year sentence at Rikers Island, he found himself unable to readjust to society and chose to end his own life. Browder was one example of many of solitary confinement’s negative psychological effects on prisoners; many would classify the practice as “cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation of the Constitution’s 8th amendment.
There are various schools of thought regarding the long-term effects of solitary confinement. The first is the justification of this type of housing as a tool to protect “dangerous” inmates from the general population. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study on restrictive housing, 30 percent of inmates in so-called “protective housing” have suffered serious psychological distress after their release. In a similar vein, more than three quarters of those same inmates became violent offenders after their release from solitary housing. Many organizations such as the ACLU, The National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Solitary Watch contend that solitary confinement is torture, which is unconstitutional because of the deep and prolonged mental health effects of isolation. Multiple studies have concluded that solitary confinement acts as a negative trigger for inmates already suffering from mental illness, who populate 25 percent of administrative housing in the prison system. Issues of isolation have also been connected to increased cognitive delay, higher levels of physical health problems and a higher mortality rate during imprisonment.
The 8th Amendment to the Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, is generally the basis of arguments against solitary confinement. The basic definition of what is considered “cruel and unusual” is the following: the action must be serious in nature and prison officials must have indifference to the harm caused. This classification is complemented by the “evolving standards of decency” test applied in Atkins v. Virgina (2002). This test accounts for the gap between what was deemed acceptable at the time of the 8th Amendment’s ratification (1791) and what is acceptable today. The interpretation of a “standard of decency” is based on state-specific legislation, the sentencing decisions of juries and views of relevant experts.
The “seriousness” aspect of “cruel and unusual” classification relies on the severity of the issue’s lasting effects after the prisoner’s release. Sixty-one percent of inmates who have been in solitary confinement eventually get re-arrested, often for violent offenses, with a median time of recidivism of less than a year. This data could be interpreted as a lasting negative effect of solitary confinement. The second aspect of “cruel and unusual punishment,” prison officials’ indifference to the harm caused, is more difficult to prove with empirical data. No large-scale studies have focused on the opinions of prison officers on the lasting harm of solitary confinement, so it is difficult to quantify their “indifference.” That said, attempted solitary confinement reforms in cities like New York have been met with strong prison staff union pushback. As for evolving standards of decency, doubt regarding the validity of solitary confinement has not been restricted to the public sphere . Legislation such as H.R.3399 called for review of solitary confinement’s legitimacy, and S.342 requested a complete reform of the practice. Experts have also weighed in on the issue, with Colorado’s Department of Corrections (DoC) removing solitary confinement from the state prison system entirely. This revelation came after Colorado DoC partnered with the United Nations to develop standards of humane imprisonment: the “Nelson Mandela Rules.” Rick Raemisch, the executive director of Colorado’s DoC, noted that he “became convinced this practice was a contradiction of our mission of public safety, and felt even more so after I spent 20 hours in solitary confinement myself. Experiencing solitary firsthand, I thought, would better position me to change our culture.” The third aspect of evolving standards of decency classifies imprisonment by method of prescription, either by jury or by prison officials. In almost all cases, prisoners committed to solitary are done so by prison administrators, not juries. The last person committed by jury to a supermax prison (essentially amounting to prolonged solitary confinement) was Boston Bomber co-conspirator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2015. Florence ADMAX is the last remaining federal supermax in the United States, and is the only way an inmate can be jury-appointed to this level of confinement. ADX Florence holds prisoners like the Unabomber and a 9/11 coconspirator.
Still, some argue solitary confinement’s validity based on its “reformative properties.” Solitary confinement originated from a desire to completely separate certain inmates from the rest of the prison population, holding them in small, silent cells to enable reflection and repentance. This method was intended for inmates convicted of the most serious crimes. Today, solitary confinement seeks essentially the same goal: non-sexual violent offenders, who make up 25 percent of the U.S. prison population, are more likely to be committed to SHU. Inmates with extensive criminal histories were also more likely to be prescribed to solitary confinement. “Prison culture” also informs the continuance of this system. If an offender “endangers” prison staff and fellow inmates, he or she needs to be held separately for safety concerns. In 2012, more than 75 percent of inmates who assaulted other prisoners or staff were assigned to SHU. More than half of those who assaulted prison staff were consigned to solitary confinement. This data clearly illustrates the usage of solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure.
In any decision regarding solitary confinement, courts must parlay general prison safety with the human rights of prisoners. In any case, the system of solitary confinement appears unnecessarily cruel and should be reformed: one solution could be to impose more stringent limits on the amount of time a prisoner can be committed to SHU. Common conditions for solitary confinement should also be defined. Kenneth M. Cole outlined these regulations in his 1972 Cornell Law Review article, The Constitutional Status of Solitary Confinement. In his article, Cole explores precedents Wright v. McMann (plaintiff Lawrence Wright was committed to SHU for over a month, and was refused clothing in a cell that was “filthy and unsanitary, without adequate heat”) and Sostre v. Rockefeller (Sostre was held in solitary confinement for over a year). Cole concludes, “Specific restrictions on duration and accompanying conditions must be set so that the use of solitary may become at once less frequent and more humane.” Considering that the central purpose of the prison system remains “reformation” rather than simple “punishment,” solitary confinement without these standards seems inhumane and unproductive.
As prisoner’s rights become a more frequently discussed aspect of the broader discourse on civil rights, courts must consider solitary confinement’s psychological effects on inmates. Cases like Kalief Browder’s, where inmates are placed in SHU for extended periods of time without reasonable cause, are shockingly widespread. Solitary confinement may be legitimate in the short term for disciplinary purposes, but abuse of SHU commitment disservices all aspects of the prison system and can complicate a prisoner’s reentry into society. This broken system must be reformed.