Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement

shadowraiths said:

Have to start somewhere. This particular issue is as good as any. Especially since solitary confinement affects so many (the accused, criminals and the mentally ill) in both federal and state prisons.

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wendybtn said:

Since only Congress can change or write laws, do you think Obama will get this done, when he has not managed to do anything constructive with Congress for the last seven years? Sometimes I even like an idea I hear him speak about, but he never gets anything done.

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shadowraiths said:

Have to start somewhere. This particular issue is as good as any. Especially since solitary confinement affects so many (the accused, criminals and the mentally ill) in both federal and state prisons.

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NAMI's Executive Director Mary Giliberti expressed grave concern about the statistics. "It is well documented in research that long term segregation in prisons has devastating emotional consequences for all individuals," Giliberti stated.

"For individuals with pre-existing serious mental illness, it is akin to torture, a sure fire way to worsen symptoms and decrease the opportunity of successful reentry into society."

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Betty P said:

The right to put prisoners in solitary confinement while in prison isn't written into law. It's done at the discretion of the prison. Since Obama is in charge of the Executive Branch, he can make changes on his own where the federal prison system is concerned.

ETA: According to the link at the top of this thread, Obama already has issued new guidelines for solitary confinement in federal prisons. Good for him. The FBI will monitor it's application in federal prisons. Hopefully, it will serve as a guideline for state and other prisons.

http://www.justice.gov/restrictivehousing

If abuse continues in state prisons, he has other options available.

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A court settlement reached this week transforms the way Indiana treats prisoners with serious mental illnesses, ending practices that often worsened their symptoms and sometimes led to suicide, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.

Under the agreement, prisoners with serious mental illnesses will receive better access to mental health care and, with few exceptions, will no longer be held in solitary confinement in state correctional facilities.

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katydid23 said:

Why was he put in solitary confinement? They don't usually do that unless they need to protect the inmate, because of crimes they are accused of, OR to protect others from them, because of their violent behavior. So why did he spend 2 yr in solitary over a backpack? THere has to be more to this story.

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katydid23 said:

Why was he put in solitary confinement? They don't usually do that unless they need to protect the inmate, because of crimes they are accused of, OR to protect others from them, because of their violent behavior. So why did he spend 2 yr in solitary over a backpack? THere has to be more to this story.

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katydid23 said:

Why was he put in solitary confinement? They don't usually do that unless they need to protect the inmate, because of crimes they are accused of, OR to protect others from them, because of their violent behavior. So why did he spend 2 yr in solitary over a backpack? THere has to be more to this story.

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Montjoy said:

There is more to the story than what you've stated. Have you read any of the articles linked here?

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It came in November 2014. Kevin Bushrod Jr. said he didn’t understand why he was isolated. A cop had pulled him over for driving on a suspended license. He tried to escape. The cop shot him in the left shoulder. Bushrod, a former top athlete at a Bible college, was charged with assault on an officer while armed — the car was the weapon. And now, he was here. Facing years in prison. Alone in a cell with little beyond a steel toilet and sink.

Bushrod, whose medical records show that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, said he waited until evening so he could be sure that guards wouldn’t check on him. He said he wept, pulling the sheet off his bed. He said he folded it into a noose. He said he tied one end to the top of a bunk bed and slowly lowered himself.

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Bushrod had just tumbled into administrative segregation, where inmates have spent years. Between 2012 and 2014, more than 170 inmates at the Department of Corrections were placed into administrative segregation, records show, spending an average of nearly 19 weeks. Others did considerably longer stints. One inmate did 1,231 days. Another spent 804 days. One more spent 510 days.

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Bushrod said the process was pretty simple. Every few weeks, he said, one female employee would come by his cell. “She used to give me a form to sign every month [saying] that they had a board hearing and this was the decision they made,” he said. “I would just sign it and get her out of my face. There were no hearings.”

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Another problem, underscored by Obama’s call for greater transparency, is institutional opacity. Some facilities don’t keep records or disclose how often they isolate prisoners.

“Lack of data and transparency is the baseline problem for systems across the country,” said Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If a system is never held accountable for results it produces or if their results are so poor it’s in their interest not to track data, then you arrive at the systems we currently have — billions of dollars spent for no clear reason, with no evidence to support why American taxpayers are funding a practice.”

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Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, presented a report to the General Assembly detailing and comparing solitary confinement practices around the world. The report, notably, was Mendez’s last as Special Rapporteur, as was his appearance before the UN.

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Seeing into Solitary builds on a prior groundbreaking report by Méndez, presented to the UN in 2011, that for the first time declared that solitary confinement may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and in some cases torture, and may thus, under certain conditions, be prohibited under international law.

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The report found that seven of the thirty-five jurisdictions analyzed allow for solitary confinement to be used only for disciplinary purposes, one of which is the U.S. state of Colorado. It further found that solitary confinement is often imposed in response to remarkably minor offenses. According to research from the Vera Institute of Justice cited in the report, 85 percent of people held in solitary confinement in Illinois’ state prison system were sent there “as punishment for minor infractions, such as abusive language.”

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At the federal level, the President has recently banned subjecting juveniles in the federal prison system to solitary confinement; at the state level, Colorado has narrowed the criteria of who may be subject to solitary confinement; and at the city level, New York City recently banned solitary confinement for juveniles and disabled people.

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The report ends on a largely optimistic note, observing a general trend, though not without exception, toward reform. Specifically within the United States, it notes a number of policy changes or legal settlements that have chipped away at the use of solitary confinement. These include efforts by the federal government, including President Obama’s announcement that juveniles in the federal prison system will no longer be held in solitary confinement.

They also include state-level reforms, such as Colorado policy to reserve the use of isolation for “only the most violent and dangerous offense types,” pending legislation in Colorado and Pennsylvania to lessen the use of solitary confinement, and further reform efforts at more local levels—including New York City’s ban on solitary confinement of those who are under 21 years of age, are seriously mentally ill, or are physically disabled.

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