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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:20 pm
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Results for restricted housing
3 results foundAuthor: Association of State Correctional Administrators Title: Aiming to Reduce Time-In-Cell: Reports from Correctional Systems on the Numbers of Prisoners in Restricted Housing and on the Potential of Policy Changes to Bring About Reforms Summary: A new report, jointly authored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the Arthur Liman Program at Yale Law School, reflects a profound change in the national discussion about the use of what correctional officials call "restrictive housing" and what is popularly known as "solitary confinement." Just published, Aiming to Reduce Time-In-Cell provides the only current, comprehensive data on the use of restricted housing, in which individuals are held in their cells for 22 hours or more each day, and for 15 continuous days or more at a time. The Report also documents efforts across the country to reduce the number of people in restricted housing and to reform the conditions in which isolated prisoners are held in order to improve safety for prisoners, staff, and communities at large. The 2016 publication follows the 2015 ASCA-Liman Report, Time-In-Cell, which documented the use of restricted housing as of the fall of 2014. As ASCA explained then, “prolonged isolation of individuals in jails and prisons is a grave problem in the United States.” Today, a national consensus has emerged focused on limiting the use of restricted housing, and many new initiatives, as detailed in the report, reflect efforts to make changes at both the state and federal levels. The 2016 Report is based on survey responses from 48 jurisdictions (the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands)—that held about 96% of the nation’s prisoners convicted of a felony. That number excludes people held in most of the country’s jails (housing hundreds of thousands of people), in most of the country’s juvenile facilities, and in military and immigration facilities. Tallying the responses, the new 2016 Report found that 67,442 prisoners were held, in the fall of 2015, in prison cells for 22 hours or more for 15 continuous days or more. The percentages of prisoners in restricted housing in federal and state prisons ranged from under 1% to more than 28%. Across all the jurisdictions, the median percentage of the prison population held in restricted housing was 5.1%. How long do prisoners remain in isolation? Forty-one jurisdictions provided information about the length of stay for a total of more than 54,000 people in restricted housing. Approximately 15,725 (29%) were in restricted housing for one to three months; at the other end of the spectrum, almost 6,000 people (11%) across 31 jurisdictions had been in restricted housing for three years or more. The Report also chronicles efforts throughout the country and the world to reduce the use of restricted housing. In August of 2016, the American Correctional Association (ACA) approved new standards, calling for a variety of limits on the use of isolation, including a prohibition against placing prisoners in restricted housing on the basis of their gender identity alone. The standards also included provisions that pregnant women, prisoners under the age of 18, and prisoners with serious mental illness ought not be placed for extended periods of time in restricted housing. Further, in some jurisdictions, prison systems (sometimes prompted by legislation and litigation) have instituted rules to prevent vulnerable populations from being housed in restricted housing except under exceptional circumstances and for as short an amount of time as possible. As the Report also details, several jurisdictions described making significant revisions to the criteria for entry, so as to limit the use of restricted housing, as well as undertaking more frequent reviews to identify individuals to return to general population, thereby reducing the number of people in restricted housing by significant percentages. In short, while restricted housing once was seen as central to prisoner management, by 2016 many prison directors and organizations such as ASCA and the ACA have defined restricted housing as a practice to use only when absolutely necessary and for only as long as absolutely required. The goals of ASCA and the ACA are to formulate and to apply policies to improve the safety of institutions and communities by ensuring that the separation of individuals to promote safety and well-being need not be accompanied by deprivation of all opportunities for social contact, education, programming, and other activities. Details: New Haven, CT: Yale University, School of Law, 2016. 127p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 7, 2016 at: https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/liman.new.combined.113016.mf.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/liman.new.combined.113016.mf.pdf Shelf Number: 147928 Keywords: Administrative SegregationPrison ReformRestricted HousingSolitary Confinement |
Author: Southern Poverty Law Center Title: Solitary Confinement: Inhumane, Ineffective, and Wasteful Summary: Around the world and increasingly in the United States, there's a growing consensus that solitary confinement of incarcerated persons is, at best, an ineffective and inhumane practice with little or no carceral benefit and, at worst, outright torture. Yet, on any given day, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) holds approximately 10,000 people - more than 10 percent of its population - in solitary. The nationwide average was 4.5 percent in 2018. Numerous studies have shown that solitary confinement harms a person's mental and physical health, as well as the community to which the person eventually returns. People in solitary, in fact, attempt suicide at a much higher rate than those in the general population. What's more, solitary is disproportionately used for people with mental illnesses, people of color, and people with disabilities. In the late 1990s, the FDC was sued by a statewide class of incarcerated people because of its dangerous and inhumane solitary confinement practices. That lawsuit, Osterback v. Moore, resulted in limited reforms. Unfortunately, after the Osterback settlement, solitary confinement in Florida's prisons did not end, it merely evolved. The FDC's failure is compounded by the fact that Florida keeps far too many people in prison in the first place. With one of the highest incarceration rates in the country the state spends more than $2.4 billion a year to imprison more than 96,000 people. That's the third-largest state prison population in the United States. Although the number of people admitted to Florida prisons has trended downward over the last decade, the overall prison population has not decreased at a proportionate rate because of increases in sentence length and rules restricting early release. In addition, the state cut substance abuse and mental health programs for incarcerated people in 2018. The prison system also has experienced chronic staffing shortages. This environment only heightens the prospect that an incarcerated person will be placed in solitary; because the system is strained, prison officials too readily resort to solitary for discipline - or in the case of overcrowded facilities - for housing. Solitary confinement does not improve public safety. Studies show that when people who have been in solitary return to their communities, they are more likely to commit crimes than those who were not subjected to it. Other states have recognized the wasteful and destructive nature of solitary confinement and have adopted more humane and less costly alternatives. It's time for Florida to recognize that solitary confinement is not the answer; rather, it is part of the problem. Details: Montgomery, AL: Author, 2019. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 23, 2019 at: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_solitary_confinement_0.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_solitary_confinement_0.pdf Shelf Number: 155497 Keywords: Human Rights Imprisonment Isolation Restricted Housing Solitary Confinement |
Author: Solitary Watch Title: Louisiana on Lockdown: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It Summary: Te use of solitary confinement in the state of Louisiana has penetrated the broader public consciousness largely through the story of the Angola 3. Over the past decade, the harrowing saga of three African American men-all likely innocent of the prison murders that were used to justify confining them in solitary for up to 43 years-sparked media attention and public outcry as the ultimate expression of harsh, racist, Southern injustice. But there is another story to be told about solitary confinement in Louisiana. Like the story of the Angola 3, it is deeply rooted in the history of racial subjugation and captivity in the South, which begins with slavery and stretches through convict leasing and Jim Crow to the modern era of mass incarceration. However, it extends far beyond the lives of just three men. This is the story of a prison system where, on any given day, nearly one in five people is being held in isolation, placed there by prison staff, often for minor rule violations or "administrative" reasons. When it conducted a full count in the fall of 2017, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC) reported that 19 percent of the men in its state prisons - 2,709 in all - had been in solitary confinement for more than two weeks. Many had been there for years or even decades. The Vera Institute of Justice, which released its own report on solitary confinement in Louisiana earlier this year, similarly found over 17 percent of the state's prison population in solitary in 2016. These rates of solitary confinement use were more than double the next highest state's, and approximately four times the national average. Given that Louisiana also has the second highest incarceration rate in the United States, which leads the world in both incarceration and solitary confinement use, it is clear that Louisiana holds the title of solitary confinement capital of the world. Te state has this dishonorable distinction at a time when a growing body of evidence offers proof of the devastating psychological and social harms caused by prolonged solitary confinement, as well as its ineffectiveness as a tool to reduce prison violence. In 2015, when it revised its Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules), the United Nations acknowledged that solitary confinement of 15 days or more is cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment that often rises to the level of torture. Taken together, these facts indicate that the state of Louisiana is abusing and at times torturing thousands of its citizens for no legitimate purpose whatsoever. Te numbers, however, still tell only part of the story. Just as Albert Woodfox's memoir "Solitary" powerfully conveys what it is like to live for decades in conditions that are designed "to break people," the words of individuals living in solitary confinement are vital to understanding the reality of what is happening today in Louisiana's prisons. For this report, we collected information directly from those men and women. The bulk of the report is based on detailed responses from more than 700 lengthy surveys completed by individuals in solitary, whose names and identifying information have been changed to protect their safety and privacy. Their descriptions paint a grim picture of long stretches of time spent in small cells that are often windowless, filthy, and/or subject to extreme temperatures, where they are denied basic human needs such as adequate food and daily exercise, and subject to many forms of abuse as well as to unending idleness and loneliness, resulting in physical and mental deterioration. Since surveys were returned voluntarily, the results cannot be viewed as a comprehensive or representative sampling. Yet with more than 700 responses from all nine of the state's prisons, which provided personal narratives as well as quantitative data, we believe our report complements, builds upon, and adds an even greater sense of urgency to previous recommendations for reform of solitary confinement in Louisiana, including those included in the recent report by the Vera Institute of Justice. At a moment when LADOC has, for the first time, shown willingness to reconsider and reduce its use of solitary confinement, the findings in this report offer vital insights-and illuminate a path toward the sweeping changes that must be made if Louisiana is to create a prison system that succeeds in both advancing public safety and preserving the human rights of incarcerated people. Details: New York: Authors, 2019. 135p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 26, 2019 at: https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Louisiana-on-Lockdown-Report-June-2019.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Louisiana-on-Lockdown-Report-June-2019.pdf Shelf Number: 156632 Keywords: Administrative SegregationHuman Rights Imprisonment Isolation Restricted Housing Solitary Confinement |