solitary_smallThe movement to expose the inhumanity of solitary confinement is gaining momentum.
In June 2015, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy beckoned for a case to examine the use of solitary confinement. In July 2015, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to review the use of solitary confinement in federal facilities. California settled a lawsuit in September 2015 brought by prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison that will overhaul the use of solitary confinement. In that case, more than 500 prisoners had been held in solitary confinement for more than 10 years with 78 having been held for more than 20 years.
In fall 2015, there was a breakthrough moment for the end-solitary movement when 15 heads of corrections agencies from around the U.S., as well as leading academic experts and advocates, released a set of recommendations to reform solitary confinement.
In January 2016, President Obama banned solitary confinement of juveniles in federal prisons and announced sweeping reforms to reduce the use of the practice against adult prisoners in the system as well. The president also called on the nation to rethink solitary confinement as an affront to our common humanity.
The turning point for reforming the use of solitary confinement in the past few years is obvious. Expert research conducted in a variety of scientific fields on the effects of the practice is overwhelmingly damning. The physical and psychological effects of isolating a person for 23 hours a day for lengthy periods of time, sometimes even decades, with little or no human interaction or sensory stimuli, literally drives people insane.
Often, the damage is irreversible. Aside from the inhumanity of the practice, correctional officials are beginning to accept that solitary confinement costs taxpayers too much to maintain and actually harms public safety instead of protecting us. Prisoners too often are released back into our communities unprepared to re-enter community life. Sometimes they are released directly from solitary confinement where they experienced immense suffering, and the consequences can be shocking.
The ACLU of Virginia has asked Governor McAuliffe to follow the President’s lead at the state level by 1) banning solitary confinement of juveniles in state and local facilities; and 2) developing and implementing effective strategies to reduce solitary confinement of adults in the Commonwealth’s state and local correctional facilities. We are still working to make that happen.
Our work is part of a nationwide effort by the ACLU and its affiliates across the country, working together with other advocates, to conduct public education campaigns that uncover the ugly consequences of solitary confinement in prisons and dispel the myths behind its justification, advocate for changes to end its routine use and initiate litigation where education and advocacy is unsuccessful.
In December 2015, the ACLU’s affiliate in New York (NYCLU) announced a groundbreaking, historic settlement with the New York Department of Corrections (NYDOC) that will overhaul and reduce the use solitary confinement in one of the country’s largest penal systems. The settlement comes as a result of NYCLU’s class-action lawsuit file in 2012, Peoples v. Fischer, and after years of negotiations with the state.
The settlement reached by the NYCLU in New York, that was approved by a federal judge on March 31 sets a model for the nation. The settlement promises  to: 1) reduce the number of people in solitary; 2) reduce the time people spend in solitary; and 3) alter the conditions of solitary confinement by abolishing some of its most dehumanizing aspects and emphasizing rehabilitative features that will improve safety for those inside the prison and the public.
NYDOC will implement a step-down program for prisoners for the first time that advocates hope will be much shorter in duration than other states’ programs. Further, getting out of solitary confinement will not be dependent on successful completion of the step-down program. The program simply requires that a prisoner put forth effort.
The settlement also promises that prisoners who commit minor infractions will not be sent back to solitary confinement automatically. While the NYDOC settlement isn’t perfect, the result is that persons with serious mental illness will no longer be held in solitary confinement. A court will monitor implementation of the settlement that will result in millions of dollars of investment to achieve the promised reforms.
We have a lot of work to do in Virginia to live up to the model set by New York. The actions we’ve asked the Governor to take would move us in the right direction but more must be done to reform use of solitary in Virginia’s adult and juvenile correctional facilities.
Hidden away in the deep corner of Southwest Virginia is the supermax Red Onion State Prison (ROSP). ROSP is a long way from VDOC headquarters and its oversight in Richmond.
The prison came under fire in 2012 for its use of solitary confinement and subsequently, officials put in place a “step-down” program in which prisoners in solitary can participate and behave their way out of solitary. The program sounds great in theory (and it received some positive press attention accordingly); however, many prisoners suffer from serious mental illnesses that prevent them from conforming their behavior to the standards set in the program.
As for the rest of the prisoners, it takes an average of 18 months to work their way through the program, much longer than programs in other states. Also, a prisoner in Virginia only gets out of solitary confinement if he successfully completes the program. What qualifies as successful completion remains a mystery, and completion doesn’t prevent a prisoner from being sent back to solitary confinement.
Since the Virginia step-down program was implemented at ROSP, few updates have been publically released. The information that has been released raises more question than it answers. For example, the Virginia Department of Corrections reported that the number of filed incident reports and grievance forms had been dramatically reduced. In fact, the ACLU of Virginia has received reports that incidents and grievances are not down because VDOC’s reform measures are working, but because of actions by correctional officers.
We’ve been told that on-the-ground correctional officers won’t give prisoners the necessary forms and, at times, prisoners have suffered from physical acts of violence or the threat of violence if they want to report problems or attempt to address basic rights. This is just one of the alarming problems we’ve heard about at Red Onion State Prison.
It is past time for VDOC to retain an independent expert to examine the effectiveness of its step-down program in light of the national recommendations made in the fall of 2015 and the terms of the New York settlement, and tell the people of Virginia what is really going on at Red Onion State Prison and other adult and juvenile facilities in the Commonwealth.
At the very least, VDOC should reduce the length of time it takes to complete the step-down program at ROSP, and prisoners should not be sent back to solitary confinement automatically for minor infractions. Virginia prisoners suffering from serious mental illness should not be in solitary confinement at any correctional facility in Virginia– period.
VDOC and ROSP must provide transparency and implement an effective plan that permanently moves away from this practice that makes a mockery of human rights. The effects of solitary confinement are destructive to the human body and mind – that is a universal truth.
That truth alone should be enough to end the wholesale use of the practice and prohibit its routine use as cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution. The Governor and VDOC should get serious about reforming solitary confinement before it’s too late.