“Loneliness Is a Destroyer of Humanity”

2019 ◽  
pp. 343-352
Author(s):  
Amy Fettig ◽  
David C. Fathi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
People With Mental Illness ◽  
Advocacy Campaigns

This chapter explores how civil society advocacy campaigns working to reform and abolish solitary confinement are interacting with recent and ongoing federal litigation. The authors posit that the evolution of policy, practice, litigation, and public knowledge regarding solitary confinement is pushing the law forward. Momentum for greater legal protections is growing in the courts and the combination of people power and jurisprudential development is leading to substantial new protections for prisoners, including the exclusion of vulnerable populations, such as youth, people with mental illness, and pregnant women, from solitary confinement. Additionally, courts are increasingly questioning the extreme duration of solitary confinement in the United States and the reasons used to justify it, such as automatic solitary confinement of people sentenced to death. At the same time, state departments of corrections are settling class action lawsuits brought on behalf of prisoners in solitary confinement by agreeing to major policy innovations and alternatives to the use of segregation.

Parity and Difference: The Value of Parity Legislation for the Seriously Mentally Ill

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
John V. Jacobi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Services ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Persistent Mental Illness ◽  
Seriously Mentally Ill ◽  
People With Mental Illness

Mental illness affects the health status of about one in five Americans each year. More than five percent of adult Americans have a “serious” mental illness—an illness that interferes with social functioning. About two and one-half percent have “severe and persistent” mental illness, a categorization for the most disabling forms of mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. All mental illness interferes to some degree with social activities. Left untreated, serious mental illness can be disabling—disrupting family life, employment status and the ability to maintain housing. Nevertheless, privately insured people in the United States (that is, the majority of insured people in the United States) are not covered for mental health services to the same extent that they are covered for physical health services. Second-class coverage of mental health services reduces access to care for people with mental illness because cost becomes a significant barrier to service. The resulting lack of treatment fuels the disabling potential of mental illness.

Torture in US Jails and Prisons: An Analysis of Solitary Confinement Under International Law

ICL Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Conley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Self Mutilation ◽  
The Us

AbstractOne of the most serious human rights violations today is occurring throughout the US. In US jails and prisons, individuals are held in solitary confinement for weeks, months and even years. Solitary confinement can cause significant psychological damage, including cognitive delays, increased suspicion and paranoia, increased anxiety, fear, ag­gression and hostility, heightened feelings of helplessness and depression, and increased thoughts and attempts at self-mutilation and suicide. Many prisoners held in this severe form of isolation are juveniles or individuals with serious mental illness, to whom it is par­ticularly damaging. Although solitary confinement is common in the rest of the world, no­where is it more prevalent as a long-term prisoner management tool than in the United States. US courts have found that solitary confinement is a violation of the Eighth Amend­ment to the US Constitution in certain situations, yet the practice persists.As a global movement against solitary confinement grows, the United Nations and re­gional human rights tribunals have spoken out against the practice. A robust body of inter­national case law has defined the contours of when solitary confinement is cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the instances in which it is torture. International bodies pro­hibit solitary confinement for juveniles, prisoners with mental illness, and prisoners on death row or with life sentences. International tribunals generally find solitary confinement for all prisoners contrary to applicable law where it constitutes incommunicado detention, where it is unnecessarily prolonged without justification, and where the totality of condi­tions of confinement cross a threshold into unacceptable cruelty.As international law prohibiting solitary confinement crystallizes, the practice in the United States may be curtailed through reliance on international law by US judges. Further, the US executive may take an increased interest in curbing solitary confinement to avoid repu­tational damage among the global community.

Litigation to End Indeterminate Solitary Confinement in California

2019 ◽  
pp. 353-372
Author(s):  
Jules Lobel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
State Prison ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
Psychological Harm

In 2012, a group of prisoners brought a class action lawsuit challenging the incarceration of hundreds of prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement of over ten years in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison as cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That lawsuit was eventually settled in 2015 and resulted in virtually all of those prisoners being released from solitary. This chapter describes the use of interdisciplinary and comparative experts in that litigation to present a multidimensional challenge to prolonged solitary confinement as cruel and inhumane. Those experts demonstrated that the prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners at Pelican Bay caused those prisoner serious psychological harm and physical harm, deprived them of basic human social interaction, was unnecessary and counterproductive penologically, and was contrary to international norms and practices.

scholarly journals Identification of Vulnerable Populations and Areas at Higher Risk of COVID-19-Related Mortality during the Early Stage of the Epidemic in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 4021
Author(s):  
Esteban Correa-Agudelo ◽  
Tesfaye B. Mersha ◽  
Adam J. Branscum ◽  
Neil J. MacKinnon ◽  
Diego F. Cuadros
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
Mortality Risk ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Average ◽  
Health Determinants ◽  
White Population ◽  
Latino Population ◽  
Related Mortality

We characterized vulnerable populations located in areas at higher risk of COVID-19-related mortality and low critical healthcare capacity during the early stage of the epidemic in the United States. We analyze data obtained from a Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 database to assess the county-level spatial variation of COVID-19-related mortality risk during the early stage of the epidemic in relation to health determinants and health infrastructure. Overall, we identified highly populated and polluted areas, regional air hub areas, race minorities (non-white population), and Hispanic or Latino population with an increased risk of COVID-19-related death during the first phase of the epidemic. The 10 highest COVID-19 mortality risk areas in highly populated counties had on average a lower proportion of white population (48.0%) and higher proportions of black population (18.7%) and other races (33.3%) compared to the national averages of 83.0%, 9.1%, and 7.9%, respectively. The Hispanic and Latino population proportion was higher in these 10 counties (29.3%, compared to the national average of 9.3%). Counties with major air hubs had a 31% increase in mortality risk compared to counties with no airport connectivity. Sixty-eight percent of the counties with high COVID-19-related mortality risk also had lower critical care capacity than the national average. The disparity in health and environmental risk factors might have exacerbated the COVID-19-related mortality risk in vulnerable groups during the early stage of the epidemic.

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