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.

“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.

The Special Perils of Being Old and Sick in Prison

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 276-284
Author(s):  
William J. Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Medical Needs ◽  
Access To Medical Care

The United States Supreme Court declared in 1976 that deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain…proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. It matters not whether the indifference is manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by prison guards intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with treatment once prescribed—adequate prisoner medical care is required by the United States Constitution. My incarceration for four years at the Oakdale Satellite Prison Camp, a chronic health care level camp, gives me the perspective to challenge the generally promoted claim of the Bureau of Federal Prisons that it provides decent medical care by competent and caring medical practitioners to chronically unhealthy elderly prisoners. The same observation, to a slightly lesser extent, could be made with respect to deficiencies in the delivery of health care to prisoners of all ages, as it is all significantly deficient in access, competencies, courtesies and treatments extended by prison health care providers at every level of care, without regard to age. However, the frailer the prisoner, the more dangerous these health care deficiencies are to his health and, therefore, I believe, warrant separate attention. This paper uses first-hand experiences of elderly prisoners to dismantle the tale that prisoner healthcare meets constitutional standards.

James Bryce and the Australian Constitution

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Stephen Gageler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Responsible Government ◽  
Shed Light

James Bryce was a contemporary of Albert Venn Dicey. Bryce published in 1888 The American Commonwealth. Its detailed description of the practical operation of the United States Constitution was influential in the framing of the Australian Constitution in the 1890s. The project of this article is to shed light on that influence. The article compares and contrasts the views of Bryce and of Dicey; Bryce's views, unlike those of Dicey, having been largely unexplored in contemporary analyses of our constitutional development. It examines the importance of Bryce's views on two particular constitutional mechanisms – responsible government and judicial review – to the development of our constitutional structure. The ongoing theoretical implications of The American Commonwealth for Australian constitutional law remain to be pondered.

Medicaid Not Required to Fund Medically Necessary Abortions

1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
George J. Annas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Medical Procedures ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Law Enforcement Agency ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Joint Resolution

In an extraordinary and highly controversial 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court decided on June 30, 1980, that the United States Constitution does not require either the federal government or the individual states to fund medically necessary abortions for poor women who qualify for Medicaid.At issue in this case is the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. The applicable 1980 version provides:|N]one of the funds provided by this joint resolution shall be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term; or except for such medical procedures necessary for the victims of rape or incest when such rape or incest has been reported promptly to a law enforcement agency or public health service, (emphasis supplied)

Is Music Teacher Professional Development Becoming More Effective? Evaluating Practice and Policy in the United States, 1993–2012

2020 ◽  
pp. 002242942098252
Author(s):  
Justin J. West
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Teacher Professional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Using Data

The purpose of this study was to evaluate music teacher professional development (PD) practice and policy in the United States between 1993 and 2012. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) spanning these 20 years, I examined music teacher PD participation by topic, intensity, relevance, and format; music teachers’ top PD priorities; and the reach of certain PD-supportive policies. I assessed these descriptive results against a set of broadly agreed-on criteria for “effective” PD: content specificity, relevance, voluntariness/autonomy, social interaction, and sustained duration. Findings revealed a mixed record. Commendable improvements in content-specific PD access were undercut by deficiencies in social interaction, voluntariness/autonomy, sustained duration, and relevance. School policy, as reported by teachers, was grossly inadequate, with only one of the nine PD-supportive measures appearing on SASS reaching a majority of teachers in any given survey year. Implications for policy, practice, and scholarship are presented.

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