Solitary Confinement in Canada

On January 17, 2018, a historic decision put Canada at the forefront of an international movement against solitary confinement. A trial judge found that administrative segregation is a form of solitary confinement and that it causes some inmates physical harm and places all inmates subject to it in Canada at significant risk of serious psychological harm, including mental pain and suffering, and increased incidence of self-harm and suicide. This chapter describes the Canadian litigation and the findings of the trial judge with respect to the laws’ constitutional invalidity. The decision of the trial judge was largely upheld by the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The Canadian Parliament has now enacted a new law that purports to abolish solitary confinement but the authors are skeptical that the new law will pass constitutional muster because it is still too restrictive of inmate rights. It is expected that the government will seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Reflections on North Dakota’s Sustained Solitary Confinement Reform

As director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (ND DOCR), I have overseen its adult, juvenile, and community corrections services for the past thirteen years. This chapter will focus on the broader systems reforms that were implemented prior to solitary confinement reform at the ND DOCR, why it was necessary to change the way we use solitary confinement or restrictive housing, the specific changes we made within the unit, how we improved transitions from the unit, the challenges associated with this work, and the successes we have seen as a result of the reforms.

Resisting Supermax

This chapter focuses not on the supermax itself, although a brief description is offered as a comparator, but instead on articulating alternative forms of imprisonment for those prisoners considered to be dangerous and therefore to be held in conditions of high security. The chapter argues that alternatives to the globalized brand of the supermax can be found in localized and often historically established practices. While such practices are imperfect and limited in scale, they do contain elements of good practice worthy of our attention when countering a flawed and inhumane system of imprisonment. Rather than suggesting a reinvention of the prison, the author argues that alternatives can be uncovered in the rediscovery of more humane and effective penal practices that have often continued to flourish in niches of prison systems, but may now be brought into the light and encouraged to reach full bloom. In particular the author points out the rejection of the supermax approach in England and Wales and explores alternatives that have taken root in its place.

Solitary Confinement, Loneliness, and Psychological Harm

Solitary confinement subjects prisoners to extreme forms of social isolation and social exclusion that, in turn, produce very high levels of suffering and pathology and nearly unprecedented degrees of loneliness. This chapter briefly reviews the scientific literature on harmful effects of solitary confinement, connecting it more directly to social psychological research on the adverse effects of social exclusion and isolation. The author discusses findings from a recent study of loneliness among long-term isolated prisoners, as well as an earlier study performed in an especially harsh solitary confinement unit—the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California—which systematically assessed the prevalence of symptoms of psychological stress, trauma, and isolation-related psychopathology.

The Rise of Supermax Imprisonment in the United States

This chapter provides an overview of the history of supermax prisons: facilities built across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s in order to hold “problem” prisoners, like gang members, the seriously mentally ill, the extremely violent, and those sentenced to death, in solitary confinement for months and years at a time. Since nearly every state opened one of these facilities in the late twentieth century, prisoners have litigated the constitutionality of the harsh conditions: no human contact, 24-hour fluorescent lighting, limited time outdoors. In spite of these conditions, supermaxes were not just another popular tough-on-crime innovation; state (not federal) prison administrators designed the first supermaxes with little public knowledge or oversight, in response to organized protests in prisons in the 1970s and 1980s. Although prisoners have sought to challenge these facilities, litigation has, in many cases, played a legitimizing in the history of supermaxes.

Solitary Confinement across Borders

This chapter looks at the use of solitary confinement in three jurisdictions where the author has conducted research: England and Wales, New Zealand, and the United States. It asks when and why prisoners are placed in solitary confinement in these jurisdictions, and what are the conditions of their confinement. The chapter's main focus is on the long-term use of solitary confinement as a tool for managing individuals classified and labeled as the most dangerous or troublesome in the prison system, including in New Zealand's Management Units and England and Wales’s Close Supervision Centres. Finally, it examines recent developments and asks what learning there might be for other jurisdictions.

Global Perspectives on Solitary Confinement—Practices and Reforms Worldwide

This chapter puts the practice of solitary confinement in the context of and distinguishes it from other aggravated forms of deprivation of liberty, such as incommunicado detention, secret detention, and enforced disappearance. Thereafter, the case law of international and regional monitoring bodies and courts in respect of solitary confinement will be analyzed and compared with the author’s own experience as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture as well as with the experience of Juan Mendez who succeeded the author in this function. On the basis of medical and psychological research showing the harmful effects of solitary confinement on the mental and physical health of detainees, both the author and Juan Mendez contributed to the development of soft law standards, such as the Istanbul Statement and the Mandela Rules, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015. By taking powerful scientific evidence into account, these soft law standards, which in principle prohibit every form of solitary confinement for more than fifteen days, are much more advanced than the fairly permissive standards of hard law, as interpreted by regional human rights courts and universal treaty monitoring bodies.

Solitary Confinement—From Extreme Isolation to Prison Reform

For nearly two centuries the practice of solitary confinement has been a recurring feature in many prison systems all over the world. Solitary confinement is used for a panoply of different reasons although research tells us that these practices have widespread negative health effects. Besides the death penalty, it is arguably the most punitive and dangerous intervention available to state authorities in democratic nations. These facts have spawned a growing international interest in this topic and reform movements which include, among others, doctors, psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, prisoners, families, litigators, human rights defenders, and prison governors. This chapter sets the scene by briefly describing this context and by presenting the structure of the book and the chapters that follow.

“Loneliness Is a Destroyer of Humanity”

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 Brain in Isolation

Absent direct studies that evaluate the brain damage specifically incurred as a result of extended solitary confinement, is there sufficient neuroscientific evidence that would make the likelihood of brain damage compelling? This chapter argues that such a general case can indeed be made. The basis of the argument is threefold: a) The intrinsic nature of the brain and its interaction with the individual’s physical and social context; b) The known impact of some specific features of prolonged isolation (e.g., chronic stress, sensory and motor deprivation, altered circadian patterns) on the brain, and the known biological changes they induce; and c) Changes in the brain associated with the psychological consequences of solitary confinement, such as anxiety disorders and severe clinical depression.