Solitary Confinement - Effects, Practices, and Pathways Toward Reform

Solitary confinement is used for a variety of different reasons in many prison systems all over the world, despite the fact that research shows that these practices have widespread and pronounced negative health effects. Besides the death penalty, solitary confinement is arguably the most punitive and dangerous intervention available to state authorities in democratic nations. This broad and interdisciplinary book draws together research and personal experience fromneuroscientists, high level prison officials, social and political scientists, medical doctors, lawyers, and former prisoners and their families from different countries in order to address the effects and practices of prolonged solitary confinement and to strengthen the movement for its reform andeventual abolition.

List of contents

• Contributors


• Acknowledgments


• Chapter 1: Solitary Confinement-from Extreme Isolation to Prison Reform


• Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith


• PART ONE: Two Centuries of Solitary Confinement


• Chapter 2: Solitary Confinement-Effects and Practices from the Nineteenth Century until Today


• Peter Scharff Smith


• Chapter 3: Global Perspectives on Solitary Confinement-Practices and Reforms Worldwide


• Manfred Nowak


• Chapter 4: Solitary Confinement Across Borders


• Sharon Shalev


• Chapter 5: The Rise of Supermax Imprisonment in the United States


• Keramet Reiter


• Chapter 6: Not Isolating Isolation


• Judith Resnik


• Chapter 7: Torture, Solitary Confinement and International Law


• Juan E. Mendez


• PART TWO: Mind, Body and Soul - The Harms and Experience of Solitary Confinement


• Chapter 8: Solitary Confinement, Loneliness, and Psychological Harm


• Craig Haney


• Chapter 9: First Do No Harm: Applying the Harms-to-Benefit Patient Safety Framework to Solitary Confinement


• Brie Williams and Cyrus Ahalt


• Chapter 10: Mythbusting Solitary Confinement in Jail


• Homer Venters


• Chapter 11: Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Health


• Louise Hawkley


• Chapter 12: The Brain in Isolation


• A Neuroscientist's Perspective on Solitary Confinement


• Huda Akil


• Chapter 13: Use of Animals to Study the Neurobiological Effects of Isolation: Historical and Current Perspectives


• Michael J. Zigmond and Richard Jay Smeyne


• Chapter 14: Sharing Experiences of Solitary Confinement-Prisoners and Staff


• Robert King, Dolores Canales, Jack Morris, Lieutenant Armondo Sosa


• PART THREE: Prison reform, prison litigation and human rights


• Chapter 15: The Management of High Security Prisoners: Alternatives to Solitary Confinement


• Andrew Coyle


• Chapter 16: Resisting Supermax: Rediscovering a Humane Approach to the Management of High Risk Prisoners


• Jamie Bennett


• Chapter 17: Prisoners Association as an Alternative to Solitary Confinement-Lessons Learned From a Norwegian High Security Prison


• Are Høidal


• Chapter 18: Colorado Ends Prolonged, Indeterminate Solitary Confinement


• Rick Raemisch


• Chapter 19: Reflections on North Dakota's Sustained Solitary Confinement Reform


• Leann Bertsch


• Chapter 20: Solitary Confinement in Canada


• Joseph J. Arvay, and Alison M. Latimer


• Chapter 21: "Loneliness is a destroyer of humanity."


• Jesse Wilson, Held in Solitary Confinement at United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado


• Amy Fettig and David C. Fathi


• Chapter 22: Litigation to End Indeterminate Solitary Confinement in California: The Role of Inter-Disciplinary and Comparative Experts


• Jules Lobel

About the author

Jules Lobel is the Bessie Mckee Walthour Endowed Chair Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. He was President of the Center for Constitutional Rights from 2011-2017, a prominent constitutional and human rights NGO based in New York City and is still a cooperating attorney with that organization. He argued Wilkinson v. Austin in the United States Supreme Court, addressing the due process rights of Ohio prisoners held in prolonged solitary confinement in that State's supermax prison. He is currently lead counsel, on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights in Ashker v. Brown, a class action challenge to prolonged solitary confinement in California that has resulted in more than 1500 prisoners being released from solitary confinement.

Peter Scharff Smith is Professor in the Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. He has studied history and social science, holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen and has also done research at the University of

Cambridge and at the Danish Institute of Human Rights. Smith has published books and articles in Danish, English and German on prisons, punishment and human rights, including works on prison history, prisoner's children and the use and effects of solitary confinement in prisons.

Summary

The use of solitary confinement in prisons became common with the rise of the modern penitentiary during the first half of the nineteenth century and his since remained a feature of 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. Nevertheless, in the United States there is currently an estimated 80-100,000 prisoners in small cells for more than 22 hours per day with little or no social contact and no physical contact visits with family or friends. Even in Scandinavia, thousands of prisoners are placed in solitary confinement every year and with an alarming frequency. These facts have spawned international interest in this topic and a growing international reform movement, which includes researchers, litigators and human rights defenders as well as prison staff and prisoners.

This book is the first to take a broad international comparative approach and to apply an interdisciplinary lens to this subject. In this volume neuroscientists, high level prison officials, social and political scientists, medical doctors, lawyers and former prisoners and their families from different countries will address the effects and practices of prolonged solitary confinement and the movement for its reform and abolition.

Additional text

The authors of this volume argue eloquently and convincingly, from varied disciplines and perspectives, that it is time to end solitary confinement, and they provide a vision of a carceral system devoid of solitary as well as a road map for getting there. Jules Lobel ... was the lead attorney in a historic class action lawsuit, Ashker v. Governor of California [and t]his volume includes chapters by many of the experts who testified in the Ashker litigation ... This volume is unprecedented in the comprehensiveness and rigor of its treatment of the evidence of negative effects of solitary confinement, and the safe alternatives to solitary that are proven and available. The writing is engaging and accessible. The impact of this book, like the impact of the Ashker litigation, will serve to advance the struggle to end the torture of solitary confinement in the USA and, one hopes, worldwide.

Product details

• Authors: Jules (Bessie Mckee Walthour Professor of L Lobel
• Assisted by: Jules Lobel (Editor), Lobel Jules (Editor), Peter Scharff Smith (Editor), Smith Peter Scharff (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2020
• EAN: 9780190947927
• ISBN: 978-0-19-094792-7
• No. of pages: 384
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Law > International law, foreign law; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Penology, Human rights & civil liberties law, LAW / Civil Rights, LAW / Criminal Law / Sentencing, Legal aspects of criminology, Penology and punishment, Penology & punishment, Sentencing & punishment, Sentencing and punishment, Law: Human rights and civil liberties, Criminology: legal aspects