SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

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What is Solitary Confinement?

Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating humans in “prisons within prisons”- small, windowless cells that permit no contact with the outside world or with other people. It is:

Confinement for 22 or more hours a day in tiny concrete and metal cells
No access to programs
Little or no medical or mental health care
Beatings, starvation, torture, hog-tying, restraint chairs and forced cell extractions
Sensory Deprivation - Permanent Bright Lighting - Extreme Temperatures & Forced Insomnia
Rare Non-Contact or No Family Visits -
Sexual Intimidation & Violence
Used Arbitrarily By Prison Officials As A Means of Coercion and Retribution

Solitary confinement is torture as defined by several international human rights treaties, and is a violation of human rights law. It is inhumane and degrading, and it destroys the minds and personalities of the people who are forced to experience it.

How is it used in Pennsylvania?

The PA Department of Corrections calls solitary confinement “Level 5 Custody”. The control units (blocks of isolation cells) that contain “Level 5” prisoners are called: RHU (Restricted Housing Unit), SMU(Special Management Unit), MHU(Mental Health Unit) and SNU(Special Needs Unit). The reasons given for placing prisoners in these control units generally cite violations of rules concerning safety, security, or appropriate behavior. However, prison authorities often exploit the power they've been given over prisoners, and the people who end up in solitary are often the jailhouse lawyers, the political prisoners, and those who've become targeted by the prison staff for personal and petty reasons. For these prisoners, solitary confinement is simply punishment for aggravating their captors or for standing up for their own humanity. Many of the people placed in PA's control units for violent or disruptive behavior have severe emotional and/or psychological problems, which are only made worse by their confinement in isolation. The practice of keeping these prisoners in isolation “until they learn to behave” creates a vicious cycle in which those people who are most in need of help are the ones who won't get it.

What are the effects of solitary confinement?

The brutal conditions of isolation in Pennsylvania's control units are devastating to human beings. Prisoners subjected to prolonged isolation experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and an impaired ability to think, concentrate or remember. People with psychiatric illnesses who enter control units often leave them with those illnesses massively exacerbated, and those who've exhibited no previous illness often leave control units with new mental disturbances, whose symptoms are consistent with sensory deprivation. Prolonged isolation robs humans of their ability to interact with other people. It shatters their sense of reality and makes them unable to function. In control units, suicide and self-mutilation are common. In 2007 nine people committed suicide in Pennsylvania’s state prisons--one-third of those happened within a six-month period in SCI Smithfield’s Restricted Housing Unit.