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| Solitary confinement -- a needed prison option or human rights abuse? |
| By stlbeacon.org - Robert Koenig, Beacon Washington correspondent |
| Published: 06/25/2012 |
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WASHINGTON – “I lived in a small 8-by-12 foot cage,” said Anthony C. Graves, recalling that he “had no physical contact with another human being for at least 10 of the 18 years I was incarcerated.” Tears brimmed in his eyes as Graves, wearing a grey suit, looked across the Senate hearing room at U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and gave his assessment of the impact of extended solitary confinement on prisoners: “Solitary confinement breaks a man’s will to live, and he deteriorates right in front of your eyes,” Graves said. “It is inhumane, and by its design it is driving men insane.” Graves, who was exonerated in 2010 after spending 18 years on a Texas prison’s death row for crimes he did not commit, was the most dramatic witness in a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights and human rights that featured a full-size wooden model of a solitary cell in the room’s corner. Durbin chaired the hearing, billed as the Senate’s first on the topic of solitary confinement in the nation’s prisons, jails and detention centers. “The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation in the world,” he said. “The dramatic expansion of the use of solitary confinement is a human rights issue we can’t ignore.” Most witnesses at the June 19 hearing focused on the public safety, human rights and fiscal issues raised by solitary confinement among this nation’s 2.3 million inmates or detainees – by far the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated that more than 80,000 people are held in some kind of restricted detention – in what corrections officials refer to variously as solitary confinement, isolation, segregation or “supermax” prison housing. In Illinois, 56 percent of inmates have spent some time in segregated housing, Durbin said, noting that solitary confinement can be costly. Keeping a prisoner in isolation at the Tamms Correctional Center, a 500-bed maximum-security prison in Tamms, Ill., costs more than $60,000 a year, compared to the $22,000 average for inmates in other Illinois prisons. Read More. |
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