Tag Archives: solitary confinement

Justice Kennedy asks us to rethink U.S. prisons broadly

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy not only wants the Court to hear a case as soon as possible on the constitutionality of solitary confinement, in the aftermath of the suicide of Kalief Browder, but he wants lawyers to start thinking more seriously about the prison system in general when they’re putting people there:

But Kennedy’s concurrence also seemed to be directed toward the American legal community, whose disengagement from prison issues he has previously lamented. “In law school, I never heard about corrections,” he told a congressional hearing on March 23, two weeks after the Davis oral arguments. “Lawyers are fascinated with the guilt/innocence adjudication process. Once [it] is over, we have no interest in corrections. Doctors and psychiatrists know more about the corrections system than we do.”

Although no one realized it at the time, his brief soliloquy on the crisis of “total incarceration” in March was a preview of today’s concurrence. “Too often, discussion in the legal academy and among practitioners concentrates simply on the adjudication of guilt or innocence,” Kennedy wrote. “Too easily ignored is the question is the question of what comes next. Prisoners are shut away—out of sight, out of mind.” Consideration of these issues, he stated, “is needed.”

 
I’ve been thinking about this (the theme Kennedy highlights in the quotes above) a lot while watching legal dramas. The lawyers on both sides plea-bargain in abstractions with no real sense of what they might be condemning the accused to, even for a few years. I don’t think it’s much different in the real world. Even a year or two in general population, let alone solitary confinement, is a pretty strong punishment, and I suspect many lawyers don’t think too hard about that.

Which is not to say that all prison sentences (or even most) are somehow inherently unjust, but rather that we need serious prison reform to ensure that prisons are actually constructively “correcting” and proportionally punishing criminal actions, without being excessive or abusive. We’ve got a hell of a long road ahead of us considering our society still thinks “prison rape” is a hilarious subject, not a serious problem, or that abuses by guards are irrelevant even when someone is serving time for a very minor offense because prison should be as harsh as possible.

We have a very destructive system that is killing people and destroying lives permanently, even for minor or non-violent crimes, without any consideration toward rehabilitation or even true justice.

Ending solitary confinement

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The previous Colorado chief of Corrections was shot and killed in his own home by a former inmate who had spent years confined in solitary confinement (a punishment which is pretty well known at this point to make most people very mentally unstable), after the latter man was released from prison straight out of solitary when his sentence ended.

The victim, ironically, had expressed concern about the state’s excessive use of such treatment (and in particular the habit of releasing people directly without transition like that) and had cut the number of solitary inmates in half before his death.

To me it has long seemed that solitary confinement is probably one of the most heinous practices in the American prison system, and one that should probably be banned at least for general use under the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” It must be particularly traumatic and damaging for inmates who are serving less than a life sentence and are eventually supposed to be released back into ordinary society.

The new executive director of Corrections, Rick Raemisch, is so opposed to the practice that he is using the job to campaign against it. As he said, “Everything you know about treating human beings, that’s not the way to do it.”

Raemisch even spent 20 hours in solitary himself in January to protest the practice. It’s part of his broader agenda to shake up the state’s correctional system so it might actually rehabilitate people rather than worsening the problem.

All of it calls to mind a biting satirical article from The Onion not long ago, headlined: “15 Years In Environment Of Constant Fear Somehow Fails To Rehabilitate Prisoner.”