FuzzyLumpkins
09-02-2015, 01:53 PM
Hundreds of prisoners housed in the California penitentiary system will be released from solitary confinement, where dozens of inmates have been detained for more than a decade, under the details of a settlement announced Tuesday. The agreement raises hopes among prison reform advocates for a national shift in the use of solitary confinement.
Signs of that shift are mounting, with recent reforms to solitary confinement practices in states ranging from Maine to Illinois to New York. In addition, earlier this year, a Louisiana judge released Albert Woodfox from prison after he spent 40 years in solitary, making national headlines. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, the key swing vote on the United States Supreme Court, raised the issue of solitary confinement in concurring with a ruling on a different subject earlier this year.
“Research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on end of near-total isolation exacts a terrible price,” he wrote, referencing the 1890 court decision In re Medley.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0901/California-s-big-shift-on-solitary-confinement-points-to-US-justice-rethink
Signs of that shift are mounting, with recent reforms to solitary confinement practices in states ranging from Maine to Illinois to New York. In addition, earlier this year, a Louisiana judge released Albert Woodfox from prison after he spent 40 years in solitary, making national headlines. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, the key swing vote on the United States Supreme Court, raised the issue of solitary confinement in concurring with a ruling on a different subject earlier this year.
“Research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on end of near-total isolation exacts a terrible price,” he wrote, referencing the 1890 court decision In re Medley.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0901/California-s-big-shift-on-solitary-confinement-points-to-US-justice-rethink