WaPo editorial board calls on Maryland legislature to limit use of solitary confinement in state's prisons

WaPo's editorial board notes that 8% of state's prison population is held in solitary confinement, and that inmates are typically sent there for failing to follow rules. The board questions whether current policy is required to reduce the risk of violence, as some supporters say, and it doubts whether inmates commonly have cellmates. Instead, it recalls one mentally ill inmate who allegedly spent four years in solitary, and argues:

Weeks, months and years of solitary confinement can destroy people’s minds. Stories of healthy inmates leaving solitary with a mental illness are horrible but unsurprising. So are accounts of inmates who enter it with a mental illness and come out worse — if they don’t commit suicide, a particular problem in isolation programs.

 

Isolation can seem like an easy solution for dealing with a violent or antisocial inmate, but it can be expensive and counterproductive, deepening the psychosis that led to bad behavior. The internal report found that isolated prisoners in Maryland face “heightened risk for worsening physical and mental health outcomes.”

Sadly, the state's general assembly hasn't been any help so far:

[W]e published a letter from Susan Kerin of Interfaith Action for Human Rights noting that Maryland lawmakers recently scuttled a bill calling for an independent analysis of the state’s use of prisoner segregation. The bill merely asked for a report on living conditions and the frequency with which state facilities isolate prisoners. It sought recommendations on how to reduce the number of prisoners in isolation, how to improve conditions and how to manage juveniles and the mentally ill. All of these goals should be priorities for any state that claims to run a humane prison system.