Resnik et al. on Time-in-Cell

Judith Resnik, Skylar Albertson, Grace Li and Jennifer Taylor (Yale University - Law School, Yale University - Law School, Yale Law School and Yale Law School) have posted Time-in-Cell: A 2021 Snapshot of Restrictive Housing Based on a Nationwide Survey of U.S. Prison Systems on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

 

This study, Time-In-Cell: A 2021 Snapshot of Restrictive Housing, analyses data from prison systems around the country and is part of a series of reports by the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) and the Arthur Liman Center at Yale Law School, which have worked for a decade together to generate the only longitudinal, nation-wide database documenting the reported use of solitary confinement in prisons in the United States. This 2022 publication finds that prison systems report that fewer people are held in solitary confinement – defined as 22 hours or more on average a day for fifteen days or more – than in the past. This Report estimates that, as of July 2021, between 41,000 to 48,000 people were held in isolation in a U.S. prison cell for an average of 22 hours a day, for 15 days or more.

Moreover, three states reported holding no one in that form of isolation in July 2021; two other states reported fewer than ten people in solitary; and ten states reported not using solitary in any of their women’s prisons. In contrast, as documented in the study published in 2014, every jurisdiction reported using solitary confinement, and an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were in solitary confinement in prisons throughout the United States.

This research intersects with efforts around the country—spearheaded by people in confinement, by communities, by many organizations including of correctional leaders, and by legislators—to limit or end the use of isolation in prison. National campaigns (“Unlock the Box,” “Stop Solitary”) have brought attention to the harms, as has the recent death of Albert Woodfox, author of Solitary, who spent more than forty years in isolation at Louisiana’s Angola prison before he was released in 2016.

Change is being driven by many factors, including that many corrections agencies have revised their policies to put fewer people into isolation. Moreover, between 2018 and 2020, legislators in some twenty-five states introduced bills to limit the use of restrictive housing, and some fifteen enacted legislation. Since 2020, bills have been introduced in some thirty state legislatures. In 2021, seven states enacted legislation aiming to curb the use of solitary confinement, and a few courts have held that specific forms of isolation are unlawful. Declining prison populations is another factor, as the rise of the use of solitary confinement in the 1980s and thereafter came with the increasing numbers of people held in prison.

Time-in-Cell also examined the demographics of people held in isolation, including its continued use for people whom their own jurisdiction defines as having “serious mental illness.” Moreover, the number of Black women held in solitary was higher than the number of white women.

The full report is posted here as well as on the web; prior reports can be found on websites, including of the Liman Center at http://law.yale.edu/liman/solitary, and can be downloaded free of charge.