Solitary confinement in Louisiana

LOUISIANA ON LOCKDOWN: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It, is published by Solitary Watch, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University New Orleans.

“For decades, solitary confinement occupied one of the darkest corners of the U.S. criminal justice system,” said Jean Casella, Co-Director of Solitary Watch, a national watchdog group that investigates and reports on the subject. “Even now, most of what we know is based on data provided by corrections departments. That information is incomplete without the testimony of people who know what it means to live for months, years, or even decades in a 6-by-9-foot cell, cut off from nearly all human contact.”

Among the findings:

   Most survey respondents believed their mental health had worsened during their time in solitary, describing symptoms including anxiety, depression, paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, and difficulty interacting with others. Some expressed fear that they would “never be the same again.”
•  More than 77 percent of people who responded to the survey said they had been held in solitary confinement for more than a year, and 30 percent said they had been there for more than five years. Nationally, less than 20 percent of individuals in solitary have been there for more than a year.
•  A majority said they were in solitary for breaking prison rules, including minor, nonviolent infractions, and many said they were there indefinitely, with no clear way of earning their way out through good behavior.
•  Approximately 80 percent of respondents reported that physical assaults at the hands of staff, as well as threats, intimidation, and racial intimidation, were common or very common in solitary confinement.
•  Most respondents said they had personally been subjected to additional punishments in solitary, including pepper spray or physical restraints, and a few described being punished by being placed in bare “strip” cells with only a paper gown to wear.
•  Over 25 percent of respondents reported engaging in self-harm, including cutting and head-banging, while in solitary, and most had witnessed it. But only 4 percent of those who had harmed themselves said they received counseling, while more than 26 percent said they were punished for it.
•  Nearly everyone who responded to the survey described serious neglect in the areas of medical and mental health care, which they said led to suffering, blindness, and even death.