This week, I spent much of my work hours in Augusta, talking with legislators, prisoners’ rights advocates and other interested parties about Representative Jim Schatz’s solitary confinement bill which legislators will consider in the upcoming session.
These conversations were made all the more interesting due to the fact that I spent a good chunk of last week touring some of Maine’s correctional facilities – including areas where prisoners are kept within their small cells, alone or with a roommate, for 23 to 24 hours per day. It wasn’t hard to place myself into the cell, onto the narrow metal bunk – it wasn’t difficult to imagine the absence of privacy, the lack of mental or physical stimulation, left to little else than my own thoughts. What I can’t claim to be able to imagine, however, is what it would feel like to be in there for days, weeks, months.
As inmates reflect in the video below, “you have nothing in the cell but you” and the only human touch you experience is “aggressive touch.”
This session, Maine lawmakers are being asked to address the continually increasing evidence that such extended isolation of human beings can result in tremendous damage - emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and for some, physically. Representative Schatz’s bill reflects this evidence and the growing number of voices asserting that prolonged solitary confinement is torture, in violation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, is highly costly, and can undermine a prisoner’s latter re-integration into their prison or home community.
They will be presented with the fact that we have more prisoners in solitary confinement than does the entire country of England, and nationally, while Maine incarcerates fewer of its residents than most states, we rise to the top of the pack when it comes to the percentage of our inmates placed in isolation
Among other things, the bill codifies the exclusion of inmates with serious mental illness from standard segregation, creates limits on how long an inmate can be segregated without access to outside due process; assures inmates have clear guidance about what they must do to earn their way out of confinement, and bans certain restraint practices (such as the infamous restraint chair). If passed Maine would become a leader in terms of humane prisoner treatment.
If you want to know more, advocates for reform have created a website with background materials, information about how to get involved, press coverage and specifics of the proposed legislation.
You can also check out this Jules Lobel article for more on the Constitutional arguments, Atul Gawande’s piece in the New Yorker for further discussion of the detrimental effect of isolation and the video from the American Friends' Service Committee's STOPMAX Campaign (above)for a more visceral experience of what solitary is like.