Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons

Invitation from The Center for Church and Prison, Inc. to Public Forum: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons Old South Church/Boston 645 Boylston Street.  Tuesday March 19, 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. What is Solitary Confinement? “Solitary confinement is a controversial form of punishment used in prison. Prisoners who are placed in solitary will spend up to 23 hours a day in a cell with no human contact except prison staff. It has been called a barbaric form of punishment by its opponents due to its negative impact on the prisoner's mental health." Solitary Confinement: By the Numbers Solitary confinement is 23-24 hours a day in a cell six to eight feet wide and nine to 10 feet long. Over 80,000 inmates languish daily in some form of segregation in US prisons……and 25,000 of these inmates are held in supermax prisons—facilities made up solely or mostly of solitary cells. U.S. prisons hold more than three times as many men and women with mental illnesses as are held in mental health hospitals.  8-19 percent of U.S. prisoners have psychiatric disorders “that result in significant functional disabilities” while 45 percent of supermax residents have “serious mental illness, marked by symptoms or psychological breakdowns.”: Click to read more: Solitary Confinement Fact Sheet   Implications of Solitary confinement: Serious psychological damage, High rate of mental illness, High rate of recidivism, High rate of violence. Very Expensive:   $75,000, in a supermax prison  as opposed to $25,000 for an inmate in the general population. California With over 1,100 inmates in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) and 400 more in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), Pelican Bay State Prison has an yearly budget of $180 million. For 2010-2011, the annual costs per inmate were as follows:  $70, 641 per SHU inmate  $77,740 per ASU inmate $58,324 per general population inmate 4 According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, the average length of time spent in the Pelican Bay SHU is 6.8 years.5 This means the total cost of holding each inmate in the SHU is on average $480,358. Housing the same inmate in the general population would save $83,733. Some 2,200 additional prisoners are housed in Security Housing Unit Click to read more at: Fact Sheet: The High Cost of Solitary Confinement  Speakers and Panelists  Dr. Stuart Grassian  Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement Mr. Bobby Dellelo Mr. Muarice Alves  Mr. Glenn  Williams  Leslie Walkers, Esq. Director: Prisoners Legal Service  Rahsaan Hall, Esq. Deputy Director: Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights  Tuesday March 19, 2013 Time: 6pm- 8:30pm  Venue: Old South Church/Boston, 645 Boylston Street.  Directions: Take Greenline to Copley/Boylston Street. "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." Elie Wiesel "When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of." Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Center for Church and Prison, Inc. is  a resource and research center working towards community revitalization through prison reform and strategic solution development and intervention in the high rate of incarceration and recidivism in the United States prison system. Visit us: www.Churchandprison.org