Solitary in the United States

Solitary Confinement

Justice Kennedy, in aconcurring opinion in the case Davis v. Ayala, wrote:

“Sentencing judges … devote considerable time and thought to their task. There is no accepted mechanism, however, for them to take into account, when sentencing a defendant, whether the time in prison will or should be served in solitary. So in many cases, it is as if a judge had no choice but to say: ‘In imposing this capital sentence, the court is well aware that during the many years you will serve in prison before your execution, the penal system has a solitary confinement regime that will bring you to the edge of madness, perhaps to madness itself.’ Even if the law were to condone or permit this added punishment, so stark an outcome ought not to be the result of society’s simple unawareness or indifference.” (1)

Ayala, in the case, was sentenced to death for a triple homicide. While concurring, Justice Kennedy  wrote separately on an issue that had,”no direct bearing on the precise legal questions presented” in the case. Based on Ayala’s attorney’s statement that his client had “served the great majority of his more than 25 years in custody in’administrative segregation’ or, as it is better known, solitary confinement,” Justice Kennedy, while acknowledging that solitary confinement of immates may be necessary temporarily in some instances, he concluded that, “the judiciary may be required, within its proper jurisdiction and authority, to determine whether workable alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.”

In 2012, the American Psychiatric Assoication published its Position Statement on Segregation of Prisoners with Mental Illness. (2) The Position Statement concludes that prolonged segregation for prisoners with severe mental illness should be avoided, and that if a prisoner with severe mental illness requires segregation access to out of prison, mental health treatment and unstructured recreation time should be provided.

A 2013 study by O’Keefe, et al., (3) not cited in Kennedy’s concurring opinion, does not agree with Kennedy’s holding, at least in case for segregation of prisoners for one year or less.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Davis v. Ayala 576 U. S. ____ (2015).
2. American Psychiatric Assoication Position Statement on Segregation of Prisoners with Mental Illness.
3. O’Keefe ML, Klebe KJ, Metzner J, Dvoskin J, Fellner J, Stucker A.: A longitudinal
   study of administrative segregation. 41 JAAPL 49-60, 2013.

Further Reading

Metzner & Fellner: Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U. S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics, 38 JAAPL 104–108, 2010