New Report Details Solitary Decline

Ninety six people incarcerated in Connecticut spent at least 15 consecutive days in solitary confinement last summer, according to a newly released report by Yale Law School researchers and a national prison directors association.

That marks an overall decline in solitary confinement in recent years not just in the state, but across the country. It also comes on the heels of a new Connecticut law taking effect that further limits the amount of time an incarcerated person can spend in isolation.

The Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School jointly released that updated Time-In-Cell report on Wednesday afternoon.

The 195-page report provides a snapshot of the number of people who spent over two consecutive weeks in solitary confinement at a given time across the country, based on data reported by 35 different states’ correction departments in July 2021. 

Overall, the Time-In-Cell report traces a national decline in solitary confinement (also known as restrictive housing), counting the number of individuals in each state who spent an average of 22 hours a day in isolation for 15 or more consecutive days. 

Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale and one of the report’s five co-authors, attributed the national decline to a growing public awareness of the negative psychological ramifications of solitary confinement, and a consequential rise in state laws restricting solitary confinement. 

“There’s growing national consensus that instead of being a solution to a problem, solitary confinement is a problem,” Resnik said.

The report itself strikes an optimistic note about the overall declining trend in the use of solitary confinement nationwide. ​“In light of the numbers and practices reported and ongoing reforms by correctional agencies and legislatures,” the report reads, ​“reducing or ending the use of restrictive housing has become an attainable goal.”

In response to the report, Director of External Affairs at the Department of Corrections Ashley McCarthy told the Independent in a Wednesday afternoon phone interview that, since December 2021, ​“there has been no prolonged isolated confinement for more than 15 consecutive days” in the state. 

Click here and here to read the newly released CLA-Liman 2021 report in full.

Across the country, the number of people in conditions that meet this definition of solitary confinement decreased from 27,697 in 2015 (4.6 percent of the incarcerated population at the time) to 13,371 in 2021 (2.9 percent of the incarcerated population). 

In Connecticut, the number of people in solitary confinement between 2019 and 2021 decreased only slightly in recent years. 

In 2019, 106 individuals — 0.8 percent of the prison population — matched the report’s definition of restrictive housing at the time of CLA-Liman’s inquiry, compared to 96 individuals, or 1.1 percent of the prison population, in 2021. 

Connecticut reported that no one had been placed in solitary confinement due to a Covid-19 exposure at the July 2021 moment that the report assessed.

Connecticut reported that 30 individuals were in restrictive housing in July 2021 for ​“administrative” reasons, 55 for ​“safety,” and 11 for ​“punishment.”

At the time, 24 individuals in the state were in solitary for one to three years; three individuals had spent between three and six years in solitary; one had spent between six and 10 years in solitary; and one had spent over 10 years in solitary.

According to the DOC’s McCarthy, state prisons include two different types of so-called ​“restrictive housing”: ​“restrictive status units,” which is when someone who is a danger to themselves or others is placed in solitary confinement, and ​“restrictive status programming,” which is for people who are gang-affiliated or have long histories of violence.

Mike Lawlor — a former co-chair of the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee and former state undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning who currently works teaches about criminal justice at the University of New Haven — explained that the potentially extreme psychological effects of solitary confinement increase the likelihood of recidivism after people leave prison. 

“People were being released from prison directly from solitary confinement, where in some cases they had been there for years,” Lawlor said. ​“If anything, taking somebody from basically sensory deprivation to the street is a bad idea. You shouldn’t be surprised that bad outcomes will ensue.”

“As a general rule, in developed countries where solitary is almost unheard of, they have a lot fewer incidents in their facilities,” he continued. ​“If we can get to the point where we have a totally different culture in our correctional facilities, it’s going to be a lot safer for the people who work there, the people who live there, and there’s going to be less crime.”

Lawlor argued that ​“it is still necessary to keep some people in a status that is equivalent to solitary,” including for people who need protection and who have shown signs of suicidality, particularly after Connecticut closed its ​“supermax” high-security prison last year.

The Time-In-Cell report arrives one month after a new state law known as the PROTECT Act came into effect on July 1, 2022. The law prevents carceral institutions in Connecticut from sending people to solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days or more than 30 days total within a 60 day period. 

State Sen. Gary Winfield, who led the effort to pass the PROTECT Act through roadblocks that included, at one point, the governor’s veto, said that while many criminal justice advocates in the state are calling for the abolition of solitary confinement practices altogether, ​“that is a much, much more difficult conversation to have” with other legislators and correctional leaders. 

“We’ve struggled with trying to maintain an environment where the corrections officers are as safe as possible, while also respecting the fact that clearly part of the reason we [place people in solitary confinement] is not necessarily linked to safety but to habit,” Winfield said. He said that the new limits on the use of restrictive housing will ​“reduce harm.”

In addition to restricting the number of days an incarcerated person can spend in solitary, the law entitles incarcerated people to four hours per day outside of their cell as of July, with exceptions for emergencies, lockdowns, and medical treatment. Eventually, by April 2023, that mandated out-of-cell time will increase to five hours per day.

The law also requires prisons to report more detailed information annually about the demographics of people in solitary confinement and the reasons for their isolation.