On Monday, President Obama announced a new plan for criminal justice reform regarding the practice of solitary confinement. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, he laid out a series of executive actions he is taking and why he feels strongly about this issue.
Last summer, President Obama directed Attorney General Loretta Lynch to investigate the overuse of solitary confinement in federal prisons. The Justice Department has now completed its review and published its recommendations in a report delivered by the White House on Monday. The president plans to put those recommendations into effect in federal prisons and hopes that states will follow suit.
Solitary confinement is immensely damaging to humans both psychologically and socially. As social animals, humans require regular contact with other humans in order to function normally—which is precisely why solitary confinement is such an effective punishment. As the Department of Justice found, excessive solitary confinement can increase acts of violence in prisons, worsen existing mental disorders, and cause new mental illnesses to develop. As President Obama so eloquently put it, “How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn’t make us safer. It’s an affront to our common humanity.”
There are currently about 100,000 people in solitary confinement in the U.S., but President Obama’s plan will only affect the 10,000 who are in federal prisons. The new changes will be a dramatic step forward, however: the president wrote in his op-ed that he plans on “banning solitary confinement for juveniles and as a response to low-level infractions, expanding treatment for the mentally ill and increasing the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells.”
Of the changes being made, the most widely reported on is the banning of solitary confinement for children under the age of 18. This is an incredibly important step because solitary confinement can cause serious psychological damage in all people, but especially in an adolescent brain that is still continuing to develop. President Obama supported this decision in his op-ed with the story of Kalief Browder, a teenager who was wrongfully held in solitary confinement for nearly two years and later committed suicide.
Despite their lack of media coverage, the other aspects of the president’s plan are also very important. According to the ACLU, “Transgendered prisoners, those with physical disabilities, and other vulnerable people won’t find themselves in solitary for no other reason than ‘their own protection’ from other prisoners; instead special units for vulnerable prisoners will be created.” This is critical; while it may be necessary to isolate prisoners for their own safety at times, prisons shouldn’t punish inmates who are already disadvantaged and especially those who have done nothing wrong. Creating special units will protect not only vulnerable prisoners’ physical health and safety, but also their mental health by keeping them out of solitary.
Additionally, prisoners with mental health issues that need treatment will no longer be sent to solitary. This is perhaps the most important aspect of this plan. Solitary confinement frequently exacerbates mental illnesses and leads to self-harm and suicidal behaviors. Barack Obama, in his op-ed, committed to not only keeping mentally ill individuals out of solitary, but also to expanding mental health care in federal prisons. This will substantially benefit the many inmates who struggle with mental illnesses and with finding adequate mental health care.
According to this new plan, nonviolent infractions by prisoners will no longer be punishable by solitary confinement. The issue of minor rule breaking being punished by solitary is huge in the U.S. For example, Chelsea Manning, a transgender soldier serving a 35-year military prison sentence for leaking government secrets, was recently threatened with indefinite solitary confinement for simply having the Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair issue and an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell. The president’s new plan will prevent such minor nonviolent offenses from being punished so severely.
President Obama’s recent executive actions on criminal justice reform are very encouraging for those who support the rights of prisoners. His plan is well researched, thorough, and bound to succeed in protecting the most marginalized among us: youth, disabled, and LGBT prisoners. Once again the president has stood up for the rights of the least privileged among those living in the United States.
