On Jan. 10 — the first day of Texas’ legislative session, at least 72 Texas prisoners began a hunger strike against solitary confinement, which can sometimes last a decade or longer. By last Thursday, more than two weeks later, nine prisoners were still not eating. Also, death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit against Texas over its use of solitary confinement.
We recognize these are not sympathetic people. These are prisoners who have been convicted of terrible offenses, and, in Texas, they are put in solitary if they are escape risks, have committed violent assaults or serious offenses while incarcerated, or are confirmed members of dangerous prison gangs. But how we treat them is a reflection of our values and humanity — and it matters if we are serious about rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.
It’s inhumane to employ solitary confinement in a way that experts say is torture.
Prisons use different words to describe what amounts to locking up inmates and throwing away the key: disciplinary segregation, punitive segregation, administrative segregation, involuntary protective custody and segregated housing units.
Texas, which has some of the harshest solitary confinement practices in the country, calls it “security detention population.” International law and experts describe it as torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading; a violation of human rights. We agree.
The striking Texas prisoners want solitary confinement changed from “status-based” to “behavioral-based,” which would be triggered for serious rules violations, not simply gang membership. They also want firm timelines for people to get out of solitary and new pathways for re-entry into the general prison population.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has downplayed the scope of extended solitary confinement use.
“Security detention accounts for less than 3% of the inmate population within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It is used judiciously,” agency spokesperson Amanda Hernandez told our Editorial Board.
But this affects thousands of prisoners. In November, 3,141 Texas prisoners were held in solitary confinement; more than 500 were there for at least a decade, according to the Texas Tribune.
Former South African leader Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison fighting apartheid, enduring hunger, forced labor, abuse and solitary confinement, said, “I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life.”
“There is no end and no beginning; there is only one’s mind, which can begin to play tricks,” he said. “Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.”
The first of 122 rules of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for Prisoners begins: “All prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings.”
That should be our guide.
For prisoners in American prisons, solitary confinement means living 23 to 24 hours a day in a 6-by-9-foot to 8-by-10-foot cell.
Experts have said the process in Texas prisons for renouncing gangs and entering a pathway back into the general population is flawed and often unattainable.
The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for Prisoners, known as the the Nelson Mandela Rules, defines prolonged solitary confinement — isolation for 23 hours a day for 15 days — as torture.
“There is overwhelming evidence that solitary confinement causes indelible harm and the practice should be prohibited,” concludes a 2020 article by the Prison Policy Initiative.
Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, tweeted on the second day of the protest that “tons of research shows that (people) deteriorate mentally in solitary confinement, and can become suicidal. Imagine letting someone out on the street after years in that setting with no human contact (because most of these people ARE getting out of prison someday).”
This speaks to the concerns about failing to rehabilitate people. Just what are we accomplishing if we resort to practices that damage people before they are released to the public?
In prison, where gangs and violence are the norm, ensuring safety and security is a challenge and a concern, but that does not justify resorting to torture. Texas should study New York’s new HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long Term solitary confinement) Act, which bars isolation for more than 15 consecutive days.
Hernandez told us the TDCJ “has made great strides in reducing the security detention population in recent years” and noted a 65% decrease in “security detention population” since 2007, when there were 9,186 inmates in solitary.
But if the practice is inhumane, then it shouldn’t be used.
San Antonio Express-News
