President speaks out about devastating effects of solitary confinement
The movement to end kids being shut up in solitary confinement continues to pick up steam. As well it should.
This practice puts young people under 18 in tiny cells for 22 hours, even more, a day. They have little or no interaction with others. They often are given nothing to read or do. Too little food. They are at the mercy of guards who have no mercy. They sit there, by themselves, taking a heavy toll on their emotional well-being. Many contemplate suicide. Few come out unscathed.
And now POTUS is on board with putting an end to this practice.
President Obama announced that he is banning solitary confinement of juveniles in federal prisons. In a Washington Post op-ed piece, he wrote, "It has been linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others and the potential for violent behavior." He added, "Some studies indicate that it can worsen existing mental illnesses and even trigger new ones. Prisoners in solitary are more likely to commit suicide, especially juveniles and people with mental illnesses."
Locked up—often in solitary—for three years with no trial
The president cited the “heartbreaking” case of Kalief Browder, about whom Jennifer Gonnerman wrote in The New Yorker. Kalief was a young man arrested for taking a backpack, a crime he maintained he didn’t commit. Because he was lost in an overburdened Bronx court system, the 17-year-old spent the next three years on Rikers Island as his case was postponed, postponed and postponed many more times. He refused to take deals that entailed him pleading guilty, even to lesser charges. And while he was in Rikers, he spent a lot of time in solitary. Gonnerman wrote, “No matter how hard he tries, he cannot forget what he saw: inmates stealing from each other, officers attacking teens, blood on the dayroom floor. ‘Before I went to jail, I didn’t know about a lot of stuff, and, now that I’m aware, I’m paranoid,’ he says. ‘I feel like I was robbed of my happiness.’”
Kalief tried to commit suicide in jail. He tried at home after he was finally released. Just when he seemed to have gotten it together—becoming something of a celebrity after Gonnerman’s article ran, meeting Jay Z and Rosie McDonnell—he finally succeeded in taking his life.
The abusive treatment of juveniles at Rikers was condemned in a 2014 federal report on conditions there. The civil rights of young men were being violated, it was found, and their safety was in jeopardy because they were not given adequate protection.
More states ending solitary for youths
By May 2015, Illinois became the 20th state to ban solitary confinement in juvenile-detention facilities. California State Sen. Mark Leno is introducing a bill, “Stop the Torture of Children Act,” that would cut back on sticking kids in solitary in that state’s correctional facilities. In New York, Gov. Mario Cuomo promised an overhaul of solitary confinement. New York City announced a ban on the practice for youths 21 and younger that was supposed to go into effect at the beginning of this month. Ohio plans to completely eliminate this practice that N.J. Sen. Cory Booker characterizes as not “in keeping with the ideals of our country.”
This progress is heartening, but there is still a long way to go.
To start with, we should keep more kids out of the system and use evidence-based models that are community based. Models like MST, FFT and others. To learn more about such programs, consider attending the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development Conference in Denver this April. And Register for the MST pre-conference on April 11. Find more information here.
