(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — As Illinois legislators weigh a proposal to curb the use of solitary confinement in prison, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Restore Justice, and Uptown People’s Law Center have released a report titled “Ending Long-Term Solitary Confinement in Illinois.”
The report describes solitary confinement as a road to nowhere. Chris Bridges, with the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, said they would like to see the state end its use of solitary confinement and restrictive housing.
“It’s a more archaic way of thinking that there’s a way to punish people and separate them in order to increase safety within prisons or among the general population of folks who are incarcerated, and that’s not true,” he said.
The Illinois General Assembly is considering the Nelson Mandela Act, which would restrict solitary confinement by prohibiting prisons from holding someone in solitary for more than 20 hours per day for more than 10 days.
“There is actually no peer-reviewed research or data that we know of to suggest that solitary confinement or restrictive housing actually improves the safety of prisons,” he said. “In fact, we’ve quite seen the opposite. There have been several states that are showing that refusing solitary confinement and restrictive housing actually improves the safety, overall, of staff and other prisoners.”
The report said, among other things, that solitary confinement can lead to mental illness, suicide, violence and can cost taxpayers far more than incarceration in the general prison population.
Bridges said he’d like to see the state get “up to speed with the United Nations’ view of what torture is.”
“The United Nations ruled in 2013 that having even more than 15 days in solitary confinement was a form of torture,” Bridges said.
There are currently about 1,100 people in solitary confinement in Illinois prisons.
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