In a phone call with Solitary Watch, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Terry Thornton confirmed that Gomez had been placed in solitary confinement in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) pending investigation of assault on another inmate with a weapon on January 14, 2012. Thornton would not confirm the status of this investigation. Gomez was serving a life sentence for first degree murder and attempted murder.

Christian Gomez had not told his family members of his intentions to participate in the January 27-February 13 hunger strike held by ASU inmates in protest of their conditions. According to an interview with Gomez’s sister, Y.L., she “found out when the coroner Tom [Edmonds] implied that there was a possibility of a chemical imbalance due to a hunger strike he was participating in. That’s the first I heard of this. Back in [September or October] when he first was transferred there he did tell me that they were having a hunger strike to fight for their rights but he was in general population.”

Contrary to earlier reports that he had only been on a hunger strike for four days when he died, Terry Thornton confirmed to Solitary Watch that Gomez joined the strike on January 27 with 31 other inmates. This means that he had been on hunger strike for a week at the time of his death.

The family says that Gomez had high blood pressure, thyroid and kidney problems.  According to Y.L., before being sent to Corcoran he had been incarcerated at High Desert State Prison for four years. “He told me things were a lot different at this prison and that he didn’t receive the same medical attention he received over at high desert,” said Y.L.

Gomez was found unresponsive in his cell at an unconfirmed time on February 2. Reports from other inmates indicate that they had pounded on their cell doors and screamed to get the attention of the correctional officers. He was declared dead at Corcoran District Hospital at 12:22 PM.

According to Y.L., “My mother received the call of my brother’s death on Thursday February 2, 2012 at approximately  1pm. She then called me hysterically and that’s when I went over to her house. When I got there I asked her who called and she said someone from the prison. [I] asked her if they gave her a number were we could call to obtain more info and she said no. They told her that she would receive a letter in the mail explaining everything and where we could claim the body… I was so upset that things were being handled this way, for God sake we were talking about a human being not an animal.”

Asked how she would like people to remember her brother, Y.L. responded,”he was a genuine person that had not lost hope in the system. He knew that he would eventually get out. Although he had made bad choices in who he hung around with he didn’t murder anyone. The witnesses in his case never identified him on the contrary, but yet he was still convicted. Unfortunately we couldn’t afford a good attorney and he got screwed. He was very caring with his family and friends and therefore he will be greatly missed by those who knew him. He had matured a lot in prison and can be remembered by those who knew him as a prankster. There was never a dull moment with him. He always had a big smile when we visited him and never discussed how bad things were in there to not worry us. He always said he was fine. Even in the last letter he wrote on Jan 30th which my mom received on Feb 3rd he wrote that he was fine.”

Photos courtesy of the family of Christian Gomez

Tamms holds more than 200 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement in conditions that have been denounced as torturous. Prisoners at Tamms spend at least 23 hours a day locked down in small cells, leaving them only to shower or to exercise alone in a concrete pen. They are fed through slots in their cell doors, and are allowed no communal activities, no phone calls, and no contact visits.

As in most supermax prisons, a high percentage of prisoners at Tamms suffer from serious mental illness, and for them the torment is even worse. In its 14-year history, Tamms has witnessed inmate suicides, suicide attempts, and self-mutilations.

When it opened in 1998, Tamms was purported to be a short-term solution for prisoners with disciplinary problems. Yet ten years later, a third of the original prisoners were still there, held in solitary for more than a decade.

In addition to its human costs, incarcerating prisoners at Tamms is also extraordinarily expensive: According to one calculation, the cost of keeping an inmate in the supermax exceeds $92,000 per year–two to three times the cost of the state’s other maximum security prisons.

With Illinois several years into a serious fiscal crisis, the immediate impetus for the proposed closure of Tamms is clearly financial. But years of activism and litigation, along with  scathing press exposes, undoubtedly helped sway the state to put Tamms on the chopping block.

Grassroots advocacy, spearheaded by the group Tamms Year Ten, began in earnest in 2008, on the tenth anniversary of Tamms’ opening. In addition to mounting various educational and organizing efforts, the Tamms Year Ten campaign exerted pressure on state legislators, the governor, and the Illinois Department of Corrections–which in 2009 announced a “ten-point plan” for reforming the supermax. Subsequently, however, the head of the IDOC was pushed out, and most of the reforms were never implemented.

The movement gained traction, nonetheless, as a result of a series of investigations by reporters at the Belleville News-Democrat, which released its series “Trapped in Tamms” in August 2009. The series portrayed a nightmarish place where sane prisoners were driven mad, and where those with underlying mental illness suffered daily as a result of their extreme isolation.

In 2010, following a ten-year legal battle by Chicago’s Uptown People’s Law Center, a federal judge ruled that inmates at Tamms were being denied their Constitutional rights by being placed in long-term solitary without any semblance of due process. The same judge found that the “crushing monotony” and total deprivation of human contact were likely to “inflict lasting psychological damage and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods.”

Alan Mills of the Uptown People’s Law Center told Solitary Watch that in combination with the pressure from advocates, the legal case “gave the imprimatur of a federal judge to our long-time contention that long term isolation at Tamms inflicts serious harm on men’s minds—harm that continues even after they are released from Tamms.” In addition, said Mills, ”by finally requiring the Department [of Corrections] to provide meaningful due process hearings to determine why each man was at Tamms” it forced the DOC to realize ”that many of the prisoners who had spent years there, really didn’t need to be there. They transferred over 25 men out of Tamms as a result of this review process. I am guessing that during these reviews the Department began to seriously question what the real criteria should be for placement at Tamms—and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.” Finally, “All of this was crystallized by the desperate need to save money somewhere.”

Prisoner advocates were today affirming Quinn’s decision to promote the closure of Tamms, calling it “long overdue.” Tamms Year Ten leader Laurie Jo Reynolds told the Belleville News Democrat: “From the day it opened, Tamms has been a financial boondoggle and a human rights catastrophe. The staff to prisoner ratio is the highest in the system and the mental health worker to prisoner ratio is vastly higher…Because men can’t work or leave the cell, we just pay for excess correctional staff to shackle them, move them around, and push food into their cells. Then we pay to treat them when they become insane due to the isolation.”

But they also warned that the closure of Tamms is far from accomplished, and will face resistance from a number of directions–including not only corrections officials and unions and Republican legislators, but also Democrats from the southern tip of the state where Tamms is located. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The rumored Tamms closure was drawing heavy criticism from Southern Illinois legislators throughout the day Tuesday. The criticism was directed at Quinn, a Chicagoan. ‘I’m mad as hell. I don’t know where this guy is coming from,’ state Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, wrote in a Twitter feed.”

Advocates urged backers of the Tamms closure to immediately contact the governor’s office to state their support for the plan.

Protestors outside the LA County Jail

Solitary confinement was very much on the agenda during yesterday’s “Occupy for Prisoners”protests at more than a dozen sites around the country. This was particularly true in California, where recent prisoner hunger strikes have called attention to conditons in the state’s all-solitary Security Housing Units (SHUs) and Administrative Segregation Units (ASUs).

The largest rally was staged at the east gate of San Quentin, north of San Francisco, which is the state’s oldest prison and the home of its death row. At least 700 people gathered there on Monday afternoon for a peaceful demonstration. As the Guardian reports:

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California’s Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights…

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandela described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.

“In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary,” Fattal added.

Bauer said “a prisoner’s greatest fear is being forgotten.” He described how hunger strikes became the hikers’ own “greatest weapon” in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that “this movement, this Occupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons.”…

Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called “three strikes, you’re out” laws.

Ironically–but perhaps predictably–prison officials responded to news of the impending protest by increasing restrictions on prisoners. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “San Quentin was placed on lockdown, meaning prisoners were kept in their cells,  in anticipation of the protest.”

While the rally was taking place at San Quentin, another group of about 100 advocates was demonstrating in front of the Los Angeles County Jail. Members of the National Religious Campaign Against  Torture (NRCAT), ACLU of Southern California, and California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement were there “to protest  long-term solitary confinement in American prisons, show support for  prisoners, and advocate for legislation that would limit the use of  solitary confinement,” according to a statement from NRCAT.

One attendee, NRCAT board member Virginia Classick, said that the event was “an opportunity to be in solidarity with family members” inside California’s prisons and jails, and to be “visible as part of the witness” to a practice that the religious coalition considers a form of torture. The group’s executive director, Rev. Richard Killmer, stated: “Long-term solitary confinement denigrates a person’s inherent dignity and hinders genuine rehabilitation.  As people of faith, we have been deeply concerned about prison conditions in California that led to the recent prisoner hunger strikes.”

Isolated tension so thick you can see it, feel it when you walk into our section, or hear it if you stop and pay attention.

Intense anger and open fury evoked by constant frustration. Hidden cries and silent tears from hopes of false delusions.

Shattered dreams and broken promises from Men who played against reality, or some just out here on some type of adversity.

Still, the outcome is the same, a cell designed for my undeclared torture, for an inconceivable amount of time intended deep within the future.

Forty-six hours in a single cell with the very minimal needs given, while my sanity and well-being is constantly in a struggle of being taken.

Suffering from the hands of time that seem to never turn, while anticipating some type of unfulfilling yearn.

Sentenced to this heinous life like a chaotic scream! Stranded in a prison within a prison, designed with immorality.

Officially, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has given varying accounts about the hunger strike. CDCR Spokesperson Terry Thornton, in an email to Solitary Watch, stated that the hunger strike officially began on January 27 and that on Thursday, February 9, “all inmates in the ASU except one resumed eating state-issued food.” This was followed up by Nancy Kincaid, Director of Communications with California Correctional Health Care Services, who stated to Solitary Watch that “all accepted food trays last Thursday [February 9].”

This information has been contradicted by a relative of one hunger striker, who told Solitary Watch that the strike was still ongoing on February 10th, when at least two inmates fainted and had to receive medical attention. Medical problems seemed to have plagued many strikers, as noted in a letter to activist Kendra Castaneda dated February 5, in which one of the strikers writes that “inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously.” The relative reported that the striker appeared to have lost a significant amount of weight during a recent visit, and that he had been very dizzy during the visit.

The striker, who had only recently been placed in the ASU for an indeterminate amount of time, reportedly knew Christian Gomez and described the day of his death. He told his relative that several inmates were screaming and pounding their fists on their cell doors trying to get the attention of the correctional officers. His knuckles were noticeably battered during the visit. CDCR officials continue to assert that autopsy results show Gomez did not die of starvation, although the cause of death has not been made public.

Affirming the statements of one of the December ASU strike petitioners, who asserted that the strike “has no ending date unless some or all demands are met,” the striker hinted that there will be future strikes if the CDCR doesn’t reform conditions in the ASU at Corcoran. It is currently unclear why the hunger strike ended when it did. A January 31st letter from one of the petitioners indicated that prison officials may have entered into talks with the strikers, but this remains unconfirmed.

Currently, there are over 350 inmates in the ASU at Corcoran. According to a 2009 Office of the Inspector General report, there are over 8,000 administrative segregation beds in CA. The report examined a number of ASUs, not including Corcoran, but indicated that several ASUs involved unjustifiably delayed classification hearings, holding inmates with expired SHU terms, and transfer delays. Such issues were noted by the Corcoran petition in December. The prisoners third demand is “That inmates not be further punished upon completion of their SHU terms,” and reads in part:

Inmates are being placed in the ASU after the completion of their SHU terms supposedly “pending transfer.” These inmates are then stuck here for four, five months, in many instances even longer, before finally being transferred to general population. This practice of illegally placing inmates in ASU upon the completion of their SHU terms for long periods of time without proper procedure and with excessive delays on their transfers is resulting in unjustified punishment for these inmates.

Furthermore, inmates undergoing the DRB (Departmental Review Board) process after the completion of their SHU terms are being held in ASU for months and even years while the counselors and committee ignore their repeated requests for a timely hearing on their case. This is in blatant violation of their procedural due process rights.

Time will tell whether or not reform of such practices comes at Corcoran any time soon. However, KALW News reported on February 15 that “Thornton said revisions to its policies regarding security threat group management and changes to the gang validation process is nearly complete. [She] anticipates the revision will go out for legislators and inmate advocacy groups to review near the end of this month.”

For more on the potential reforms, read this January Solitary Watch post on the matter. Solitary Watch will continue to publish updates on the Corcoran hunger strike as information becomes available.

News of a death in Corcoran State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit is emerging as an underreported hunger strike in the prison’s ASU comes to a close. Inmates in the ASU are held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. Many have been in isolation for years and even decades.

California State Prison, Corcoran, which houses over 1400 in Security Housing Units and an additional 350 in ASUs, has been the site of two waves of hunger strikes since late December 2011. Unlike the highly publicized hunger strikes last year that originated in Pelican Bay State Prison’s SHU, the Corcoran strikes have remained relatively small and have received little press attention.

On December 19, 2011, three inmates at Corcoran announced a hunger strike protesting the conditions of the ASU. They listed eleven demands  ranging from educational and rehabilitative programming to timely medical care. According to California Department of Corrections spokesperson Terry Thornton:

On Dec. 28, 59 inmates housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit at Corcoran State Prison refused their state-issued meals. On Dec. 29, that number dropped to 54. On Dec. 30, 49 inmates refused state-issued meals. By Dec. 31, all inmates resumed eating state-issued food.

According to Pyung Hwa Ryoo, one of the main petitioners of the December 2011 hunger strike:

Three days after the strike began, prison officials came to the ASU and let the strikers know that the petition, and demands of the strike, would be granted. They requested three weeks to make the changes happen; and to give them the benefit of the doubt, the request was granted and the strike was put on hold.

It has been a little more than 2 weeks since the strike stopped. So far, there has been some improvements in this ASU, but the majority of the promised changes have not yet occurred.

According to a letter from strike petitioner Juan Jaimes dated January 31st:

…this hunger strike commenced on December 28, 2011 and it has no ending date unless some or all demands are met…

He also indicated (as confirmed by CDCR’s inmate locator) that he was transferred from Corcoran to Kern Valley State Prison. Though unconfirmed, he has also indicated that the two other strike petitioners were also transferred away from each other.

There is conflicting information suggesting that some inmates continued to strike during the period between the “official” strikes. The following, however, has been confirmed by Thornton:

 On Jan. 27, 32 inmates in Corcoran State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) refused to eat breakfast and started a hunger strike. As of Feb. 9, all inmates in the ASU except one resumed eating state-issued food.

In an email to Solitary Watch from Nancy Kincaid, Director of Communications for California Correctional Health Care Services, stated that all strikers resumed eating February 9th.

A letter to California activist Kendra Castaneda from a Corcoran ASU striker, however, indicated that “on or about Feb 2^nd or 3^rd 2012 an inmate has passed away due to not eating.”

While the cause of death and its possible relationship to the hunger strike remains unconfirmed, Thornton responded to questions from Solitary Watch with an apparent affirmation that an inmate death had taken place, and the statement: ”I do not know the results of the autopsy.”

In response to a phone call, Tom Edmonds, Chief Deputy Coroner in Kings County confirmed that inmate Christian Gomez died on February 2nd at Corcoran, but also did not share the cause of death.

Solitary Watch will provide updates as information becomes available.

More information can be found on the blog maintained by Teresa Shoats at http://russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com/. Solitary Watch reporter and videographer Valeria Monfrini talked with Teresa Shoats last fall.

A Columbia-based advocacy group that sued South Carolina’s prisons agency over the care of mentally ill inmates is finally getting its day in court. Circuit Court Judge Michael Baxley is expected to begin hearing arguments Monday in the case that accuses the Corrections Department of subjecting mentally ill inmates to cruel and unusual punishment.

Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities sued the agency in 2005, saying that mentally ill inmates were severely punished for disciplinary infractions and were not given enough access to psychiatric care.

The advocacy group sued along with four mentally ill South Carolina inmates. One man, according to court papers, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and “believes that at night, while he is sleeping, doctors come into his cell and perform surgery on him.” Instead of being placed at the prison system’s sole psychiatric hospital, attorneys for the group wrote, the man “has lived for most of the last sixteen years in an SCDC lock-up unit,” where he is kept alone in a cell nearly 24 hours a day and sees a counselor only once a month.

Protection and Advocacy said it sued on behalf of all of South Carolina’s mentally ill inmates, a number the group estimated is as many as 4,400, or about 19 percent of the state’s inmate population. Those inmates, according to the group, spend an inordinate amount of time in solitary confinement when compared to other inmates. Studying disciplinary records for 110 mentally ill inmates, the group said nearly all of them — 98 percent — spent more than a year in solitary confinement, while 20 percent were in solitary for more than five years.

Attorneys for the South Carolina Corrections Department, according to the AP,  have argued that ”all new inmates are screened for mental health issues within 30 days of arriving at the state’s prisons,” and “denied that mentally ill inmates were punished any differently than other prisoners. Even when in solitary confinement, the agency’s attorneys wrote, inmates receive visits from mental health specialists.”

Read the full article here.

According to the article, “A 2010 University of Michigan study found that more than 20% of the state’s prisoners — about 10,000 inmates out of a population of 45,000 — had severe mental disabilities. The same study found that 65% of those with severe mental disabilities had received no treatment in the previous 12 months.”

Many of these prisoners end up among the thousand or so held in administrative segregation in Michigan. “MDOC administrators acknowledge that the percentage of mentally ill inmates in segregation is probably higher than in the overall population. Prisoners in segregation are handcuffed when they leave their cells, eat off serving trays pushed through the slots of steel doors, and generally lack the few privileges extended to those in general population, such as telephone calls, contact visits and television. Some stay in segregation for months, even years.”

Gerritt leads with the story of one young prisoner whose symptoms of untreated mental illness landed him in solitary, and eventually shackled to his bed.

On Jan. 10 of last year, corrections officers at Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility found 19-yearold Kevin DeMott banging his head against a blood-stained cell wall.

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 11, inmate No. 608233 had languished in solitary for four months, sometimes without the psychotropic medication his psychiatrist prescribed. Normally 5-foot-10 and 171 pounds, he had lost 25 pounds.

Officers ordered DeMott to stop banging his head, but he continued.

After DeMott told officers who tried to restrain him that they would have to kill him, he was hit twice with pepper spray, then manacled in belly chains and leg irons, according to a critical incident report. Soon after, prison authorities charged him with disobeying a direct order, resulting in 30 days’ loss of privileges.

Too often, the Department of Corrections punishes instead of treats mental illness. Michigan’s 32 prisons hold thousands of mentally ill inmates, including as many as 200 isolated in segregation cells, where they are locked up for 23 hours a day, or longer, unable to participate in treatment programs, and sometimes cut off from the medications prescribed to help manage their illnesses.

It’s an insidious cycle: Mentally ill inmates act out and exhibit unstable or destructive behavior. Prison officials respond by further restricting their movements and their opportunities to get treatment.

Privately, MDOC officials acknowledge that many mentally ill inmates don’t belong in prison, where security demands trump treatment needs. Over the last two decades, however, Michigan has slashed spending on in-patient treatment, leaving courts with few options but to send mentally ill offenders to jail or prison.

“We don’t control who comes to us,” said Russ Marlan, administrator of MDOC’s executive bureau.

Read the full story, complete with chilling photographs, here.

A widely accepted 2005 study found that some 25,000 prisoners were being held in supermax prisons around the country. And in the last year, that figure seems to dominate in the mainstream press. The Washington Post, in a recent front-page article on solitary confinement in Virginia, noted that “44 states…use solitary confinement,” and cited an “estimated 25,000 people in solitary in the nation’s state and federal prisons.” The problem here is that the 25,000 figure (as well as the 44) applies to supermax prisons only. It does not claim to account for the tens of thousands of additional prisoners held in the Secure Housing Units, Restricted Housing Units, Special Management Units and other isolation cells in prisons and jails around the country. Yet it is being cited as a total for the nation’s overall use of solitary confinement.

An alternative figure does, however, exist–and while it may not be perfect, we believe it more accurately reflects the total number of prisoners held in isolated confinement on any given day. A census of state and federal prisoners is conducted every five years by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. The most recent census for which data are available is 2005. It found 81,622 inmates were being held in “restricted housing.” This number was recently cited by the Vera Institute of Justice‘s Segregation Reduction Project. The 80,000 figure has also been used by National Geographic and The New Yorker, among others.

An earlier version of this number, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s 2000 census, was cited by the widely respected Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, convened by Vera. The Commission further broke the figure down to show types of ”restricted housing.” In 2000, the BJS found 80,870 inmates in some form of segregation, including 36,499 in administrative segregation, 33,586 in disciplinary segregation, and 10,765 in protective custody. The Commission noted that the 2000 figures represented a 40 percent increase over 1995, when 57,591 inmates were in segregation. During the same period of time, the overall prison population grew by 28 percent. (See page 56 of the Commission’s 2006 report, Confronting Confinement).

The census uses the term “restricted housing,” which clearly includes segregation units outside of supermax prisons. Since it captures where prisoners are housed on a given day (June 30, 2005), it is meant to include both long-term or indefinite isolation (years or decades) as well as shorter stints in solitary (weeks or months). It may include a small number of prisoners who are held in 23-hour lockdown in double cells, a practice popular in some states. (For this reason, some advocates prefer the term “isolated confinement” to “solitary confinement”). The number  is based on self-reporting by wardens and state corrections departments, so it may reflect some errors and inconsistencies. But prison officials are not, as a rule, known for their tendency to overrreport the number of inmates they hold in solitary.

It is also worth noting that the census figures do not include prisoners in solitary confinement in juvenile facilities, immigrant detention centers, or local jails; if they did they would certainly be higher. We know that New York’s jails alone contain 990 isolation cells, according to the New York City Department of Corrections.

A survey of available data from a handful of states also suggest that the 80,000 figure is likely low, rather than high. Just eight states and the federal government hold some 44,000 prisoners in isolated confinement.

• In 2010, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told CNN that there were about 11,150 federal inmates being held in “special housing.” ADX Florence holds approximately 400 of these inmates in ultra-isolation.
• In California in 2011, Scott Kernan, Undersecretary of Operations of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, testified before the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee that approximately 3,000 inmates were held in California’s Security Housing Units, including over 1,100 at the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU alone. A 2009 report from California’s Inspector General found 8,878 inmates in Administrative Segregation Units. This means that, all told, there are close to 11,000 prisoners in solitary confinement in California.
• As reported by the Houston Chronicle based on figures from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in 2011 there were over 5,205 inmates in long-term isolation in administrative segregation, and approximately 4,000 more serving shorter terms in solitary for disciplinary violations–for a total of more than 9,000.
• According to a 2003 report by the Correctional Association, New York state had approximately 5,000 inmates in disciplinary lockdown in 2003.
• At the end of 2011, Pennyslvania Department of Corrections reported that 2,406 inmates were held in segregation in the state’s Restrictive Housing Units.
• A 2011 study carried out in Colorado by independent researchers funded by the National Institute of Corrections found that nearly 1,500 inmates, or 7% of the prison population, were in administrative segregation and a further 670 in disciplinary segregation–for a total of more than 2,100.
• In Virginia, according to a 2012 article in the Washington Post, there were 1,800 inmates in solitary confinement, 500 of whom are held at the supermax Red Onion State Prison.
• A 2007 report by the American Friends Service Committee found 1,623 inmates held in isolation in Arizona’s SHUs.
• In a 2008 report to the state legislature, the Michigan Department of Corrections said that that the daily average number of inmates held in administrative segregation in FY 2007-08 was 1,294.

In our opinion, the most accurate possible description of how many prisoners are solitary confinement in the United States would go something like this: “Based on available data, there are at least 80,000 prisoners in isolated confinement on any given day in America’s prisons and jails, including some 25,000 in long-term solitary in supermax prisons.”

Research for this article was provided by Sal Rodriguez.