JDI Applauds President Obama’s Key Reforms to Solitary Confinement
- January 26, 2016
Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., January 26, 2016 — Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced a series of executive actions to curb solitary confinement, a harmful and overused practice that has had severe consequences for prisoner rape survivors. The new measures, which apply to facilities run by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), include many reforms supported by Just Detention International. The President’s action prohibits solitary confinement of youth; it also spells out steps to keep vulnerable prisoners, such as LGBT people and people with a mental illness, safe without isolating them.
“Solitary confinement is devastating, especially to people who have just been assaulted. The President’s announcement is a big step forward, as it will make it less likely that inmates who have been raped are subjected to further trauma by being placed in isolation,” said Lovisa Stannow, JDI’s Executive Director. “JDI looks forward to working with BOP on making sure that these new guidelines live up to their potential.”
Historically, many corrections facilities have routinely placed prisoner rape survivors — or anyone perceived to be vulnerable — in solitary confinement, ostensibly to keep them safe from additional attacks. Rather than protecting them from further harm, this reliance on solitary confinement puts rape survivors at even greater risk for emotional distress. Even worse, JDI regularly hears from prisoners who are held in segregation as punishment for reporting sexual abuse. As one survivor in a Texas prison put it, “I am in lock-up or segregation or whatever it is called. I’m being told I will spend over 100 days here before I’m transferred. You would think that I attacked someone from the way they are treating me.”
The overuse of solitary confinement has a chilling effect on the reporting of sexual abuse. A 2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that, among former state prisoners who reported being sexually abused by staff, a staggering 41 percent were placed in solitary confinement. “Far too often, solitary is used by staff as a tool to keep rape survivors quiet,” said Stannow. “Understandably, many survivors prefer to stay silent rather than face the prospect of weeks, if not months, in the hole. President Obama’s new regulations present an opportunity to stop punitive solitary confinement in federal prisons, and should provide a model for state systems as well.”
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Just Detention International is a health and human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention