Is Solitary Confinement Racist?

A solitary confinement cell at New York City's Rikers Island jail. | AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File

BY DARLA MAESTAS

The use of solitary confinement has been a topic of debate amongst those living in the United States but is
still one of the most common forms of administrative punishment. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
more than 80,000 men, women, and children are in solitary confinement in prisons across the United States.
Although their study was conducted over a decade ago, according to the Association of State Correctional
Administrators/Yale Law School, “80,000 to 100,000 people were, in 2014, in segregation. And none of the
numbers include people in local jails, juvenile facilities, or in military and immigration detention."1

1
Baumgartel, S., Guilmette, C., Kalb, J., Li, D., Nuni, J. and Porter, D. (2015). Time-In-Cell: The ASCA-Liman 2014 National Survey of
Administrative Segregation in Prison. New Haven: Yale Law School, p.ii. https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/document/asca-
liman_administrativesegregationreport.pdf
 Prisoners can be thrown into isolation for several reasons. Some include serious infractions, like assault
against guards/inmates or protection against themselves or another inmate. Other times, it can be minor
infractions or for nothing at all. Prisons use solitary confinement as a tool to manage prisoners and gangs and may
isolate people simply for being suspect of being a part of a crime, whether it is gang related or otherwise.
However, it has become more evident that the minority population of prisons are more at risk of being thrown into
solitary than their white counterparts.

There is little information from the Federal Government regarding racial disparities within solitary
confinement. But there is a decent amount of data that exists from individual states and from Yale that suggest
that solitary confinement disproportionately affects prisoners of color. See the below representation created by
the Marshall Project that was compiled from the data of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program in Yale Law
School regarding percentages of white, black, and Hispanic male prisoners in the general population vs solitary.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/11/30/a-new-report-gives-the-most-detailed-breakdown-yet-of-how-isolation-is-used-in-u-s-prisons

One study that was done by health officials with the New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene also shows that black and Hispanic inmates are more likely to be punished with solitary confinement than
someone who is white and are less likely to receive a diagnoses or treatment of a mental illness they may have
acquired. In fact, black inmates were 2.52 times more likely to be put in solitary than someone who is white, with
Hispanics being 1.65 times more likely.
 A story that can be seen from these above statistics from New York involves a man named Kalief Browder.
Browder was a young African American man from the Bronx in New York, and at the age of 16 was falsely accused
of stealing a backpack. He awaited trial at Rikers Island for three years, and he spent more than two of those years
in solitary confinement. There is video evidence of him being abused by prisoners and guards that became viral,
and it became a part of the evidence to expose Rikers as the violent and unjust place that it was, but these clips
were nothing compared to the extent of the abuse he suffered while in solitary. Browder had tried to commit
suicide several times while he was held, and left prison suffering with depression, paranoia, delusions, and suicidal
tendencies that resulted in him killing himself in 2015. His story is what led President Obama to ban solitary
confinement for juveniles, expand treatment for the mentally ill, and increase the amount of time inmates in
solitary will have outside of their cells. But this would only reform the federal prison system. Individual states still
have different laws regarding the use of solitary confinement.

Another story regarding prolonged solitary confinement involves another African American named Albert
Woodfox who use to hold the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history. He arrived at
Angola prison in Louisiana in 1971 and was charged with an Armed Robbery for a sentence of 50 years. Then in
1972, a guard named Brent Miller was found murdered in a cell, and Woodfox and two other prisoners named
Robert King and Herman Wallace were accused and punished for the crime. Woodfox says he believes he and the
others were falsely accused for this murder due to their association with the Black Panthers. Woodfox was sent to
what was called "protected custody", which could be defined as a form of solitary confinement, as Woodfox would
spend 23 hours a day in a 9 by 6-foot cell with one hour a day to spend outside. He lived this way for 43 years,
which would end up being most of his life. That was until February 2016, where he took a no contest plea in order
to take lesser charges and be released from prison, as he was having concerns about his health and his age,
especially after the conditions he was in. He once said to a blogger while he was in prison that that "'I'm afraid I'm
going to start screaming and not be able to stop. I'm afraid I'm going to turn into a baby and curl up in a fetal
position and lay there like that day after day for the rest of my life. I'm afraid I'm going to attack my own body,
maybe cut off my balls and throw them through the bars the way I've seen others do when they couldn't take any
more."2 Woodfox is still dealing with the implications that solitary had given him. He says he still has panic and
claustrophobic attacks to this day. Read more about Albert Woodfox and Kalief Browder with the presentation at
the bottom of this screen. Details may be more gruesome, and images are intended for mature audiences.

With both stories, the amount of time in solitary was way over what is to be considered safe according to
psychologists. Medical research has shown that the denial of meaningful human contact causes isolation
syndrome, which have symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger cognitive disturbance, perceptual distortions,
paranoia, psychosis, self-harm- and suicide. If it is prolonged, the symptoms would continue outside of
segregation. This may be due to findings regarding the actual size of the brain after such isolation. In extreme cases
of solitary confinement, there is a decrease in the size of the hippocampus, which is the brain region that controls
learning, memory, and spatial awareness. The hippocampus decreases due to loss of plasticity, and a decrease in
the formation of new neurons. However, the amygdala increases its activity with isolation. The area controls
anxiety and fear.

2
Hensley, Rebecca. “Albert Woodfox Speaks To The Experts.” Albert Woodfox Speaks To The Experts, 1 Jan. 1970,
whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/2014/04/albert-woodfox-speaks-to-experts.html#more
 With these facts in mind, African Americans and Hispanics are at higher risk to suffering from the effects
of prolonged isolation, as they are more likely to be put in solitary and more likely to stay longer than those who
are white. And while there have been restrictions set federally, it is a different situation state by state.

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Works Cited
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Haven: Yale Law School, p.ii.

https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/document/asca-

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