Texans don't want Solitary Confinement!
We want an end to ALL forms of solitary confinement in Texas! For DECADES Texas has been the leader in the use of prolonged solitary confinement. Solitary confinement conditions include housing people in a 6X9 or smaller cell for upwards of 22 hours a day. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of those in solitary are not there for violent infractions. The poor, minorities, and the mentally ill are overly represented in this marked isolation.
A few of the issues people held in Solitary confinement conditions experience include.
- High Rates of suicide and deaths
- Denied educational access
- Weeks without any chance to leave their cell
- Very little meaningful human contact
- Limited shower and recreation opportunities
- None to limited rehabilitative programs
- Very limited interactions with family or support system.
- Profound and obvious psychological pain and suffering
- Disruption of psychological and physiological health
- Ignored medical emergencies and ignored mental health crises
Conditions that amount to torture also have serious consequences for the mental health of the guards and the prisoners' families. In Texas, Death row individuals have experienced prolonged solitary confinement. There MUST be an end to this systemwide. For more than two decades, all the men on Texas' death row have been kept in isolation cells every day, having no contact with other humans except guards. One version of this prolonged isolation is called Security Detention. Of the 3,141 incarcerated Texans identified as STG in Security Detention, 500 of them have been in solitary confinement for ten or more years. Another area of great concern is a 12-cell section of the Coffield Unit, called the ALU, where due process does not exist. This area is under the complete and sole direction of the executive director of TDCJ. One of the individuals in ALU has been there for more than 20 years.
Solitary confinement is an expensive management tool. “A 2015 study by Texas civil rights organizations argued the state's overuse of solitary confinement was unnecessarily expensive to taxpayers, increased crime and prison violence, and caused thousands of mentally ill people to further deteriorate.” (Texas Tribune Jan. 2023).
Solitary confinement is at odds with the goal of rehabilitation and the facilitation of social reintegration. Studies have found that inmates who have spent time in solitary confinement are more likely to re-offend than those who have not. The effects of this are felt not only by the prisoners and guards but also by their families and, ultimately, our communities once those prisoners have served their time and are released. Considering that 95% of those incarcerated will be released back to the community, bringing with them the negative health consequences of their confinement, the conditions and traumas they face while incarcerated should concern us all.
Despite the research, lack of rehabilitation, cost to taxpayers, and pleas for human decency, Texas continues to use solitary confinement excessively. Texas houses nearly 1,000 people who have been in solitary confinement for more than six years. More than 500 prisoners there have served more than 10 years in almost total isolation, and 138 have served more than 20. Over 3,000 people are held in solitary confinement in Texas.
We are asking for:
1. The elimination of long-term solitary confinement system by adopting a minimum overall standard to prevent torture, like the “Mandela Rules” (U.N. Gen. Ass. Res. 70/175), which limit the number of consecutive days in a cell to 15 under all circumstances. (Colorado has done this.)
2. An end to the practice of housing individuals in ALU,
3. Sufficiently licensed mental health therapists to provide the prisoners with the individual help that they need.
4. Regular access to individual counseling with licensed mental health therapists
5. An end to solitary confinement for Death row.
6. More access to the GRAD program, access to education and other rehabilitative programs, humane treatment, contact visits, and phone usage.
7. Regular communal work, recreation, and religious services.
We want the end to all cruel punishments that harm prisoners, their families, prison personnel, and the general public.