California agrees to limit solitary confinement to settle Pelican Bay lawsuit
California has agreed to limit its use of solitary confinement to inmates who commit serious offenses in prison.
The proposed lawsuit settlement would end the practice of putting inmates in solitary confinement for indefinite periods because of gang affiliation, report the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the San Jose Mercury News. Inmates who are sent to solitary for offenses in prison would be sent there for a set amount of time, rather than for indefinite periods.
Prison practices throughout the state would be changed under the agreement, though it settles a class action filed on behalf of inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison, where the state’s most dangerous prisoners and gang leaders are housed. Some inmates were kept in solitary for decades. They were housed alone in windowless cells for all but an hour or two a day.
The inmate who was kept in solitary the longest was Hugo Pinell, who spent 43 years there, the Los Angeles Times says. He was put back in the general prison population last month, at the age of 71, and was killed by another prisoner days later in the exercise yard, according to this news coverage by the San Jose Mercury News.
Related article:
ABAJournal.com: “Long-term solitary confinement produces ‘social death,’ psychologist finds”
