Solitary Confinement: Torture in Our Prisons and the Urgent Case for Abolition

Every day, tens of thousands of incarcerated Americans languish in solitary confinement – isolated in tiny cells between 23 and 24 hours a day with no human contact.

The United States, which often champions human rights globally, remains one of the only advanced nations to use prolonged isolation as a routine prison practice. This extreme form of incarceration is not only cruel and inhumane; mounting evidence shows it amounts to torture, produces devastating psychological harm, and yields no rehabilitative benefit. In fact, solitary confinement undermines public safety, carries enormous fiscal costs, and, many argue, violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

I can speak to the irreparable psychological harm caused by solitary confinement because I lived through it—twice. The only way to describe it is this: being buried alive. It is torture in its truest form.

This article explores why long-term solitary confinement persists in American prisons, why it constitutes torture and must be declared unconstitutional, the immense societal and financial costs of its continued use, and the urgent need for reform at both the state and federal levels to finally end this barbaric practice.

Solitary Confinement as Torture: Conditions and Human Suffering

 A typical solitary confinement cell, bare and cramped, contains only a concrete slab bed and a steel toilet. Prisoners may spend 22 to 24 hours a day in such spaces, often no larger than a walk-in closet. They eat, sleep, and exist in these concrete boxes, usually without any meaningful human contact or mental stimulation. Over days and weeks, this extreme isolation inflicts profound psychological trauma. This is precisely why the United Nations considers prolonged solitary confinement (more than 15 days) to be a form of torture.

International and medical organizations have unequivocally condemned these conditions as torturous. The Nelson Mandela Rules (the U.N.’s minimum standards for prisoner treatment) prohibit solitary confinement beyond 15 days, recognizing that longer isolation “constitutes torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned that even shorter stints can inflict severe mental pain and suffering.

In 2016, the U.S. National Commission on Correctional Health Care likewise instructed that keeping someone alone for over 15 days is “inhumane, degrading treatment, and harmful to an individual’s health.” Psychiatric research confirms that prolonged solitary causes intense psychological damage, often irreversible. Symptoms can emerge in a matter of days, including anxiety, panic, rage, hallucinations, and psychosis.

Even nineteenth-century observers understood the horror: after visiting an early U.S. solitary prison, Charles Dickens wrote that he could not fathom the “immense amount of torture and agony” it inflicted, calling it “immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” Over 170 years later, Dickens’s words ring tragically true – extended solitary confinement remains a form of hidden, psychological torture administered in the name of American justice.

Cruel and Unusual: The Constitutional Crisis

Given its severe cruelty, many legal scholars and jurists argue that long-term solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” To date, the Supreme Court has not outright banned solitary confinement. However, even some Supreme Court Justices have raised alarms.

In a 2015 opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy described a prisoner’s 25-year solitary confinement in a windowless cell “no larger than a typical parking spot” for 23 hours a day, noting the “terrible price” exacted by such isolation. He catalogued the “madness and suicide, anxiety, panic, withdrawal, hallucinations, and self-mutilation” that often result from extended isolation. Justice Kennedy bluntly called solitary an “added punishment” beyond a prison sentence, one that urgently warrants constitutional scrutiny: he questioned whether locking human beings in near-total isolation for years can be squared with “contemporary standards of decency” under the Eighth Amendment.

Lower courts have started to heed that call. In Porter v. Clarke (2019), for example, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Virginia’s practice of automatic, indefinite solitary confinement for death-row inmates violated the Eighth Amendment. The court recognized the “heavy psychological toll” of such conditions and deemed them an impermissible form of cruel and unusual. Likewise, numerous federal judges have expressed deep concern over the “grave or irreparable harm” caused by prolonged solitary, especially when used on individuals with mental illness or juveniles.

The constitutional argument is straightforward: a punishment that inflicts severe, needless suffering and mental injury, without clear necessity or penological purpose, fails to meet basic standards of human decency. As Justice Thurgood Marshall once noted, the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning from “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” By that measure, entombing people in isolation for months or years on end should have no place in a civilized society or legal system.

Indeed, we are witnessing a growing consensus that solitary confinement is fundamentally at odds with our Constitution’s values. In 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court itself acknowledged that even a few weeks of solitary confinement caused such significant mental decline that many prisoners became “violently insane” or suicidal – an observation from over a century ago, long before modern supermax prisons existed. Today, with volumes of evidence of its harms, the case is stronger than ever that prolonged solitary confinement is a cruel, unusual, and thus unconstitutional punishment that our courts and legislatures must no longer ignore.

The Human Costs: Trauma, Suicide, and Public Safety Risks

Solitary confinement doesn’t only offend abstract principles of law and morality – it produces real, devastating human costs that ripple far beyond prison walls. Decades of research on isolated confinement have documented a predictable pattern of psychological deterioration and suffering among those subjected to it. Mental health professionals compare long-term isolation to pushing a person to the brink of insanity. 

Inmates held in solitary often develop a syndrome akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. They may experience incessant anxiety, depression, anger, and perceptual distortions. Many begin to hallucinate or become paranoid after extended periods with minimal stimulation. The stress can manifest physically through headaches, heart palpitations, insomnia, and loss of appetite. Corrections officials themselves have grimly noted that some prisoners in solitary will mutilate themselves or attempt suicide just to escape the torture of isolation, if only for a moment. The statistics are as compelling as they are horrifying. Key indicators of the human toll of solitary include:

• Skyrocketing Suicide Rates: Roughly 50% of all prison suicides occur among the 5% of prisoners held in solitary confinement. Isolation is a major suicide risk factor – desperate people, cut off from any hope or help, too often take their own lives.

• Self-Harm and Psychiatric Breakdown: Individuals in solitary are far more likely to self-mutilate or descend into acute mental illness. One study in New York City jails found that inmates in solitary were nearly seven times more likely to harm themselves than those in general population Many isolated prisoners (approximately one-third in some studies) develop acute psychosis, complete with hallucinations and loss of touch with reality.

• Lasting Trauma and Recidivism: The psychological damage of solitary often extends long after release. Research shows that even short stays in solitary confinement can increase the risk of re-offending once a person returns to society. A recent study found that being placed in solitary, even for a few days, raises the chance of committing another crime after release by about 15%. In other words, solitary confinement actually makes the public less safe, by intensifying trauma and hindering prisoners’ ability to successfully reintegrate.

Tragic Case Examples: 

The human cost can be glimpsed in stories like that of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager jailed at 16 for a petty charge and kept in Rikers Island’s solitary confinement for two years awaiting trial. Kalief endured beatings and extreme isolation; within two years of release – unable to escape the mental anguish of his ordeal – he died by suicide.

In another case, Layleen Polanco, a 27-year-old woman held on Rikers Island for a low-level offense, died of an epileptic seizure while in solitary – she had been left alone and unmonitored despite known medical risks.

Jamie Gettings, a 33-year-old woman from West Mifflin, died by suicide in her cell while in segregation at Allegheny County Jail in April 2017. She was visibly withdrawing from opioids, yet reportedly denied food and medical attention as her condition deteriorated in isolation. Nearby inmates later recalled hearing her on the intercom all night, begging for help and something to eat—but her pleas were ignored. At 2:12 a.m., she was found hanging by a bedsheet in her cell. She was in segregation for one night before she took her life.

These names are sadly just a few among many. They underscore that solitary confinement is not an abstract policy: it destroys real lives, often young lives, with appalling regularity. Critically, there is no evidence that solitary confinement improves prison safety or discipline in the long term. On the contrary, extreme isolation tends to exacerbate violent and erratic behavior. Deprived of any normal outlets or human interaction, people can become more explosive – a fact noted by numerous corrections administrators who have reduced solitary and seen violence decrease as a result. In Mississippi, for example, a large-scale reduction of solitary confinement led to a 70% drop in prison violence in one facility.

Other states like Maine and Colorado similarly cut their use of isolation and reported no uptick in violence; in some cases violence. The lesson is clear: solitary confinement is not only morally costly, it is counterproductive to the goal of rehabilitating inmates and protecting society.

The Fiscal Costs: Wasting Taxpayer Dollars on a Failed Practice

Beyond the moral and human devastation, solitary confinement also inflicts a steep cost on taxpayers and state budgets. It turns out that locking one person alone in a cell 24 hours a day is enormously expensive. Supermax prisons and isolation units require extra staffing, higher security, and special infrastructure, all of which drive up per-inmate costs. Nationwide, estimates show it costs two to three times more to keep someone in solitary than in the general prison population. At a time when resources are scarce, we are spending a fortune to perpetuate a practice that fails to improve safety and likely makes things worse.

Some eye-opening figures on the financial costs of solitary confinement include:

• Higher Annual Costs per Prisoner: One study estimated that the average annual cost of housing a prisoner in a supermax (solitary) facility is about $75,000, compared to roughly $25,000 for a prisoner in the general population. Solitary confinement. in this analysis, was three times as expensive as normal incarceration due to the intense resources required.

• State Budgets Drained: In California, housing one inmate in the notorious Pelican Bay SHU (segregation unit) costs over $70,000 per year, versus about $58,000 for an inmate in normal maximum security. Those differences add up: California has historically spent an extra $175 million per year on its population of roughly 3,000–4,000 solitary prisoners. In Texas, a review found isolation cells cost 45% more per day than standard cells, translating into an additional $63 million annually for the ~9,000 people in solitary statewide.

• Expensive “Supermax” Prisons: In Illinois, the now-shuttered Tamms Supermax prison was spending about $92,000 per prisoner per year to keep a few hundred people in permanent solitary – two to three times the cost at other state prisons. This exorbitant expense yielded no measurable benefit in terms of rehabilitation or safety. After criticism, Illinois closed Tamms in 2013, saving millions of dollars.

• Opportunity Costs: The money sunk into solitary confinement is money not spent on rehabilitation, mental health treatment, or re-entry programs that actually reduce crime. For example, instead of paying $75,000 to torture one person in a supermax cell, those funds could hire additional mental health counselors or run educational programs for dozens of inmates. Many states literally spend more on isolating people in prison than on educating our youth or providing public healthcare, an alarming misallocation of public funds.

From a purely economic standpoint, solitary confinement is a failed policy. Taxpayers are funding an extraordinarily costly intervention that delivers no public safety return on investment. By reducing or eliminating long-term solitary, states could save tens of millions of dollars and reinvest those funds in evidence-based practices (like drug treatment or job training) that actually improve outcomes for individuals and communities.

In short, ending solitary is not only the humane choice – it is the fiscally responsible choice.

Momentum for Reform: Ending Solitary at the State and Federal Level

Encouragingly, a growing number of lawmakers, courts, and even corrections officials are confronting the urgent need to reform or abolish solitary confinement. What was once a hidden corner of the prison system has come under public scrutiny, and momentum is building to change this practice across the United States. State Reforms: Several states have taken bold steps to curb the use of solitary:

• New York’s HALT Solitary Act: In 2021, New York enacted the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act. The HALT bans solitary beyond 15 consecutive days (or 20 days in any 60-day period) – effectively adopting the U.N. Mandela Rule standard in state law. It also prohibits solitary entirely for vulnerable populations (such as juveniles, elderly, pregnant women, and the mentally ill) and mandates creation of more humane rehabilitative units. With HALT, New York became one of the first states to legislatively recognize that prolonged isolation is torture and to require alternatives. This law is a model that advocates urge other states to follow.

• Colorado’s Reduction of Solitary: Colorado dramatically reduced its solitary population in recent years. The state’s prison chief famously experimented by placing himself in solitary for 24 hours, emerging convinced of its horror. Colorado reduced the number of inmates in solitary from over 1,500 to under 300, and ended the practice for those with serious mental illnesses. Notably, Colorado reports that prison violence did not increase after these changes – a powerful rebuttal to the argument that solitary is needed for safety.

• Other States: Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, and others have also launched initiatives to limit isolation, cap the duration, or improve conditions. For example, Mississippi closed an entire supermax unit and reduced its solitary population by over 75%, with violence dropping significantly as a result. California in recent years settled a lawsuit by agreeing to restrict long-term solitary confinement in its prisons, releasing thousands from indefinite isolation. New Jersey passed a law limiting solitary to 20 consecutive days in most cases. While progress is uneven, these efforts show a trend: states are beginning to recognize that solitary confinement must be reserved only for the most extreme situations – if it is used at all.

Federal Level: The federal prison system, which operates penitentiaries nationwide, has likewise faced pressure to reform:

• In 2016, President Barack Obama ordered a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal custody and for inmates who commit low-level infractions. While relatively few juveniles are in federal prison, this move set an important precedent, acknowledging that isolating children is unacceptable. President Obama also directed the Bureau of Prisons to scale back the length of solitary stays and expand treatment for mentally ill prisoners.

• Recently, lawmakers in Congress have introduced bills to study and limit solitary confinement nationally (such as the proposed Solitary Confinement Reform Act). These proposals seek to impose stricter standards – for example, requiring regular mental health evaluations, barring long-term isolation except as a last resort, and increasing out-of-cell time and congregate activities. Although comprehensive federal reform has not yet passed, bipartisan concern is rising. Both Democratic and Republican legislators have decried the overuse of solitary as inhumane and counterproductive, noting the practice offends American values.

• The U.S. Department of Justice has also investigated certain prisons (including at Rikers Island and various state facilities) for civil rights violations related to excessive use of solitary confinement, especially for juveniles and the mentally ill. In some cases, these investigations led to consent decrees and mandated changes. There is a growing recognition at the federal level that national standards are needed – at minimum, to stop the worst abuses like decades-long solitary stints and to enforce basic humane conditions.

It is important to note that reform does not mean compromising safety. The experience of states that have limited solitary shows that there are effective alternatives: stepped-down units that offer therapy and group programs, behavioral incentives, and targeted interventions for violent or at-risk inmates. These approaches can manage security concerns without stripping people of all social contact. In fact, providing troubled inmates with therapy, social interaction, and hope is far more likely to reduce violent incidents than leaving them to fester in isolation. As one federal court observed, “prolonged solitary confinement exacts a heavy psychological toll” and thus prison authorities should be required to adopt workable alternative practices wherever possible.

Final Thoughts: An Urgent Call for Humanity and Justice

After decades of excessive solitary confinement, the United States stands at a crossroads. We know that solitary is torture. We know that it is a practice that shatters minds, costs lives, and undermines the very notion of rehabilitation. We know it is likely unconstitutional under any modern understanding of human dignity. We know it wastes enormous public resources on a strategy that fails both prisoners and society. And we know there are better alternatives that protect safety while honoring basic human rights. The question now is whether we have the moral and political will to end this abhorrent practice.

Each passing day that we allow men, women, and children to waste away in cramped, silent cells is a stain on our society’s conscience. As Justice Kennedy reminded us – invoking Dostoevsky – “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." What does it say about our civilization that we continue to countenance a punishment so cruel that it is deemed torture by the international community? If we believe in constitutional freedoms, human rights, and redemption, we must reckon with this reality: solitary confinement has no place in the 21st-century United States.

The movement to abolish or strictly limit solitary confinement is not about being “soft” on those who commit crimes; it is about affirming human dignity and rational, evidence-based policy. It is about ensuring that no matter what someone has done, we do not resort to methods of punishment that betray our deepest values. Torture has no legitimate role in American justice – and make no mistake, prolonged solitary confinement is torture.

In conclusion, solitary confinement should be abolished or drastically curbed through law and policy, at both the state and federal level. Legislators, judges, and prison officials must act with urgency to bring the United States in line with basic humane standards. This means banning extended solitary beyond 15 days, except in truly rare, emergency circumstances, and developing alternative approaches for discipline and safety. It means investing in mental health care and rehabilitation rather than paying for more isolation cells. And it means recognizing that how we treat the most marginalized and difficult members of our society is a reflection of our own humanity.

The moral and empirical case is overwhelming: solitary confinement is a cruel, costly, and unnecessary practice that belongs in the past. To continue it is to ignore both the suffering of those subjected to it and the warnings of experts, courts, and human rights bodies. We can no longer look the other way. It is time to end the torture of solitary confinement – a reform that is long overdue for a nation that calls itself free and just. The urgency of this change cannot be overstated. Lives and minds hang in the balance, and our collective integrity does as well. It is time to open the cell doors and let the light of justice in.

-Sarah Gad