In 2019, the state passed a law restricting how long prisons can hold people in isolation. But, according to a new report, people still say they’re being isolated for weeks and even months.
The percentage of people held pretrial for six months or longer is up six percent from January of last year, according to a UCLA School of Law report.
A year after state officials said they would take steps to overhaul solitary confinement rules, prisoners remain isolated in conditions that one says is akin to being ‘buried alive.’
Faculty members of the Yale School of Public Health, the Yale School of Medicine, and the Yale School of Nursing wrote to the governor that sending patients there is “inhumane and ineffective.”
With Appeal staff reporter Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Some death row prisoners will be moved to another unit with access to direct sunlight, fenced-in recreation, and contact visits, department says.
Civil rights groups demand change as other states move away from the practice of isolating people sentenced to death.
A new lawsuit, filed against the Virginia Department of Corrections, says prisoners are kept in isolation for frivolous reasons and prevented from rejoining the general population.