Why The President Is Right About Solitary Confinement

By Christopher Zoukis

President Obama's recent announcement concerning sweeping revisions to the way the Federal Bureau of Prisons uses solitary confinement couldn't have come at a better time.

Most news outlets focused on the new restriction on housing juveniles in such restrictive housing, and this should be commended as children should not be held in isolation. But several other aspects of this topic deserve significant attention.

First and foremost, while the bureau has repeatedly said that only the most violent or worst of the worst are housed in segregated confinement, this simply is not the case.

Solitary confinement – officially called the “Special Housing Unit” or “SHU” – is used for a variety of reasons. These include protective custody, housing those under investigation for misconduct, and those serving formal sanctions for violating the bureau's disciplinary code. Obama’s announcement touches on all three of these categories.

As it concerns prisoners housed in protective custody, in the current era this means solitary confinement. These prisoners are simply held in isolation, which consists of 23 to 24-hour lockdown for months or years on end.

This is a sickening practice considering that most of those subjected to protective custody are not violent, but scared and inexperienced in prison life. More often than not these are informants, sex offenders, or other “softer” sorts who can't cut it in the land of the convict.

Regardless of the threat to their lives, the bureau regularly places them at prisons where they won't be able to stay, and they only enter protective custody after being badly beaten by fellow prisoners or having their lives threatened.

In an effort to alleviate the burdens of solitary confinement for those in protective custody, Obama announced a new type of housing called “Reintegration Housing Units.” If this is a meaningful change to the typical SHU experience, then it will greatly protect and improve the lives of those subjected to it.

But perhaps the most significant change concerns who is permitted to be placed in solitary confinement and for what length of time. Obama called for prisoners who commit low-level disciplinary code violations to not be eligible for solitary confinement. He also called for limits on the amount of time prisoners can be sanctioned to disciplinary segregation, and limits on the amount of time prison officials can hold prisoners in the SHU under “investigation” for potential disciplinary code violations. All of these are very important developments due to current abuses.

Two cases in point come to mind when thinking about solitary confinement abuses; one is personal and the other is not.

In 2012, I was placed in the Special Housing Unit at the Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg due to disciplinary code violations. The prison accused me of conducting a business (Code 334 violations) due to my writing and my work advocating for prison education.

I was issued three incident reports for my writing activities. All three reports came on the heels of the release of my first book. In total I spent just shy of five months in the SHU. Less than half that time was due to formal sanctions, and most was while I was under investigation for additional business incident reports that focused on my prison-education advocacy.

This highlights how prisoners who commit low-level offenses are abused by the system and how prisoners are held in the hole under “investigation” as an extrajudicial punishment designed to break and intimidate them.

All three of those incident reports were eventually overturned and expunged from my record. When my second book, “College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons” (McFarland & Co., 2014), was released I was again issued incident reports – this time four of them for conducting a business.

While I wasn't placed in the SHU this time, other sanctions were levied. Again, all four incident reports were overturned and expunged on appeal.

Recently, a transgender prisoner at FCI Petersburg, who goes by the name “Alex,” was caught with a tattoo gun. She was escorted to the SHU and still remains there. That was because of a new local policy of placing in solitary confinement anyone caught receiving or giving a tattoo.

The irony is that she can't even receive SHU time for the offense because it is a Code 305, possession of anything unauthorized. The incident-report code isn't severe enough to qualify for SHU placement, yet she sits in the SHU due to possessing a homemade tattoo gun. Once the case is adjudicated she will be released.

This is exactly the sort of abuse that President Obama's new solitary confinement policy seeks to address.

About Christopher Zoukis

Christopher Zoukis, author of “College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons,” is founder of PrisonEducation.com and PrisonLawBlog.com. He is incarcerated at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg in Virginia.