A Solitary Failure
The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

February 2015

A Solitary Failure:
The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas
February 2015

American Civil Liberties Union of Texas
P.O. Box 8306
Houston, TX 77288
www.aclutx.org

Texas Civil Rights Project - Houston
2006 Wheeler Ave.
Houston, TX 77004
www.texascivilrightsproject.org

Cover photo © Roberto A Sanchez

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .....................................................................................................	�2
Findings..............................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................11
BACKGROUND...................................................................................................................16
The Early Failure of Solitary Confinement........................................................................16
The Misguided Return of Solitary Confinement in the Late Twentieth Century . ..............17
The Renewed Consensus: Solitary is a Dangerous and Expensive Correctional Practice......22
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT INCREASES CRIME..................................................................24
Solitary Permanently Damages People Who Will One Day Return to Texas Communities........24
Solitary Confinement Causes Permanent Mental Deterioration.....................................24
Isolation Erodes People’s Capacity to Interact with Others.............................................31
Solitary Confinement Severs Family Bonds....................................................................33
TDCJ Deprives People in Solitary of All Opportunities for Self-Improvement..................36
The Consequence of Overusing Solitary is More Crime in Texas Communities ................37
TEXAS OVERUSES SOLITARY CONFINEMENT AT TREMENDOUS COST TO TAXPAYERS.....39
Solitary Confinement Costs Texas Taxpayers at Least $46 Million a Year........................39
Texas Overuses Solitary Confinement..............................................................................40
TDCJ INCREASES PRISON VIOLENCE BY OVERUSING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.............44
Solitary Confinement Makes Texas Prisons Less Safe......................................................44
Solitary Confinement Deprives Officers of the Option to Incentivize Good Behavior	��������45
Violence Escalates When Officers Deny People in Solitary Basic Necessities...................46
Other States Improved Prison Safety by Reducing Solitary Confinement.........................46
MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE DETERIORATE IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT ..............................48
The Universal Consensus: Never Place the Seriously Mentally Ill in Solitary...................48
Texas Sends Thousands of People with Mental Illness to Solitary Confinement..............49
TDCJ Inadequately Monitors and Treats People with Mental Illness in Solitary ..............51
CONCLUSION: OUR VALUES AND COMMITMENTS AS TEXANS.........................................55
METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................56

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

T

he Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) confines 4.4 percent of its prison
population in solitary confinement.1 Texas locks more people in solitary-confinement
cells than twelve states house in their entire prison system.2 On average, prisoners
remain in solitary confinement for almost four years3; over one hundred Texas prisoners
have spent more than twenty years in solitary confinement.4 The conditions in which
these people live impose such severe deprivations that they leave prison mentally
damaged; as a group, people released from solitary are more likely to commit more
new crimes than people released from the rest of the prison system. Yet in 2013, TDCJ
released 1,243 people directly from solitary-confinement cells into Texas communities.5
These prisoners return to society after living for years or decades in a tiny cell
for twenty-two hours a day, with no contact with other human beings or access to
educational or rehabilitative programs.6 As documented in this report, this dangerous
and expensive practice is making our state less safe.

Alex is one of 6,564 Texas prisoners7 who live in a solitary-confinement cell.8 It is sixty
square feet in size9; he can cross its length in six paces.10 If he lifts his arms to their
full wingspan, his fingertips almost graze the walls.11 The cell is completely bare; just
a concrete floor and four concrete walls.12 Alex is not allowed to place anything on his
walls, not even a calendar.13 The door is made of solid metal with a slot for a food tray,
and two thin Plexiglas rectangles to allow officers to see in.14

1 Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, at 6 (Sept. 2014) (obtained from Jeff
Baldwin, Chief of Staff, TDCJ, and on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP). TDCJ’s technical term for solitary confinement is administrative
segregation. Solitary confinement is the commonly accepted term, used nationwide, to describe the practice of housing prisoners alone
in a cell for at least twenty-two hours a day. Therefore, we use the term solitary confinement throughout this report.
2  E. Ann Carson & Daniela Golinelli, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2012: Trends in Admissions and Releases, at 23-24 (Sept.
2, 2014), available at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p12tar9112.pdf.
3  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 6.
4  Spreadsheet from TDCJ in response to Open Records Request (ORR) (Nov. 20, 2012) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
5  Letter from TDCJ to authors in response to open records request (July 9, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
6  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 6.
7  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.
8  We have changed the names of people we interviewed or corresponded with in order to protect confidentiality.
9  The average size of a solitary-confinement cell in Texas is sixty square feet; some are as small as forty-five square feet. Letter from
TDCJ to authors in response to open records request (Feb. 27, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
10  Letter from Alex to authors (Sept. 17, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
11  Id.
12  Id.
13  Id.
14  Id.

2  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Alex’s drawing of the door to his solitary cell

Alex calls this cell his “house”;15 and for the past ten years, it has been the only home he
has known.16
Alex’s entire life is confined within the four corners of his “house.” He eats sitting on the
floor or on his bed. He sleeps on a steel bunk along one wall, covered in a thin plastic
mattress.17 He goes to the bathroom in the toilet in the corner. The cell smells “[l]ike
mold and urine and feces and filth,” Alex writes. “Like a downtown subway restroom.
Like a locker room that’s never been cleaned.”18
Most days, Alex’s only contact with another human being is the hand that slides his food
tray through a slit in his cell door. Weeks pass in which Alex never sees another person’s
face, or looks another person in the eyes. He can only talk to people by shouting to
other prisoners through the concrete walls. He cannot practice his Christian faith with a
community of others who share his beliefs.19 He cannot play sports or games with other
people.20 When his niece comes to visit, he cannot hug her goodbye; he must talk to her
through a pane of glass.21
15  Interview with Alex, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (May 28, 2014).
16  Id.
17  Letter from Alex to authors, supra note 10.
18  Id.
19  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, at att. A (Mar. 2012) (unpublished) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
20  Id.
21  Id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  3

There is no window in Alex’s cell.22 His field of vision is limited to peering through the
Plexiglas slit in his cell door to the door of the cell opposite him.23 Alex has not seen
the stars in a decade.24 “I miss that so much,” he writes. “One time I was going to the
hospital, down to Galveston and we were riding the ferry and the sun was coming up and
it was the only one I’d seen in years. I’m a pretty tough guy, but it brought tears to my
eyes.”25
Alex struggles to fall asleep at night. Usually, he can only sleep for four hours.26
The fluorescent light hanging from his ceiling remains on all night.27 The cell block
constantly echoes with screams because some of the men confined in neighboring cells
have gone insane, cutting themselves or eating their own feces.28 Alex is overwhelmed
by the noise: “Constant banging, clanking, rage, anger,” he writes. “Like a jammed
packed area for a boxing match with everyone screaming murder. The night sounds are
the worst. More personal and filled with sadness. It sounds like hell.”29
Prison regulations require that officers take Alex outside his cell for one hour several
times a week to exercise in a recreation yard. Often, he is deprived of even this minimal
reprieve. Officers go for weeks without letting people on his block leave their cell for
recreation.30 But even in the recreation space—a caged outdoor box not much larger
than his cell, covered in bird feces31—Alex is alone.
Solitary confinement forces Alex into a life of idleness. Alex wants to educate himself
before returning to society. He wants to get counseling to help him deal with the abuse
from his childhood.32 But he is not allowed to take group classes to get his associate’s
degree.33 He cannot take classes to help him manage his anger, or join Alcoholics
Anonymous to manage the addictions that led him to prison.34 He cannot purchase a
television to watch in his cell.35
“I want something meaningful, not meaningless in my life,” Alex says. “I do everything I
can to make my time mean something. To take responsibility for my day.”36
22  Letter from Alex to authors, supra note 10.
23  Id.
24  Id.
25  Id.
26  Alex’s Journal (entries eated June 12 & 19, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
27  Interview with Alex, supra note 15.
28  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated July 7, 2014).
29  Letter from Alex (Sept. 17, 2014), supra note 10.
30  Interview with Alex to authors, supra note 15.
31  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated June 17, 2014).
32  Id.
33  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
34  Id.
35  Id.
36  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated June 19, 2014).

4  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Alex keeps a journal; he calls it “Wilson,” the name Tom Hanks gave a volleyball—his
only companion and confidant while abandoned on a desert island—in the movie
Castaway.37 Every morning, Alex picks a new word out of the dictionary to learn. He reads
inspiring quotations. He reads books on self-improvement from the prison library; the
most recent one was The Power of Habit, which “is basically about replacing bad habits
with good ones. . . . This is the kind of stuff we need to be addressing if we have any
hope of giving ourselves a chance.”38 He keeps a strict workout schedule of pushups
and crunches.39 On Saturdays, he cleans his cell.40 On Sundays, he listens to Lakewood
Church on the radio.41 Each morning he makes his bed; then he lays out a towel on
his cell floor, sits on it, and meditates for twenty minutes.42 He had to train himself to
meditate over time, though; it used “to be so hard because the last thing your nerves or
body wants to do is relax when your neighbor is ‘cell warring’ and kicking his door, or
when the whole wing is in complete chaos.”43 When someone walks by his cell, he comes
up to his cell door to say “hello”; he says, “It keeps the free world present and keeps my
social skills from completely wasting away.”44 He feeds the lizards that crawl in his cell
to keep him company.45 He has a “mantra”: “I am stronger than this place, I am stronger
than these circumstances.”46
But the cries from his neighbors’ cells
shake his confidence that he will be able
to withstand the isolation. Sometimes,
he wonders if he will go insane before
returning to the outside world.47
“I have to be honest,” he wrote. “[W]hen
your48 back here and the guy next to you is
so crazy he’s cutting on his face or eating his
feces. It makes things even worse because
you don’t know if they came into [solitary]
this way, or the walls, this place, has caused
it. So you begin to wonder, am I next?”49

n  Floor plan of Alex’s cell (drawn by Alex).

37  Id. (entry dated June 7, 2014).
38  Id.
39  Id.
40  Id.
41  Id.
42  Id. (entry dated June 12, 2014).
43  Id.
44  Id. (entry dated June 12, 2014).
45  Id.
46  Id. (entry dated June 25, 2014).
47 Id. (entry dated June 7, 2014).
48  Throughout this report, we represented people’s words as they wrote them to us, without edits to grammar or punctuation.
49  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated July 7, 2014).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  5

Findings

A

t stake in TDCJ’s use of solitary confinement is whether thousands of people like
Alex will successfully rejoin their families and society upon their release, or whether
they will return to their communities irreversibly damaged by years of isolation and
sensory deprivation. Solitary confinement permanently damages people. Rather than
prepare prisoners for their eventual return to Texas communities, solitary confinement
breaks down their ability to interact with other human beings; erodes their family
relationships; deprives them of educational, rehabilitative, and religious programming;
causes mentally healthy people to descend into mental illness; and severely exacerbates
symptoms for people with pre-existing mental illness.
Because it so damages Texas prisoners by confining them in severe conditions, TDCJ
ultimately increases crime in Texas communities. Ninety-five percent of incarcerated
people return to our communities one day.50 TDCJ recognizes in its mission statement
that one of its most important duties is to improve public safety: “The mission of the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice is to provide public safety, promote positive
change in offender behavior, reintegrate offenders into society, and assist victims of
crime.”51 Yet years of social isolation, enforced idleness, lack of programming, and
sensory deprivation make people released from solitary confinement, as a group, more
dangerous within prison walls and ultimately to society. All of us pay the price.
In 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (ACLU of Texas) and the Texas
Civil Rights Project (TCRP) studied Texas’s use of solitary confinement. We conducted
a written survey of 147 people in solitary confinement, collected data from publicinformation requests to TDCJ, interviewed and corresponded with people in solitary
confinement, reviewed other states’ practices, researched the financial impacts of
solitary, consulted with security and psychiatric experts, and interviewed correctional
officers.
We discovered that TDCJ overuses solitary confinement compared to other states,
houses many people in solitary confinement who could be safely confined in a lower
security setting, and keeps people in solitary confinement for years and decades, long
after they cease to pose a threat. By overusing solitary confinement, TDCJ increases
crime, wastes taxpayer money, increases violence in prison, and causes thousands of
mentally ill people to further deteriorate before returning to Texas communities.

50  See Timothy Hughes & Doris James Wilson, Reentry Trends in the United States, Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://www.bjs.gov/
content/reentry/reentry.cfm (last visited Aug. 28, 2014).
51  Tex. Dep’t. Crim. Justice, http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/ (last accessed Sept. 5, 2014).

6  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

What is Solitary Confinement?
People in Texas’ solitary-confinement cells spend at least twenty-two hours
a day52 in a cell that is sixty square feet,53 about the size of a residential
bathroom or a walk-in closet. During their years or decades in solitary
confinement, they almost never leave their tiny cells.54 Although TDCJ
policies permit them an hour or two of recreation per day, many of our survey
respondents reported that in reality officers almost never take them outside.55
Solitary confinement deprives prisoners of any opportunity for selfimprovement. People in solitary confinement cannot participate in group
educational and rehabilitative programs to help prepare for their release.
They cannot work in prison jobs to use their time productively and learn
useful skills. They cannot participate in Alcoholics’ Anonymous to cure their
addictions. They cannot take group classes to get their G.E.D. or associate’s
degree, to receive the education they need to support their wives, children, and
parents. They cannot take group therapy to help them develop healthy coping
mechanisms. They cannot practice their faith with a group of like-minded
believers and receive the support and moral education that comes from
collective worship.56
Solitary confinement strips people of all interpersonal contact. Prisoners in
solitary confinement spend their days completely alone. They eat alone. They
sleep alone. They go to the recreation yard alone. They can only speak to other
people by shouting through the cell walls. They only touch another human
being when an officer places handcuffs on them to take them to a medical
appointment. When their family members come to visit them, they talk to
them through wire mesh or a pane of glass; they cannot hold their hand or hug
their loved one goodbye. They are not permitted to make phone calls to their
parents, wives, or children.57 n

52  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
53  Letter from TDCJ to authors (Feb. 27, 2014), supra note 9.
54  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
55  Interview with Juan, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (June 2, 2014); Interview with Alex, supra note 15; Interview with Paul, individual
incarcerated in TDCJ (May 30, 2014); Survey response from Brian, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP);
Survey response from Miguel, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Steve,
individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Larry, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on
file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
56  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
57  Id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  7

Credit: Texas Department of Corrections

Finding One: Solitary confinement
increases crime in Texas communities.
Permanently damaged by years in
isolation, people released from Texas
solitary-confinement cells commit more
new crimes: They are rearrested at a
twenty-five percent higher rate than
prisoners released from the overall prison
system. Of prisoners released from TDCJ
in 2006, 48.8 percent were rearrested
within three years,58 whereas 60.84 percent
of people released directly from solitary
confinement were rearrested within
the same time period.59 According to a
preliminary study in California, parolees
released from solitary confinement
committed new crimes at a thirty-five
percent higher rate than parolees released
from the overall prison system.60 The data
from Texas and California are consistent
n  Texas solitary-confinement cell
with evidence from other states that
solitary confinement increases violent
crime, even when controlling for common predictors of recidivism. People released
from solitary-confinement cells in Washington State commit new felonies at a thirty-five
percent higher rate than people released from the general population.61 People who had
spent time in Florida’s solitary-confinement cells are eighteen percent more likely to
commit new violent crimes.62

58  See Legislative Budget Board, Statewide Criminal Justice Recidivism and Revocation Rates 35 (Jan. 2011), available at http://
www.lbb.state.tx.us/Public_Safety_Criminal_Justice/RecRev_Rates/Statewide%20Criminal%20Justice%20Recidivism%20and%20
Revocation%20Rates2011.pdf.
59  Letter from TDCJ to Rodney Ellis, Tex. Senator (Dec. 6, 2011) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); E-mail from Ed Sinclair, Analyst,
Criminal Justice Data Analysis Team, Tex. Legislative Budget Board, to Burke Butler, Fellow, TCRP (Sept. 26, 2014 07:31 CST) (on file
with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
60  See Keramet Reiter, Parole, Snitch, or Die: California’s Supermax Prisons & Prisoners, 1987-2007, at 50 (ISSC Fellows Working Paper,
Institute for the Study of Social Change, Univ. of Ca. Berkeley, 2010).
61  See David Lovell et al., Recidivism of Supermax Prisoners in Washington State, 53 Crime & Delinquency 633, 644 (Oct. 2007).
62  See Daniel P. Mears & William D. Bales, Supermax Incarceration and Recidivism, 47 Crimonology 1131, 1151 (2009).

8  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Finding Two: TDCJ overuses solitary confinement at tremendous cost to taxpayers.
TDCJ houses 4.4 percent of prisoners in solitary confinement63—about four times the
estimated national average of one to two percent of the prison population.64 TDCJ uses
overbroad criteria to send people to solitary confinement, capturing many individuals
who did not commit any misconduct within the prison system. It also confines people to
solitary confinement for lengthy periods—on average 3.7 years65—rather than returning
them to general population as soon as it is safe to do so. Recognizing the safety
consequences of solitary confinement, states like Mississippi have dramatically reduced
their reliance on solitary confinement, which improved safety in their prisons and
communities and saved taxpayers millions of dollars. It is time for Texas to follow their
lead. TDCJ spends $46 million dollars a year above normal correctional costs to house
people in solitary confinement—$61.63 per day per person housed in administrative
segregation, compared to $42.46 per day per person in general population.66 Since Texas
taxpayers foot the bill for Texas’s use of solitary confinement, TDCJ should use it as
rarely as possible. TDCJ could save taxpayers $31 million dollars a year just by dropping
its use of solitary confinement to Mississippi’s rate of 1.4 percent.67
Finding Three: Solitary confinement increases prison violence. Serious assaults on
Texas prison staff have increased 104 percent during the last seven years.68 Texas’s
largest correctional officers union attributes the rise, in part, to TDCJ’s overuse of
solitary confinement and the practice of housing people with mental illness in solitary
confinement.69 In 2013, almost eighty percent of the 499 instances of prisoners
exposing officers to bodily fluids occurred in Texas’s solitary-confinement units; none
occurred in general-population units.70 These assaults led Texas’s largest correctional
officers union to call upon the United States Senate to regulate states’ use of solitary
confinement.71 Other states have improved security by drastically reducing their use
63  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 6.
64  There are no hard numbers on the percentage of states’ prison populations in solitary confinement. Experts estimate that the
state average is one to two percent. See James Austin & Emmitt Sparkman, Nat. Inst. of Corrections, Prisons Division: Colorado Department of
Corrections Administrative Segregation and Classification Review 17 (Oct. 2011), available at https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/final_ad_seg.
pdf.
65  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 6.
66  This data is unfortunately over eleven years old. TDCJ has said that it does not track the costs of housing people in solitary
confinement compared with general population. See Crim. Just. Policy Council, Mangos to Mangos: Comparing the Operational Costs of
Juvenile and Adult Correctional Programs in Texas, Prepared for the 78th Texas Legislature 12 (2003), available at http://www.lbb.state.tx.us/
Public_Safety_Criminal_Justice/Reports/2003cpd.pdf; Letter from TDCJ to Rodney Ellis, supra note 59.
67  See Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences: Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary
Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, 112th Cong. (2012), (written testimony of Christopher
Epps, Commissioner of Mississippi Department of Corrections), available at http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12-619EppsTestimony.pdf.
68  See Reassessing Solitary Confinement II—The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences: Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary
Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, 113th Cong. (2014) (testimony of Lance Lowry, President,
AFSCME Local 3807 Texas Correctional Employees), available at http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Lance-LowrySenate-Hearing-Submission.pdf.
69  See id.; see also e-mail from Lance Lowry, President, AFSCME 3807, to Burke Butler, Fellow, TCRP (Sept. 21, 2014 16:41 CST) (on file
with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
70  See Testimony of Lance Lowry, supra note 68.
71  See id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  9

of solitary confinement. Mississippi cut serious assaults against staff and prisoners
by seventy percent when it reduced its solitary population from one thousand to fewer
than 150.72 When Maine cut its solitary-confinement population, incidents of prison
violence dropped.73 Colorado saw no increase in assaults when it reduced its solitaryconfinement population by sixty percent, and the Director of the Colorado Department
of Corrections declared that “our institutions will actually be safer” with less solitary
confinement.74
Finding Four: Solitary confinement causes thousands of mentally ill people to further
deteriorate before they return to Texas communities. The universal consensus among
mental health experts is that correctional departments must never send people with
serious mental illnesses to solitary confinement because complete isolation causes
people with serious mental illness to fall apart.75 Yet TDCJ confines at least 2,012 people
with mental illnesses in solitary confinement76 and inadequately monitors them during
their time in isolation, providing only cursory checks that are unlikely to identify serious
issues. According to our survey results, of those survey respondents who met with a
mental health worker, sixty-five percent said their meetings were less than two minutes
long.77As a consequence, rates of suicide, attempted suicide, and self-harm in solitary
confinement are far higher than rates in the general population: People in solitary
confinement are five times more likely to commit suicide than those in the general
population.78 For the mentally ill who do survive solitary confinement, they return to
Texas communities in worse condition than when they entered TDCJ.

72  See Terry A. Kupers et al., Beyond Supermax Administrative Segregation: Mississippi’s Experience Rethinking Prison Classification and
Creating Alternative Mental Health Programs, 20 Crim. Just. & Behavior 1, 5, 7 (July 2009), available at https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/
files/images/asset_upload_file359_41136.pdf.
73  See Lance Tapley, Reducing solitary confinement, Portland Phoenix, Nov. 2, 2011, http://portland.thephoenix.com/news/129316reducing-solitary-confinement/?page=2#TOPCONTENT; see also Am. Civ. Liberties Union of Me., Change Is Possible: A Case Study of Solitary
Confinement Reform in Maine 30-31 (Mar. 2013), available at http://www.aclumaine.org/sites/default/files/uploads/users/admin/ACLU_
Solitary_Report_webversion.pdf.
74  See Reassessing Solitary Confinement II—The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences: Hearing Before the Senate
Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, 113th Cong. (2014) (testimony of Rick Raemisch,
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections), available at http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/02-2514RaemischTestimony.pdf.
75  See Jeffrey L. Metzner & Jamie Fellner, Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics, 38 J.
Am. Acad. Psychiatry & L. 104, 105 (Nov. 2010), available at http://www.jaapl.org/content/38/1/104.full.pdf+html.
76  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.
77  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
78  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.

10  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Recommendations
Recommendation One: Change Institutional Attitudes Toward Solitary Confinement.
TDCJ and statewide policymakers must move toward a new institutional attitude
that views solitary confinement as a rare practice, to be used only in exceptional
circumstances and for short periods. The State of Texas has embraced “smart on crime”
reforms in recent years, and this same balancing of benefits against costs should inform
our approach to solitary confinement:
•	 Train correctional officers to work effectively with people with mental illness.
Texas Correctional Office on Offenders with Medical or Mental Impairments
(TCOOMI) should develop additional mental-health training for correctional
officers, and make this training a precondition for an additional pay raise.
Increased training will allow correctional officers to identify misbehavior based
on mental illness and divert people with mental illness to appropriate treatment,
rather than sending them to solitary confinement. It will also help to prevent
confrontations between correctional officers and mentally ill prisoners that can
spiral out of control. A small amount of dedicated additional funding for mental
health training is a wise investment for the state because it gives officers skills
they need, makes them safer, and could increase job satisfaction and reduce
turnover.
•	 Enact step-down programs that allow individuals to move to less restrictive.
housing based on good behavior. TDCJ should enact programs that allow
individuals in solitary confinement to earn greater privileges through good
behavior and eventually return to the general population. These programs will
ensure that people only stay in solitary confinement for short durations. They
will also give prisoners an incentive to comply with prison regulations, thereby
making solitary-confinement units safer for correctional officers.
•	 Institute an independent oversight entity to monitor TDCJ’s use of solitary
confinement and make recommendations for reform. The legislature should
institute an independent oversight body—comprised of mental-health and
corrections experts—to collect data on TDCJ’s use of solitary confinement,
monitor TDCJ’s practices, and make recommendations for reform. This
independent body could play a vital role in ensuring that the public is well
informed about this important area of prison management. The independent
entity should have the power to inspect TDCJ facilities and interview incarcerated
people.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  11

Recommendation Two: Remove People with Serious Mental Illness from Solitary
Confinement
A large number of individuals housed in solitary confinement in Texas prisons
have serious mental illnesses. These individuals should be removed from solitary
confinement and placed in a setting where their mental health needs can be
appropriately addressed, helping to ensure that they are not returned to their
communities unstable and untreated.

•	 Exclude people with serious mental illness from solitary confinement.
Serious mental illnesses include, among other conditions: major depression,
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic
disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and borderline personality
disorder.79 The legislature should dedicate funds for a one-time review
to ensure that all individuals with serious mental illnesses in solitary
confinement are removed to therapeutic settings. TDCJ should also remove
anyone whose medical or mental-health conditions will worsen in solitary
confinement. Diverting those with serious mental health issues to psychiatric
treatment units or other appropriate settings reduces litigation exposure
and improves outcomes for this population, including reducing the causes of
recidivism.
•	 Provide mental-health screening to everyone within twenty-four hours of
placement in solitary confinement. TDCJ should ensure that no one spends
more than one day in solitary confinement without a mental-health screening,
conducted in person by a mental-health professional in a confidential setting.
If a person has serious mental illness, he must be removed from solitary
confinement to a setting where he can receive adequate treatment. People in
solitary confinement who are undergoing mental-health treatment must receive
an in-person mental-health review once per month, conducted by a mentalhealth professional in a confidential room where security staff cannot overhear
the communication.

79  See What Is Mental Illness?: Mental Illness Facts, Nat’l Alliance on Mental Illness http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=about_
mental_illness (last accessed Sept. 16, 2014).

12  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

•	 Enact policies requiring mental-health professionals to participate in all initial
decisions classifying prisoners to solitary confinement, as well as all follow-up
placement reviews. By having mental-health professionals play an ongoing role
in classification decisions, TDCJ will ensure that inmates with serious mental
illnesses are not sent to solitary confinement in the future.

•	 Establish segregated housing with adequate mental-health treatment for
the small number of mentally ill people who legitimately need to be housed
in a high security setting. For many mentally ill prisoners, misbehavior is
a result of inadequate mental-health treatment and the harmful effects of
solitary confinement—which could be remedied with adequate therapeutic
interventions and medication. However, there may be a very small number of
prisoners with mental illness who legitimately need to be isolated from the
rest of the prison population. For these few individuals, TDCJ should create
special mental-health segregation units. In those units, people with mental
illness must receive ten to fifteen hours a week of out-of-cell therapeutic
activities, and at least ten hours a week of unstructured exercise or recreation
time.80
Recommendation Three: Review Solitary-Confinement Placement System-Wide.
To ensure that TDCJ only houses people in solitary confinement if they pose a serious
security risk, TDCJ should:
•	 Review all individuals in solitary confinement with the goal of removing as
many individuals as possible. The legislature should fund a one-time review
to ensure that the costly practice of solitary confinement is not overused
within TDCJ. The review should examine the appropriateness of placement
and the duration of placement for each individual currently housed in solitary
confinement. If an individual poses no threat, the review should result in removal
from solitary confinement. This approach is cost effective because it would rightsize the solitary confinement population in Texas.
•	 Cease automatic placement in solitary confinement. Currently, association with
certain prison gangs can mean automatic and long-term placement in solitary
confinement. While addressing gang violence is a key element of ensuring
security, other criminal justice systems have successfully housed gang members
in settings less restrictive (and less expensive) than solitary confinement. TDCJ
should consider alternative housing for this population, including reviewing
80  See Jeffrey Metzner & Joel Dvoskin, An Overview of Correctional Psychiatry, 29 Psychiatric Clinics N. Am. 761, 764 (2006), available at
http://www.joeldvoskin.com/Metzner___Dvoskin_2006.pdf.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  13

practices in other states that have allowed for placement in less restrictive
settings.
•	 End flat release of people from solitary confinement into Texas communities.
TDCJ has taken steps to expand step-down programs that provide treatment to
help people transition from solitary confinement to life in the outside world. Given
that solitary confinement is associated with higher recidivism rates, it is essential
that TDCJ further expand this programming to make it available to all those
released from solitary. To ensure accountability and transparency, TDCJ should
report publicly on the success of these programs and their outcomes.
•	 Never house individuals in solitary confinement for over one year except in
rare circumstances. TDCJ should cease housing people in solitary confinement
for indefinite periods of time, and never for over one year, unless the following
conditions are met: TDCJ conducts a hearing in which it establishes (1) by a
preponderance of evidence that the individual, within the previous year, has
committed an act which resulted in or was likely to result in serious injury
or death to another; or (2) by clear and convincing evidence that there is a
significant risk that the individual will cause physical injury to prison staff,
other inmates, or members of the public, if removed from long-term isolation.
Association with a prison gang alone should not be enough to meet that burden.
The hearing committee must not be comprised of staff from the prisoner’s unit.
Recommendation Four: Improve Conditions in Solitary Confinement.
After dramatically reducing its solitary-confinement population, TDCJ should take steps
to improve conditions for people in its solitary-confinement cells to reduce isolation and
the corresponding anti-social tendencies isolation causes:
•	 Ensure appropriate programming for individuals held in solitary confinement.
TDCJ should provide people in solitary confinement with opportunities for
out-of-cell educational, rehabilitative, and religious programs to help prepare
them for their eventual release into the outside world. TDCJ should also develop
educational, rehabilitative, and religious programs that people can complete in
their cells.
•	 Provide adequate stimulation to lower the effects of sensory deprivation.
TDCJ should provide people in solitary confinement with the same access to
televisions, radios, books, and magazines that is available in general population.
It should also provide more out-of-cell time.

14  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

•	 Support family relationships. Solitary confinement significantly impairs family
bonds by limiting visitation to no-contact visits and prohibiting telephone calls
to loved ones. TDCJ can support family relationships—which in turn aid in
rehabilitation—by providing people in solitary confinement with the ability to have
contact visits with their loved ones and make telephone calls to their families.
•	 Provide adequate mental-health and medical services to those in solitary
confinement. TDCJ should conduct weekly reviews of people in solitary
confinement by a mental-health professional. People receiving mental-health
treatment should be granted out-of-cell treatment sessions with a mental-health
professional, taking place in a confidential room where security staff cannot
overhear the conversation. The complete isolation in solitary confinement can
also make it more difficult for people to request and access urgent medical care.
TDCJ should review the provision of medical care in its solitary-confinement
units and ensure that people in solitary confinement receive adequate medical
services.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  15

BACKGROUND
The findings documented in this report are hardly news. The dangers of extreme
isolation were first observed by correctional experts in the 1800s, causing them
to abandon the practice in favor of more humane and constructive conditions
of confinement. Now, after decades of experience with the ill effects of solitary
confinement, a new generation of experts and policymakers has concluded that solitary
confinement must be used as rarely possible and only for brief periods.

The Early Failure of Solitary Confinement

Credit: Michael Cevoli

Early experiments with
solitary confinement
demonstrated that it
completely debilitated
prisoners, thwarting
the fundamental
correctional objective
of making American
communities safer by
preparing people to live
law-abiding lives in the
outside world. In the late
1700s, the Pennsylvania
legislature authorized
the construction of this
country’s first-ever block
of solitary confinement
cells in the Walnut Street
Jail.81 82

n  Opened in 1829 outside of Philadelphia, Eastern State
Penitentiary utilized a system of complete isolation, like
its predecessors, Walnut Street Jail and Western State
Penitentiary.82

81  See Craig Haney & Mona Lynch, Regulating Prisons of the Future: A Psychological Analysis of Supermax and Solitary Confinement, 23
N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 477, 483 (1997).
82  See History of Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, E. State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc. http://www.easternstate.org/sites/default/
files/pdf/ESP-history6.pdf (last accessed Sept. 15, 2014).

16  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Then in 1826, Pennsylvania opened Western State Penitentiary, and housed everyone
there in solitary confinement.83 Other states soon followed Pennsylvania’s model.84
Observers quickly recognized that solitary confinement caused lasting psychological
harm, however, permanently damaging inmates beyond repair—until they were
utterly unfit for return to free society.85 As the United States Supreme Court observed
in 1890, the experiment with solitary confinement had completely failed as a
correctional practice:
But experience demonstrated that there were serious objections to
[solitary confinement]. A considerable number of the prisoners fell,
after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from
which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became
violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood
the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did
not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to
the community.86
Correctional departments had largely abandoned solitary confinement by the early
twentieth century because of the irreversible damage it inflicted on prisoners.87
Until the 1980s, state and federal prisons used solitary confinement only in rare and
extraordinary circumstances.88

The Misguided Return of Solitary Confinement in the Late
Twentieth Century
Fueled by the “tough on crime” movement and reeling under the pressure of a
skyrocketing prison population in the 1980s,89 correctional departments forgot the
abysmal early failure of solitary confinement. Between 1925 and 1986, the size of the
population incarcerated in state and federal prisons skyrocketed by 450 percent.90 By
83  See Haney & Lynch, supra note 81, at 483.
84  See id. at 484.
85  See Gustave de Beaumont & Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France 5-6 (Francis
Lieber, trans., S. Ill. U. Press 1979) (1833).
86  In re Medley, 134 U.S. 160, 168 (1890).
87  See Haney & Lynch, supra note 81, at 484-87; see also Jesenia M. Pizarro, Vanja M.K. Stenius, & Travis C. Pratt, Supermax Prisons:
Myths, Realities, and the Politics of Punishment in American Society, 17 Crim. Just. Pol. Rev. 6, 12 (Mar. 2011).
88  Haney & Lynch, supra note 81, at 488-89; Pizarro, Stenius, & Pratt, supra note 87, at 7.
89  It is beyond the scope of this report to detail the policies that contributed to exponential growth in the nation’s prison population. But
it is important to note that the drivers of the increase—including the misguided “war on drugs” and harsh sentencing requirements—
meant that much of the growth was among non-violent, low-level drug offenders. See The Sentencing Project, Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S.
Corrections (Sept. 2014), available at http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf.
90  See Patrick A. Langan, John V. Fundis, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, & Victoria W. Schneider, Bureau of Justice Statistics: Historical Statistics
on Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions, Yearend 1925-1986, at 15 (May 1988), available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/
digitization/111098ncjrs.pdf.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  17

the late 1990s, most prisons were operating at over one hundred percent of design
capacity.91 As correctional departments struggled to control overcrowded prisons, many
prison officials responded by locking down prisoners in solitary confinement.92

And with elected officials needing to establish their “tough on crime” bona fides,
legislatures poured money into the construction of expensive solitary-confinement
units.93 Some states even built “supermax” prisons—prisons consisting entirely
of solitary-confinement cells. In 1984, there was only one “supermax” facility in
the United States.94 By 1999, there were sixty supermax facilities in thirty states.95
In 2000, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that a over 80,000 people were
held in solitary confinement in federal and state prisons.96 That was a forty percent
increase from only five years earlier, even faster than the rate of growth of the
general prison population, which had increased twenty-eight percent over the same
period.97
Texas was at the forefront of the renewed use of solitary confinement. Facing its
own rapidly inflating prison population, Texas imposed a new regime of widespread
solitary confinement in the late 1980s. Traditionally, TDCJ had used solitary
confinement only as a short-term punishment for in-prison misbehavior, lasting
just a few weeks at a time.98 But Texas’s prison population boomed in the twentieth
century, increasing at an even more dramatic rate than the rest of the country.
Between 1925 and 1986, Texas’s prison population increased by over one thousand
percent.99 By 1986, TDCJ had the third-largest number of people in prison in all fifty
states.100 Rather than augment its correctional force to manage the over 38,000
people it had locked behind bars, Texas responded by warehousing a large portion
of its prison population in permanent solitary confinement.101 TDCJ built new units
with layouts that harkened back to the Pennsylvania model of the nineteenth century
of “total isolation.”102 Between 1987 and 1994, TDCJ built seven maximum-security
prisons, each with 504 administrative segregation cells.103 Soon, Texas had solitaryconfinement cells throughout the state—and it started to fill them.104
91  See Chase Riveland, Supermax Prisons: Overview and General Considerations 5 (Jan. 1999), available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.
nicic.gov/Library/014937.pdf.
92  See id.; see also Haney & Lynch, supra note 81, at 480.
93  See Riveland, supra note 91, at 5.
94  See Pizarro, Stenius, & Pratt, supra note 87, at 7.
95  See id.
96  See Vera Institute of Justice, Confronting Confinement: A Report of The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 52-53 (June
2006), available at http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Confronting_Confinement.pdf.
97  See id. at 53.
98  See Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough 314 (2010).
99  See Langan, Fundis, Greenfield & Schneider, supra note 90, at 5, 13.
100  See id.
101  See Perkinson, supra note 98, at 314-15.
102  See id.
103  John Sharp, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, A Report from the Texas Performance Review 47 (Apr. 1994).
104  See id.

18  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary confinement cells in the State of Texas per prison unit

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  19

Who is in Texas SolitaryConfinement Cells?
Fifty-three percent105 of prisoners in solitary confinement are there because
TDCJ determined that they were either an escape risk or a security threat to
officers or other prisoners.106 On average, they remain in solitary confinement
for three and a half years, which indicates that TDCJ continues to isolate
many people long after they cease to pose a threat.107 Forty-six percent are
in solitary confinement because TDCJ determined that they were members
of one of eight gangs—not because they committed any misconduct while
incarcerated.108 The remaining prisoners are in in “Protective Custody”—
isolated in solitary confinement for their own protection.109
The population in Texas’s solitary-confinement cells is predominantly male;
110
there are only 103 women in Texas solitary-confinement cells.111 Nineteen
people in solitary-confinement cells are under the age of 19, and forty-four are
over sixty-five years old.112
Thirty-three percent of people in solitary confinement committed non-violent
offenses 113 such as property and drug crimes.114
The population in Texas’s solitary-confinement cells is disproportionately
Hispanic.115 Hispanics comprise over fifty percent of the solitary-confinement
population, even though they make up only thirty-two percent of the general
population.116 The racial disproportion is likely because the eight gangs
automatically housed in solitary confinement are predominately Hispanic.117 n

105  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.
106  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at 1.
107  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.
108  E-mail from TDCJ Office of the General Counsel to Burke Butler, Fellow, TCRP (Sept. 9, 2014, 08:35 CST) (on file with ACLU of Texas
and TCRP).
109  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5; TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
110  Letter from TDCJ to authors, supra note 5.
111  Id.
112  Id.
113  Id.
114  Id.
115  Id.
116  Id.
117  Id.

20  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Racial breakdown of general population compared to solitaryconfinement population

Black	
  

Black	
  

Hispanic	
  

Hispanic	
  

White	
  

White	
  

Other	
  

Other	
  

General Population

Solitary-Confinement Population

Total confinement
Age breakdown of people in solitary
65+

18

60-64

33

55-59

116

50-54

235

45-49

424

40-44

672

35-39

813

30-34

732

25-29

474

23-24

96

21-22

49

19-20

15
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  21

The Renewed Consensus: Solitary Confinement is a Dangerous
and Expensive Correctional Practice
Predictably, after diverting thousands of prisoners to solitary confinement, correctional
departments around the country soon learned that solitary confinement increased
violence both in prison and in American communities. In May 2007, violence erupted in
Mississippi’s solitary-confinement unit.118 By the summer, three people in the unit had
been murdered.119 Officials in Mississippi recognized that “[a] different approach was
needed due to the deteriorating and dangerous environment.”120 In March 2013, a former
gang member released from a Colorado
solitary-confinement cell assassinated
“Is [solitary confinement] really
the Executive Director of the Colorado
necessary? And is it necessary at the
Department of Corrections. His successor, level of current use? And I think when you
Rick Raemisch, said that the murder
look critically at it, the answer is [that]
underscored the urgent need for reform
we don’t need these kinds of numbers of
of Colorado’s use of solitary confinement.
inmates in these kinds of high security
“Whatever solitary confinement did to
settings, and we can better prepare them
that former inmate and murderer,” Mr.
for release, because ninety-eight percent
Raemisch wrote, “it was not for the
of our inmates are getting out.”
121 122 123
better.”
—Commissioner of the Maine Department
Recognizing that solitary confinement
of Corrections Joseph Ponte122
endangers the public, many states are
changing their ways. Between 2007 and
2012, Mississippi reduced its solitary“This is a message I deliver directly to
confinement population from one
my wardens. I say to them: ‘Who wants
thousand prisoners to fewer than 150.124
to live directly next to someone who was
Maine cut the number of people in solitary just released from solitary confinement?
cells in half between 2010 and 2012 and
Think about how dangerous that is.’”
gave those who remained in solitary
group recreation, counseling sessions,
—Executive Director of Colorado
opportunities to earn more recreation
Department of Corrections Rick
through good behavior, and
Raemisch123
118  See Testimony of Christopher Epps, supra note 67.
119  See id.
120  See id.
121  Rich Raemisch, My Night in Solitary, N.Y. Times, Feb. 20, 2014, at A25, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/mynight-in-solitary.html.
122  Stop Solitary: Maine’s Commissioner of the Department of Corrections Joseph Ponte on Reducing His State’s Solitary Confinement Population,
available at https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/stop-solitary-maines-commissioner-department-corrections-joseph-pontereducing-his (last accessed Sept. 5, 2014).
123  See Testimony of Rick Raemisch, supra note 74.
124  See Kupers, supra note 72, at 5.

22  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

greater access to radios, televisions, and reading materials.125 In 2013, Illinois closed
its supermax prison, Tamms Correctional Center.126 Colorado reduced its population
in solitary confinement by nearly sixty percent between 2011 and 2014.127 In February
2014,Mr. Raemisch vowed to further reduce Colorado’s solitary-confinement
population,128 and two months later the Colorado legislature passed a bill excluding
people with serious mental illnesses from solitary confinement.129 New York corrections
officials agreed to new guidelines limiting the maximum length of time people should
spend in solitary and eliminated the use of solitary confinement against the most
vulnerable prisoners: juveniles, pregnant women, and people with developmental
disabilities.130 In August 2014, the California Department of Corrections took preliminary
steps to revise its misguided use of solitary confinement by instituting policies to greatly
reduce the number of mentally ill people in solitary confinement, improve mental-health
treatment, and increase suicide-prevention measures.131 Under the new measures,
California will move 2,740 mentally-ill people out of solitary confinement.132
By reducing their use of solitary, states made their prisons safer and saved taxpayers
millions of dollars. When Mississippi reduced its solitary-confinement population, violent
incidents dropped by almost seventy percent,133 and it saved taxpayers $5.6 million a
year.134 Mississippi still has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country.135 Incidents
of violence in Maine’s prisons dropped when it cut its solitary-confinement population
in half.136 By closing Tamms Correctional Center, Illinois saved taxpayers $26.6 million a
year.137

125  See Am. Civ. Liberties Union of Me., supra note 73, at 13.
126  See Tamms Supermaximum Security prison now closed, Amnesty Int’l (Jan. 10, 2013), http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/latestvictories/tamms-supermaximum-security-prison-now-closed.
127  Testimony of Rick Raemisch, supra note 74.
128  See Allison Sherry, Colorado corrections chief: I will reduce solitary confinement, Denver Post, Feb. 25, 2014, http://www.denverpost.
com/news/ci_25227021/colo-corrections-chief-i-will-reduce-solitary-confinement.
129  See Michael Muskal, Colorado bans solitary confinement for seriously mentally ill, L.A. Times, June 6, 2014, http://www.latimes.com/
nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-colorado-mentally-ill-isolation-20140606-story.html.
130  See Benjamin Weiser, New York State in Deal to Limit Solitary Confinement, N.Y. Times, Feb. 19, 2014, at A1, available at http://www.
nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/new-york-rethinks-solitary-confinement.html.
131  See Erica Goode, Federal Judge Approves California Plan to Reduce Isolation of Mentally Ill Inmates, N.Y. Times, Aug. 29, 2014, at A11,
available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/us/california-plans-to-reduce-isolation-of-mentally-ill-inmates.html?_r=0.
132  See id.
133  See Kupers, supra note 72, at 7.
134  See Testimony of Christopher Epps, supra note 67, at 3.
135  See id.
136  See Tapley, supra note 73.
137  See Ill. Dep’t of Corrections, Tamms Correctional Center Closing—Fact Sheet 142, available at http://cgfa.ilga.gov/upload/
TammsMeetingTestimonyDocuments.pdf (last accessed Aug. 28, 2014).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  23

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT INCREASES
CRIME

P

risons should make our communities safer, but solitary confinement makes them
more dangerous. Solitary confinement causes prisoners to develop lasting mental
illnesses, destroys their ability to relate to others, tears apart their family safety nets,
and deprives them of vocational, educational, rehabilitative, and religious programming.
After subjecting people to years or decades of solitary confinement, TDCJ sets them
free in Texas communities—where, impaired by their years of complete isolation, they
commit crimes at higher rates than people released from the general population.
Solitary confinement does more than cause lasting harm to the people confined there; it
ultimately harms our communities.

Solitary Confinement Permanently Damages People Who Will
One Day Return to Texas Communities
Solitary Confinement Causes Permanent Mental Deterioration
Solitary confinement can cause people’s mental health to seriously deteriorate, creating
or exacerbating psychiatric symptoms that persist long after their release and impede
their ability to reintegrate to society. The medical consensus is that most human
beings cannot withstand the prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation that solitary
confinement entails, and our survey of people incarcerated in Texas prisons produced
predictable results. Ninety-five percent of respondents to our survey had developed
some sort of psychiatric symptom as a result of solitary confinement; thirty percent
reported having oral or physical outbursts, fifty percent reported suffering from anxiety
or panic attacks, and fifteen percent reported hallucinations.138 Solitary confinement’s
impact on the human brain is as brutal as a traumatic physical injury; prisoners of
war who spent six months in solitary confinement had abnormal brain-wave patterns
months after their release.139
Studies document that people in solitary confinement are also at a higher risk of
suffering from psychiatric disorders.140 Dr. Stuart Grassian, one of the nation’s leading
138  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
139  See Atul Gawande, Hellhole, New Yorker, Mar. 30, 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole.
140  See Craig Haney, Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement, 49 Crime & Delinquency 124, 138-40 (Jan.
2003), available at http://www.supermaxed.com/NewSupermaxMaterials/Haney-MentalHealthIssues.pdf; Terry A. Kupers, What to Do

24  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

experts on the psychiatric effects of solitary confinement, found that many people in
solitary confinement develop a unique psychiatric syndrome: They lose their capacity
to think clearly or concentrate; lose their memory; hallucinate; have panic attacks;
ruminate on obsessive thoughts of “revenge, torture, and mutilation of the prison
guards”; get lost in paranoid delusions; and have poor impulse control.141 These
symptoms do not go away when people leave prison; they persist long after release,
inhibiting the ability to adjust to normal life and reintegrate into the community.142
Summing up the research on solitary confinement’s psychological impact, Dr. Terry
Kupers, of the Wright Institute, writes that “it is very clear . . . that for just about all
prisoners, being held in isolated confinement for longer than 3 months causes lasting
emotional damage if not full-blown psychosis and functional disability.”143 In the words
of a staff psychiatrist from a California state prison, “It’s a standard psychiatric concept,
if you put people in isolation, they will go insane. . . . Most people in isolation will fall
apart.”144
The psychological impact of Texas’s solitary-confinement cells was documented by
University of California professor Craig Haney when he served as an expert in the
prisoners’ rights case Ruiz v. Estelle.145 Dr. Haney found that “high numbers of prisoners
were living in psychological distress and pain” in Texas’s solitary-confinement cells:
I’m talking about forms of behavior that are easily recognizable and that
are stark in nature when you see them, when you look at them, when
you’re exposed to them. In a number of instances, there were people who
had smeared themselves with feces. In other instances, there were people
who had urinated in their cells, and the urination was on the floor. . . .
There were many people who were incoherent when I attempted to talk to
them, babbling, sometimes shrieking, other people who appeared to be
full of furyand anger and rage and were, in some instances, banging their
hands on the side of the wall and yelling and screaming, other people who
appeared to be simply disheveled, withdrawn and out of contact with the
circumstances or surroundings. Some of them would be huddled in the
back corner of the cell and appeared incommunicative when I attempted
with the Survivors? Coping With the Long-Term Effects of Isolated Confinement, 8 Crim. Just. & Behav. 1005, 1005-06 (2008), available at
http://www.nrcat.org/storage/documents/usp_kupers_what_do_with_survivors.pdf.
141  See Stuart Grassian, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, 22 Wash. U.J.L. & Pol’y 325, 335-36 (2006).
142  See id. at 333.
143  Kupers, supra note 140, at 1005-06.
144  Human Rights Watch, Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness 19 n.512 (Oct. 2003), available at http://www.hrw.org/
node/12252/section/19#_ftnref513.
145  See Ruiz v. Johnson, 37 F. Supp. 2d 855, 908-09 (S.D. Tex. 1999), rev’d on other grounds, 243 F.3d 941 (5th Cir. 2001), adhered to on
remand, 154 F. Supp. 2d 975 (S.D. Tex. 2001).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  25

to speak with them. Again, these were not subtle diagnostic issues. These
were people who appeared to be in profound states of distress and pain...
The bedlam which ensued each time I walked out into one of those units,
the number of people who were screaming, who were begging for help,
for attention, the number of people who appeared to be disturbed, the
existence, again, of people who were smeared with feces, the intensity
of the noise as people began to shout and ask, Please come over here.
Please talk to me. Please help
me. It was shattering. And as I
discussed this atmosphere with
“Families of these individuals [placed
the people who worked here, I
in solitary confinement] are faced with
was told that this was an everyday
monumental challenges in helping their
occurrence, that there was nothing
loved one’s adapt to life on the outside.
at all unusual about what I was
. . . We should never lose sight of a
seeing.146
person’s humanity and their need for
family and human contact. Developing
The federal judge presiding over the
pro-social services and strengthening
Ruiz case wrote that Texas’s solitaryfamily relationships within prison walls is
confinement cells “are virtual incubators
paramount to public safety—both inside
of psychoses—seeding illness in
and outside prison fences. ”
otherwise healthy inmates.”147 Based
—Jennifer Erschabek, Executive Director
on the psychological effects of solitary
of Texas Imate Families Association.149
confinement, the judge determined
that Texas’s solitary-confinement cells
constituted cruel and unusual punishment
in violation of the Eighth Amendment of
the United States Constitution.148
149

146  Id. at 909-10.
147  Id. at 907.
148  See id. at 914-15.
149  E-mail from Jennifer Erschabek, Executive Director, TIFA, to Matthew Simpson, Policy Strategist, ACLU of Texas (July 14, 2014,
07:56 CST) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

26  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices
“Now I know how the caged animal
must feel and why it paces the way
it does. I feel so angry at times and
I pace this cell for hours trying to
get my thoughts and feelings under
control. I feel suffocating feelings and
have anxiety attacks that I feel are
going to kill me sometimes—heart
attack. I sometimes see things in this
cell like ghosts flitting around the
floor & walls. I can’t sleep for days
at time and the officers count every
hour and most of them bang on your
door, shine their lights in your face
and make you get up and show them
you I.D. card—tell you make sure you
are alive. I get so angry I cuss, kick the
150151152152
“Felt isolated, withdrew from people
door & walls and lose any self control
socially; clean, organize, obsessively,
I have and I actually start to think
hand wash, felt despair, felt
about really ending this torment—I
disoriented/confused, panic, couldn’t
sometimes sleep so much I lose track
sleep until exhausted. Bad dreams,
of days at a time—sometimes several.
see something on walls moving but
That’s when I really feel disoriented/
151
nothing there.”
confused/afraid.”152
“Everyday from dusk to dawn theres
noise, banging, clanking, yelling,
screaming. Everyday someone is
getting hurt or hurting themselves.
Everyday theres fire and floods and
complete chaos & hate. Everyday
there’s loneliness. I woke up last
night to someone screaming ‘Let Me
Out of Here’ (again) over and over
with so much anguish there was no
doubt he was screaming from his
very soul. But he was just screaming
what we are all thinking. Everyday is
a challenge here. A challenge against
insanity.”150

150  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated July 29, 2014).
151  Survey response from Anna, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
152  Survey response from Nathan, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  27

Sergio’s Story
TDCJ sent Sergio to solitary confinement when he was nineteen years old.
During his three and a half years in solitary confinement, Sergio had virtually
nothing to do. Every day, he would wake up when breakfast was served, usually
at three or four o’clock in the morning. Then he would listen to the radio
for four to five hours, and work out in his cell. Although he could not watch
television, Sergio rigged his radio so he could listen to television shows like
Fox News, Anderson Cooper, Dateline, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Seinfeld.
(Under prison regulations, he was not allowed to rig his radio that way; he just
tried not to get caught.) He would eat lunch at ten o’clock, and then listen to
more radio or read. His favorite books were Tuesdays with Morrie, which he
loved “because it’s about a guy who talks to his friend once a week about life
lessons, success and marriage,” and The Time Traveler’s Wife. He would play
chess with other prisoners by drawing out a chess board, numbering it, and
then calling out his moves to people in other cells. At four in the afternoon,
Sergio would have dinner, and at 8:00 p.m. officers would distribute the mail;
he received a letter from his family a couple of times a month.
In January 2014, Sergio finally got out of solitary confinement. We met with
Sergio in May. Although Sergio was scheduled to be released from prison in
eight months, he felt damaged and unprepared for the real world after his
time in solitary. Sergio said that he is not “comfortable being around people”
and does not go to the recreation room. He prefers to stay in his cell and
obsessively tries to order everything perfectly there because “if it ain’t right,
I get agitated.” Before he was in solitary confinement, Sergio says, “I used to
be a people person and like being around people.” But, Sergio says “it’s weird
after three years back there” in solitary confinement. Now, he doesn’t like
“having other people being close to me” and says that “stuff gets balled up
inside” of him.153 n

153  Interview with Sergio, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (May 28, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

28  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices
“I have difficulty talking to people now and I feel paranoid at times in my cell—I
see shadows and I’v started to hear voices whisper my name the last couple of
years in my cell . . . feel closed in!”154

154

155

“I am an honorably discharged combat veteran diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety
disorder, panic disorder, etc. Isolation is torture. There can be no other word
for it. ‘Isolation’ simply means you are single-celled. You are not removed from
the effects of other inmates’ extreme behavior resultant from ad seg. People
flood the areas by plugging toilets. Fires are routinely started so you wake in the
middle of the night choaking on black smoke. Electricity gets turned off. People
scream, yell non-sensical gibberish all night. They bang doors 24 hours. . . .”155

154  Survey response from Greg, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
155  Survey response from Pedro, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  29

Letter From Alex
“When you dive deep in the ocean and when you go to make your ascension, it’s
very important to make stops to calibrate your air. You can’t just swim to the
surface. If a diver rushes to the surface too fast, they put themselves in serious
risk of injury (called “the bend”). In some cases it can be fatal if the diver
cannot go immediately back down and start over, or be rushed to a hyperbaric
chamber. . . .
“Coming out of my cell feels like I’ve gone to the surface too fast. When the
doors roll, everything is amplified. Nerves are cranked to 10. Lights are too
bright. A mop bucket being pushed by an S.S.I. sounds like a mid-day freight
train with horns blaring. It’s hyper-sensitivity on the grandest scale, with the
feeling like the whole world is watching. . . .
“I’m a people person. Before I came here I was outgoing, very social. Maybe
even too much the life of the party. And I hate this cell, I hate it. But in some
crazy way as much as I enjoyed our meeting and its purpose, a part of me
couldn’t wait to get back to my cell. In one big haste to return to the very same
place that cause it. My cell is my hyperbaric chamber.
“T.D.C.J., as well as I’m sure all prison systems, will claim that ad. seg. is not
a punishment in itself. But the system puts an even greater burden on the
segregated inmate being released. Since there’s no available programming for
substance abuse (AA, NA) or groups to address Anger Management like you
may find in the general population. If you’re released on parole or released
period, an ad. seg. inmate not only has to struggle with the issues they had
going into prison. The isolated ad. seg. inmate has to deal with the adverse
symptoms caused by the prison itself.
“I feel fortunate because I recognize these things. While I’m in no way
suggesting I’ll have it easier than the next man when I leave here. I’m looking
forward to the challenge, I’m looking to the day I’ll leave this cell for the last
time and slowly make my way to the top.156 n

156  Letter from Alex to authors (May 30, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

30  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices
“Being secluded to a small cell 23
hours a day-plus affects every sane
individual in one way or another. A
person has to yell just to socialize.
To those who are not socializing, it
is a constant cacophony of noise—
constant! A person is affected
negatively in every way!157

“In another state of mind. You could
not tell day from night. You were
always backward. Sleep all day stay
up all night. No light coming in the
building. You be lost.”158
“It dehumanizes you and causes a
enmity in you against staff and feelings
of worthlessness and despair.”159

”157158159
Isolation Erodes People’s Capacity to Interact with Others
Solitary confinement damages people’s ability to relate to other human beings. It erodes
the social skills people need to raise children, support their spouses, help aging parents,
participate in their communities, cooperate with neighbors, and hold down jobs.
Prisoners in solitary confinement are always alone. They live in a cell alone. They
go to the recreation yard alone. They eat alone. For weeks, they do not see another
person’s face. To speak to anyone else, even a person in a neighboring cell, they must
shout through the cell walls. The only time they touch another human being is when a
correctional officer places handcuffs on their wrists to take them to the recreation yard.
Stripped of all social contact for years at a time, their capacity to relate to human
beings decays.160 In the words of Dr. Grassian, people in solitary confinement suffer
from “a continued intolerance of social interaction” even after their release.161 Dr.
Grassian has had the opportunity to evaluate people years after their release from
solitary confinement.162 He says that “these individuals had become strikingly socially
impoverished and experienced intense irritation with social interaction, patterns
dramatically different from their functioning prior to solitary confinement.”163 As Dr.
Haney describes, the lack of contact creates a “pervasive feeling of unreality,” which
causes people to “experience a paradoxical reaction, moving from initially being starved
157  Survey response from Will, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
158  Survey response from Charles, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
159  Survey response from Andy, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
160  See Haney, supra note 140, at 138-40.
161  Grassian, supra note 141, at 333.
162  See id. at 354.
163  Id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  31

for social contact to eventually being disoriented and even frightened by it.”164 In our
survey, fifty-nine percent of respondents reported that they had “difficulty interacting
with other people” as a consequence of their time in solitary.165
Indeed, many of the symptoms of mental and emotional damage caused by solitary
confinement impair normal human interaction:
Consistent patterns emerge, centering around . . . extreme anxiety, anger,
hallucinations, mood swings and flatness, and loss of impulse control. In
the absence of stimuli, prisoners may also become hypersensitive to any
stimuli at all. Often they obsess uncontrollably, as if their minds didn’t
belong to them, over tiny details or personal grievances. Panic attacks are
routine, as is depression and loss of memory and cognitive function.166
Solitary confinement also causes “significantly increased negative attitudes and affect,
irritability, anger, aggression and even rage.”167 People are thus rendered incapable
of resuming the normal familial and community relationships that are essential to
successful reentry. According to Dr. Kupers, the inevitable result of confinement in
solitary is the “decimation of life skills” because it “destroys one’s capacity to relate
socially, to work, to play, to hold a job or enjoy life.”168
Yet eventually, TDCJ sends these damaged people back to Texas communities. After
years in solitary confinement, they are unprepared to resume the roles society expects of
them: as parents, spouses, employees, and neighbors.

164  See Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences: Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary
Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, 112th Cong. (June 19, 2012) (testimony of Craig Haney,
Prof. of Psychology, Univ. of Ca. Santa Cruz), available at http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12-6-19HaneyTestimony.pdf.
165  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
166  Brandom Keim, The Horrible Psychology of Solitary Confinement, Wired, July 10, 2013, http://www.wired.com/2013/07/solitaryconfinement-2/.
167  See Testimony of Craig Haney, supra note 164.
168  Keim, supra note 166.

32  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices
“Being enclosed for so long just
looking at 4 walls, a toilet and metal
bars is all I look at 24 hours a day,
so when and if I go to visitation, my
dad says I cant stop looking around.
And when I come back to my cell
I get depressed to have to go thru
it all again being away from any &
everything & my family.”169

“[T]his is a dark sad cut off place, no
people interaction, no one to talk to
& rec with. You go crazy just wanting
someone to talk to or play dominos
with some times, or just to talk about
things with, everything keeps you
isolated from others some times for
years & years at a time! How can you
isolate a man that long & expect him
to have good/acceptable social/people
skills when hes released to gen. pop.
or the free?”171

“[Solitary confinement] makes one
lose self of all humanity as we are
treated worse then animals in a
“It is becoming harder to deal with real
kennel feels suffocating like walls are 169170171
life problems. Mainly because I feel
closing in makes one lose sense of
170
suspended in time. No human contact.
reality.”
172
Very little human interactions.”172

Solitary Confinement Severs Family Bonds
TDCJ should support incarcerated people in maintaining family bonds, but solitary
confinement severs those bonds. Strong family bonds can help prisoners successfully
reintegrate into society; people in prison who receive visits from their family members
are thirty percent less likely to commit new crimes than those who never received a
visit.173 Yet solitary confinement interferes with family bonds by limiting families to a
“no-contact visit,” during which prisoners are separated from their family members
by a pane of glass or metal mesh.174 People in solitary confinement cannot hold their
family member’s hand or hug them goodbye. “The contact visit means everything,”
says Jennifer Erschabek, Director of the Texas Inmate Families Association (TIFA), a
non-profit organization that advocates for the family members of people incarcerated in
Texas prisons. “That little interaction is so appreciated by the guys. And you can feel it
169  Survey response from George, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
170  Survey response from Chris, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
171  Survey response from Richard, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
172  Survey response from Ignacio, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
173  See William D. Bales & Daniel P. Mears, Inmate Social Ties and the Transition to Society: Does Visitation Reduce Recividism?, 45 J. Res.
Crime & Delinq. 287, 304-05 (2008).
174  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  33

in the hug.”175 The restrictions on people in solitary confinement add further trauma to
family members; they may drive a full day across Texas to visit their son, only to see him
in a glass cage and speak to him through a telephone.176 At the most restrictive level of
solitary confinement, prisoners can only visit with their family once a month—far less
than people in the general population.177 People in solitary confinement also cannot call
their family members, which is often their only way to maintain ties with loved ones who
are too far away or cannot afford to visit. TIFA knows firsthand that solitary confinement
profoundly impairs family bonds. For a person placed in solitary confinement for even
the average length of almost four years, TIFA says, it is “almost impossible for that
person to remain in meaningful contact with their family and other members of their
support network.”178 Solitary confinement cuts away the interpersonal safety net that
people need to support their transition back to life in the outside world.

Lori and Frank
Lori and Frank’s love story epitomizes how solitary confinement prevents
prisoners from accessing the family and religious support they need to
rehabilitate. Lori met her husband, Frank, when she was fourteen and he
was sixteen. “I felt in love the first moment he smiled at me,” she recollected.
Frank has been in solitary confinement since 2003. Lori does everything she
can to support her husband. She drives to see him every week—125 miles each
way—to visit with him through a pane of glass. She writes prolifically to him,
and he writes to her; when we spoke, she had just received letter 395 from
Frank. Lori reconnected her husband with his estranged sister, who has visited
him three times in the last several months. To show Frank love and support,
she tracked down Frank’s childhood friends and took them with her on her
weekend visits.
Faith has played a central role in Lori and Frank’s relationship. “He is a huge
person of faith,” Lori said of her husband. “Over the years, he’s recognized
that God is working in him and refining him, and he definitely has some things
to be fixed in his life. He believes that God created both of us as spirit mates
together.” God is a central focus of their meetings and letters. “We talk about
175  E-mail from Erschabek to Simpson, supra note 149.
176  See id.
177  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
178  E-mail from Erschabek to Simpson, supra note 149.

34  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

God, we write about God, we write about us having faith with each other,” Lori
explained. “And as implausible as it is, my pastor, our friends, our families, are
in constant prayer that those walls are gonna fall down.”
Yet rather than nurture the seeds of Frank’s faith, TDCJ places many
limitations on his religious practice. “Faith plays a part in our relationship,”
Lori told us. “But Frank has no ability for faith to play a part in what he does.
He has never seen a chaplain set foot in [the solitary-confinement unit].”
Lori knows a woman whose husband is imprisoned in general population;
the woman participates in a guided Bible study with her husband every week.
Lori has no such opportunity to study the Bible with her husband under the
guidance of a pastor. And her husband cannot attend religious services, like
people in general population can. “We’re gonna figure out a way to get him
home,” Lori says. “Until then, it would certainly be nice if he could go to a
church service.”
“From the year 2000, in April, when
Lori wishes she could speak to her
my stepson went into [solitary
husband on the phone or hold his
confinement], the next time his
hand during their visits. “Human
mother was able to touch him was in
touch is so restorative, and he deals
2010. . . . In other words, there is no
with negativity 24/7, and that two
ability to hug each other—you can
hours we have every weekend, he
have no physical contact with that
calls it his ‘charging up time,’” she
individual if they are in [solitary],
explained. “To be able to hold hands,
period. From a mother’s perspective,
and connect without the glass—I’m
that’s heartbreaking. The fact that you
pretty darn strong, but just being
can’t hug periodically.”180
able to hold his hand so he felt the
connection, so he can be strong for
what he has to endure in there.” Lori started to cry when she recounted what it
would mean to her and Frank to be able to hold hands once a week. “I wouldn’t
care what hoops I would have to go through to have a contact visit with my
husband,” she said. “I would do whatever they wanted me to. Even if had to
be in a separate room, with his leg chained to the floor, whatever they have to
do, I would be willing to. . . . It would make such a difference for him to endure
what he has to endure to pay his debt to society. . . . And I could endure, too.
Because I am in there with him.”179 n180

179  Telephone interview with Lori, family member of individual incarcerated in TDCJ (Sept. 23, 2014).
180  Telephone interview with Robert, family member of individual incarcerated in TDCJ (Sept. 17, 2014).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  35

TDCJ Deprives People in Solitary Confinement of All Opportunities for SelfImprovement
Solitary confinement forces people into lives of complete idleness, depriving them of
any opportunity for self-improvement. TDCJ excludes people in solitary confinement
from all rehabilitative programs—programs designed to prepare people for life in the
outside world.181 They cannot take group courses to earn their G.E.D. or associates’
degree to support a future career.182 They cannot work in a prison job to pass their
hours productively.183 They cannot learn a trade that could help them one day meet their
responsibilities as breadwinners for their families.184 Seventy percent of respondents
to our survey professed adherence to a religion;185 yet people in solitary confinement
cannot practice their faith with others and receive the many educational, moral, and
spiritual benefits of collective worship.186 Although over sixty-five percent of people
in solitary confinement have an addiction,187 they cannot join recovery programs like
Alcoholics Anonymous.188 They cannot learn how to manage their anger by receiving
group counseling.189 They cannot watch television to keep up with the news.190 TDCJ
makes it impossible for people to use their time in prison productively. Instead, it
confines them in cells to waste away. Dr. Haney observed that many people in isolation
“lose the ability to initiate or to control their own behavior” because they are stripped of
all ability to meaningfully direct their lives.191

181  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
182  See id.
183  See id.
184  See id.
185  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
186  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
187  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 5.
188  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Plan, supra note 19, at att. A.
189  Id.
190  Id.
191  Haney, supra note 140, at 139.

36  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices192193194
“That’s the difference between [solitary confinement] and general population.
Theres no structure. In GP unless your medically unassigned your gonna work,
if you want to shower you have a certain time. If you want to eat you got to be
there. Theres school. Theres church. There’s commissary. Theres medical.
Theres laundry. Like in the freeworld if you want something you have to go and
get it. That’s how GP is. . . . Im saying theres structure and a sense of living
that comes with accountability and responsibility. . . . In [solitary confinement]
. . . .Everything is brought to you. Theres no responsibility, no purpose no
schedule forced upon you. No reason to get up and live. You get out of your
cell for rec, medical, visit, or death.”192
“[Solitary confinement]
has been the reason I’ve
really & truly never gotten
any true rehabilitation
in getting rid of these
problems that have made
me so aggressive!”193

“My mental illness has worsened because as
a ad-seg category … prisoner, I am not allowed
to attend my alcohol anonymous/narcotic
anonymous, religion study class, chapel library
session to help me stay occupied and balanced.
I was also taken out of school and vocation
trade masonry brick laying.”194

The Consequence of Overusing Solitary is More Crime in Texas
Communities
When it permanently scars Texas prisoners, TDCJ ultimately damages our communities.
Solitary confinement increases recidivism. As a group, people released directly from
Texas’s solitary-confinement cells every year—1,243 in 2013 alone—commit more new
crimes than people released from the general population.195 Of all prisoners released
from Texas prisons in 2006, 48.8 percent were rearrested within three years,196 whereas
60.8 percent of people released from solitary confinement were rearrested within that
same time period.197
Moreover, studies from other states show that solitary confinement increases crime.
In California, preliminary data suggests that people released on parole from solitary192  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated June 5, 2014).
193  Survey response from Carlos, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
194  Survey response from Andy, supra note 159.
195  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 5.
196  See Legislative Budget Board, supra note 58, at 35.
197  Letter from TDCJ to Rodney Ellis, supra note 59; E-mail from Sinclair to Butler, supra note 58.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  37

confinement cells recidivate at a thirty-five percent higher rate than parolees from the
overall prison system.198 And a 2007 study of 1,205 people released from federal prisons
found that harsher prison conditions
increased rearrest rates after release.199
“[W]e are releasing inmates into our
People who had spent time in Florida
communities every day, who have spent
solitary-confinement cells committed
years in solitary conditions with little
new violent crimes at an eighteen percent
or no treatment to correct the behavior
200
higher rate. In Washington State, people
which lead to their incarceration in
released directly from solitary committed
solitary conditions.”
new felonies at a thirty-five percent higher
—Lance Lowry, President AFSCME Local
rates than their peers released from
3807, Texas Correctional Employees202
general population, even when controlling
for common predictors of recidivism.201202
TDCJ’s short re-entry programs cannot erase the social and mental deterioration
caused by years of isolation. TDCJ now provides a handful of re-entry programs to help
some prisoners readjust to ordinary life before their release from solitary confinement.
For example, the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) gives people
seven months of in-cell programs designed to help them manage their anger, reduce
“thinking errors,” teach them about employment, and prevent substance abuse.203
The Administrative Segregation Pre-Release Program (ASPP) provides people with
ninety days of instruction through workbooks they can fill out in their cell, instruction
via a computer monitor from a remote instructor, and weekly one-hour meetings with
case managers to discuss rehabilitative opportunities in the outside world.204 While
more programming should always be encouraged, a few months of in-cell workbooks
or computer instruction cannot repair the destruction caused by years or decades of
sensory deprivation and social isolation. Moreover, these programs have limited capacity
and therefore can only serve a small handful of the people who could benefit from them.
For example, the SVORI program can only accommodate sixty-three people at once,205
and ASPP can only accommodate less than two hundred people.206 TDCJ should provide
rehabilitative programming throughout people’s time in prison—not just as a Band-Aid
solution a few months before their release into the outside world.
198  See Reiter, supra note 60, at 50.
199  See M. Chen & Jesse M. Shapiro, Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach, 9 Am. Law & Econ.
Rev. 1, 3, 8, 23-24 (2007).
200  See Mears & Bales, supra note 62, at 1151.
201  See Lovell et al., supra note 61, at 644.
202  See Testimony of Lance Lowry, supra note 68.
203  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 9.
204  See New Pre-release Program Serves Administrative Segregation Offenders, Crim. Just. Connections (Nov./Dec. 2012), available at http://
www.tdcj.state.tx.us/connections/NovDec2012/agency_vol20no2.html.
205  SVORI Fact Sheet (July 2013) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
206  Administrative Segregation Pre-Release Program Fact Sheet (July 2013) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

38  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

TEXAS OVERUSES SOLITARY AT
TREMENDOUS COST TO TAXPAYERS

C

ontrary to the trend nationwide to reduce the population confined in solitary, TDCJ
overuses solitary confinement on people who pose no threat, while Texas taxpayers
foot the bill. TDCJ could save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each year by lowering
its use of solitary confinement to Mississippi’s level of 1.4 percent.

Solitary Confinement Costs Texas Taxpayers at Least $46 Million
a Year
Texas taxpayers currently spend an extra $46 million or more each year to house 6,564
prisoners in solitary confinement instead of general population. Solitary confinement is
more expensive than regular housing: It costs forty-five percent more than housing the
same person in general population, or $61.63 per person per day compared to $42.46
per person per day.207 The solitary-confinement units require more staff to maintain
security and deliver services; moreover, people in solitary confinement are single celled,
such that TDCJ must operate more cells in order to house them.208 Indeed, the actual
cost of solitary confinement is likely much higher, as this estimate fails to capture
expenses that are difficult to measure or not borne by the prison system itself. Hidden
costs include stress on correctional officers, weakened family relationships, and reduced
ability to function in the world outside TDCJ. And Texas taxpayers unquestionably spend
more money when people return to prison after their release because their time in
solitary confinement created or exacerbated anti-social behaviors and mental illnesses.
Given the fiscal implications for taxpayers, TDCJ should approach housing decisions
with the mindset of using solitary confinement as rarely as possible. TDCJ should
send people to solitary confinement only when necessary to maintain safety and order;
and it should regularly and thoroughly review the placement of individuals in solitary
confinement with the intention of removing them as soon as it is possible to do so safely.

207  See Crim. Just. Policy Council, supra note 66, at 12.
208  See Daniel P. Mears, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Supermax Prisons 35 (Jan. 2006), available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/
grants/211971.pdf.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  39

Texas Overuses Solitary Confinement
Unfortunately, TDCJ is trapped in the outdated and expensive mindset of using solitary
confinement as a routine correctional practice. TDCJ houses 4.4 percent of Texas
prisoners in solitary confinement, much higher than the estimated national average
of one to two percent.209 And prisoners remain in solitary-confinement cells for an
average of almost four years,210 indicating that TDCJ makes little effort to return people
to general population as soon as they cease to pose a threat. TDCJ could save taxpayers
$31 million dollars a year just by lowering its population in solitary confinement
to Mississippi’s rate of 1.4 percent.211 TDCJ could reduce its solitary-confinement
population while still preserving prison safety: Mississippi had seventy percent fewer
violent incidents in its prisons when it reduced its solitary-confinement population from
one thousand to 150.212
TDCJ houses too many people in solitary confinement in part because its standard is
overbroad, capturing many people who could be safely housed in general population.
TDCJ automatically houses 3,194 people213 in solitary confinement on the grounds
that they “associate[e] or affiliate[e]” with a gang.214 Gang status alone—divorced
from individual misbehavior or active participation in gang activities—is not a threat
to prison safety. Security expert Steve Martin—a former TDCJ correctional officer who
served as TDCJ Legal Counsel from 1981-83 and TDCJ General Counsel from 198385—explains that using gang affiliation alone ends up “catching folks that don’t really
need segregated confinement; their status as a gang member is not in and of itself a
threat.”215 Isolating suspected gang members or affiliates is an extreme overreaction
that fails to improve prison safety and actually may undermine it. In a survey of wardens
and superintendents of adult prisons in forty-eight states conducted by the National
Gang Crime Research Center (NGCRC), over half of the respondents said that “no
human contact status” was not “effective for the control of gang members.”216 Toni V.
Bair, former warden of Virginia’s death row, describes Texas’s practice of automatically
segregating gang members as “the antithesis of what modern correctional professional
classification management is supposed to be about. . . . That’s not twentieth century
corrections—that’s eighteenth century corrections.”217 Mr. Bair emphasizes that the
entire purpose of classifying people in prison is to “find out what the needs are so you
209  See Austin & Sparkman, supra note 64, at 17.
210  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 9.
211  See Testimony of Christopher Epps, supra note 67.
212  See Kupers et al., supra note 72, at 5, 7.
213  E-mail from TDCJ Office of the General Counsel to Butler, supra note 108.
214  TDCJ Security Threat Group Plan, 5-6 (Jan. 2012) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
215  Telephone Interview with Steve Martin, Security Expert and Former General Counsel, TDCJ (June 13, 2014).
216  George W. Knox, The Problem of Gangs and Security Threat Groups (STG’s) in American Prisons and Jails Today: Recent Findings from the 2012
NGCRC National Gang/STG Survey (2012), available at http://www.ngcrc.com/corr2012.html.
217  Telephone Interview with Toni V. Bair, former Warden, Virginia death row (Sept. 30, 2014).

40  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Credit: iStock user jessekarjalainen

can habilitate them, and to better
manage your inmate population”; when
correctional departments automatically
place people in solitary confinement,
Mr. Bair says, “you miss so many people
coming in that we could have helped, such
as suicidal inmates, mentally ill inmates,
and inmates with alcohol and drug
problems.”218 TDCJ should send people to
solitary confinement only if they pose an
actual danger to officers or other inmates
as demonstrated through their actions.
Instead, it isolates thousands of people
who do not actually present a security
risk, such as low-level or inactive gang
members who behaved peacefully within
prison.

Moreover, once people are confined to
n  Most inmates confined in solitary spend
solitary for gang affiliation, TDCJ does
years there.
little to shorten their stay. These prisoners
can only get out of solitary confinement
by participating in the Gang Renouncement and Disassociation Process (GRAD), which
provides nine months of programming on substance abuse, alcohol abuse, group
classroom instruction, anger management, and criminal-addictive behavior.219 While the
GRAD program is a useful avenue to help people return to general population, it does not
resolve the underlying problem that TDCJ sends too many people to solitary confinement
in the first place. Moreover, people must go through a probationary period of one year in
solitary confinement to even qualify for the program.220 The long wait, combined with too
few spots in the GRAD program, creates a bottleneck that traps people in solitary for far
too long. As the GRAD program itself only has a capacity to hold 180 people at any one
time,221 it would take over twelve years for every eligible person to enter the program
and be diverted from solitary. As a consequence, people affiliated with a gang spend on
average over five years in solitary confinement.222

218  See id.
219  TDCJ Gang Renouncement and Disassociation Process (GRAD) Program Description (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
220  E-mail from William Stephens, Director, Correctional Institutions Division, TDCJ, to Jorge Renaud, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition
(Sept. 12, 2014, 12:01 CST).
221  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 1.
222  E-mail from TDCJ Office of the General Counsel to Butler, supra note 108.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  41

Credit: Texas Department of Corrections

The Texas Comptroller of Public
Accounts—“the chief steward of the state’s
finances”223—has condemned TDCJ’s
policy of automatically isolating gang
members in solitary-confinement cells
who could be more cheaply housed in a
lower security setting. The Comptroller
conducted a public study of Texas’s use of
solitary confinement in 1994, sampling 131
prisoners. He discovered that fifty-four of
them—forty-one percent—had no prison
n  A solitary confinement cell on Texas
record of disciplinary assaults, meaning
death row.
that they did not present a security risk
to the safety of correctional officers or other prisoners.224 The Texas Comptroller also
criticized TDCJ’s policy of “warehousing gang members” because it “prevents them from
receiving any rehabilitative treatment”; he found no reason that the gang members could
not be double celled, work, and take group classes.225 The Comptroller observed that
solitary-confinement cells should be exclusively used for “the most difficult inmates.”226
TDCJ failed to implement the Comptroller’s recommendations.
Other states use more appropriate measures to identify gang members who pose an
actual threat. Colorado amended its statute to limit its use of solitary confinement
against gang members to situations where it is necessary to maintain safety, for
example, when a person “actively participates in disruptive” gang behavior.227 Mississippi
limits solitary confinement to people who have attempted an escape, committed a
serious infraction, or are active, high-level members of a gang.228 Virginia houses
gang members in solitary confinement only if they commit certain offenses tied to
gang activity, or serve in a “documented” leadership role.229 Washington does not
automatically isolate gang members; instead, it employs an “Operation Ceasefire”
model that restricts the privileges of individuals and groups who commit serious violent
infractions.230 With the use of “Operation Ceasefire,” violent infractions dropped by fifty
percent.231
223  See About Us: Meet Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, Tex. Comptroller of Pub. Accounts, http://www.window.state.tx.us/about/ (last
visited Sept. 2, 2014).
224  See Sharp, supra note 103, at 78.
225  Id.
226  Id.
227  Colo. Rev. Stat. § 17-1-109; see 2011 Colo. Sess. Laws 176.
228  See Kupers et al., supra note 72, at 5.
229  Va. Dep’t of Corrections Operating Procedure: Security Level Classification 830.2, at 8 (Jan. 1, 2012; Amended June 6, 2014).
230  Washington State Dep’t of Corrections, Operation Place Safety: First Year in Review 2-3 (May 28, 2014), available at http://
nnscommunities.org/uploads/Operation_Place_Safety_First_Year_Report_2014.pdf.
231  See id.

42  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Tom’s Story
TDCJ demonstrated the irrationality of its addiction to solitary confinement
recently when it condemned a prisoner to more time in isolation for growing
a five o’clock shadow. Tom is twenty-four years old; he has been in solitary
confinement for forty-one months. TDCJ sent Tom to solitary confinement
because it believed he was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, though Tom
claims that he is not. Tom was on the waiting list for the GRAD program, his
only avenue to get out of solitary, but he was recently kicked off the list for
not shaving. TDCJ policy forbids all facial hair; but Tom was only permitted
to use a razor when he showered. When Tom missed his chance to shower,
TDCJ determined that his “scruff” violated TDCJ policy—a policy that bears
no connection to gang activity, and represents no security threat. On account
of that minor infraction, he was sent to the bottom of the waiting list for
participation in the GRAD program.232 n

232  Interview with Tom, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (June 26, 2014).

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  43

TDCJ INCREASES PRISON VIOLENCE BY
OVERUSING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

S
Credit: Alan Pogue

n  Hunstville Unit.

olitary confinement increases violence
in Texas prisons. Trapped in solitary
confinement with no social contact and no
programming, people become increasingly
aggressive and disturbed—and more
difficult to control.

Solitary Confinement Makes
Texas Prisons Less Safe

Serious assaults on Texas prison staff
have increased 104 percent during the last seven years.233 Texas’s largest correctional
officers union attributes the increase in violence in part to TDCJ’s overuse of solitary
confinement and practice of housing mentally ill people in solitary.234 Lance Lowry,
president of the union, says that solitary confinement “creates a different individual, it
really does—socially, psychologically. It is the equivalent of locking a kid in a closet. It’s
not going to fix a lot of problems.”235 In 2013, almost eighty percent of the 499 instances
of prisoners exposing officers to bodily fluids occurred in Texas’s solitary-confinement
units; none occurred in the general population.236 With absolutely nothing to do, people
in solitary take out their anger on officers. “They’re bored,” Mr. Lowry explains. “What
else are they going to do? They’re locked in a box all day. It’s a game for them. They
can’t play checkers or dominos together. So, the first guy who can get the Lieutenant
down here and piss him off wins. . . . Let’s focus these guys on something other than
the staff.”237 Texas’s correctional officers union called for national standards governing
the use of solitary confinement, explaining that its overuse makes Texas prisons more
dangerous for correctional officers.238 It further recommends that TDCJ utilize a greater
array of sanctions, short of solitary confinement, to address misconduct.239
233  See Testimony of Lance Lowry, supra note 68.
234  See id.; E-mail from Lowry to Butler, supra note 69.
235  Telephone interview with Lance Lowry, President, AFSCME Local 3807 (Sept. 16, 2014).
236  See Testimony of Lance Lowry, supra note 68, at 1.
237  Telephone interview with Lance Lowry, President, AFSCME Local 3807 (Sept. 16, 2014), supra note 235.
238  See Testimony of Lance Lowry, supra note 68, at 1-2.
239  Telephone interview with Lance Lowry, President, AFSCME Local 3807 (Sept. 19, 2014).

44  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Confinement Deprives
Officers of the Option to
Incentivize Good Behavior

Credit: Brett Coomer

Solitary confinement also deprives officers
of an important tool—their power to
incentivize good behavior by creating a
system of earned privileges. People in
solitary confinement have no freedoms;
nor can they earn greater freedom through
good behavior. As a consequence, they
have no incentive to comply with prison
regulations. Jeanne Woodford, who served
as Director of the California Department
of Corrections and Warden of San Quentin,
writes that “allowing inmates privileges
based on good behavior enhances security
because it creates incentives for inmates
to comply with prison regulations.
When inmates are permanently and
automatically housed in highly restrictive
n  Rogelio Baca stands in his cell in the
environments . . . it is more difficult
administrative segregation wing of the
to control their behavior.”240 Mr. Lowry
Estelle Unit in Huntsville.
explains that the lack of incentives in
solitary confinement ends up impairing correctional officers’ ability to control prisoners:
I think the best people know how to control human behavior, is your cable
company. If you don’t pay your bill, they take your privileges away. They’re
smart. If you don’t pay your bill, they don’t leave you with a salty screen.
They leave you with a preview of what’s on. . . . They leave this message
on for a reason. You know everyone else is watching Days of their Lives.
I don’t know why prison administrators don’t see that. . . . Controlling
privileges is how you control these individuals.241
Mr. Lowry suggests that TDCJ could offer a step-down program that allows people
to earn their way to greater privileges, and out of solitary confinement, through good
behavior.242
240  Letter from Jeanne Woodford, former Director, Ca. Dep’t of Corrections to TDCJ (Jan. 27, 2014) (on file with ACLU of Texas and
TCRP).
241  Telephone interview with Lance Lowry, supra note 235.
242  Id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  45

Violence Escalates When Officers Deny People in Solitary
Confinement Basic Necessities
Violence in solitary confinement further escalates when correctional officers deny
prisoners basic necessities. Eighty percent of our survey respondents reported that they
received an “insufficient amount” of food;243 and thirty-one percent reported that prison
staff had served them the “loaf,”244 a “bland, brownish lump” of ground-up food without
seasoning—which they may be forced to eat over and over again for weeks at a time.245
People reported other deprivations besides food: Twenty-two percent claimed they
were denied water,246 and another twenty-two percent said they were denied showers.247
Numerous people also said that officers almost never take them out of their cells for
recreation despite TDCJ policies requiring that prisoners in isolation receive one to two
hours of recreation a day.248 Ted, a correctional officer who asked us not to use his real
name, reports that solitary confinement breeds hostility between prisoners and officers.
In the unit in which Ted works, officers punish individuals in solitary confinement by
refusing them food, showers, or recreation time, which angers inmates. According
to Ted, it is not uncommon for prisoners to act out, even after the original officers
have already finished their shifts. As a result, the hostility can spiral out of control,
culminating in correctional officers violently subduing the prisoner.249

Other States Improved Prison Safety by Reducing Solitary
Confinement
Other states have found that drastically reducing the use of solitary confinement
improves prison safety. When Mississippi reduced its solitary population from one
thousand to less than 150, serious assaults against staff and prisoners dropped by
seventy percent.250 Mississippi lowered violence in part by instituting an incentive system
to encourage good behavior and allow people in solitary to acquire greater freedoms.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Deputy Commissioner Emmitt Sparkman
explained that people in solitary “participated in the programs, we gave them more
243  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
244  See id.
245  Eliza Barclay, Food As Punishment: Giving U.S. Inmates ‘The Loaf’ Persists, Nat’l Public Radio Jan. 2, 2014, available at http://www.npr.
org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/02/256605441/punishing-inmates-with-the-loaf-persists-in-the-u-s.
246  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
247  See id.
248  Interview with Juan, supra note 55; Interview with Alex, supra note 16; Interview with Paul, supra note 55; Survey response from
Brian, supra note 55; Survey response from Miguel, supra note 55; Survey response from Steve, supra note 55; Survey from Larry, supra
note 55.
249  Telephone interview with Ted (July 15, 2014).
250  See Kupers, supra note 72, at 5, 7.

46  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Credit: Flickr user mlsnp

n  Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas
freedoms, and we saw a huge decrease in violence. . . . Typically, people in segregation
just sit idle and alone, sometimes for years. You have to give a guy an incentive to do
better.”251 When Maine cut its solitary-confinement population, incidents of prison
violence dropped.252 Colorado saw no increase in assaults when it reduced its solitaryconfinement population by sixty percent, and the Director of the Colorado Department
of Corrections declared that “our institutions will actually be safer” with less solitary
confinement.253 According to Commissioner Sparkman, lowering solitary confinement
also improved working conditions for staff: “In segregation, you typically have two-onone escorts and use restraints, and there are continuous searches—and that’s a drain
on staff. When we had large numbers of people in segregation, staff were under constant
pressure. . . . With these lower numbers, there’s much less stress on staff.”254

251  Emmitt Sparkman, Mississippi DOC’s Emmitt Sparkman on reducing the use of segregation in prisons, VERA Institute of Justice, (Oct.
31, 2011), available at http://www.vera.org/blog/mississippi-docs-emmitt-sparkman-reducing-use-segregation-prisons.
252  See Tapley, supra note 73.
253  Testimony of Rick Raemisch, supra note 74.
254  Sparkman, supra note 251.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  47

MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE DETERIORATE IN
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

T

DCJ must never place people with serious mental illnesses in solitary confinement.
Although solitary confinement causes mental distress for anyone, the impact of
solitary confinement is especially profound for people with serious mental illnesses
such as major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, panic disorder, PTSD,
and borderline personality disorder.255 Already vulnerable, people with serious mental
illnesses inevitably fall apart in isolation.256 According to Dr. Haney, people with serious
mental illness “will be unable to withstand the psychic assault of dehumanized isolation,
the lack of caring human contact, the profound idleness and inactivity, and the otherwise
extraordinarily stressful nature of [solitary] confinement without significant deterioration
and decompensation.”257 Corrections expert Steve Martin refers to the phenomenon of
placing the mentally ill in solitary confinement as “the perfect storm” because of the
way in which people with mental illness get stuck in solitary confinement.258 Dr. Pablo
Stuart, who served as an expert witness in a California class-action suit about solitary
confinement, explained that people with mental illness deteriorate in solitary, until they
can no longer comply with prison regulations and start to act out.259 As their mental
health unravels, their misbehavior escalates; as a consequence, many people with
mental illness end up permanently trapped in solitary.260

The Universal Consensus: Never Place the Seriously Mentally Ill
in Solitary Confinement
The consensus is universal: Federal courts, the American Bar Association (ABA), the
American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the United States Department of Justice
(DOJ) agree that correctional departments must exclude people with serious mental
illness from solitary confinement. Federal courts have ruled that our prisons should not
place mentally ill people in solitary confinement because it exacerbates their symptoms,
in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.261
In the words of one federal judge, placing a mentally ill person in solitary confinement
255  See Nat’l Alliance on Mental Illness, supra note 79.
256  See Metzner & Fellner, supra note 75, at 105.
257  Haney, supra note 140, at 142.
258  Telephone interview with Steve Martin, Corrections Expert and Former General Counsel, TDCJ (Sept. 23, 2014).
259  Transcript of Evidentiary Hearing at 2771-72, Coleman v. Brown, No. 5014 (E.D. Cal. Dec. 5, 2013).
260  See id.
261  See, e.g., Jones ‘El v. Berge, 164 F. Supp. 2d 1096, 1101-02 (W.D. Wis. 2001); Ruiz, 37 F. Supp. 2d at 915; Coleman v. Wilson, 912 F.
Supp. 1282, 1320-21 (E.D. Cal. 1995); Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146, 1265-66 (N.D. Cal. 1995); Casey v. Lewis, 834 F. Supp. 477,

48  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

“is the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.”262
In its Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners, the ABA called for the exclusion of
people with mental illness from solitary confinement.263 The APA issued a formal
position statement explaining that people with serious illness should almost never
be placed in solitary confinement; when they are, they need extra clinical support.264
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture declared that prolonged solitary
confinement is a form of torture, and should never be used against people with mental
disabilities.265 After an extensive investigation, the DOJ announced that Pennsylvania’s
policy of housing people with mental illness in solitary confinement was an unsound
correctional practice—both on humanitarian and public-safety grounds:
Neither the interests of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
nor those of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are served when one
of its prisons subjects prisoners to conditions that deny prisoners
with psychiatric disabilities the benefit of mental health treatment and
exacerbate their mental illness. When the mental health of prisoners
deteriorates, when their episodes of paranoia and psychosis intensify,
and when they engage in behaviors more dangerous to themselves and
others, taking care of them becomes more difficult and more dangerous
for correctional officers and more expensive for the Commonwealth.
Moreover, those living outside the prison’s walls feel the negative impact
of the prison’s mistreatment of prisoners with serious mental illness
when these prisoners return to the community.266

Texas Sends Thousands of People with Mental Illness to Solitary
Confinement
Despite this universal consensus, TDCJ does not even track the number of people with
serious mental illness in solitary confinement.267 Mr. Martin says that TDCJ’s failure
to track people with serious mental illness is “an alarming flaw from a correctional
1549-50 (D. Ariz. 1993); Langley v. Coughlin, 715 F. Supp. 522, 540 (S.D.N.Y. 1988).
262  Madrid, 889 F. Supp. at 1265.
263  See Am. Bar Ass’n Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners 23-2.8(a) (2010), available at http://www.americanbar.org/publications/
criminal_justice_section_archive/crimjust_standards_treatmentprisoners.html#23-3.8.
264  See Am. Psych. Assoc., Position Statements: Segregation of Prisoners with Mental Illness (2012), available at http://www.psychiatry.org/
advocacy--newsroom/position-statements.
265  See UN News Centre, Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says (Oct. 18, 2011), http://www.un.org/apps/
news/story.asp?NewsID=40097#.U6C7uZRdUmk.
266  Letter from Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Civil Rights Division, & David J. Hickton, U.S.
Attorney, Western Dist. Pa., to Tom Corbett, Governor, Pa. (May 31, 2013), available at http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/
cresson_findings_5-31-13.pdf.
267  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 5.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  49

management standpoint—on its face it calls into question TDCJ’s management.”268 TDCJ
has 2,012 people in solitary confinement on its mental-health case load, however.269
Moreover, our investigation revealed that TDCJ houses many people with serious
mental illness in solitary confinement—and solitary confinement significantly worsens
their mental health. During our research, we met with multiple people whom TDCJ
had diagnosed with a serious mental illness, but who nonetheless remained in solitary
confinement. In many cases, their symptoms appeared significantly exacerbated by
complete isolation. Several of these individuals appeared to us in such an obvious and
advanced stage of psychosis that we determined they lacked the capacity to understand
our legal disclosures or to consent to have their stories shared in this report. They
described violent auditory and visual hallucinations and appeared trapped in paranoid
and obsessive thinking.

Henry’s Story
Henry is one of over two thousand
people in solitary confinement
with a mental illness. TDCJ
diagnosed him with bipolar I
disorder with psychotic features.
He attempted suicide while in
general population. Despite
Henry’s prior suicide attempt, TDCJ sent him to solitary confinement in 2005,
where he remains to this day. In isolation, Henry felt that “everything was
crushing in on me at one time,” and told us, “[I] see things that aren’t there
and have conversations with people who aren’t there.” He attempted suicide a
second time while in solitary confinement. Although TDCJ documented Henry’s
mental illness, visual and auditory hallucinations, and suicide attempts in his
medical chart, it failed to take him out of solitary confinement.270 n
The prevalence of mental illness among people in TDCJ’s solitary-confinement
cells is epitomized in their high rates of suicide and self-harm. A person trapped in
solitary confinement is five times more likely to kill himself than someone in general
268  Telephone interview with Steve Martin, supra note 258.
269  Id.
270  Interview with Henry, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (July 11, 2014); Henry’s medical records (obtained from Health Services
Archives) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

50  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

population.271 For every one hundred prisoners in solitary confinement, there are 2.4
instances of self-inflicted injury, compared to 0.3 instances in general population.272

TDCJ Inadequately Monitors and Treats People with Mental
Illness in Solitary Confinement
TDCJ also fails to adequately treat people with mental illness once they are trapped
in solitary confinement. TDCJ only evaluates a person’s mental health immediately
upon sending him to a solitary-confinement cell if he currently receives mental-health
treatment. All others only receive a mental-health evaluation after a full month.273 Under
this policy, people who need mental-health treatment but are not on TDCJ’s current
caseload fall through the cracks. After the initial evaluation, mental-health officers only
conduct mental-health assessments every three months.274 In a three-month period,
people can easily deteriorate into a crisis state.
Worse, TDCJ may be falling short of meeting even its own meager standards for mentalhealth screenings. We requested all mental-health evaluations for several prisoners
who had been diagnosed with a serious mental illness by TDCJ. Yet the files for several
people had few or no evaluations covering their period in solitary confinement. For
example, TDCJ diagnosed Paul with a mental illness. While in general population in
2009, he attempted to kill himself by overdose. Afterward, he was treated at a TDCJ
psychiatric unit for his mental-health problems.275 Although we requested all of Paul’s
mental-health evaluations, TDCJ did not turn over a single evaluation for the three-year
period he spent in solitary confinement.276 This lack of documentation suggests that
TDCJ may not provide frequent, in depth review of the mental-health needs of people in
solitary, even those with a history of serious mental illness.
Moreover, to the extent it provides them, TDCJ’s mental-health reviews are too
superficial to properly identify people’s mental-health needs.277 Of those survey
respondents who met with a mental health worker, sixty-five percent said their meetings
were less than two minutes long.278 Sixty-two percent of survey respondents said

271  Letter from TDCJ, supra note 5.
272  See id.
273  TDCJ Medical and Mental Health Care in Segregation/Death Row (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
274  See id.
275  Paul’s medical records (obtained from Health Services Archives) (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
276  See id.
277  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
278  Id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  51

they never had enough time to discuss their mental-health needs with mental-health
workers.279 280
TDCJ’s mental-health reviews are also
“I thought that someone from mental
not confidential. Seventy-five percent of
health was suppose to make rounds but
respondents said their mental-health
this only happens here once a year. And
review was merely conducted by speaking
its ‘How you doing today?’ And if you say
through their cell door, rather than in
‘ok’ they move on to the next cell.”280
281
a private meeting room. Eighty-nine
percent of survey respondents said that their medical treatment was not confidential.282
Numerous people reported that officers overhear all of their confidential medical
conversations283 and repeat confidential medical information to other officers or
prisoners.284 Because of the lack of confidentiality, prisoners may not disclose mentalhealth issues, fearing stigma or humiliation.285

279  Id.
280  Alex’s Journal, supra note 26 (entry dated June 9, 2014).
281  Id.
282  Data collected from survey of 147 people incarcerated in Texas prisons who previously spent time in or are currently in solitary
confinement (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
283  Survey response from Chris, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Ivan,
individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Charles, supra note 158; Survey response
from Oscar, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
284  Survey response from Ivan, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Miguel,
supra note 55; Survey from Diego, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Edward,
individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Kyle, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on
file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Duncan, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP);
Survey response from Simon, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP); Survey response from Ernesto,
individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
285  See Grassian, supra note 141, at 333.

52  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

Solitary Voices
“Non-medical staff are always
present during interviews and exams
and I have heard them discussing it
between the guards and in front of
other inmates.”286
“I’ve witness medical talk to officer
about other inmates medical problem
and I’ve even had officers tell me that
a inmate has AIDS.”287
286287288 289

“Every single time I go talk to the
mental health lady, the officers who
escort me stand in the room with me
listening to every word of what I say.”288
“[The treatment] was the same day
only due to me threatening to kill
myself, an the interview was not held
confidentially, it was either talk to
mental health in front of the prison
official’s or they wouldn’t talk with
me, so I was force’d against my will to
expose alot of my mental health history
before the prison official’s.”289

In October 2014, TDCJ announced a new program called the Administrative Segregation
Therapeutic Diversion Program (ASTDP).290 According to TDCJ, the program will divert a
small number of people with mental illness from solitary confinement to an alternative
treatment environment.291 Unfortunately, this program only includes 252 beds.292
Therefore, it can only serve thirteen percent of the 2,012 mentally ill people in solitary.293
Moreover, TDCJ has not provided advocates with details about the program, such as the
criteria for entering it, the length of the program, the type and frequency of treatment
available, and the amount of out-of-cell time and rehabilitative programming people
in it can access.294 Consequently, it is impossible to evaluate whether ASTDP will be an
effective alternative to solitary confinement for people with mental illness.295
Texans do not want mentally ill prisoners to return to their communities in an even more
deteriorated mental state than when they entered prison. Yet TDCJ places people with
mental illnesses in conditions that seriously exacerbate their symptoms, and it fails to
provide them with adequate treatment while they are there.
286  Survey response from James, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
287  Survey response from Ignacio, supra note 172.
288  Survey response from Henry, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
289  Survey response from Lee, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
290  TDCJ Administrative Segregation Information Sheet, supra note 1, at 4.
291  See id.
292  See id.
293  See id.
294  See id.
295  See id.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  53

Solitary Voices
“I have a worsening of my antisocial
behaviors and thoughts. The depression
and self-destructive behaviors I have
have intensified consistently since
being placed in AD.SEG. Im aware of
my thought process and mental illness
however I have trouble controlling the
symptoms . . .”296

“I’ve done tried to kill my self twice
Hanged & cut & Ive been asking for
help.”298
“After being in seg. for 13x years,
I now suffer from, depression, I’m
antisocial, & mood swings & suicidal
attemps.”299

“Mostly, it’s the continued screaming.
“I’m losing my sanity.”300
The crying, pleading, and gibberish
people yell 24 hours a day. It’s very
unnerving. To a combat vet, it’s torture.
Panic & anxiety skyrocket. Exhaustion
sets in for lack of sleep. I had to draw, in
pencil, a large mural on one wall of my
cell, talking to myself, just to focus on
something other than the cries.”297

296 297298299300

296  Survey response from Ivan, supra note 284.
297  Survey response from Pedro, supra note 155.
298  Survey response from Duncan, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
299  Survey response from Jeremy, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).
300  Survey response from Samuel, individual incarcerated in TDCJ (on file with ACLU of Texas and TCRP).

54  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

CONCLUSION: OUR VALUES AND
COMMITMENTS AS TEXANS

S

olitary confinement violates our fundamental values as Texans—the values that
define who we are as a state and set us apart. We value self-starters who take
steps to improve their lives and overcome hardship. We value hard work. We value
religious worship, along with the high moral standards it encourages and the community
bonds it nurtures. We value family relationships because they form our lifelong
moral commitments, bring us joy, and sustain us through times of difficulty. A Texan,
responding to a recent blog post about Texas values on the Houston Chronicle website,
put it perfectly: “Texas values—Freedom, Faith, Family.”301
We expect our criminal justice system to reflect these values. We want our neighbors
to have these values. We want our prisons to foster these values in the incarcerated
people who will one day become our neighbors. Yet as detailed in this report, solitary
confinement destroys all opportunities for self-improvement, denies the option to work,
deprives prisoners of collective religious worship, and impairs family relationships.
We have known since the 1800s that solitary confinement does not work for American
prisons. This report documents that solitary confinement does not work for Texans.
Texas’s outdated mindset also runs contrary to our commitment as Texans to employ
fiscally prudent policies that increase the safety of our communities. In many respects,
Texas has led the country on smart-on-crime reforms that utilized best practices,
decreased crime, and saved taxpayer money. But in a key area, Texas legislators and
TDCJ have failed to implement smart-on-crime policies: solitary confinement. Texas
relies heavily on solitary confinement even though it was discredited in the nineteenth
century as an unsound correctional practice, wastes taxpayer money, and increases
insecurity in our prisons and communities.
Less solitary confinement is not about going “soft” on crime; it is about being smart on
crime. It makes how we punish more cost-effective, and more likely to produce positive
outcomes that decrease crime in our communities. With less solitary confinement, Texas
prisons can carry out their mission more effectively. It is time for Texas to drastically
reduce its use of solitary confinement—and ensure that our prison system employs
policies that reflect the values and commitments that unite us as Texans.
301  Craig Hlavaty, What exactly are “Texas values” these days?, Texican, June 28, 2012, http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2013/06/whatexactly-are-texas-values-these-days/.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  55

METHODOLOGY
This report was researched and written by Burke Butler, Arthur Liman Fellow, TCRP,
and Matthew Simpson, Policy Strategist, ACLU of Texas, and edited by Rebecca L.
Robertson, Legal and Policy Director, ACLU of Texas.
To research this report, we submitted public information requests to the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB);
sent a survey to people in Texas prisons about solitary confinement and collected and
analyzed the responses; interviewed experts on incarceration, security, mental illness,
and the Texas prison system; and interviewed people who were either currently housed
in or had previously spent time in solitary confinement.
We sent surveys to 668 people incarcerated in Texas prisons between December 2013
and May 2014 to ask about their experiences in solitary confinement, and received
147 responses—a twenty-two percent response rate. Those surveys included fortynine closed and open-ended questions, based on a similar survey developed by the
Correctional Association’s Prison Visiting Project in New York. We sent:
(1) 585 surveys randomly to people incarcerated at nine facilities with
high solitary-confinement populations: Coffield, Connally, Darrington,
Eastham, Estelle, Ferguson, Lewis, Telford, and Wynne (sixty-five surveys
sent randomly to each facility); and
(2) Eighty-three surveys to people in Texas prison who had written to the
TCRP, the Prison Justice League, or the non-profit Texas Interfaith directly
or whose families had reached out on their behalf.
In May to August 2014, lawyers and clerks with TCRP and the ACLU of Texas conducted
interviews with people in solitary confinement. We met with each person one to two
times and in many cases corresponded with them extensively after our visit. Where
possible, we confirmed their stories with their prison records. These interviews were
conducted by Burke Butler, Satinder Singh, Priscilla Kennedy, Monique Rodriguez,
Pedro Blandon, Margaret Brunk, Ryan Jones, Rebecca Pillar, Hunter Jackson, and Ethan
Ranis.
Cindy Eigler, Amy Fettig, Craig Haney, and Steve Martin reviewed drafts of this report
and generously provided their feedback and guidance.

56  |  A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas

We appreciate the hard work of the many dedicated volunteers and staff who made this
report possible: Pedro Blandon, Priscilla Kennedy, Professor Dennis Kao, Christopher
Clay, Monique Rodriguez, Philip Koelsch, Mandy Nguyen, Elizabeth Nuñez, Bryan Mejia,
Margaret Brunk, Ryan Jones, Rebecca Pillar, Hunter Jackson, and Ethan Ranis.
We are also indebted to the Arthur Liman Program for providing fellowship support for
Burke Butler to work on reducing Texas’s overuse of solitary confinement.
Finally, we are profoundly grateful to the many men in solitary confinement in prisons
across the state of Texas who wrote to us, responded to our surveys, and spoke with us
in person about their experiences. Their courage to share their stories, many of which
were difficult to tell, made this report possible. We fervently hope that their willingness
to help us expose all that is wrong with solitary confinement will put Texas at long last
on the path to reform.

ACLU of Texas & Texas Civil Rights Project  |  57