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I sat in the cold concrete cell, surrounded by filth. Unknown bodily fluids from prior inhabitants covered the walls. I had no idea why I had been tossed from the prison mainline and into solitary confinement. But here I was.
Like all prisoners, I knew it didn’t really matter what I did to end up in solitary, only that prison administrators wanted me there. It is their go-to “stick,” — weaponized constantly against those in their care. Ultimately, that stint in solitary lasted more than 30 days.
Across the U.S. today, there are at least 80,000 prisoners estimated to be in some form of isolated confinement. It’s a grueling practice, one deemed a failed experiment nearly 200 years ago when, in 1829, it was introduced at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, commonly known as Cherry Hill.
In Washington, there have been modest changes in recent years to the use of solitary, but the results have not come close to matching the promise of reform. Bills to put new limits around the practice have failed during the past four legislative sessions.
Meanwhile, years of activism and millions of Washingtonians’ tax dollars have had almost no impact on the number of people held in solitary confinement.
State Department of Corrections data shows that, in June 2022, there were about 205 people held across the state in “max” custody, which refers to “intensive management units,” where people are held in isolation for long periods of time. The most recent available data , from December, indicates that number has increased to 214 people.
The department told the Washington State Standard this month that 602 individuals were in “solitary confinement conditions” as of July 1.
Prisoners still routinely isolated in WA, despite efforts to cut solitary confinement
Solitary
Solitary confinement goes by different names depending on the place and purported purpose: administrative segregation, or ad-seg, intensive management, disciplinary confinement, restrictive housing and security housing. People in prison just call it the hole.
In each situation, individuals are isolated in a cell for about 20 to 24 hours each day.
In many places, bright lights stay on at all times. There are no windows. Showers and phone access are limited. Outdoor time is either banned or requires stepping into what resembles a dog cage.
Many prisoners spend months, years, and in some cases, even decades in these conditions.
Solitary confinement has been found to cause serious psychological damage to those forced to experience it, even in short stints.
Far from reducing violence inside prisons, studies have shown that people who experience solitary confinement are more likely to commit future crimes. Solitary confinement is also incredibly expensive, largely because of the additional staffing it requires to hold people outside of the general prison population.
The state Department of Health has highlighted strong evidence that decreasing solitary would reduce reincarceration and improve health outcomes for those forced to experience it.
It would seem like a no-brainer to end the use of this cruel and archaic structure. Why continue to use such a toxic and costly practice when the evidence says we receive no benefit?
These are the very questions that have made the elimination of solitary confinement a top priority for activists and policy organizations throughout the country, including in Washington state.
Legislation
In 2021, Washington’s Department of Corrections announced it would no longer use solitary confinement for disciplinary purposes.
It was a welcome announcement. But at the time, the vast majority of people in solitary were held in administrative segregation, awaiting a hearing or investigation, not disciplinary segregation. In other words, although people could not be placed in segregation after a hearing as punishment, the department could still leave them there before they’d been found to have done anything wrong.
That same year, the Legislature introduced a solitary reform bill . It would have required solitary to include four hours out of cell, positive programming, access to mental health staff, ending the “constant illumination” in cells, allowing prisoners to move without restraints (a euphemistic term for shackles and a leash), and a 15-day limit on administrative segregation.
These modest proposals failed that year and again in 2022 .
By the end of the 2023 session, the only action lawmakers took on solitary confinement was to give the Department of Corrections millions of dollars to work toward ending the practice.
Today, the results are underwhelming.
Instead of working toward reducing the use of solitary, the department has focused on hiring additional staff to move people into solitary confinement.
Although the agency has made minor modifications, including allowing the use of secure tablets in solitary and expanding “yard” access (which is actually a concrete room) at one facility, it has not taken meaningful steps towards systemic change.
The Washington state Corrections Ombuds recommended in 2021 that the department impose a 30-day limit on holding people in ad-seg. Two years later, the ombuds followed up with a recommendation that the agency increase the standard of proof for infractions that typically land people in ad-seg.
These recommendations, which could have reduced the state’s ad-seg population, were rejected by the Department of Corrections. Unsurprisingly, the ad-seg population has remained relatively stable, bouncing between about 350 and 450 people.
Costs
In this year’s session, activists and policymakers again introduced a bill that would mandate modest reforms to the use of solitary. In response to the bill, House Bill 1087 , the Department of Corrections estimated that eliminating the use of long-term solitary confinement would cost almost $50 million per year and require about 300 additional full-time employees.
This doesn’t add up.
Research has consistently shown that solitary confinement is one of the most expensive, staff-intensive forms of incarceration. It defies logic that reducing its use would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, other states that have pursued similar reforms have reported savings .
The Department of Corrections acknowledged in 2023 the harm caused by isolation and pledged to reduce the use of solitary confinement by 90% in five years. Since that bold claim, two legislative sessions have passed without a single major reform bill passing.
Despite its lack of progress in reducing the number of people held in solitary confinement, the department continues to receive millions of dollars towards this goal, without any legislative oversight. The state budget for 2024 provides more than $5.5 million dollars to the department for solitary reform. The 2025 budget sends around $8 million dollars in this direction.
Upon visiting Cherry Hill in 1842, Charles Dickens said, “I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers.” Solitary confinement didn’t help people then and it doesn’t now.
Why would we, as a society, want to inflict this torture upon fellow citizens who will be released back into our communities? If the Department of Corrections is going to dedicate large sums of taxpayer funds to reform this archaic practice, it is past time to see results.
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