The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
February 27, 2014

At Senate Hearing, Former Prisoner Calls Solitary Confinement Torture 
----------------------------------------------------------------------


 
The use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons was under discussion on
Capitol Hill this week. Witnesses at a hearing led by Illinois
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin described how solitary confinement
devastates families, allows guards to isolate prisoners whom they have
sexually assaulted, and drives prisoners to hopelessness; Durbin said
more than half of prison suicides take place in solitary. Among the
speakers was Damon Thibodeaux, a former Louisiana death-row prisoner who
spent 15 years in solitary confinement, for 23 hours a day, before being
exonerated in 2012.
bq. Damon Thibodeaux: "I do not condone what those who have killed and
committed other serious offenses have done, but I also don't condone
what we do to them by putting them in solitary confinement for years on
end, and treat them as subhuman. We are better than that. As a civilized
society, we should be better than that. I would like to think the vast
majority of people in America would be appalled if they knew what we are
doing to inmates in solitary and understood that we are torturing them,
for reasons that have little to do with protecting other inmates or
prison guards from them."
Last week, New York state agreed to reform its use of solitary
confinement, including banning its use in disciplining prisoners under
18.

 

.