‘Depraved and sadistic’: Cori Bush pushes for end to solitary confinement with new bill
Rep. Cori Bush unveiled a bill Thursday aimed at limiting the use of solitary confinement in prisons, a practice the St. Louis Democrat called “depraved and sadistic.”
The End Solitary Confinement Act would largely prohibit the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons, including immigration detention facilities, while incentivizing state and local correctional facilities to stop using the practice.
“It is indisputable that solitary confinement is torture,” Bush said during a virtual news conference. ”It doesn’t matter what it’s called, whether it’s administrative segregation, restrictive housing or anything else. It leads to self-mutilation, to suicide, heart disease, anxiety, depression, psychosis, mental and physical deterioration and a significantly heightened risk of death.”
The Missouri Democrat also pointed out that its use disproportionately impacts people of color and other vulnerable groups including youth and LGBTQ+ prisoners.
According to a report released in May, prisoners in Missouri are placed in solitary confinement, also known as restrictive housing or administrative segregation, at higher rates than the national average.
Bush’s proposal allows for some exceptions including using solitary confinement for short-term, emergency de-escalation. It would also create due process protections such as access to representation and an oversight mechanism including mandatory reporting.
State and local facilities that do not implement changes to their use of solitary confinement could be at risk of losing 10% in funding from the federal Justice Assistance Grant program.
Bush said the measure will save lives.
“We are, as a nation, we are facilitating the torture of own community members and we’re doing it on a massive scale,” she said. “And by inflicting this violence, we are only planting seeds for more of it.”
Nationally, more than 122,000 people were in restrictive housing for 22 hours or more on a given day in mid-2019, a report put together by Solitary Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group, found.
Across the U.S., about 6% to 7% of prisoners were in restrictive housing in state and federal prisons. In Missouri, though, that figure was 11.9% or 3,356 prisoners.
Last month, a transgender woman sued the Missouri Department of Corrections after she was kept in solitary confinement for more than six years. The woman alleged that she was put there as a result of a corrections policy that discriminates against people with HIV.
Bush joins New York Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Adriano Espaillat, California Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, all Democrats, in sponsoring the bill. The measure likely faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House.
The news conference, which was conducted on the meeting app Zoom, was twice interrupted by hackers who played inappropriate videos.
“Whoever the haters are out there with the Zoom bombs, you must know that this is an important issue,” Kamlager-Dove said.
She went on to say she considers solitary confinement to be torture.
“We shouldn’t be doing it,” Kamlager-Dove said. “If we can’t find other ways to help people correct behavior or adjust or practice self-reflection, then shame on us for not being as sophisticated and humane and compassionate as we claim we want to be.”
The legislation has been endorsed by 150 organizations, its sponsors said.
Locally, Decarcerate KC, a group working to reduce the use of incarceration, said it supports the bill.
“(Solitary confinement) takes away sunlight, right? It takes away exercise, it takes away not just the ability to socialize, which is like really important, but to actually preserve your body right?” organizer Dylan Pyles said. “And so to me, it seems completely overdue. I don’t think that solitary has ever been a remotely justifiable practice. But I’m glad that we’re finally doing something on a federal level.”
Pyles added that the measure represents “a step toward larger reimagining of how we treat people who have committed harm in society, which we think is really important for the overall kind of like reevaluation of what prisons and jails actually do or don’t do for people.”
This story was originally published July 27, 2023 at 12:35 PM.
