From Vox: Mass incarceration in America, explained in 22 maps and charts

Fro our look at the criminal justice system.

- Click here for the story.

Should solitary confinement for juveniles be considered cruel and unusual punishment?

As with solitary confinement in general there is a movement to claim that it is.

Texas Senate Committee holds hearings on solitary confinment

This Texas Tribune story builds off a post below - maybe its a trend? In the section on public policy we discuss agenda setting, and how certain events can cause items to come on the public agenda. Perhaps this has happened to whether solitary confinement is appropriate punishment, or is cruel and unusual.

The story highlights hearings held by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and its chairman John Whitmire, who represents a district in Houston, note the spin he's putting on the issue - how he's defining it:


While solitary confinement in prisons is rising as a national issue because of concerns about its psychological effect on individual inmates, Texas lawmakers are worried in particular that inmates are released with no transition between solitary confinement and the free world.

"The longer you leave someone in there without rehabilitation, there is a possibility they will come out more dangerous,” Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Tuesday at a committee hearing.

Though the U.S. still leads the world in its rate of solitary confinement, Texas has seen a slight decline in its number of inmates held in administrative segregation. There are 8,144 inmates (including roughly 80 women) under the classification in Texas, down from 8,701 in 2010 and 9,752 in 2005. The average stay in administrative segregation is 3.2 years, but some inmates have been there for more than two decades.

So we are less worried about the effect solitary confinement has on the prisoner, but the effect it can have on society once these people finish their terms.

Is solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment?

A movement is underfoot attempting to make that argument.

From the Opinionator:

There are many ways to destroy a person, but the simplest and most devastating might be solitary confinement. Deprived of meaningful human contact, otherwise healthy prisoners often come unhinged. They experience intense anxiety, paranoia, depression, memory loss, hallucinations and other perceptual distortions. Psychiatrists call this cluster of symptoms SHU syndrome, named after the Security Housing Units of many supermax prisons. Prisoners have more direct ways of naming their experience. They call it “living death,” the “gray box,” or “living in a black hole.”
A recent Senate Subcomittee focused on this issue.

The committee was the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights.

Click here for the testimony before the committee.

This applies to future discussions about both the Constitution (US or Texas) and what it means (and how we figure that out), but the role of legislative committees in highlighting issues by having hearings on issues, and conducting oversight over executive agencies. That last part brings up checks and balances.

Mandatory life without parole sentences for juvenile defedants are cruel and unusual according to the Supreme Court

From the NYT:

The ruling left open the possibility of judges' sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without parole in individual circumstances but said state laws could not automatically impose such sentences.

“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features — among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority. “It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him — and from which he cannot usually extricate himself — no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.”

Justice Kagan’s opinion argued that the cases, involving 14-year-old boys who had taken part in murders in Arkansas and Alabama, were an extension of the court’s recent rulings on the young, which asserted that they still had unformed emotional and moral structures and that treating them as adults violated “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

From Scotusblog:

. . . . there presently are approximately seventy-nine individuals currently serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed at age thirteen or fourteen. The Court further explains that approximately 2500 people are serving life without parole for crimes they committed before they were eighteen.
The Court’s opinion brings together two strands of precedent to hold that a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment. The first strand holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits punishments that enact a mismatch between the culpability of a class of offenders and the severity of the penalty. Citing, among cases, Roper and Graham, the Court explains that juveniles have always been regarded as less culpable because the distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest penalties on juvenile offenders, even when they commit severe crimes.  The second line of precedent holds that life without parole shares key characteristics with the death penalty, and thus raises similar Eighth Amendment concerns, most notably that defendants are entitled to individualized consideration when facing such a severe sanction.

Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearing on solitary confinement

Is it cruel and unusual punishment?

The hearings can be found here: “Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences”

From the NYT:

The hearing, held before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, represents the first time lawmakers on Capitol Hill have taken up the issue of solitary confinement, a form of imprisonment that many human rights advocates believe violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” and that has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months in the United States and internationally.

The practice, which is widespread in American prisons, has also been the target of a growing number of lawsuits, including a class-action suit filed on Monday on behalf of mentally ill inmates held in solitary at ADX, the federal super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Last month, civil rights lawyers representing prisoners held for more than 10 years in isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison in California filed suit in federal court, arguing that solitary confinement is unconstitutional.

Is life without parole for juvenile offenders cruel and unusual?

The Supreme Court heard arguments about that question today.

Two Supreme Court Decisions Regarding Sentencing

In one, Graham v. Florida, the court decided 6-3 that life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of crimes less than murder was cruel and unusual punishment which violated the eighth amendment.

In the other, United States v. Comstock, a 7-2 court stated the Congress had the authority to allow continued confinement of some sex offenders who had completed their sentences, even though this power is not an enumerated (or delegated) power granted to Congress in Article One. It was argued on the basis of the necessary and proper clause, though the dissent wondered necessary and proper to do what?

Cruel and Unusual Punishment, and Patents

Those are the subjects of two Supreme Court cases we covered in 2302 today:

- Supreme Court Ruling May Transform Tech Industry
- Supreme Court To Hear Arguments On Life Sentences For Juveniles