It is estimated that 80,000 to 100,000 incarcerated persons, disproportionately adults and youth of color, are held in conditions of solitary confinement nationwide on any given day. That number does not include people in local jails, juvenile facilities, or in military and immigration detention, and it does not tell you their names nor their stories. It does tell the story of a social moral crisis.
Pennsylvania’s Corrections Secretary John Wetzel has worked hard to reduce the population in solitary, especially those with mental health conditions. But there is still much to be done to change a system that places incarcerated persons alone or in a cell with one other person 22-24 hours a day for months, years—and sometimes decades.
There is scientific evidence that prolonged isolation alters the brain, creates and exacerbates mental illness, denies opportunity for community, and violates inherent human dignity—and it creates toxic environments for incarcerated people, correctional staff and administrators. Given that 95% of all those currently incarcerated will eventually return to our communities, we all have a stake in how they return to us.
As people of faith, we believe that solitary confinement is not only a waste of our resources and antithetical to rehabilitation, but that it is also immoral.
Please sign on to our call to Governor Tom Wolf to work with the faith community and Pennsylvania’s elected and appointed leadership to abolish the torture of long term solitary confinement for all incarcerated persons in our state and promote humane alternatives that prioritize therapeutic interventions, restoration and recovery. The link for signing on is http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5415/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=22994.
The Council is offering this opportunity in collaboration with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
Michael Doutrich
Please end this inapropriate form of discipline in our prisons.