Report Shows Solitary Confinement Endangers Public Safety, Costs Taxpayers At Least $46 Million A Year
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Anna Núñez, ACLU of Texas, 713-942-8146, ext. 110, [email protected]
Burke Butler, Texas Civil Rights Project–Houston, 626-372-9957, [email protected]
HOUSTON – The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) overuses solitary confinement to the detriment of taxpayers, prison guards, Texas communities, and the prisoners whose mental health rapidly deteriorates under such conditions, are among the findings included in a report published today by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP).
“In recent years, the State of Texas has made strides to reduce our prison population and implement smart-on-crime reforms,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. “If Texas is to remain a leader in criminal justice reform, now is the time for our legislators in Austin to join other states in rolling back the use of solitary confinement, which would reduce violence in prisons and money wasted on a dangerous correctional practice that has been shown to lead to higher rates of recidivism.”
Recommendations on how to scale down the number of prisoners held in solitary from the report, A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas, include: excluding people with serious mental illness from solitary confinement; training correctional officers to work effectively with people with mental illness; and only housing people in solitary confinement if they pose a serious security risk. In Texas, 6,564 people live in solitary confinement—of these, one-third of them have been diagnosed with mental illness.
“TDCJ could save Texans $33 million a year simply by reducing its rate of solitary confinement to Mississippi’s rate of 1.4 percent,” said Burke Butler, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “When you consider the savings, reductions in prison violence, increased safety for Texas guards, and the benefits to prisoners who may return to live and work in our communities, reform and reduction of TDCJ’s use of solitary is the smart and right thing to do.”
The report documents that serious assaults on Texas prison staff increased 104% in the last seven years. Texas’s largest correctional officers union attributes the rise in part to TDCJ’s overuse of solitary confinement and the practice of housing people with mental illness in solitary confinement. TDCJ houses more people in solitary for longer periods of time than nearly all other state prison systems.
The report by the ACLU of Texas and TCRP is the culmination of an eight-month investigation, including a written survey of 147 people in solitary confinement, review of public-information requests to TDCJ, interviews and correspondence with people in solitary confinement, consultations with security and psychiatric experts, and interviews with correctional officers.
View a PDF of the report: http://aclutx.org/download/197.
