California prisons to vastly reduce solitary confinement
Source: Reuters
California will no longer hold inmates in solitary confinement for more than five years at its notorious Pelican Bay prison and will reform its incarceration practices for similar units in other prisons under a sweeping settlement announced on Tuesday.
The settlement ends a lawsuit originally brought by prisoners at the maximum-security facility, where some of them lived for decades in units where they were housed alone in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, plaintiffs' lawyers said.
As outlined in the agreement, most inmates held in so-called Security Housing Units for more than 10 years will be released immediately into general prison populations, and inmates will no longer be confined to such units for unknown periods of time, according to the lawyers.
As many as 1,500 inmates, or about half the total population in solitary or near-solitary confinement, will soon be moved either into general prison populations or special units where they will have higher security but will be able to interact with each other and receive visitors, said Jules Lobel, an attorney with the New York based Center for Constitutional Rights.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/01/us-usa-prisons-california-idUSKCN0R149M20150901
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