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Solitary Confinement
Effects, Practices, and Pathways
toward Reform
EDITED BY JULES LOBEL

A N D P E T E R S C HA R F F SM I T H
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lobel, Jules, editor. | Smith, Peter Scharff, 1971– editor.
Title: Solitary confinement : effects, practices, and pathways toward reform / edited by Jules Lobel
and Peter Scharff Smith.
Description: New York, New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references
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Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
1. Solitary Confinement—From Extreme Isolation to Prison Reform 1
Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith
I . T WO C E N T U R I E S O F S O L I TA RY C O N F I N E M E N T
2. Solitary Confinement—Effects and Practices from the

Nineteenth Century until Today 21
Peter Scharff Smith
3. Global Perspectives on Solitary Confinement—Practices and
Reforms Worldwide 43
Manfred Nowak
4. Solitary Confinement across Borders 59
Sharon Shalev
5. The Rise of Supermax Imprisonment in the United States 77
Keramet Reiter
6. Not Isolating Isolation 89
Judith Resnik
7. Torture, Solitary Confinement, and International Law 117
Juan E. Méndez
I I . M I N D, B O DY, A N D S O U L — T H E HA R M S
A N D E X P E R I E N C E O F S O L I TA RY C O N F I N E M E N T
8. Solitary Confinement, Loneliness, and Psychological Harm 129

Craig Haney
9. First Do No Harm: Applying the Harms-to-Benefits Patient
Safety Framework to Solitary Confinement 153
Brie Williams and Cyrus Ahalt
10. Mythbusting Solitary Confinement in Jail 173
Homer Venters
vi Contents
11. Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Health 185

Louise Hawkley
12. The Brain in Isolation: A Neuroscientist’s Perspective
on Solitary Confinement 199
Huda Akil
13. Use of Animals to Study the Neurobiological Effects of
Isolation: Historical and Current Perspectives 221
Michael J. Zigmond and Richard Jay Smeyne
14. Sharing Experiences of Solitary Confinement—Prisoners and Staff 243
Robert King, Dolores Canales, Jack Morris, and Armondo Sosa
I I I . P R I S O N R E F O R M , P R I S O N L I T IG AT IO N ,
A N D H UM A N R IG H T S
15. The Management of High-Security Prisoners: Alternatives to

Solitary Confinement 259
Andrew Coyle
16. Resisting Supermax: Rediscovering a Humane Approach to the
Management of High-Risk Prisoners 279
Jamie Bennett
17. Prisoners’ Association as an Alternative to Solitary Confinement—
Lessons Learned from a Norwegian High-Security Prison 297
Are Høidal
18. Colorado Ends Prolonged, Indeterminate Solitary Confinement 311
Rick Raemisch
19. Reflections on North Dakota’s Sustained Solitary Confinement
Reform 325
Leann K. Bertsch
20. Solitary Confinement in Canada 335
Joseph J. Arvay and Alison M. Latimer
21. “Loneliness Is a Destroyer of Humanity” 343
Amy Fettig and David C. Fathi
22. Litigation to End Indeterminate Solitary Confinement in
California: The Role of Interdisciplinary and Comparative Experts 353
Jules Lobel
Index 373
Contributors
Cyrus Ahalt, MPP, Associate Director of The Criminal Justice & Health Program,
University of California, San Francisco
Huda Akil, PhD, Gardner Quarton Distinguished University Professor of Neuroscience

and Psychiatry and Co-Director, Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (MBNI),
University of Michigan
Joseph J. Arvay, Partner and founder of Arvay Finlay LLP
Jamie Bennett, Deputy Director, HM Prison Service; former governor, HMP Grendon
and Springhill (2012–19), and Research Associate, University of Oxford
Leann K. Bertsch, Director, North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Dolores Canales, Co-Founder and one of the leaders of California Families to Abolish
Andrew Coyle, Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies, University of London; Founding

Director, International Centre for Prison Studies in the School of Law, Kings College
London; and Former Senior Administrator, United Kingdom Prison Service
David C. Fathi, Director, National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
Foundation
Amy Fettig, Deputy Director, National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties
Union Foundation; Director, Stop Solitary Campaign
Craig Haney, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, the University of California,

Santa Cruz
Louise Hawkley, Senior Research Scientist, NORC at the University of Chicago
Are Høidal, Governor, Halden Prison
Robert King, One of the Angola Three prisoners held in solitary confinement for almost
twenty years in Louisiana’s Angola prison
Alison M. Latimer, Partner, Arvay Finlay LLP
Jules Lobel, Bessie McKee Walthour Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

Law School; Co-operating Attorney and Former President of the Board, Center for
Constitutional Rights
viii Contributors
Juan E. Méndez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, Washington College of

Law, American University
Jack Morris, Former California prisoner at the Pelican Bay SHU, held in solitary confine-
ment for thirty-five years
Manfred Nowak, Professor of law, University of Vienna and Secretary General of the
Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice
Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections, 2013–2018
Keramet Reiter, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology, Law & Society, and
School of Law at the University of California, Irvine
Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Peter Scharff Smith, Professor in Sociology of Law, Department of Criminology &

Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law, Oslo University
Sharon Shalev, Research Associate, the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
Richard Jay Smeyne, Professor, Thomas Jefferson University, Jack & Vickie Farber
Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience
Armando Sosa, Lieutenant, Colorado State Penitentiary
Homer Venters, MD, MS, Former Chief Medical Officer, Correctional Health Services,
New York City Health and Hospital System; Senior Health and Justice Fellow at
Community Oriented Correctional Health Services and Clinical Associate Professor,
New York University College of Global Public Health
Brie Williams, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco,
Division of Geriatrics (UCSF), Director of the Criminal Justice and Health Program
at UCSF
Michael J. Zigmond, Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurobiology, the

University of Pittsburgh
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of the collaborative efforts of many people who have
worked tirelessly in different ways to reform and eventually end the practice of
prolonged solitary confinement throughout the world. First we want to thank all
the authors who agreed to contribute essays to this book, and whose collective
work has helped produce a movement challenging the use of solitary confine-
ment in prison systems.
We also want to acknowledge and thank those at the University of Pittsburgh
who helped put on the interdisciplinary and comparative conference on solitary
confinement at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, which this book is
an outgrowth of, particularly Dean Chip Carter who was an early and vital sup-
porter of the project, and Cori Parise, Sara Barca, Patty Blake, Kim Getz, and
LuAnn Driscoll, who provided critical administrative support for the conference.
We thank Professor Ronald Brand, who heads the Center for International Legal
Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, for providing financial
support for the conference and first putting us in touch with Oxford University
Press. We thank Professor Brie Williams at the University of California at San
Francisco Medical Center for providing financial support and encourage-
ment for the conference, and Professor Michael Zigmond at the University of
Pittsburgh for providing financial support and more importantly connecting us
with other wonderful neuroscientists such as Professor Huda Akil. In addition,
we thank the many prisoners and their on-the-ground activist supporters such
as Dolores Canales, whose struggle and activism has inspired the academic and
human rights community to better understand the suffering solitary confine-
ment causes and the pathways to reforming and ending the practice.
For help preparing an index for the book we would like to thank Marina Hiller
Foshaugen and Amanda Vik Andersen at the University of Oslo, and we thank
the staff at the Document Technology Center at the University of Pittsburgh
School of Law for helping to prepare the manuscript. Finally, we want to thank
the editors at Oxford University Press for their excellent work in editing and
shepherding this project to completion.
Professor Lobel also thanks his colleagues at the Center for Constitutional
Rights, Rachel Meeropol, Sam Miller, and Alexi Agathocleous, whose work and
collaboration on the Ashker v. Brown case has been so important and founda-
tional to this effort, and Staughton and Alice Lynd, who first introduced him to
the issue of solitary confinement and continue to be important collaborators in
x Acknowledgments
his work. His three children, Mike, Caroline, and Sasha, have provided motiva-
tion, humor, and inspiration to do this work. Most important has been the con-
tinuing love and support of his wife, Karen Engro, who has been the key person
enabling him to engage in the activist, litigation, and academic work challenging
prolonged solitary confinement.
Professor Scharff Smith would like to thank all the participants in the
Scandinavian Solitary Confinement Network— former prisoners, prison
officers, prison governors, psychologists, lawyers, and researchers—for a cru-
cial exchange of knowledge and for supporting and working for prison reform
in this area. He would also like to thank his colleagues at the Department of
Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo for creating an ex-
cellent academic and social working environment. For ongoing and inspirational
discussions throughout the years concerning solitary confinement, he especially
wants to thank Sharon Shalev and Marte Rua. Finally, he would like to thank his
family and especially his three children, Siri, August, and Vera, who are an in-
credible joy to be around and a constant motivation in life.
1
Solitary Confinement—From Extreme
Isolation to Prison Reform
Jules Lobel* and Peter Scharff Smith**
For nearly two centuries the practice of solitary confinement has been a recur-
ring feature in many prison systems all over the world. Solitary confinement
is used for a panoply of different reasons although research tells us that these
practices have widespread negative health effects. Besides the death penalty, it is
arguably the most punitive and dangerous intervention available to state author-
ities in democratic nations. These facts have spawned a growing international in-
terest in this topic and reform movements which include, among others, doctors,
psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, prisoners, families, litigators, human
rights defenders, and prison governors.
Social beings
Humans are social beings. We interact with other human beings, and that is how
we come to know who our friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors, and
others we meet on our journey through life are. Such interactions enable us to
understand who we ourselves are. Without human and social contact that feat
would seem impossible. How should we otherwise form and comprehend our
own identity? Indeed, it is through social interaction that we find partners and
eventually reproduce as a species. In that sense the alternative to social contact
is not only loneliness but in the end also death—unless we envision some kind
of dystopian future where computers and science have somehow replaced love
and sex.
Many of us live lives full of people, children, families, work, and activities and
sometimes long for more time for ourselves. Just a few hours or even minutes
* Bessie McKee Walthour Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School; Co-operating
Attorney and Former President of the Board, Center for Constitutional Rights.
** Professor in Sociology of Law, Department of Criminology & Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law,
Oslo University.
Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith. Solitary Confinement—From Extreme Isolation to Prison Reform In: Solitary
Confinement. Edited by: Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith. Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190947927.003.0001
2 Solitary Confinement
behind a closed door in order to gather our thoughts, write that email, get on
with a project, finish that chapter or article, etc. Nevertheless, given some time to
ponder this issue most of us will likely understand that prolonged social isolation
is not something to wish for. Especially not if we are unable to choose when and
how to end such isolation.
As will be described in this book, social isolation is in fact very dangerous to
human health and well-being. In the free world, loneliness and isolation increase
the risk of mortality significantly and present a risk equivalent to or even greater
than some of the most well-known and severe health hazards such as smoking
and being overweight.1 This book is about a special kind of social isolation that
is imposed on the incarcerated—people who cannot themselves decide when
to get out and end such isolation. Solitary confinement is the term used to de-
scribe the situation where people are confined individually and alone in a cell in
a prison for between twenty-two and twenty-four hours every day.2 This practice
has been utilized in prison systems since the eighteenth century and up until this
day. This form of isolation is extremely detrimental to the health of the people
being subjected to such conditions.3 Not surprisingly, in states without the death
penalty, solitary confinement has been described as the “the furthest point of the
repertoire of sanctions and compulsions available to a liberal democratic state
outside time of war.”4
Incredibly, these facts have had little or no impact on prison policy in many
jurisdictions. Often, people are placed in solitary confinement simply at the
whim of prison officers and often without noteworthy legal safeguards or ef-
fective complaint mechanisms. And such conditions are sometimes imposed
for years and even decades on end. Interestingly and bizarrely, we treat these
prisoners in a manner that would not be permitted for our animal companions
used in scientific research. Indeed, humans are not the only social beings living
among us and in many countries our research on animals, and even in some
cases the treatment of certain animals is regulated in great detail by law in a way
we see few or no signs of when it comes to humans residing in prisons.
1See Hawkley, Chapter 11, this volume.

2This definition of solitary confinement follows the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules
for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) from 2015; and The Istanbul Statement
on the Use and Effects of Solitary Confinement, Adopted on December 9, 2007 at the International
Psychological Trauma Symposium, Istanbul.
3 See Haney, Chapter 8, this volume; Williams and Ahalt, Chapter 9, this volume; Venters,
Chapter 10, this volume; Zigmond and Smeyne, Chapter 11, this volume; Smith, Chapter 2, this
volume.
4 Richard Sparks, Anthony E. Bottoms, and Will Hay, Prisons and the Problem of Order
(London: Clarendon Press, 1996), 30.

Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith 3
Social animals and isolation
Imagine a horse in the middle of a field—in this case somewhere in Sweden. This
particular horse is leading a happy life in part because it has a legal right to eve-
ryday contact with other companions. The horse is a social animal and hence
social isolation is unhealthy. This fact is reflected in Swedish law. The statutes of
the Swedish Animal Welfare Authority stipulate that “a horse’s need for social
contact must be met.”5 What this entails in practice is explained in the rules and
guidelines for horse owners from the Swedish Department of Agriculture:
Ideally, your horse should be in contact with other horses, but it can work with
another flock animal, such as sheep or cattle, if this is enough for your horse to
be well.6
To ensure such contact, the living conditions in the stables are also regulated in
detail: “Box walls, box doors and partitions must be designed so that the horse’s
need for social contact is met.”7 Unsurprisingly, the same goes for other social
animals. Another example from Swedish law involves the ostrich—an animal
that you are not allowed to isolate from its conspecifics.8
Bear in mind that Sweden is just one example. Many countries of course have
rules and legal safeguards protecting certain animals from abuse and ill health. As
shown in the Swedish example, a social animal’s need for contact with other animals
is an important element in its well-being, and therefore animals often have special
rights in this area. But in Sweden, you will not find similar rights being granted to
imprisoned human beings. Despite Sweden’s reputation as a country with humane
prison conditions, solitary confinement is actually a serious problem, especially
during remand where pre-trial detainees are awaiting conviction. In fact, and quite
extraordinarily, around two-thirds of all pre-trial detainees in Sweden are auto-
matically subjected to solitary confinement—a practice that has been heavily criti-
cized by international human rights committees for decades.9
5 Djurskyddsmyndighetens författningssamling, DFS 2007:6, 2 kap. Skötsel och hantering,
Allmänna krav, 1 § 4.
6 Jordbruksverket “Djurskyddsbestämmelser, Häst,” Jordbruksinformation 4, 2011, p. 6. See also,
Djurskyddsmyndighetens författningssamling, DFS 2007:6, Allmänna råd till 2 kap. 1, “Hästar bör
hållas tillsammans med artfränder.”
7 Jordbruksverket “Djurskyddsbestämmelser, Häst,” Jordbruksinformation 4, 2011, p. 5.
8 Swedish Ministry of Agriculture, August 14, 2018, accessed April 2019, https://nam05.safelinks.
protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jordbruksverket.se%2Famnesomraden%2Fdj
ur%2Folikaslagsdjur%2Fhagnatvilt%2Fskotselavstrutsar.4.51c5369e120aee363f08000366.html&am
p;data=02%7C01%7Clawdtc%40pitt.edu%7Cf8c18f3a3e5a4ec7858508d6bc18f8c5%7C9ef9f489e0a
04eeb87cc3a526112fd0d%7C1%7C0%7C636903212765281265&sdata=gUyJ0Zurd%2B%2Ba
uCb6PrwRckJm%2FagRAcVLTXbZrC3xVno%3D&reserved=0.
9 See Smith, Chapter 2, this volume.
Solitary confinement in prison—Effects and practices
A human being’s need for some level of social contact does not seem to be
secured as a basic right in any prison system in the world, and in some it is bla-
tantly ignored to a remarkable degree. This has to a greater or lesser extent been
the case especially during the last two centuries. The use of solitary confinement
in prisons became common with the rise of the modern penitentiary during
the first half of the nineteenth century and his since remained a feature of some
Western, and non-Western, prison systems. A debate about the effects of solitary
confinement was largely settled early in the twentieth century, when this practice
was condemned as being severely unhealthy, and consequently the general use
of prolonged solitary confinement appeared to be on the way out. Discussions
about the practice resurfaced in the 1950s, when sensory deprivation and per-
ceptual deprivation studies were carried out partly in reaction to stories of brain-
washing of US prisoners of war during the Korean War.10 During the 1980s
solitary confinement again regained topicality when supermax prisons caused
an explosion in the use of solitary confinement in the United States.11 However,
various forms of isolation have been continuously used in different parts of the
world, which includes numerous practices ranging from the phenomenon of
pre-trial solitary confinement in Scandinavia to the use of isolation in connec-
tion with interrogations of suspected terrorists.12
Today we know from a wide range of international studies and research that
solitary confinement is a dangerous practice that can have significant nega-
tive health effects.13 Nevertheless, in the United States currently, an estimated
80,000 to 100,000 prisoners are housed in small cells for more than 22 hours per
day with little or no social contact and no physical contact visits with family or
friends. Indeed, solitary confinement is used in many prison systems as a means
to maintain prison order: as disciplinary punishment or as an administrative
measure for inmates who are considered an escape risk or a risk to themselves or
to prison order in general. Some inmates, for example, sex offenders, also choose
voluntary isolation to avoid harassment from other prisoners.
Nevertheless, recent years have witnessed growing international reform in-
terest in this area, which has mobilized not only researchers, litigators, and
human rights defenders, but also prison governors and other practitioners. This
10See Smith, Chapter 2, this volume.

11See Reiter, Chapter 5, this volume; Resnik, Chapter 6, this volume; Lobel, Chapter 22, this
volume.
12 See Nowak, Chapter 3, this volume; Shalev, Chapter 4, this volume; Smith, Chapter 2, this
volume.
13 See Haney, Chapter 8, this volume. See also Williams and Ahalt, Chapter 9, this volume;
Venters, Chapter 10, this volume, Zigmond and Smeyne, Chapter 13, this volume; Smith, Chapter 2,
this volume.
is the starting point for the present book, which builds on the hitherto most am-
bitious international, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive conference on soli-
tary confinement, which took place at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016 and
was organized by the editors.
With this book we wish to take for the first time a broad international com-
parative approach to this subject and to apply an interdisciplinary lens consisting
of the views of neuroscientists, high-level prison officials, social and political
scientists, medical doctors, historians, lawyers, and former prisoners and their
families from different countries to address the effects and practices of prolonged
solitary confinement and the movement for its reform and abolishment.
Two reform movements that inspired this book
In many countries you will, on a given day, find hundreds or even thousands of
prisoners being locked up in solitary confinement in various institutions—for
days, weeks, months, or even many years at a time. In that sense we are very
far indeed from a situation where a human beings’ very basic social needs are
protected by law and respected in practice in our prisons. Nevertheless, a number
of important developments have taken place during recent decades that have
brought the question of solitary confinement and prison practice to the forefront
and created significant pockets of reform. Two different reform movements have
been significant and at least partly successful in this regard, and they form the
background of this book as well as the conference held in Pittsburgh in 2016.
First, international human rights standards have increasingly been applied
to prisoners in the last half century.14 With regard to solitary confinement, in-
ternational human rights standards have evolved significantly especially in the
last approximately 15 years, and human rights monitoring has expanded since
the 1990’s in Europe and during the last decade or so, internationally as well.15
International and regional human rights bodies, supported by NGOs, individual
researchers and activists have succeeded in strengthening soft law, monitoring,
and torture prevention in this particular area significantly, which to a varying
degree has had an impact on national jurisdictions as well. This development is
reflected in several of the chapters in this volume and is an important reason that
this book has become possible at all.
14 Concerning the “endtimes” of human rights, see Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human
Rights (New York: Cornell University Press, 2013). Concerning pockets of increased human rights
implementation and protection in prison systems, see Peter Scharff Smith, “Prisons and Human
Rights: Past, Present and Future Challenges,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Criminology
and Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2016).
15 See Nowak, Chapter 3, this volume; Mendez, Chapter 7, this volume.
Secondly, significant developments have taken place in the United States,

where litigation against isolation practices has gained momentum and finally
become more successful.16 Equally importantly, the litigation has been joined
with a reform movement that has raised awareness of the harmfulness of the
practice, has helped enlist the aid of some prison officials in reforming certain
state prison systems, and has created partnerships between non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), lawyers, researchers, and state correctional services. As
will be explained in this chapter, this has informed and formed this book in a
very direct way through a particular case brought against the Pelican Bay prison
in California.
The following sections briefly describe these two reform movements, which
have converged in recent years and formed the backbone of this collection.
International human rights reforms—From

the International Prison Commission to the Istanbul
Statement and the Mandela Rules
The process of creating international standards for prison practice—including

the use of solitary confinement—goes back to before World War II and hence
precedes the first human rights conventions. Evidence on the detrimental health
effects of solitary confinement continued to mount during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries and gradually, albeit slowly, influenced international
prison experts and their recommendations for sound prison management. The
International Prison Commission held several conferences during the nine-
teenth century and in 1846 the delegates approved the use of solitary confine-
ment. At the 1872 penitentiary congress in London, solitary confinement was
also subject to a lively discussion, but no resolutions were drawn up. This un-
doubtedly reflected the fact that large-scale solitary confinement (according to
the Pennsylvania/Philadelphia system) was still practiced in several countries.
As late as 1960 in Brussels the use of isolation was endorsed. At a 1930 peni-
tentiary congress in Prague, however, it was specified that solitary confinement
should never be used in connection with sentences of long duration.17
After World War II the international work with prison standards con-
tinued within the United Nations (UN). The original 1948 Declaration of
Human Rights and several of the UN conventions from the 1960s and onwards
16 See Resnik, Chapter 6, this volume; Fettig and Fathi, Chapter 21, this volume; Lobel, Chapter 22,
this volume.
17 Peter Scharff Smith, “Solitary Confinement—History, Practice, and Human Rights Standards,”
Prison Service Journal, no. 181 (January 2009): 3-11.

developed standards for those deprived of their liberty. But these conventions do
not themselves address the issue of solitary confinement directly. Nevertheless,
the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) from 1966 estab-
lished that: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity
and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person,”18 which the UN
Human Rights Committee later interpreted to mean that “persons deprived of
their liberty [may not] be subjected to any hardship or constraint other than that
resulting from the deprivation of liberty.”19
The UN and other regional human rights bodies have also increasingly crit-
icized the practice of prolonged solitary confinement. In 1990 the UN Basic
Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners encouraged states to abolish solitary
confinement as a punishment.20 The UN Committee Against Torture (CAT),
which monitors the Convention Against Torture, began to criticize isolation
practices in different parts of the world and recommended that “the use of soli-
tary confinement be abolished, particularly during pre-trial detention, or at least
that it should be strictly and specifically regulated by law (maximum duration,
etc.) and that judicial supervision should be introduced.”21 Other mechanisms
contributed to these efforts; for example, the UN Committee on the Rights of
the Child recommended that solitary confinement should not be used against
children.22 On a regional level the European Committee for the Prevention of
Torture (CPT) has stated that solitary confinement can amount to inhuman and
degrading treatment and has criticized isolation practices in several countries.23
So too, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has been critical of
certain prison systems’ use of solitary confinement. Furthermore, the revised
European Prison Rules of 2006 states: “Solitary confinement shall be imposed as
a punishment only in exceptional cases and for a specified period of time, which
shall be as short as possible.”24
But all these recommendations and standards lie within the area of soft law
and are not in themselves legally binding. They require action and compli-
ance from state authorities and/or that international or national courts adopt
them and turn them into hard law through judgments in concrete prison cases.
Furthermore, after the new European prison rules appeared in 2006, experts
on solitary confinement, prisons, and human rights took stock and identified a
number of crucial problems in this area: The use of solitary confinement was on
18 Article 10.1.
19 The Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 21[44], article 10 (1-3) 1992.
20 Principle 7.
21 CAT, Visit report, Denmark, 1. May 1997, para. 186.
22 CRC/C/15/Add.273, “Denmark”, 30 September 2005, para. 58 a.
23 See Smith, “Solitary Confinement.”
24 Rule 60.5.
the rise in some jurisdictions and continued to be a significant problem in others,

while the human rights standards in the area were too weak despite developing
research that had clearly documented the severe negative health effects of pro-
longed isolation.25
Consequently—and with the purpose of either abolishing or significantly
restricting the use of solitary confinement—a group of experts convened during
the International Psychological Trauma Symposium in Istanbul in December
2007 and produced the Istanbul Statement on the Use and Effects of Solitary
Confinement.26 This Statement recommended, among other things, that solitary
confinement should be absolutely prohibited for mentally ill prisoners, for chil-
dren under the age of eighteen, and when used coercively to apply psychological
pressure on prisoners. The Statement also advised as a “general principle” that
“solitary confinement should only be used in very exceptional cases, for as short
a time as possible and only as a last resort.”27
Importantly, the Statement and these standards were then promoted in the
UN by the then-Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, who had par-
ticipated in negotiating the Statement in Istanbul and attached to his 2008 report
to the UN General Assembly.28 The Statement was also used by a later UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, who further developed and strengthened
standards significantly in this particular area.29 Mendez focused on solitary con-
finement in his thematic 2011 report and took further strides by calling for a
complete ban on all forms of prolonged solitary confinement, which he defined
as isolation beyond fifteen days.30
The increased focus on strengthened human rights standards culminated in
2015 with revised UN prison rules known as the Mandela Rules. Those rules in-
corporate the definition of solitary confinement from the Istanbul Statement on
the Use and Effects of Solitary Confinement and constitute the strongest soft law
instrument in the work towards restricting or abolishing the use of solitary con-
finement in prisons.
25 Craig Haney, “Mental Health Issues in Long- Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement,”
Crime and Delinquency 49, no. 1 (2003): 124–56; Henrik Steen Andersen, “Mental Health in Prison
Populations: A Review—With Special Emphasis on a Study of Danish Prisoners on Remand,” Acta
Psychiatrica Scandinavica Supplementum 110, no. 424 (2004): 5–59; Peter Scharff Smith, “The
Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prison Inmates: A Brief History and Review of the Literature,” in
Crime and Justice, ed. Michael Tonry (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), 441–528). Haney,
Chapter 8, this volume.
26 Peter Scharff Smith, “Solitary Confinement: An Introduction to the Istanbul Statement on the
Use and Effects of Solitary Confinement,” Torture 18, no. 1 (2008): 56–62.
27 The Istanbul Statement on the Use and Effects of Solitary Confinement, Adopted on December
9, 2007 at the International Psychological Trauma Symposium, Istanbul.

28 See Nowak, Chapter 3, this volume.
29 Mendez, Chapter 7, this volume.
30 See id.
To sum up, the last fifteen years or so have witnessed increased human rights
attention to the problem of solitary confinement in prisons, and the develop-
ment of standards to significantly restrict and eventually abolish the practice.
Many of the authors of this book have participated in and contributed to this
growing human rights reform movement, which provided a basis for the interna-
tional, interdisciplinary, and comparative approach taken in this book.
Prison litigation in the United States—Solitary

confinement and the recent Pelican Bay case
The United States, where the increasing use of solitary confinement in the last
few decades of the twentieth century was most dramatic, spawned a reform
movement of its own. Indeed, the conference held at the University of Pittsburgh
Law School in 2016 of which the book is an outgrowth, germinated in part
based on class action litigation brought against the California Department of
Corrections on behalf of over 1,000 prisoners held in prolonged solitary con-
finement at Pelican Bay State Prison in California. That litigation, which success-
fully ended the indeterminate, very prolonged solitary confinement of almost
1,600 California prisoners, was premised on combining prisoner testimony on
the harm and pain caused by their confinement with expert testimony from var-
ious disciplines setting forth the psychological, neurological, and physical harm
caused by solitary confinement. In addition, the expert strategy would also set
forth the international norms limiting the use of prolonged solitary, and in that
sense the two reform movements mentioned here—international human rights
and US prison litigation—converged with this particular case, and now with
this book. Additionally, high-level prison official expertise was employed in the
Pelican Bay case, claiming that California’s practices were penologically unnec-
essary. Finally, international comparison was used to illustrate other nations’ use
of alternatives to draconian isolation. The combination of first-hand experience
with interdisciplinary, international, and comparative expertise was then uti-
lized at the Pittsburgh conference convened by the two co-editors of this book,
and continued with this volume. Indeed, some of the authors of the chapters in
this book were experts in the California case.31 The multifaceted challenge to
solitary confinement contained in the Pelican Bay litigation thus provides rich
intellectual and practical lessons on why and how to reform and eventually end
the practice.32
31 Haney, Chapter 8, this volume; Hawkley, Chapter 11, this volume; Coyle, Chapter 15, this
volume; and Mendez, Chapter 7, this volume.

32 See Lobel, Chapter 22, this volume; Lobel was one of the litigators in the California litigation.
To demonstrate that the use of prolonged solitary confinement is cruel, in-

humane, unusual, and degrading punishment that violates constitutional and
human rights norms required both the Pelican Bay litigators and the editors of
this book to address three basic questions. The first is what is the harm to human
beings who are placed in such confinement? At first glance the harm is obvious: To
lock someone up for a prolonged period of time in a small cell, twenty-two to
twenty three hours per day, with virtually no social contact, no programming, no
physical contact with friends, family, or other prisoners, seems like it would drive
the person crazy. Or as United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
put it in a 2015 speech at Harvard Law School, “it drives men mad.”33 Moreover,
various psychological experts and researchers—including Craig Haney, an au-
thor in this book and an expert in the Pelican Bay litigation—have concluded that
prisoners in solitary suffer tremendously from such prolonged isolation.34 But
the reluctance of some courts to view the pain caused by solitary confinement as
rising to the level of cruel and inhumane punishment demonstrates a need for a
deeper and broader understanding of the harm caused by such confinement. This
led the Pelican Bay litigators to retain experts in the fields of neuroscience, social
science, and touch in order to demonstrate that prisoners in solitary confinement
were suffering an increased risk of physical harm, in addition to mental harm.
They also asked the psychological experts to develop new, promising avenues of
research with the prisoner class at Pelican Bay to further illustrate the ongoing,
long-term psychological harm these prisoners were suffering. That interdiscipli-
nary approach involving five separate experts led to success in the Pelican Bay liti-
gation and has been continued in this book, which broadens the understanding of
solitary confinement and its effects even further.
The second major question faced by the litigators was a penological one—was
the use of prolonged solitary confinement necessary, and were alternatives avail-
able? Probably the key defense that prison officials, including those in California,
make of their use of solitary confinement is that it is necessary to curb violence
in the prisons; to isolate the most dangerous prisoners so that they do not kill, as-
sault, or rape other prisoners and staff. Courts faced with that security argument
are often likely to defer to the prison officials’ rationale. The prisoners and their
legal team felt that we needed expert witnesses to undercut California’s security
rationale. This book takes the same approach. Justice Kennedy articulated the
likely underlying concerns of many judges when, in inviting a future challenge to
prolonged solitary confinement, he noted that the “judiciary may be required to
33 Liz Mineo, “Kennedy Assails Prison Shortcomings,” last modified October 22, 2015, https://
news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/kennedy-assails-prison-shortcomings/.
34 See Haney, Chapter 8, this volume.
determine . . . whether alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and

if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.”
The plaintiffs’ legal team retained a former director and a deputy director of
two state prison systems that had reformed their use of solitary confinement to
testify as to the lack of justification for California’s use of prolonged isolation
as well as potential alternatives to the practice. They also retained the nation’s
leading expert on prison classification systems for determining the level of se-
curity for a prisoner. He declared that California’s system of determining who
should be placed in and retained in solitary confinement was broken, had not
diminished prison violence, and resulted in numerous prisoners being placed
and retained for years in solitary without justification. Moreover, Andrew Coyle,
an international expert in prisons and solitary confinement, who had been a
high-level Scottish official who had led a reform movement away from such con-
finement in that country, also agreed to testify that California’s use of solitary
was not only penologically unnecessary but also harmful from a security per-
spective and contrary to sound prison management principles.35 This book con-
tinues and significantly expands upon that effort by including a number of essays
by top American state prison officials and prison managers in other countries
discussing their reform of solitary systems and the development of alternatives.
In particular, the prisoners and lawyers felt that to prove an Eighth
Amendment violation one had to show that even the most dangerous prisoners
should not be held for long periods of time in the isolating conditions of Pelican
Bay or other American supermax prisons. For if solitary was a form of torture,
as the complaint alleged, it was impermissible to place any prisoners, no matter
how dangerous, in these conditions for prolonged periods. Yet it was with these
allegedly destructive prisoners—the Hanibal Lecters of the system—that the
state had its best argument; how could they place these prisoners in with gen
eral population prisoners without unleashing mayhem. The former director of
a major state system, Ohio, filed an expert declaration that in Ohio they were
able to provide even the prisoners that officials considered most dangerous with
some significant social interaction with other prisoners and contact visits and
phone calls with family and friends. So too, the foreign prison official explained
how that was possible to do and had been done in his system. In short, these
prison officials testified that you could separate these allegedly very dangerous
prisoners from other prisoners without mandating total isolation. Separation,
not isolation was their alternative practice.
Third, and finally, we sought to show that the prolonged solitary confine-
ment imposed by California was contrary to international norms and practices,
35 See Coyle, Chapter 15, this volume.

which were moving away from solitary confinement and prohibited the types of
practices imposed by California. We retained Juan Mendez, then the UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture to visit Pelican Bay and write a report on its inconsistency
with international norms and practices. In addition, our international prison ex-
pert also opined on the divergence between California’s practices and what inter-
national society now recognized as sound prison management consistent with
the human rights of the prisoners. In sum, we sought to show that California
was an outlier, out of step and touch with modern prison practices both here and
abroad. Mendez, Coyle, and another former UN Rapporteur, Manfred Nowak,
are authors of chapters in this book, and they have been joined by others who
continue and deepen the multifaceted approach that was employed with the
Pelican Bay litigation.
The importance of these expert reports in the California litigation is two-
fold. First, as a whole, they constitute a thoroughgoing and innovative critique
of prolonged solitary confinement, explaining why it deprives people of basic
human needs, is an affront to human dignity, and is unnecessary.36 As such,
these reports can play an important role in the continuing struggle against soli-
tary confinement. Their insights into the use of solitary at Pelican Bay are greatly
supplemented by the essays in this book, some of which are written by those
experts, but most of which bring their knowledge to deepen and expand both
the critique of solitary and the possibility of alternatives. Second, the reports
illustrate the role that science can play in legal advocacy, and the dilemmas
confronting the interface of law and science in the courtroom, for harnessing sci-
ence for legal advocacy can be incredibly powerful but also difficult and possibly
problematical.
The structure of the book
The book is structured in three main parts. The first part, titled “Two Centuries
of Solitary Confinement,” looks at the history of solitary confinement and how
isolation is practiced in various prison systems today, and provides an overview
of how and why relevant law has evolved in the United States and within the
human rights community.
The second part, titled “Mind, Body and Soul—The Harms and Experience of
Solitary Confinement” discusses the physical as well as the mental health effects
of solitary confinement and the frequency of self-injurious behavior in isolation,
and demonstrates how and why research on the effects of social isolation in the
36 See Lobel, Chapter 22, this volume.

free community is very relevant to the study of solitary confinement in prisons.

Furthermore, the lessons of neuroscience are applied to solitary confinement in
this part of the book. Finally, the experience of solitary confinement is described
from the point of view of prisoners and prison staff.
The third part of the book looks at “Prison Reform, Prison Litigation and
Human Rights.” Here, we initially focus on alternatives to solitary confinement
in the form of reform initiatives and concrete prison practices in different prisons
in different countries where the use of isolation is either low or nonexistent. After
that we take a look at concrete litigation in a number of jurisdictions where the
use of solitary confinement has been successfully challenged.
The individual chapters
Part one begins with Chapter 2 by Peter Scharff Smith titled “Solitary
Confinement—Effects and Practices from the Nineteenth Century until Today.”
Here Smith traces the history of solitary confinement practices and their effects
in prisons and places of detention from early experiments in late-eighteenth-
century England, to the rise of the modern penitentiary in the United States
and Europe during the nineteenth century, up until present day methods in dif-
ferent countries around the world. Smith demonstrate how various forms of iso-
lation have been, and still are, employed for very different purposes and how
the effects of solitary confinement have been discovered on several occasions in
different contexts during the last two centuries. He concludes by showing that
today few doubt the powerful effects of solitary confinement on mind and body
of prisoners, but the degree to which lawmakers and prison administrators ac-
knowledge this varies greatly.
In Chapter 3, “Global Perspectives on Solitary Confinement—Practices and
Reforms Worldwide,” Manfred Nowak puts the practice of solitary confinement in
the context of and distinguishes it from other aggravated forms of deprivation of
liberty, such as incommunicado detention, secret detention, and enforced disap-
pearance. Nowak proceeds to discuss the relevant case law of human rights courts
and monitoring bodies and compare this with his own experience as UN Special
Rapporteur on Torture and that of his successor Juan Mendez. Nowak describes
how Mendez and himself, based on research into the effects of solitary confine-
ment, helped change and significantly strengthen soft law standards in the area.
In the next chapter, Sharon Shalev builds on her previous work on supermax
prisons in the United States, high-security units across Europe, close-supervision
centers and segregation units in England and Wales, and management and pun-
ishment units in New Zealand, to identify different approaches and common
threads in the use of solitary confinement in different jurisdictions.
Chapter 5, by Professor Keramet Reiter provides an overview of how the first

supermaxes were designed by administrators, at the state-level, in response to
outbreaks of violence. The institutions faced many legal challenges, and while the
litigation led to reforms, it also legitimized the institutions, which were replicated
across the United States, and globally, over the course of the 1980s and 1990s.
In Chapter 6, Judith Resnik argues that the isolating practices of solitary
confinement ought not be analyzed in isolation, for they are continuous with
methods of incarceration that isolate by place and by rule. Drawing on research
of the Association of State Correctional Administrators and Yale Law School, she
provides a window into the numbers of people held in the United States in isola-
tion and the burdens that flow, in terms of the lack of opportunities for sociability
that individuals endure for months and years. Law licenses these practices and
could bound them more. Doing so requires rethinking not only solitary con-
finement but also the imposition of a myriad of other constraints imposed on
incarcerated individuals and taken for granted, rather than viewed as “atypical.”
Placing US law in the context of international reform efforts makes plain that
profound deprivation is the normative baseline, to which some facets of ordinary
life and constitutional protections may be added to mitigate the harshness.
In the last chapter of the overview part of the book, Juan Mendez, the former
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, himself a former political prisoner during
the Argentinian military dictatorship, describes how early on in his tenure he
was confronted with specific cases of prolonged solitary confinement. He
embarked on a research project that culminated in his thematic report on soli-
tary confinement, delivered to the UN General Assembly in November of 2011.
The report proved to have a long shelf life, as it prompted several other actions
and initiatives by the author, during and after his tenure.
Opening Part II of the book on Mind, Body and Soul, which addresses the
harm caused by solitary confinement, is a chapter by Craig Haney. This chapter
summarizes the existing state of scientific knowledge on the adverse psycho-
logical effects of isolated confinement. Based on a comprehensive review of the
published literature as well as the author’s own empirical research, it will both
catalogue these effects and provide a coherent theoretical framework for under-
standing how and why the practice of solitary confinement is both harmful and
counterproductive.
The next chapter, by Dr. Brie Williams and MPP Cyrus Ahalt, argues that
despite clear documentation of the medical and psychological harms of soli-
tary confinement, reform remains inconsistent. Oftentimes, this inconsistency
reflects the extent to which the harm-benefit calculation disproportionately
favors a perceived correctional benefit of solitary confinement over its known
health-related harm. This chapter describes the medical field’s approach to rec-
onciling harm/benefit analyses as a fundamental step in any medical research,
treatment, or policy intervention. It describes a robust, stepwise framework that

can be used to assess the harm-benefit calculus underlying the practice of solitary
confinement based on the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) model for med-
ication approval. This chapter introduces and explores the question of whether
prisons would benefit—from both ethical and effectiveness perspectives—from
the development of a parallel harm/benefit analysis framework for assessing the
appropriate use of correctional practices that have a potential to cause harm.
Chapter 10, by Dr. Homer Venters argues that the persistence of myths about
solitary confinement allow for this harmful and dangerous practice to continue
in many American jails and prisons. The first myth is that solitary is not linked
to real health outcomes. Data from 250,000 New York City jail admissions shows
that prisoners exposed to solitary have odds ratios of 6.9 and 6.6 for self-harm
and potentially fatal self-harm, respectively. The second myth relating to solitary
confinement is that solitary is evenly applied across race and age. A second large-
scale analysis of New York City data, on 50,000 first-time jail admissions, shows
African American and Hispanic prisoners more likely than white prisoners to
enter into solitary (odds ratios of 2.5 and 1.6), even after adjustment for length
of stay. The third myth about solitary is that it represents a valid approach to
reducing violence and other incidents. Venters’s chapter also discusses the
“Clinical Alternatives to Punitive Segregation” units that he helped to create in
the New York City Department of Corrections. Seriously mentally ill patients
who previously went into solitary now go into treatment settings, designed and
run by teams of health and security staff, with improved outcomes. These units
are an important alternative to solitary, but their cost should prompt discussion
about the need to divert patients into clinical treatment before they arrive in jail.
Chapter 11, by Louise Hawkley, presents concrete data that highlights the risk
of increasing hypertension amongst prisoners placed in long-term solitary con-
finement. Chronic social isolation and feelings of loneliness have been associated
with mortality and a range of adverse health outcomes. Solitary confinement is
an extreme form of social isolation that was posited, based on prior research,
to increase risk for hypertension relative to imprisonment in general prison
housing. Data collected at Pelican Bay State Prison comparing prisoners held in
long-term solitary confinement and those who were held in harsh conditions in
maximum security but not in solitary confinement supported this hypothesis,
suggesting that isolation can “cause” poor health outcomes.
Chapters 12 and 13 address the lessons that neuroscience can teach about the
harm that isolation causes the brain. Huda Akil recognizes that while there are
no direct neuroscience studies of people exposed to extended solitary confine-
ment, key characteristics of solitary confinement have been extensively studied
by neuroscientists in various models. This body of evidence strongly indicates
that each of these variables—chronic stress, lack of sensory stimulation, lack of
movement, and lack of social contact—have profound impact on brain struc-

ture and function. Their combination, especially for extended periods of time,
is likely to produce substantial structural changes in the brain that translate into
changes in many functions.
Michael J. Zigmond and Richard Jay Smeyne start from the basic proposition
that we are a social species, a characteristic undoubtedly selected for during evo-
lution. They then reference studies of animal models housed in isolation, which
show that isolation causes severe neuroanatomical and biochemical abnormali-
ties in the brain. They discuss these studies as well as regulations imposing severe
restrictions on the housing of animals in isolation.
Chapter 14 addresses the prisoner’s perspective on and experiences of solitary
confinement. Robert King and Jack Morris, former prisoners who each spent
more than two decades in solitary confinement, discuss the deep harm it caused
them, and how they managed to survive. Dolores Canales, who both experienced
solitary confinement as a prisoner and has a son who spent many years in soli-
tary confinement, shares her perspectives on the harm it causes. The chapter also
includes an essay by a Colorado prison guard, Armando Sosa, explaining how
solitary confinement not only harmed prisoners but also was a stressful work
environment, and how the reforms instituted in Colorado not only helped the
prisoners, but also the correctional officers.
The last part of the book describes and discusses various reform efforts by
prison administrators in Europe and the United States to either reform or abolish
solitary confinement and develop alternatives. It also contains essays by five
litigators in the United States and Canada that address litigation in their coun-
tries against solitary confinement.
Andrew Coyle, in Chapter 15, discusses the alternatives to solitary confine-
ment for the management of high-security prisoners. He points out that in any
prison system there are likely to be a number of prisoners who, for a wide variety
of reasons, cannot be accommodated in mainstream or general populations.
Prison administrations have increasingly resorted to the use of long-term soli-
tary confinement as a method of managing such prisoners. This chapter discusses
alternative models of prison management which obviate the need for long-term
solitary confinement.
Jamie Bennett then describes therapeutic communities and the Grendon
prison model as an alternative to solitary. He argues that the supermax has be-
come a global brand in penal practice. England and Wales have, however, con-
sistently rejected this as a normal approach to imprisonment. This chapter argues
that where local approaches are conserved, imaginative practice can flourish.
Particular attention is given to the work of Grendon prison, which operates en-
tirely as a series of therapeutic communities working with high-risk prisoners
who have committed serious offenses and have been disruptive in prisons.
In Chapter 17, Are Høidal discusses prisoner association as an alternative

to solitary confinement and the lessons learned from a Norwegian high secu-
rity prison. Participating in activities can counteract isolation and is in Norway
justified by the principle of normalization. Providing in-work training and
meaningful activities also help to counteract incidents in prison that lead to
segregation. Through the Norwegian example in general and Halden prison in
particular, this chapter describes how focusing on such activities can prevent su-
icide, isolation damage, and violence, and help to reduce the use of safety cells,
segregation, and other restrictive measures.
In Chapter 18, Rick Raemisch discusses the efforts he undertook as director
of the Colorado Department of Corrections to get prisoners out of isolation. In
Colorado prisons, 5 years ago, 1,500, or almost 7%, of the inmate population was
in solitary. His predecessor as head of the Colorado prison system was assassi-
nated by an individual who spent several years in solitary, had mental health is-
sues, and was then released into the community. Now less than 1% of the prison’s
population is in solitary. This article addresses how Colorado was able to stop re-
leasing people from solitary directly into the community, stop putting seriously
mentally ill in solitary, and ban solitary at two prisons dedicated to those with
mental health issues. It also discusses how punitive segregation was dropped from
sixty to fifteen days, how Colorado is the only state where someone’s maximum
time in solitary is one year and then only under the most serious circumstances,
how women are in solitary a maximum of fifteen days with no pregnant women
ever in solitary, and how even the few prisoners still in lengthy segregation receive
much more out-of-cell time and in programming than previously.
In Chapter 19, Leann Bertsch describes the lessons she learned when she vis-
ited high-security prisons in Norway and how she implemented those lessons
as director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Bertsch writes that focusing on the reality that almost everyone gets out of prison,
Norwegians ask the pragmatic question “What kind of neighbors do you want?”
Her most urgent priority after returning from Norway was to reduce the use of
solitary confinement. She says the department changed its philosophy to “behave
your way in, behave your way out,” dramatically reducing the number of individ-
uals in solitary.Chapter, by 20, by Joseph Arvay and Alison Latimer discusses the
historic Canadian litigation against solitary confinement that resulted in a trial
court determination that such confinement violated the constitutional rights of
prisoners. That ruling has now been affirmed by the Court of Appeals, which
held that the Canadian law permitting prolonged, indeterminate solitary con-
finement offends the fundamental norms of a free and democratic society. As
a result of the litigation, the Canadian parliament has enacted a new law that
creates “structured intervention units” which allows prisoners held in segrega-
tion considerably more out of cell time with interaction with other prisoners.
Chapter 21, by Amy Fettig and David Fathi explores how in the United States,
civil society advocacy campaigns working to reform and abolish solitary confine-
ment are interacting with recent and ongoing federal litigation. The authors iposit
that the evolution of policy, practice, litigation, and public knowledge regarding
solitary confinement is pushing the law forward. Momentum for greater legal
protections is growing in the courts and the combination of people power and ju-
risprudential development is leading to substantial new protections for prisoners.
Finally, Jules Lobel’s Chapter 22, discusses the California litigation which resulted
in the virtual elimination of prolonged, indeterminate solitary confinement in that
State’s prisons. He analyzes the use of interdisciplinary, comparative and interna-
tional law experts in that case to demonstrate both the physical and psychological
harms that prisoners held in solitary confinement experienced, the absence of a pe-
nological necessity for such confinement, the alternatives that prison officials could
utilize, and prolonged solitary confinement’s violation of international norms.
Bibliography
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and agility, and thought to crown her efforts by a notable feat, which
was no less than standing on her head on the top of the ladder, and
brandishing the two stilts, from which she had disengaged herself,
round about her, like the arms of a windmill. It required no great
skill to see that the old lady was very much offended with this last
performance, for when the little dish was carried to her, and the
ladder-dancer directed a beseeching look accompanied by an attitude
which seemed to imply that there were other feats yet in reserve, if
encouragement was held out, the patroness of the stair-head could
restrain herself no longer, but poured out a torrent partaking both of
objurgation and admonition.
“Ne’er-do-weel hussie,” and “vagrant gipsy,” were some of the
sharp missiles shot at the unsuspecting figurante, who, as little aware
of the meaning of all this “sharp-toothed violence,” as the bird is of
the mischief aimed at him by the fowler, sadly misapprehended its
import, and thinking it conveyed encouragement and approbation,
ducked her head in acknowledgment, while the thunder of the old
lady’s reprobation rolled about her in the most ceaseless rapidity of
vituperation.
“Ye’re a pretty ane indeed, to play sic antics afore ony body’s
house! Hae ye naebody to learn ye better manners that to rin up and
down a ladder like a squirrel, twisting and turning yoursel till my
banes are sair to look at you? Muckle fitter gin ye would read your
Bible, if as much grace be left to ye; or maybe a religious tract, to
begin wi’, for I doubt ye wad need preparation afore ye could drink at
the spring-head wi’ ony special profit.”
The last part was conveyed with a kind of smile of self-
approbation; for of all tasks, to reclaim a sinner is the most pleasing
and soothing to religious vanity;—so comfortable it is to be allowed
to scold on any terms, but doubly delightful, because it always
implies superiority. But the ladder-dancer and her attendant were
aware of no part of what was passing in the mind of the female
lecturer, and fully as ignorant of the eloquent address I have just
repeated; she only saw, in the gracious looks in which her feats were
condemned, an approval of her labours, for it passed her philosophy
to comprehend the ungodly qualities of standing on the head, or
whirling like a top. Again the ladder-dancer cringed and bowed to
her of the stair-head; and her male supporter, who acted as a kind of
pedestal to her elevation, bowed and grinned a little more grimly,
while the boy held out his plate to receive the results of all this
assiduity. But they could not command a single word of broad
English among them. Theirs only was the eloquence of nods and
grimaces; a monkey could have done as much, and in the present
humour of the old lady, would have been as much approved. The
ladder-dancer grew impatient, and seemed determined on an effort
to close her labours.
“Ah, Madame!” she exclaimed; “Madame” was repeated by the
man, and “Madame” was re-echoed by the boy.
“Nane o’ your nonsense wi’ me,” was the response from the stair-
head; “your madam’ing, and I dinna ken what mair havers. Ye
needna fash your head to stand there a’ day girning at me, and
making sic outlandish sport. I’m mair fule than you, that bides to
look at you; a fine tale they’d hae to tell that could say they saw me
here, idling my precious time on the like o’ you.”
She now whispered to one of the girls, who retired, and soon after
returned, giving her a small parcel, which she examined, and seemed
to say all was right. She beckoned the ladder-dancer, who slid down
with cat-like agility, and was instantly with her, standing a step
lower, in deference to the doughty dame.
“Here,” said she, with a gruff air, which was rather affected than
real, “tak these precious gifts,” handing her a bunch of religious
tracts. “See if ye canna find out your spiritual wants, and learn to
seek for the ‘Pearl of Price.’ My certie, but ye’re a weel-faured
hussie,” examining her more narrowly, “but your gaits are no that
commendable; but for a’ that, a mair broken ship has reached the
land.”
I could observe that she slipped a half-crown into the hand of the
Piedmontoise; and as she turned away to avoid thanks, an elderly
gentleman (perhaps her husband), who stood by, said in a low voice,
—
“That’s like yoursel, Darsie; your bark was aye waur than your bite,
ony day!”—Blackwood’s Magazine, 1826.
THE ELDER’S DEATH-BED.
By Professor Wilson.
It was on a fierce and howling day that I was crossing the dreary
moor of Auchindown, on my way to the manse of that parish—a
solitary pedestrian. The snow, which had been incessantly falling for
a week past, was drifted into beautiful but dangerous wreaths, far
and wide, over the melancholy expanse; and the scene kept visibly
shifting before me, as the strong wind that blew from every point of
the compass struck the dazzling masses, and heaved them up and
down in endless transformation. There was something inspiriting in
the labour with which, in the buoyant strength of youth, I forced my
way through the storm; and I could not but enjoy those gleamings of
sunlight that ever and anon burst through some unexpected opening
in the sky, and gave a character of cheerfulness, and even warmth, to
the sides or summits of the stricken hills. Sometimes the wind
stopped of a sudden, and then the air was as silent as the snow—not
a murmur to be heard from spring or stream, now all frozen up over
those high moorlands. As the momentary cessations of the sharp
drift allowed my eyes to look onwards and around, I saw here and
there, up the little opening valleys, cottages just visible beneath the
black stems of their snow-covered clumps of trees, or beside some
small spot of green pasture kept open for the sheep. These
intimations of life and happiness came delightfully to me in the
midst of the desolation; and the barking of a dog, attending some
shepherd in his quest on the hill, put fresh vigour into my limbs,
telling me that, lonely as I seemed to be, I was surrounded by
cheerful, though unseen company, and that I was not the only
wanderer over the snows.
As I walked along, my mind was insensibly filled with a crowd of
pleasant images of rural winter life, that helped me gladly onwards
over many miles of moor. I thought of the severe but cheerful labours
of the barn—the mending of farm-gear by the fireside—the wheel
turned by the foot of old age less for gain than as a thrifty pastime—
the skilful mother making “auld claes look amaist as weel’s the
new”—the ballad unconsciously listened to by the family all busy at
their own tasks round the singing maiden—the old traditionary tale,
told by some wayfarer hospitably housed till the storm should blow
by—the unexpected visit of neighbours on need or friendship—or the
footstep of lover undeterred by snow-drifts that have buried up his
flocks;—but above all, I thought of those hours of religious worship
that have not yet escaped from the domestic life of the peasantry of
Scotland—of the sound of psalms that the depth of the snow cannot
deaden to the ear of Him to whom they are chanted—and of that
sublime Sabbath-keeping which, on days too tempestuous for the
kirk, changes the cottage of the shepherd into the temple of God.
With such glad and peaceful images in my heart, I travelled along
that dreary moor, with the cutting wind in my face, and my feet
sinking in the snow, or sliding on the hard blue ice beneath it—as
cheerfully as I ever walked in the dewy warmth of a summer
morning, through fields of fragrance and of flowers. And now I could
discern, within half an hour’s walk, before me, the spire of the
church, close to which stood the manse of my aged friend and
benefactor. My heart burned within me as a sudden gleam of stormy
sunlight tipped it with fire; and I felt, at that moment, an
inexpressible sense of the sublimity of the character of that
grayheaded shepherd who had, for fifty years, abode in the
wilderness, keeping together his own happy little flock.
As I was ascending a knoll, I saw before me on horseback an old
man, with his long white hairs beaten against his face, who,
nevertheless, advanced with a calm countenance against the
hurricane. It was no other than my father, of whom I had been
thinking—for my father had I called him for many years, and for
many years my father had he truly been. My surprise at meeting him
on such a moor—on such a day—was but momentary, for I knew that
he was a shepherd who cared not for the winter’s wrath. As he
stopped to take my hand kindly into his, and to give his blessing to
his long-expected visitor, the wind fell calm—the whole face of the
sky was softened, and brightness, like a smile, went over the blushing
and crimson snow. The very elements seemed then to respect the
hoary head of fourscore; and after our first greeting was over, when I
looked around, in my affection, I felt how beautiful was winter.
“I am going,” said he, “to visit a man at the point of death; a man
whom you cannot have forgotten; whose head will be missed in the
kirk next Sabbath by all my congregation; a devout man, who feared
God all his days, and whom, on this awful trial, God will assuredly
remember. I am going, my son, to the Hazel Glen.”
I knew well in childhood that lonely farmhouse, so far off among
the beautiful wild green hills, and it was not likely that I had
forgotten the name of its possessor. For six years’ Sabbaths I had
seen the Elder in his accustomed place beneath the pulpit, and, with
a sort of solemn fear, had looked on his steadfast countenance during
sermon, psalm, and prayer. On returning to the scenes of my infancy,
I now met the pastor going to pray by his deathbed; and, with the
privilege which nature gives us to behold, even in their last
extremity, the loving and the beloved, I turned to accompany him to
the house of sorrow, resignation, and death.
And now, for the first time, I observed walking close to the feet of
his horse, a little boy of about ten years of age, who kept frequently
looking up in the pastor’s face, with his blue eyes bathed in tears. A
changeful expression of grief, hope, and despair, made almost pale
cheeks that otherwise were blooming in health and beauty; and I
recognised, in the small features and smooth forehead of childhood,
a resemblance to the aged man whom we understood was now lying
on his death-bed. “They had to send his grandson for me through the
snow, mere child as he is,” said the minister to me, looking tenderly
on the boy; “but love makes the young heart bold—and there is One
who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”
I again looked on the fearless child with his rosy cheeks, blue eyes,
and yellow hair, so unlike grief or sorrow, yet now sobbing aloud as if
his heart would break. “I do not fear but that my grandfather will yet
recover, as soon as the minister has said one single prayer by his
bedside. I had no hope, or little, as I was running by myself to the
manse over hill after hill, but I am full of hopes, now that we are
together; and oh! if God suffers my grandfather to recover, I will lie
awake all the long winter nights blessing Him for His mercy. I will
rise up in the middle of the darkness, and pray to Him in the cold on
my naked knees!” and here his voice was choked, while he kept his
eyes fixed, as if for consolation and encouragement, on the solemn
and pitying countenance of the kind-hearted pious old man.
We soon left the main road, and struck off through scenery that,
covered as it was with the bewildering snow, I sometimes dimly and
sometimes vividly remembered; our little guide keeping ever a short
distance before us, and with a sagacity like that of instinct, showing
us our course, of which no trace was visible, save occasionally his
own little footprints as he had been hurrying to the manse.
After crossing, for several miles, morass and frozen rivulet, and
drifted hollow, with here and there the top of a stone-wall peeping
through the snow, or the more visible circle of a sheep-bucht, we
descended into the Hazel-glen, and saw before us the solitary house
of the dying Elder.
A gleam of days gone by came suddenly over my soul. The last time
that I had been in this glen was on a day of June, fifteen years before,
—a holiday, the birthday of the king. A troop of laughing schoolboys,
headed by our benign pastor, we danced over the sunny braes, and
startled the linnets from their nests among the yellow broom.
Austere as seemed to us the Elder’s Sabbath face when sitting in the
kirk, we schoolboys knew that it had its week-day smiles, and we flew
on the wings of joy to our annual festival of curds and cream in the
farm-house of that little sylvan world. We rejoiced in the flowers and
the leaves of that long, that interminable summer day; its memory
was with our boyish hearts from June to June; and the sound of that
sweet name, “Hazel Glen,” often came upon us at our tasks, and
brought too brightly into the school-room the pastoral imagery of
that mirthful solitude.
As we now slowly approached the cottage through a deep snow-
drift, which the distress within had prevented the household from
removing, we saw peeping out from the door, brothers and sisters of
our little guide, who quickly disappeared, and then their mother
showed herself in their stead, expressing by her raised eyes, and
arms folded across her breast, how thankful she was to see at last the
pastor, beloved in joy and trusted in trouble.
Soon as the venerable old man dismounted from his horse, our
active little guide led it away into the humble stable, and we entered
the cottage. Not a sound was heard but the ticking of the clock. The
matron, who had silently welcomed us at the door, led us, with
suppressed sighs and a face stained with weeping, into her father’s
sick room, which even in that time of sore distress was as orderly as
if health had blessed the house. I could not help remarking some old
china ornaments on the chimneypiece, and in the window was an
ever-blowing rose-tree, that almost touched the lowly roof, and
brightened that end of the apartment with its blossoms. There was
something tasteful in the simple furniture; and it seemed as if grief
could not deprive the hand of that matron of its careful elegance.
Sickness, almost hopeless sickness, lay there, surrounded with the
same cheerful and beautiful objects which health had loved; and she,
who had arranged and adorned the apartment in her happiness, still
kept it from disorder and decay in her sorrow.
With a gentle hand she drew the curtain of the bed, and there,
supported by pillows as white as the snow that lay without, reposed
the dying Elder. It was plain that the hand of God was upon him, and
that his days on the earth were numbered.
He greeted his minister with a faint smile, and a slight inclination
of the head—for his daughter had so raised him on the pillows, that
he was almost sitting up in his bed. It was easy to see that he knew
himself to be dying, and that his soul was prepared for the great
change; yet, along with the solemn resignation of a Christian who
had made his peace with God and his Saviour, there was blended on
his white and sunken countenance an expression of habitual
reverence for the minister of his faith; and I saw that he could not
have died in peace without that comforter to pray by his death-bed.
A few words sufficed to tell who was the stranger;—and the dying
man, blessing me by name, held out to me his cold shrivelled hand,
in token of recognition. I took my seat at a small distance from the
bedside, and left a closer station for those who were more dear. The
pastor sat down near his head; and, by the bed, leaning on it with
gentle hands, stood that matron, his daughter-in-law—a figure that
would have graced and sainted a higher dwelling, and whose native
beauty was now more touching in its grief. But religion upheld her
whom nature was bowing down. Not now for the first time were the
lessons taught by her father to be put into practice, for I saw that she
was clothed in deep mourning and she behaved like the daughter of a
man whose life had been not only irreproachable but lofty, with fear
and hope fighting desperately but silently in the core of her pure and
pious heart.
While we thus remained in silence, the beautiful boy, who, at the
risk of his life, had brought the minister of religion to the bedside of
his beloved grandfather, softly and cautiously opened the door, and
with the hoar-frost yet unmelted on his bright glistering ringlets,
walked up to the pillow, evidently no stranger there. He no longer
sobbed—he no longer wept—for hope had risen strongly within his
innocent heart, from the consciousness of love so fearlessly exerted,
and from the presence of the holy man in whose prayers he trusted,
as in the intercession of some superior and heavenly nature. There
he stood, still as an image in his grandfather’s eyes, that, in their
dimness, fell upon him with delight. Yet, happy as was the trusting
child, his heart was devoured by fear, and he looked as if one word
might stir up the flood of tears that had subsided in his heart. As he
crossed the dreary and dismal moors, he had thought of a corpse, a
shroud, and a grave; he had been in terror, lest death should strike in
his absence the old man, with whose gray hairs he had so often
played; but now he saw him alive, and felt that death was not able to
tear him away from the clasps, and links, and fetters of his
grandchild’s embracing love.
“If the storm do not abate,” said the sick man, after a pause, “it will
be hard for my friends to carry me over the drifts to the kirkyard.”
This sudden approach to the grave struck, as with a bar of ice, the
heart of the loving boy; and, with a long deep sigh, he fell down with
his face like ashes on the bed, while the old man’s palsied right hand
had just strength to lay itself upon his head. “Blessed be thou, my
little Jamie, even for His own name’s sake who died for us on the
tree!” The mother, without terror, but with an averted face, lifted up
her loving-hearted boy, now in a dead fainting-fit, and carried him
into an adjoining room, where he soon revived. But that child and
the old man were not to be separated. In vain he was asked to go to
his brothers and sisters;—pale, breathless, and shivering, he took his
place as before, with eyes fixed on his grandfather’s face, but neither
weeping nor uttering a word. Terror had frozen up the blood of his
heart; but his were now the only dry eyes in the room; and the pastor
himself wept—albeit the grief of fourscore is seldom vented in tears.
“God has been gracious to me, a sinner,” said the dying man.
“During thirty years that I have been an elder in your kirk, never
have I missed sitting there one Sabbath. When the mother of my
children was taken from me—it was on a Tuesday she died, and on
Saturday she was buried—we stood together when my Alice was let
down into the narrow house made for all living; on the Sabbath I
joined in the public worship of God: she commanded me to do so the
night before she went away. I could not join in the psalm that
Sabbath, for her voice was not in the throng. Her grave was covered
up, and grass and flowers grew there; so was my heart; but thou,
whom, through the blood of Christ, I hope to see this night in
Paradise, knowest that, from that hour to this day, never have I
forgotten thee!”
The old man ceased speaking, and his grandchild, now able to
endure the scene (for strong passion is its own support), glided softly
to a little table, and bringing a cup in which a cordial had been
mixed, held it in his small soft hands to his grandfather’s lips. He
drank, and then said, “Come closer to me, Jamie, and kiss me for
thine own and thy father’s sake;” and as the child fondly pressed his
rosy lips on those of his grandfather, so white and withered, the tears
fell over all the old man’s face, and then trickled down on the golden
head of the child, at last sobbing in his bosom.
“Jamie, thy own father has forgotten thee in thy infancy, and me in
my old age; but, Jamie, forget not thou thy father nor thy mother, for
that thou knowest and feelest is the commandment of God.”
The broken-hearted boy could give no reply. He had gradually
stolen closer and closer unto the old loving man, and now was lying,
worn out with sorrow, drenched and dissolved in tears, in his
grandfather’s bosom. His mother had sunk down on her knees and
hid her face with her hands. “Oh! if my husband knew but of this—he
would never, never desert his dying father!” and I now knew that the
Elder was praying on his death-bed for a disobedient and wicked
son.
At this affecting time the minister took the family Bible on his
knees, and said, “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God, part of
the fifteenth psalm;” and he read, with a tremulous and broken voice,
those beautiful verses:—
“Within thy tabernacle, Lord,
Who shall abide with thee?
And in Thy high and holy hill
Who shall a dweller be?
The man that walketh uprightly,
And worketh righteousness,
And as he thinketh in his heart,
So doth he truth express.”
The small congregation sang the noble hymn of the psalmist to

“plaintiff Martyrs, worthy of the name.” The dying man himself, ever
and anon, joined in the holy music; and when it feebly died away on
his quivering lips, he continued still to follow the tune with the
motion of his withered hand, and eyes devoutly and humbly lifted up
to heaven. Nor was the sweet voice of his loving grandchild unheard;
as if the strong fit of deadly passion had dissolved in the music, he
sang with a sweet and silvery voice, that, to a passer-by, had seemed
that of perfect happiness—a hymn sung in joy upon its knees by
gladsome childhood before it flew out among the green hills, to quiet
labour or gleesome play. As that sweetest voice came from the bosom
of the old man, where the singer lay in affection, and blended with
his own so tremulous, never had I felt so affectingly brought before
me the beginning and the end of life, the cradle and the grave.
Ere the psalm was yet over, the door was opened, and a tall fine-
looking man entered, but with a lowering and dark countenance,
seemingly in sorrow, in misery, and remorse. Agitated, confounded,
and awe-struck by the melancholy and dirge-like music, he sat down
on a chair, and looked with a ghastly face towards his father’s death-
bed. When the psalm ceased, the Elder said with a solemn voice, “My
son, thou art come in time to receive thy father’s blessing. May the
remembrance of what will happen in this room before the morning
again shine over the Hazel Glen win thee from the error of thy ways!
Thou art here, to witness the mercy of thy God and thy Saviour,
whom thou hast forgotten.”
The minister looked, if not with a stern, yet with an upbraiding
countenance, on the young man, who had not recovered his speech,
and said, “William! for three years past your shadow has not
darkened the door of the house of God. They who fear not the
thunder may tremble at the still small voice; now is the hour for
repentance, that your father’s spirit may carry up to heaven tidings of
a contrite soul saved from the company of sinners!”
The young man, with much effort, advanced to the bedside, and at
last found voice to say, “Father, I am not without the affections of
nature, and I hurried home as soon as I heard that the minister had
been seen riding towards our house. I hope that you will yet recover,
and if I have ever made you unhappy, I ask your forgiveness; for
though I may not think as you do on matters of religion, I have a
human heart. Father! I may have been unkind, but I am not cruel. I
ask your forgiveness.”
“Come nearer to me, William; kneel down by the bedside, and let
my hand find the head of my beloved son—for blindness is coming
fast upon me. Thou wert my first-born, and thou art my only living
son. All thy brothers and sisters are lying in the kirkyard, beside her
whose sweet face thine own, William, did once so much resemble.
Long wert thou the joy, the pride of my soul—ay, too much the pride,
for there was not in all the parish such a man, such a son, as my own
William. If thy heart has since been changed, God may inspire it
again with right thoughts. Could I die for thy sake—could I purchase
thy salvation with the outpouring of thy father’s blood—but this the
Son of God has done for thee, who hast denied Him! I have sorely
wept for thee—ay, William, when there was none near me—even as
David wept for Absalom, for thee, my son, my son!”
A long deep groan was the only reply; but the whole body of the
kneeling man was convulsed; and it was easy to see his sufferings, his
contrition, his remorse, and his despair. The pastor said, with a
sterner voice and austerer countenance than were natural to him,
“Know you whose hand is now lying on your rebellious head? But
what signifies the word father to him who has denied God, the Father
of us all?”—“Oh! press him not so hardly,” said the weeping wife,
coming forward from a dark corner of the room, where she had tried
to conceal herself in grief, fear, and shame. “Spare, oh! spare my
husband—he has ever been kind to me;” and with that she knelt
down beside him, with her long, soft, white arms mournfully and
affectionately laid across his neck. “Go thou, likewise, my sweet little
Jamie,” said the Elder, “go even out of my bosom, and kneel down
beside thy father and thy mother, so that I may bless you all at once,
and with one yearning prayer.” The child did as that solemn voice
commanded, and knelt down somewhat timidly by his father’s side;
nor did that unhappy man decline encircling with his arm the child
too much neglected, but still dear to him as his own blood, in spite of
the deadening and debasing influence of infidelity.
“Put the Word of God into the hands of my son, and let him read
aloud to his dying father the 25th, 26th, and 27th verses of the
eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to St John.” The pastor
went up to the kneelers, and, with a voice of pity, condolence, and
pardon, said, “There was a time when none, William, could read the
Scriptures better than couldst thou—can it be that the son of my
friend hath forgotten the lessons of his youth?” He had not forgotten
them; there was no need for the repentant sinner to lift up his eyes
from the bedside. The sacred stream of the Gospel had worn a
channel in his heart, and the waters were again flowing. With a
choked voice he said, “Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection and
the Life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.
Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord; I believe that thou
art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”
“That is not an unbeliever’s voice,” said the dying man
triumphantly; “nor, William, hast thou an unbeliever’s heart. Say
that thou believest in what thou hast now read, and thy father will
die happy!”—“I do believe; and as thou forgivest me, so may I be
forgiven by my Father who is in heaven.”
The Elder seemed like a man suddenly inspired with a new life. His
faded eyes kindled—his pale cheeks glowed—his palsied hands
seemed to wax strong—and his voice was clear as that of manhood in
its prime. “Into Thy hands, O God, I commit my spirit!”—and so
saying, he gently sank back on his pillow; and I thought I heard a
sigh. There was then a long deep silence, and the father, and mother,
and child rose from their knees. The eyes of us all were turned
towards the white placid face of the figure now stretched in
everlasting rest; and without lamentations, save the silent
lamentations of the resigned soul, we stood around the “Death-bed
of the Elder.”
A HIGHLAND FEUD.
By Sir Walter Scott.
The principal possessors of the Hebrides were originally of the

name of MacDonald, the whole being under the government of a
succession of chiefs, who bore the name of Donald of the Isles, and
were possessed of authority almost independent of the kings of
Scotland. But this great family becoming divided into two or three
branches, other chiefs settled in some of the islands, and disputed
the property of the original proprietors. Thus, the MacLeods, a
powerful and numerous clan, who had extensive estates on the
mainland, made themselves masters, at a very early period, of a great
part of the large island of Skye, seized upon much of the Long Island,
as the isles of Lewis and Harris are called, and fought fiercely with
the MacDonalds and other tribes of the islands. The following is an
example of the mode in which these feuds were conducted:—
About the end of the sixteenth century, a boat, manned by one or
two of the MacLeods, landed in Eigg, a small island peopled by the
MacDonalds. They were at first hospitably received; but having been
guilty of some incivility to the young women of the island, it was so
much resented by the inhabitants, that they tied the MacLeods hand
and foot, and putting them on board of their own boat, towed it to
the sea, and set it adrift, leaving the wretched men, bound as they
were, to perish by famine, or by the winds and waves, as chance
should determine. But fate so ordered it, that a boat belonging to the
Laird of MacLeod fell in with that which had the captives on board,
and brought them in safety to the Laird’s castle of Dunvegan, in
Skye, where they complained of the injury which they had sustained
from the MacDonalds of Eigg. MacLeod, in great rage, put to sea
with his galleys, manned by a large body of his people, which the
men of Eigg could not entertain any rational hope of resisting.
Learning that their incensed enemy was approaching with superior
forces, and deep vows of revenge, the inhabitants, who knew they
had no mercy to expect at MacLeod’s hands, resolved, as the best
chance of safety in their power, to conceal themselves in a large
cavern on the sea-shore.
This place was particularly well-calculated for that purpose. The
entrance resembles that of a fox-earth, being an opening so small
that a man cannot enter save by creeping on hands and knees. A rill
of water falls from the top of the rock, and serves, or rather served at
the period we speak of, wholly to conceal the aperture. A stranger,
even when apprised of the existence of such a cave, would find the
greatest difficulty in discovering the entrance. Within, the cavern
rises to a great height, and the floor is covered with white dry sand. It
is extensive enough to contain a great number of people. The whole
inhabitants of Eigg, who, with their wives and families, amounted to
nearly two hundred souls, took refuge within its precincts.
MacLeod arrived with his armament, and landed on the island, but
could discover no one on whom to wreak his vengeance—all was
desert. The MacLeods destroyed the huts of the islanders, and
plundered what property they could discover; but the vengeance of
the chieftain could not be satisfied with such petty injuries. He knew
that the inhabitants must either have fled in their boats to one of the
islands possessed by the MacDonalds, or that they must be concealed
somewhere in Eigg. After making a strict but unsuccessful search for
two days, MacLeod had appointed the third to leave his anchorage,
when, in the gray of the morning, one of the seamen beheld, from the
deck of his galley, the figure of a man on the island. This was a spy
whom the MacDonalds, impatient of their confinement in the cavern,
had imprudently sent out to see whether MacLeod had retired or no.
The poor fellow, when he saw himself discovered, endeavoured, by
doubling after the manner of a hare or fox, to obliterate the track of
his footsteps, and prevent its being discovered where he had re-
entered the cavern. But all his art was in vain; the invaders again
landed, and tracked him to the entrance of the cavern.
MacLeod then summoned those who were within it, and called
upon them to deliver the individuals who had maltreated his men, to
be disposed of at his pleasure. The MacDonalds, still confident in the
strength of their fastness, which no assailant could enter but on
hands and knees, refused to surrender their clansmen.
MacLeod then commenced a dreadful work of indiscriminate
vengeance. He caused his people, by means of a ditch cut above the
top of the rock, to turn away the stream of water which fell over the
entrance of the precipice. This being done, the MacLeods collected
all the combustibles which could be found on the island, particularly
quantities of dry heather, piled them up against the aperture, and
maintained an immense fire for many hours, until the smoke,
penetrating into the inmost recesses of the cavern, stifled to death
every creature within. There is no doubt of the truth of this story,
dreadful as it is. The cavern is often visited by strangers; and I have
myself seen the place, where the bones of the murdered MacDonalds
still remain, lying as thick on the floor of the cave as in the charnel-
house of a church.
THE RESURRECTION MEN.
By D. M. Moir, M.D.
How then was the Devil drest?
He was in his Sunday’s best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind, where his tail came through.
Over the hill, and over the dale,

And he went over the plain:
And backward and forward he switched his tail,
As a gentleman switches his cane.
Coleridge.
About this time[8] there arose a great sough and surmise that some
loons were playing false with the kirkyard, howking up the bodies
from their damp graves, and hurling them away to the college.
Words canna describe the fear, and the dool, and the misery it
caused. All flocked to the kirk yett; and the friends of the newly
buried stood by the mools, which were yet dark, and the brown,
newly-cast divots, that had not yet ta’en root, looking with mournful
faces, to descry any tokens of sinking in.
8. See ante, “Benjie’s Christening,” page 214.
I’ll never forget it. I was standing by when three young lads took
shools, and, lifting up the truff, proceeded to howk down to the
coffin, wherein they had laid the gray hairs of their mother. They
looked wild and bewildered like, and the glance of their een was like
that of folk out of a mad-house; and none dared in the world to have
spoken to them. They didna even speak to ane anither; but wrought
on wi’ a great hurry till the spades struck on the coffin-lid—which
was broken. The dead-claithes were there huddled a’thegither in a
nook, but the dead was gane. I took haud o’ Willie Walker’s arm, and
looked down. There was a cauld sweat all ower me;—losh me! but I
was terribly frighted and eerie. Three mair graves were opened, and
a’ just alike, save and except that of a wee unkirstened wean, which
was aff bodily, coffin and a’.
There was a burst of righteous indignation throughout the parish;
nor without reason. Tell me that doctors and graduates maun hae the
dead; but tell it not to Mansie Wauch, that our hearts maun be
trampled in the mire of scorn, and our best feelings laughed at, in
order that a bruise may be properly plaistered up, or a sair head
cured. Verily, the remedy is waur than the disease.
But what remead? It was to watch in the session-house, with
loaded guns, night about, three at a time. I never likit to gang into
the kirkyard after darkening, let-a-be to sit there through a lang
winter night, windy and rainy, it may be, wi’ nane but the dead
around us. Save us! it was an unco thought, and garred a’ my flesh
creep; but the cause was gude,—my spirit was roused, and I was
determined no to be dauntoned.
I counted and counted, but the dread day at length came, and I
was summonsed. All the leivelang afternoon, when ca’ing the needle
upon the brod, I tried to whistle Jenny Nettles, Niel Gow, and ither
funny tunes, and whiles crooned to mysel between hands; but my
consternation was visible, and a’ wadna do.
It was in November, and the cauld glimmering sun sank behind
the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves; and the
misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the
candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was
brushing about wi’ his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy
sparking out behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and
down-sinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which
I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my
neck, I marched briskly to the session-house. A neighbour (Andrew
Goldie, the pensioner) lent me his piece, and loaded it to me. He took
tent that it was only half-cock, and I wrapped a napkin round the
dog-head, for it was raining. No being acquaint wi’ guns, I keepit the
muzzle aye awa frae me; as it is every man’s duty no to throw his
precious life into jeopardy.
A furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed
brightly, nor had I ony thought that such an unearthly place could
have been made to look half so comfortable, either by coal or candle;
so my speerits rose up as if a weight had been ta’en aff them, and I
wondered in my bravery, that a man like me could be afeard of
onything. Nobody was there but a touzy, ragged, halflins callant of
thirteen (for I speired his age), wi’ a desperate dirty face, and lang
carroty hair, tearing a speldrin wi’ his teeth, which lookit lang and
sharp eneugh, and throwing the skin and lugs intil the fire.
We sat for amaist an hour thegither, cracking the best way we
could in sic a place; nor was onybody mair likely to cast up. The night
was now pit-mirk; the wind soughed amid the headstanes and
railings of the gentry (for we maun a’ dee); and the black corbies in
the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. A’ at
ance we heard a lonesome sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat
—my skin grew a’ rough, like a poukit chicken—and I felt as if I didna
ken what was the matter with me. It was only a false alarm, however,
being the warning of the clock; and in a minute or twa thereafter the
bell struck ten. Oh, but it was a lonesome and dreary sound! Every
chap gaed through my breast like the dunt of a forehammer.
Then up and spak the red headed laddie: “It’s no fair; anither
should hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I’m
frightened to gang out my lane. Do ye think the doup o’ that candle
wad carry in my cap?”
“Na, na, lad; we maun bide here, as we are here now. Leave me
alane! Lord save us! and the yett lockit, and the bethrel sleepin’ wi’
the key in his breek-pouches! We canna win out now, though we
would,” answered I, trying to look brave, though half frightened out
of my seven senses. “Sit down, sit down; I’ve baith whisky and porter
wi’ me. Hae, man, there’s a cauker to keep your heart warm; and set
down that bottle,” quoth I, wiping the sawdust aff it with my hand,
“to get a toast; I’se warrant it for Deacon Jaffrey’s best brown stout.”
The wind blew higher, and like a hurricane; the rain began to fall
in perfect spouts; the auld kirk rumbled, and rowed, and made a sad
soughing; and the bourtree tree behind the house, where auld
Cockburn, that cuttit his throat, was buried, creakit and crazed in a
frightful manner; but as to the roaring of the troubled waters, and
the bumming in the lum-head, they were past a’ power of
description. To make bad worse, just in the heart of the brattle, the
grating sound of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too
plainly heard. What was to be done? I thought of our baith running
away; and then of our locking oursels in, and firing through the door;
but wha was to pull the trigger?
Gudeness watch ower us! I tremble yet when I think on’t. We were
perfectly between the deil and the deep sea—either to stand and fire
our gun, or rin and be shot at. It was really a hang choice. As I stood
swithering and shaking, the laddie ran to the door, and thrawing
round the key, clapped his back till’t. Oh! how I lookit at him, as he
stude, for a gliff, like a magpie hearkening wi’ his lug cockit up, or
rather like a terrier watching a rotten.
“They’re coming! they’re coming!” he cried out; “cock the piece, ye
sumph,” while the red hair rose up from his pow like feathers;
“they’re coming, I hear them tramping on the gravel!” Out he
stretched his arms against the wall, and brizzed his back against the
door like mad; as if he had been Samson pushing over the pillars in
the house of Dagon. “For the Lord’s sake, prime the gun,” he cried
out, “or our throats will be cut frae lug to lug, before we can say Jack
Robinson! See that there’s priming in the pan!”
I did the best I could; but my hale strength could hardly lift up the
piece, which waggled to and fro like a cock’s tail on a rainy day; my
knees knockit against ane anither, and though I was resigned to dee
—I trust I was resigned to dee—’od, but it was a frightfu’ thing to be
out of ane’s bed, and to be murdered in an auld session-house, at the
dead hour of night, by unyearthly resurrection-men—or rather let me
call them devils incarnate—wrapt up in dreadnoughts, wi’ blackit
faces, pistols, big sticks, and other deadly weapons.
A snuff-snuffing was heard; and through below the door I saw a
pair of glancing black een. ’Od, but my heart nearly loupit aff the bit
—a snouff and a gur—gurring, and ower a’ the plain tramp of a man’s
heavy tackets and cuddy-heels amang the gravel. Then cam a great
slap like thunder on the wall; and the laddie quitting his grip, fell
down, crying, “Fire, fire!—murder! holy murder!”
“Wha’s there?” growled a deep rough voice; “open—I’m a friend.”
I tried to speak, but could not; something like a halfpenny roll was
sticking in my throat, so I tried to cough it up, but it wadna come.
“Gie the pass-word, then,” said the laddie, staring as if his een wad
loupen out; “gie the pass-word!”
First cam a loud whussle, and then “Copmahagen,” answered the
voice. Oh! what a relief! The laddie started up like ane crazy wi’ joy.
“Ou! ou!” cried he, thrawing round the key, and rubbing his hands,
“by jingo! it’s the bethrel—it’s the bethrel—it’s auld Isaac himsel!”
First rushed in the dog, and then Isaac, wi’ his glazed hat, slouched
ower his brow, and his horn bowet glimmering by his knee. “Has the
French landit, do ye think? Losh keep us a’!” said he, wi’ a smile on
his half-idiot face (for he was a kind of a sort of a natural, wi’ an
infirmity in his leg). “’Od sauf us, man, put by your gun. Ye dinna
mean to shoot me, do ye? What are ye aboot here wi’ the door lockit?
I just keppit four resurrectioners louping ower the wa’.”
“Gude guide us!” I said, taking a long breath to drive the blude frae
my heart, and something relieved by Isaac’s company. “Come now,
Isaac, ye’re just giein’ us a fright. Isn’t that true, Isaac?”
“Yes, I’m joking,—and what for no? But they might have been, for
onything ye wad hae hindered them to the contrair, I’m thinking. Na,
na, ye maunna lock the door; that’s no fair play.”
When the door was put ajee, and the furm set fornent the fire, I
gied Isaac a dram to keep his heart up on sic a cauld, stormy night.
’Od, but he was a droll fallow, Isaac. He sung and leuch as if he had
been boozing in Lucky Tamson’s, wi’ some of his drucken cronies.
Fient a hair cared he about auld kirks, or kirkyards, or vouts, or
through-stanes, or dead folk in their winding-sheets, wi’ the wet
grass growing ower them; and at last I began to brighten up a wee
mysel; so when he had gone ower a good few funny stories, I said to
him, quoth I, “Mony folk, I daresay, mak mair noise about their
sitting up in a kirkyard than it’s a’ worth. There’s naething here to
harm us.”
“I beg to differ wi’ ye there,” answered Isaac, taking out his horn
mull from his coat pouch, and tapping on the lid in a queer style—“I
could gie anither version of that story. Did ye no ken of three young
doctors—Eirish students—alang wi’ some resurrectioners, as waff
and wild as themselves, firing shottie for shottie wi’ the guard at
Kirkmabreck, and lodging three slugs in ane o’ their backs, forbye
firing a ramrod through anither ane’s hat?”

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Solitary Confinement: Effects,

Practices, and Pathways Towards

EDITED BY JULES LOBEL

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2020

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

(Based on the Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the

2. Solitary Confinement—​Effects and Practices from the

8. Solitary Confinement, Loneliness, and Psychological Harm 129

11. Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Health 185

15. The Management of High-​Security Prisoners: Alternatives to

Huda Akil, PhD, Gardner Quarton Distinguished University Professor of Neuroscience

Joseph J. Arvay, Partner and founder of Arvay Finlay LLP

Leann K. Bertsch, Director, North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Andrew Coyle, Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies, University of London; Founding

Craig Haney, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, the University of California,

Louise Hawkley, Senior Research Scientist, NORC at the University of Chicago

Are Høidal, Governor, Halden Prison

Alison M. Latimer, Partner, Arvay Finlay LLP

Jules Lobel, Bessie McKee Walthour Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

Juan E. Méndez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, Washington College of

Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections, 2013–​2018

Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Peter Scharff Smith, Professor in Sociology of Law, Department of Criminology &

Armando Sosa, Lieutenant, Colorado State Penitentiary

Michael J. Zigmond, Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurobiology, the

1See Hawkley, Chapter 11, this volume.

(London: Clarendon Press, 1996), 30.

Social animals and isolation

5 Djurskyddsmyndighetens författningssamling, DFS 2007:6, 2 kap. Skötsel och hantering,

Solitary confinement in prison—​Effects and practices

10See Smith, Chapter 2, this volume.

Two reform movements that inspired this book

Secondly, significant developments have taken place in the United States,

International human rights reforms—​From

The process of creating international standards for prison practice—​including

Prison Service Journal, no. 181 (January 2009): 3-​11.

the rise in some jurisdictions and continued to be a significant problem in others,

9, 2007 at the International Psychological Trauma Symposium, Istanbul.

Prison litigation in the United States—​Solitary

volume; and Mendez, Chapter 7, this volume.

To demonstrate that the use of prolonged solitary confinement is cruel, in-

determine . . . whether alternative systems for long-​term confinement exist, and

35 See Coyle, Chapter 15, this volume.

The structure of the book

36 See Lobel, Chapter 22, this volume.

free community is very relevant to the study of solitary confinement in prisons.

The individual chapters

Chapter 5, by Professor Keramet Reiter provides an overview of how the first

treatment, or policy intervention. It describes a robust, stepwise framework that

movement, and lack of social contact—​have profound impact on brain struc-

In Chapter 17, Are Høidal discusses prisoner association as an alternative

The small congregation sang the noble hymn of the psalmist to

By Sir Walter Scott.

The principal possessors of the Hebrides were originally of the

Over the hill, and over the dale,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2. Solitary Confinement—Effects and Practices from the

15. The Management of High-Security Prisoners: Alternatives to

Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections, 2013–2018

Solitary confinement in prison—Effects and practices

International human rights reforms—From

The process of creating international standards for prison practice—including

Prison Service Journal, no. 181 (January 2009): 3-11.

Prison litigation in the United States—Solitary

determine . . . whether alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and

movement, and lack of social contact—have profound impact on brain struc-