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By continuing to use this website without changing your settings, you consent to our use of cookies. Some, like Pelican Bay Prison in California, keep over one-third of inmates in solitary. Up until last year, Rikers prison in New York would even put and year-old children in solitary though they euphemistically renamed it "punitive segregation". They were forced to change that policy. The estimated number of people in solitary confinement right now in the United States.
As brought out in the video below, solitary confinement usually means spending between 22 and 24 hours a day alone in your cell. A concrete slab with a thin mattress is your bed, and perhaps three times a week, guards shackle you for a minute shower.
The only exercise you get is pacing around another concrete box that, if you're lucky, might have an uncovered ceiling. Because that's the only way you'll see the sky. It got people talking and brought attention to the problem. One of the biggest concerns in addition to that whole torture thing is that the reasons inmates are sent to solitary confinement can be pretty arbitrary and subjective.
Someone can be sent there because of the book they're reading or their religious or political affiliation, gender status, or sexual orientation. Or for the infamous "gang affiliation," a catchall phrase that pretty much means anybody can be sent there for any reason. Some women have even been sent to solitary for reporting rape by prison guards β for their "safety. Just some of the reasons an inmate might go to the "Shoe. The clip below gets to the heart of it, with help from illustrator Molly Crabapple.
