Lawyers: Inmates shouldn’t be freed directly from solitary

ATLANTA — A Georgia practice of releasing prisoners directly from solitary confinement to freedom sets them up for failure and poses a risk to the public, lawyers for prisoners held in isolation say.

In a letter sent Tuesday to state corrections officials, lawyers with the Southern Center for Human Rights also raise concerns about mentally ill prisoners being held in solitary confinement. They ask the officials to “reassess and take meaningful steps to limit the use of solitary confinement in Georgia’s prisons.”

The lawyers urge corrections officials to ensure that prisoners in solitary confinement nearing the end of their prison terms be put in a “step-down” program to connect them with re-entry assistance and to help them adjust to social interaction. They also say mentally ill prisoners should be placed in solitary confinement only in rare circumstances, if at all.

The Southern Center represents prisoners in a lawsuit challenging conditions at the Special Management Unit, or SMU, of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, the state’s most restrictive solitary confinement facility. Prisoners are generally placed there because for disciplinary or security reasons.

The letter cites findings in a report completed for the Southern Center by University of California, Santa Cruz psychology professor Craig Haney as part of that litigation.

Haney called the 192-bed unit “one of the harshest and most draconian” he has seen and wrote that it “so severely and completely deprives prisoners of meaningful social contact and positive environmental stimulation that it puts them at significant risk of very serious psychological harm.”