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"States start reducing solitary confinement to help budgets"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new piece from USA Today. Here are some of the details: State prison officials are reducing the number of offenders in solitary confinement ? once among the fastest-growing conditions of detention ? as budget pressures, legal challenges and concerns about the punishment's effectiveness mount. States such as Mississippi, Texas and Illinois have decreased the number of inmates in solitary confinement, a dramatic acknowledgement, analysts say, that states can no longer sustain the costs of hard-line criminal justice policies.  "The whole philosophy of being just tough ? locking people up and throwing away the key ? has not solved the problem," said Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, Democratic chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 14, 2010 (boomark / email).