Minnesota’s prison system will partner with the Vera Institute for Justice in 2017 to look into alternative forms of punishment in hopes of moving away from a system that relies on solitary confinement as a punishment for difficult inmates.
The Vera Institute for Justice is a national criminal justice reform group that wants to help abolish the practice of solitary confinement across the United States. They have selected the Minnesota Department of Corrections to take part in a 21-month program designed to work with prison administrators to discover and introduce alternatives to long-term isolation. The ultimate goal is to find alternatives to the practice – which the group claims can take a severe mental health toll on prisoners – without sacrificing the safety of other inmates and guards.
“Solitary confinement is used widely in U.S. prisons and jails,” reads a news release from Vera. “But research has documented for decades its harmful impacts on the mental and physical health of those in isolation — nearly all of whom will eventually return to their communities — as well as emerging concerns about the potentially harmful effects on staff who work in these environments.”
Stopping Solitary
A couple of weeks ago the Star Tribune ran a piece on solitary confinement in Minnesota, and it shined a light on just how mentally damaging the practice can be. The story revealed that more than 1,600 inmates in Minnesota spent more than six months or more in solitary confinement, while 413 served one year of longer. Furthermore, over the past six years, nearly 700 inmates in Minnesota have gone directly from solitary to being released from prison, making a difficult transition to the outside world even harder.
To get a better understanding of potential alternatives to solitary confinement, Minnesota is joining nine other corrections departments taking part in the initiative. Departments needed to apply in order to be considered for the program, and in Minnesota’s application, they emphasized that they wanted to keep pace with national standards by finding alternative punishments for mentally ill prisoners and to improve data-collection methods to help measure progress, said Mary McComb, who oversees solitary confinement for the Minnesota DOC.
“Vera’s expertise in the area of restrictive housing will give much value to the work we have already started,” DOC Commissioner Tom Roy said in a statement.
The next stage in the reform is to examine the DOC’s current system to begin identifying areas in which the department needs the most work. The initiative will launch early in 2017.
