“Solitary confinement on trial: senators hear from experts on prison reform” @ The Guardian

Posted on June 20, 2012

Ryan Devereaux — Tuesday, June 19: “The first-ever congressional hearing on the use of solitary confinement in US prisons has begun in Washington.

Members of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on the constitution, civil rights and human rights are hearing testimony from a range of speakers including a former prisoner who spent years locked alone in his cell for a murder he did not commit, a psychology professor who has studied the effects of long-term prison solitude, a senior prison official who has eschewed his support for the tactic, and a former Republican assemblyman who is at the forefront of the conservative movement for prison reform.

The hearing follows a year in which thousands of prisoners across the country took part in coordinated hunger strike in response to California’s extensive use of solitary confinement, and it comes less than one month after an unprecedented class action lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of holding hundreds of men in solitary for a decade or more at the state’s Pelican Bay facility…………………………”

Read more at the Guardian.