Eneorgy Policy Modernization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I believe it was in April of 2009 that I picked up a New Yorker magazine and read an article that had a real impact on me. It was an article written by Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, an amazing man. In addition to his medical responsibilities, he is a person with a very inquisitive mind and a real knack when it comes to investigating challenging issues.

The article that I read in the New Yorker by Dr. Gawande examined the human impact of long-term solitary confinement and asked, ``If prolonged isolation is--as research and experience have confirmed for decades--so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?''

Dr. Gawande's article inspired me--motivated me--to begin to look into the issue of solitary confinement in prisons. I was amazed to learn that the United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement--about 100,000--than any other democratic nation in the world. So in 2012, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, I held the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement.

At the hearing, we took a look at the serious fiscal impact of solitary. We learned that it costs almost three times more to keep a Federal prisoner in segregation than in the general population. We also discussed the significant public safety consequences of widespread solitary confinement, given that the vast majority of inmates held in segregation will ultimately be released to the community someday. And we heard testimony about the human impact of holding tens of thousands of women, men, and children in small, windowless cells 23 hours a day-- for days, months, even years--with very little, if any, human contact with the outside world. Clearly, such extreme isolation can have a serious, damaging psychological impact. I will never ever forget the compelling testimony of Anthony Graves. In the year 2010, after 18 years in prison--and 16 of those years in solitary confinement--Anthony Graves became the 12th death row inmate to be exonerated in the State of Texas.

At the hearing, Mr. Graves testified about his experience. The room was silent. He stated:

Solitary confinement does one thing, it breaks a man's will to live. . . . I have been free for almost two years and I still cry at night, because no one out here can relate to what I have gone through. I battle with feelings of loneliness. I've tried therapy but it didn't work.

In 2014, I held a follow-up hearing on the issue. I called for an end to solitary confinement for juveniles, pregnant women, and inmates with serious mental illness. At the hearing, we heard from Damon Thibodeaux. He had spent 15 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary before being found not guilty and released. Mr. Thibodeaux testified:

I do not condone what those who have killed and committed other serious offenses have done. But I also don't condone what we do to them, when we put them in solitary for years on end and treat them as sub-human. We are better than that. As a civilized society, we should be better than that.

In recent years a number of experts and State and Federal officials across the country have questioned our Nation's overuse of solitary confinement. In 2014, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy testified to Congress: ``Solitary confinement literally drives men mad.''

Last year, Justice Kennedy again brought up the issue in a powerful concurring opinion. He wrote: ``Research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on end of near-total isolation exacts a terrible price.''

He went on to say:

The judiciary may be required . . . to determine whether workable alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.

Pope Francis, who spoke to a joint session of Congress a few months ago, has also criticized solitary confinement. In a 2014 speech at the Vatican, he referred to the practice of extreme isolation as ``torture'' and ``a genuine surplus of pain added to the actual suffering of imprisonment.''

The Pope went on to say:

The lack of sensory stimuli, the total impossibility of communication and the lack of contact with other human beings induce mental and physical suffering such as paranoia, anxiety, depression, weight loss, and significantly increase the suicidal tendency.

In light of the mounting evidence of the dangerous and harmful impacts of solitary confinement, several States have led the way in reassessing the practice. Colorado has implemented a number of reforms, including no longer releasing offenders directly from solitary to the community, and ensuring that inmates with serious mental illness are not placed in solitary confinement. As a result of the reforms, inmate- on-staff assaults are at the lowest levels in Colorado in 10 years, incidents of self-harm have decreased among the inmates, and most inmates released from solitary do not return.

In the State of Washington, a focus on rehabilitation and programming for inmates in solitary confinement has led to a reduction of more than 50 percent in the segregated population.

The Association of State Correctional Administrators--a group representing the heads of all 50 State prison systems--recently called for limits on the use of long-term solitary confinement. In a statement, they said:

Prolonged isolation of individuals in jails and prisons is a grave problem in the United States. . . . Correctional leaders across the country are committed to reducing the number of people in restrictive housing. . . .

Progress has been made at the Federal level since our first hearing. A substantial percentage of those in solitary confinement are no longer serving in that situation. After my first hearing on the issue, I asked the Bureau of Prisons to submit to the first-ever independent assessment of its solitary confinement policies and practices.

The assessment, released last year, noted that some improvements have been made since the 2012 hearing, the initial hearing we had on the subject. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has reduced its segregated population by more than 25 percent and continues to look for more reductions.

Despite this, there is a lot of work to be done. That is why I was pleased to see President Obama's announcement this week that he has accepted a number of recommendations from the Department of Justice to reform and reduce the practice of solitary confinement in the federal prison system.

In an op-ed published yesterday in the Washington Post, the President explained how the Department of Justice's review of solitary confinement policy led to the conclusion that the practice should be used rarely, applied fairly, and subjected to reasonable constraints.

The President's recommendations included: banning solitary confinement for juveniles, diverting inmates with serious mental illness to alternative forms of housing, diverting inmates in need of protection from solitary confinement to less restrictive conditions, reducing the use of disciplinary segregation, and improving the conditions of solitary confinement by increasing inmates' out-of-cell time and access to services.

I welcome these changes. I commend the President for his actions. I look forward to working with the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice on this issue.

In the course of studying this issue, I decided I had to see it firsthand. I went to Tamms prison in Southern Illinois. It was the maximum security State prison in the State. I went in, met with the warden, and I took my tour. Then I said to her: I want to see the most restrictive solitary confinement. She took me into an area where five men were in solitary confinement. I had a chance to speak to each of them. One of the men I will never forget. I asked him: How many years are you in for?

He said: Originally 20, but they added 50 to that.

I said: Fifty additional years?

He said: Yes. He said in a very calm voice: I told them that if they put another prisoner in my cell I would kill him, and I did.

I thought to myself, be aware, Senator, there are ruthless and vicious people and violent people who really need to be carefully scrutinized and carefully imprisoned in a situation where they can't harm other inmates or the personnel, but still, even in that circumstance, we have to look to the most humane way to treat them in the course of their imprisonment.

The President's decision to address the use of solitary represents a major step forward in protecting human rights, increasing public safety, and improving fiscal responsibility in our federal prisons. Still, we have the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the world--the United States, the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

President Obama noted yesterday that changing our approach to solitary confinement is just one part of a larger set of reforms we must pursue. Last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and I worked with a bipartisan coalition of Senators to introduce the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 15-to-5 bipartisan vote several months ago.

In order to comprehensively address the problems facing our Federal prisons, we should bring this bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation to the Senate floor and work with our colleagues in the House to send a bill to the President this year.

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