“In My Solitude”: The Detrimental Effects of Solitary Confinement on the Brain (in collaboration with After Dark)

In the Balance: Bringing Science to Justice with David Faigman

I sit in my chair
And filled with despair
There's no one could be so sad
With gloom everywhere
I sit and I stare
I know that I'll soon go mad

In my solitude
I'm afraid
Billie Holiday, "(In My) Solitude"

Ashker v. Governor of California was a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners held in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison who had spent a decade or more in solitary confinement. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, SHU prisoners spent between 22½ to 24 hours every day in a cramped, concrete, windowless cell. They were denied telephone calls, contact visits, and vocational, recreational, or educational programming. Hundreds of Pelican Bay prisoners had been isolated under these conditions for over 10 years and dozens for more than 20 years.

The named plaintiffs in Ashker included leaders and participants in prison hunger strikes that were joined by thousands of SHU prisoners throughout California in 2011 and 2013. The case reached settlement on September 1, 2015, ending indeterminate solitary confinement in California and dramatically reducing the number of people kept in isolation.

A turning point in this litigation proved to be the introduction of neuroscientific evidence demonstrating that long-term isolation caused significant, detrimental impacts to prisoners’ brains. Meet some of the attorneys and neuroscientists involved to explore the use and impact of neuroscience in this case, which resulted in a massive policy change in California’s prison system.

Craig Haney, J.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research concerns the application of social psychological principles and data to various legal and civil rights issues. Professor Haney has specialized in the assessment of institutional environments, especially the psychological effects of incarceration. He has also worked on the way in which attitudes and beliefs about crime and punishment are changed by legal procedures, as well as the role such attitudes and beliefs play in influencing legal fairness and impartiality.

Jules Lobel, J.D. is the Bessie McKee Walthour Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He coauthored the award-winning book Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (2007) and is the author of Success without Victory: Lost Legal Battles and the Long Road to Justice in America (2003), as well as editor of several books on civil rights litigation and the U.S. Constitution. Professor Lobel has often testified before congressional committees and is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national human and constitutional rights organization based in New York City.

Dr. Robert King is a prison reform activist and the first of the Angola 3 to win his freedom after serving 29 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana. Along with the other Angola 3 prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox he was a member of the Black Panther Party in Angola, LA., one of the only official prison chapters in the country. In the 15 years since his release in February of 2001, King’s life focus has been to campaign against myriad abuses in the U.S. criminal justice system and the cruel and unusual use of solitary confinement, and to fight for the freedom of Wallace, who passed away one week after his release in 2013, and Woodfox, who was released in February 2016.

Brie Williams, M.D. is Professor of Medicine in the University of California, San Francisco Division of Geriatrics, Founding Director of the University of California Criminal Justice & Health Consortium, and Director of the Criminal Justice and Health Project at UCSF. Dr. Williams works with collaborators from the criminal justice, public safety, and legal fields to transform criminal justice healthcare through policy-driven research and education. She has served as an expert witness in several lawsuits related to the health effects of solitary confinement.

Michael Zigmond, Ph.D. is Professor of Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is recognized for his contributions to understanding the factors that influence neurodegenerative disease and for his service to academia, including his promotion of professional development and ethics training. Professor Zigmond directs a research team studying Parkinson’s disease. His current research focus is the impact of the lack of physical exercise among most adults, which he believes causes a decrease in neuroprotective factors within the brain.

David L. Faigman is the Chancellor and Dean, and the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including two books written for a general audience: Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court’s 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (2004) and Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (1999). Professor Faigman has been widely cited by scholars and courts, including several times by the United States Supreme Court. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that investigated the scientific validity of polygraphs and is a member of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Network.

Learn more about the series, In the Balance: Bringing Science to Justice.