‘Cautiously Optimistic’: Local Advocates React To DOC’s Intent To End Solitary Confinement

June 30, 2021
WGBH
By Arun Rath and Matt Baskin

Local advocates for inmates are reacting to news that the state’s Department of Correction is planning to phase out the use of solitary confinement

In an interview with GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath, Elizabeth Matos, head of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, discussed the DOC’s decision to end the practice in a multiyear process.

Matos credited a wide array of people for the change ultimately being announced, including medical professionals, mental health experts and inmates themselves.

“Much of the work that’s been done to push for an end to solitary confinement [is] by folks on the ground, including people who are formerly incarcerated and people inside, as well,” Matos said.

The Department’s move comes in the wake of an independent report that called for reducing and eliminating restrictive housing. In line with the report, the Department Tuesday stated its intent to dissolve the ‘Department Disciplinary Unit,’ which allowed inmates to be confined in cells for an average of 22 hours per day for up to 10 years on a punitive basis, as well as studying and carrying out changes to other departmental practices.

Matos also credited a separate report issued last year by the Department of Justice that alleged “mental health watch” practices in Massachusetts facilities amounted to solitary confinement and violated inmates’ rights.

Groups including Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts have long pushed for the practice to be abolished, citing the toll on inmates’ physical and mental health.

“There’s documentation — quite honestly, going back as far as the 1800s — about how time in isolation causes mental decompensation,” Matos said. “It is also harmful, of course, to people with physical ailments, [and] has been shown very concretely in multiple studies to cause permanent psychological damage for people with mental health issues already, for existing mental health issues, and also has the potential to cause permanent psychological damage in people who hadn’t had a documented mental health issue.”