State should examine solitary confinement
The Boston Globe
January 5, 2017
The allegations in the latest Spotlight follow-up, based on a Prisoners’ Legal Services report, are serious enough to merit a state investigation into whether prison officials may have circumvented a state policy against placing mentally ill prisoners into solitary confinement. Based on the group’s findings, it would appear that prison officials put eight prisoners with documented histories of mental illness into solitary by changing or downgrading their original diagnoses to less severe conditions in all but two of the cases. That practice could potentially be unethical for a medical professional; it may also violate state law.