Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my Senate colleague from Delaware, Senator Coons, for his extraordinarily eloquent and, frankly, urgently passionate voice on issues of solitary confinement, as well as for all the work he is doing on criminal justice reform as a whole.

This bill that he and Senator Durbin have worked so hard on and that I am so proud to cosponsor, along with Senators Leahy and Franken, is a critically important bill when it comes to the overall reforming of our criminal justice system. Please understand, as the Senator from Delaware has said, this is currently a practice in our Federal system as well as in State prisons. It is an archaic, damaging, ineffective, and inefficient practice that actually works against the public interests--not just their financial interests but even the safety and well-being of our communities.

Now, solitary confinement--many people don't know exactly what we are talking about. As Senator Coons said, it is people being kept in a prison cell for 22 to 24 hours a day with little to no outside human interactions. Senator Coons said it is a fact that on any given day, we now have 80,000 to 100,000 incarcerated people in State and Federal prisons who are being held in rooms often no bigger than a parking spot.

We know that inmates placed in solitary confinement can be put there for the most minor of infractions--for literally just filing papers with the court to try to assert their constitutional rights. We also know that solitary confinement is extraordinarily expensive--more expensive than nonsolitary confinement. In fact, on average, it costs about $75,000 each year for an individual to be housed in solitary confinement. Yet it is increasingly clear that this overuse, especially for low-level offenders--not people who have done violent crime, not people who have assaulted a correctional officer, but people who are there for low-level, nonviolent crimes--we know that this is providing little benefit to no benefit for the public good, but what is extraordinary is it is creating conditions which could harm the public.

Solitary confinement has irreversible effects on the human brain, which may lead inmates to harm themselves or others. It does psychological damage. It can do serious psychological damage, making a person more dangerous.

So here we have a correctional system that doesn't correct but actually is doing more harm and putting people in a position where they can be more dangerous to themselves, to their fellow inmates, and to society as a whole. It makes no sense.

International bodies understand this. Other nations have referred to it as torture. The United Nations considers long-term isolation to be cruel and degrading treatment. Here we are in the United States of America, which I firmly believe is a symbol to the Nation--to the globe--of justice, righteousness, and decency, yet we are engaging in tactics that many of our peer nations consider cruel and degrading.

We know the data. It is clear that isolation actually worsens mental illness and can actually create issues in those who were previously seen as psychologically healthy. Researchers estimate that at least 30 percent of inmates held in solitary confinement already have a mental disorder. So this is how we are treating mental illness. We incarcerate not just the poor, but we incarcerate the addicted and the mentally ill. In prison we should seek to make those populations better, healthier, to deal with their disease or their mental disorder, yet we are using practices that aggravate these conditions.

We know data has shown that holding inmates in isolation not only makes mental illness worse for the individual, but it has truly negative impacts on their lives, the lives of their families, and their communities when they are released.

We know that while confinement for short periods of time may be necessary for safety--and please understand that the security of our correctional officers is critical in prison environments, but to allow these practices to go on actually doesn't make our correctional officers safer; it makes their job more dangerous and puts them at greater risk. This is why correctional officers across the country are speaking out. The very people who have to conduct the work in our prisons are speaking out against solitary confinement. One Texas correctional officer said: ``When you cut out social interaction, you are dealing with a person who has nothing to lose, and that is extremely dangerous.''

Kevin Kempf, the director of the Idaho Department of Corrections, remarked that reforming the practice of solitary confinement ``is not a soft-on-inmates approach; this is a public safety approach.'' He refers to a time in 2014 when 44 inmates were released directly from isolation in a maximum security prison and out to the public. That means that they were released, as in the case that Senator Coons explained, from solitary confinement--from these conditions of no social interaction, from an environment that researchers deem aggravating to mental illness--and they go right from that solitary confinement environment out into the public. He remarked about this case:

Those 44 inmates, we took belly chains and leg irons off of them and walked into your community. That is irresponsible of me as a director. Frankly our taxpayers should expect more of me, should expect more of our staff, to do things differently.

It should come as no surprise to any of us that the use of solitary confinement has received criticism both from law enforcement folks-- folks who have sworn oaths to protect the public--as well as the civil rights community, civil libertarians, the medical community, and the legal community.

Just last year, in a Supreme Court case, Davis v. Ayala, Justice Kennedy denounced the widespread use of solitary confinement in prisons. Justice Kennedy cited a litany of the possible side effects from prolonged isolation, including anxiety, panic, withdrawal, hallucinations, and self-mutilation. After examining the evidence, Justice Kennedy concluded that ample ``research still confirms what the Court suggested a century ago; years on end of near-total isolation exacts a terrible price . . . [t]he penal system has a solitary confinement regime that will bring you to the edge of madness, perhaps into madness itself.''
This is not a criminal justice system that reflects our highest values. It doesn't stand for moral rights when we are exacting such cruel punishment that doesn't just do punitive damage but also puts an inmate in a situation where they can cause more harm and damage to themselves and others.

So the bill that Senator Coons talks about--the bill that we are introducing with Senator Durbin--would substantially limit the ability of the Bureau of Prisons to use solitary confinement in Federal facilities. The bill would mandate that solitary confinement be limited to the briefest terms under the least restrictive conditions practicable, and it would preclude the BOP from placing vulnerable populations in solitary confinement, like minors--like children--as well as people with serious mental illnesses, physical disabilities, and pregnant women.

Critically, this legislation wants to promote more data collection.

The bill would require the BOP to collect data on the use of solitary confinement, and it would create a national resource center on solitary confinement reform under the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
This is an issue--the issue of solitary confinement--that has been a priority for me here in the Senate from my beginning months. In fact, over a year ago, in August of 2015, I worked with members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on an oversight hearing to explore current practices at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I requested this hearing because of the urgent need to shine a spotlight on our broken criminal justice system, including what occurs within the walls of Federal prisons that the general public does not see that is being done in the name of the public. The hearing was a good first start to improve transparency on solitary confinement. At the hearing, we heard testimony from a wide range of stakeholders, including the head of the Bureau of Prisons and advocates. Udi Offer, from the New Jersey ACLU, testified that ``our nation has seen a dramatic increase in the use or reliance on solitary confinement over the last couple of decades.''

I also introduced the MERCY Act, a bill that would prohibit the use of solitary confinement of youth adjudicated delinquent in the Federal system unless it is a temporary response to a serious risk of harm to the juvenile or others.

Our justice system must ensure justice in the deepest, richest meaning of that word. That is what we swear an oath to, that we will be a nation of liberty and justice for all--not just some but for all. It means that we need to begin to expose the practices that are happening in our prisons and understand the consequences to all of this-- increased financial expenditures, increased risk to our security and our safety, increased risks of recidivism.

Our justice system should not be engaged in practices that people across the spectrum in America--political, medical leaders, and others--really do view as harmful, inefficient, and ineffective.

I am proud to cosponsor the Solitary Confinement Reform Act. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and advance it in the Senate. I thank Senators Durbin and Coons for their leadership.

This is a time where we need national urgency on this issue. It is unfortunate that what happens in our prisons is seen as something that we as a public wash our hands of--throw them away, throw away the key.
That kind of logic doesn't solve problems, it perpetuates them. It doesn't make us safe, it makes us less safe. It doesn't save us money, it costs us more. These kinds of practices undermine the foundation of common sense as well as moral rectitude. We stand for more than this as a country. We should set an example that ultimately as a nation we are not about retribution, we are not about disproportionate punishment, we are about restorative justice. Solitary confinement as a practice being done now is an assault on justice. It is an offense to our moral values as a nation. It calls for reform.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues today to introduce legislation that will begin to take us down that important road to justice for all.

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