The Trials of Solitary Confinement
Known colloquially as “the hole” and euphemistically as “segregated housing,” “restrictive housing,” or “special housing,” solitary confinement is a form of punishment in which people are locked in parking-space-sized cells twenty-three hours a day, with no meaningful human contact for weeks, months, years, or decades. Prison officials call the practice a necessary tool for safety. Reformers call it inhumane.