‘He Had Fresh Head Injuries’: What Ohio Has Been Doing to Mentally Ill Boys
Ohio doesn’t have a law on the books barring solitary confinement of kids in juvenile detention centers or correctional facilities. At least seven states have restrictions in place, but most don’t. And it’s a practice that’s widespread across the United States. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called for an end to the practice among juveniles, the mentally ill, and pregnant women in a hearing last year, but, so far, no such federal law exists. Ian Kysel, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute who testified at Durbin’s hearing, says that the solitary confinement of children is nonetheless illegal under federal and human rights law.
The Justice Department argues that children in solitary in Ohio aren’t always getting adequate education and mental-health treatment. Advocates say that it’s hard to know what happens in facilities in the United States, because data is scarce.
Civil liberties organizations interviewed children serving time in adult prisons who had been subject to this form of isolation in 2012. “There is nothing to do so you start talking to yourself and getting lost in your own little world. It is crushing,” Paul K, who spent 60 days in solitary when he was 14, told the researchers. “You get depressed and wonder if it is even worth living.” A teen held at Rikers Island in New York—which, as a city facility, is exempt from the state’s ban on solitary confinement—recently told the Center for Investigative Reporting that his longest stretch in “the box,” a six-by-eight-foot cell, lasted four months. “There’s so many people that have been in that cell and screamed on that same gate, it smells like a bunch of breath and drool.”
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