I’m pretty tough on crime but this seems to be a bit extreme to me.

In most prisons the concept of solitary confinement (aka the hole) is common for dealing with real troublesome inmates. While in solitary you are usually kept isolated and alone for about 23 hours a day with an hour for shower and outside contact.

Conditions vary but often in solitary you have no TV or radio, and your reading material is limited to a religious text or a dictionary. Needless to say my comments are directed at situations where people are in the strict isolation solitary, not where you have TV and plenty of reading material.

I’ve got no problem with that, if you are causing problems and need to be dealt with then solitary is sometimes needed.

But in most states they put you in for a few days or weeks. In some extreme cased for a few months.

But as the linked article indicates, in California they are putting people in solitary for *decades*.

In most cases these prisoners are gang members and while sometimes the intent is to prevent gang violence it is also used to ‘persuade’ prisoners to talk about gang activities.

I do understand that we need to be tough on prisoners and I’m not by any means soft on crime. But this seems to be a step too far.