Restrictive Housing Research Articles

(Why) Are Housing Costs Rising?

Housing costs, relative to household incomes, have grown by 22 percent between 1980 and 2017. While the standard view among economists is that these costs reflect spatial differences in housing and zoning regulation, others have more recently argued that they reflect increasing labor costs. This paper shows that labor costs cannot explain the rise in housing costs. In fact, housing costs relative to income have grown more in larger counties where labor costs have decreased. Moreover, the areas with the greatest increases in housing costs relative to income are also the areas with the most restrictive housing regulation.

Statement and Recommendations to the United States Commission on Civil Rights - Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars

How are women treated in prison, and what can be done to ameliorate the problems? Prison systems are not ‘good’ for anyone, even as evidence is mounting that women are underserved in prison. The experiences are not binary: women and men of all colors, classes, and ages experience the problems of prison in different ways. These issues were explored when, in February of 2019, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a briefing, Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars. This abstract summarizes the testimony submitted by Judith Resnik, Ali Harrington, and Molly Petchenik on behalf of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School. The comments from all twenty-one presenters can be found online. As summarized below, the Liman Center statement focused on the impact on women in federal prisons of the use of solitary confinement, implementation of the 2018 First Step Act legislation, the practice of incarcerating prisoners at great distances from their communities and families, and state statutes aiming to improve the treatment of women in prison. For the last several years, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has had a policy of placing prisoners, to the extent practicable, within 500 miles of their homes. The First Step Act echoed this BOP policy. That distance imposes huge burdens on prisoners, and especially on women in confinement. As of 2019, the federal prison system had 133 facilities around the United States. Twenty-nine housed women prisoners. A 2018 report found that 62% of state prisoners and 84% of federal prisoners who were parents were incarcerated 100 miles or more from home. The Liman Center proposed that legislation is needed to limit the placement of federal prisoners, absent extenuating circumstances, to 75 miles from home. The Liman Center also raised concerns about the use of solitary confinement, a subject about which the Center has written a series of reports with the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA), an organization comprised of the leaders of U.S. corrections agencies. As is common in corrections, the reports use the term “restrictive housing” to denote all forms of placement in cell for an average of 22 hours or more, for fifteen days or more. Two new ASCA-Liman 2018 reports are Reforming Restrictive Housing, SSRN ID 3264350, and Working to Limit Restrictive Housing, SSRN ID 3264366. Based on survey responses from 43 jurisdictions providing data on 1.1 million prisoners, we identified 49,197 individuals in restrictive housing as of the fall of 2017. Given those numbers, we estimated that, of the total of 1.5 million people in prisons as of 2017, some 61,000 people were held in solitary confinement across the country. Thirty-two jurisdictions responded to the 2017 survey with information on gender. In those jurisdictions, about 66,000 women were in prison, and some 800 women were in restrictive housing. The Liman Center recommended that the Civil Rights Commission call for the abolition of solitary confinement, and, in the interim, for compliance with the 2015 United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules. These provisions classify “confinement in excess of 15 consecutive days” among the “restrictions or disciplinary sanctions [that] amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and that “shall be prohibited.” The Nelson Mandela Rules state that solitary confinement up to 15 days shall “be used only in exceptional cases as a last resort, for as short a time as possible.” The Liman Center urged oversight of the 2018 First Step Act, federal legislation that requires women to receive necessary hygiene products and that prohibits restraints on pregnant women. The statute does not build in means to ensure implementation. Further, while providing for more educational and vocational opportunities, resentencing, and potential release, the First Step Act creates no mechanisms to assess whether prisoners receive equal treatment and obtain the benefits of the legislation. The Liman Center recommended oversight hearings and the creation of a national, government-funded Institute on Women in Prison with the capacity to gather data and report annually on the numbers of women and men of what ages, gender identities, races, and ethnicity in detention. The Liman Center also submitted its survey of state legislation since 2018 to promote what many statutes call “the dignity” of incarcerated women. These laws include bans on shackling pregnant women, provision of hygiene products at no cost, increased programs for parents, improvements in medical care, restrictions on staffing of women’s facilities, and implementation of gender-informed policies and programs.

Prison System Versus Critics’ Views on the Use of Restrictive Housing: Objective Risk Classification or Ascriptive Assignment?

Despite the widespread use of restrictive housing in correctional institutions, little is known about the factors associated with placement in this setting. This study advances two theoretical arguments about the use of this practice. The prison system view argues this housing is essential for institutional order and that, accordingly, only inmates who pose an objective risk to safety get placed in such housing. By contrast, the critics’ view argues this housing causes adverse effects and disproportionately targets certain inmates based on their ascriptive characteristics, such as their mental health status or race. The results indicate support for both perspectives.

Assessing the Impact of Time Spent in Restrictive Housing Confinement on Subsequent Measures of Institutional Adjustment Among Men in Prison

Proponents of restrictive housing argue that its use is an effective deterrent of antisocial behavior, while its critics maintain that the setting causes serious psychological damage and increases noncompliance with institutional rules and expectations. Unfortunately, few studies exist that examine the influence of restrictive housing on behavioral outcomes. This investigation adds to this gap in knowledge by assessing the impact of time spent in restrictive housing confinement on subsequent measures of institutional adjustment among men in prison. Logistic regression analyses reveal no statistically significant relationships between the number of days spent in restrictive housing and subsequent measures of institutional misconduct, and uncover a small, but significant, negative relationship with subsequent placement in restrictive housing. The research and policy implications of these results are discussed.

Association of Restrictive Housing During Incarceration With Mortality After Release

Association of Restrictive Housing During Incarceration With Mortality After Release

Working to Limit Restrictive Housing: Efforts in Four Jurisdictions to Make Changes

This monograph, Working to Limit Restrictive Housing: Efforts in Four Jurisdictions to Make Changes, is related to Reforming Restrictive Housing: The 2018 ASCA-Liman Nationwide Survey of Time-in-Cell, the fourth in a series of ASCA-Liman research projects focused on restrictive housing — or what is popularly known as “solitary confinement” — defined as placement of an individual in a cell for an average of 22 hours or more for 15 days or more. In Working to Limit Restrictive Housing, directors of prison systems in Colorado, Idaho, Ohio, and North Dakota detail how they were limiting and, in Colorado, abolishing the use of restrictive housing. Correctional administrations’ efforts to reduce the numbers of people in restrictive housing are part of a larger picture in which legislatures, courts, and other institutions are seeking to limit holding people in cells 22 hours or more for 15 days or more. These endeavors reflect the national and international consensus that restrictive housing imposes grave harms on individuals confined, on staff, and on the communities to which prisoners return. Once solitary confinement was seen as a solution to a problem. Now prison officials around the United States are finding ways to solve the problem of restrictive housing.

Understanding Federal “Restrictive Housing Unit” Environments

Understanding Federal “Restrictive Housing Unit” Environments

Reforming Restrictive Housing: The 2018 ASCA-Liman Nationwide Survey of Time-in-Cell

Reforming Restrictive Housing: The 2018 ASCA-Liman Nationwide Survey of Time-in-Cell is the fourth in a series of research projects co-authored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the Arthur Liman Center at Yale Law School. These monographs provide a unique, longitudinal, nationwide database. The topic is “restrictive housing,” often termed “solitary confinement,” and defined as separating prisoners from the general population and holding them in cells for an average of 22 hours or more per day for 15 continuous days or more. The 2018 monograph is based on survey responses from 43 prison systems that held 80.6% of the U.S. prison population. They reported that 49,197 individuals—4.5% of the people in their custody—were in restrictive housing. Extrapolating, we estimate that some 61,000 individuals were in isolation in U.S. prisons. This number does not include people in most jails or juvenile, military, or immigration facilities. Two areas of special concern are the impact of mental illness and the length of time individuals spend in restrictive housing. Correctional systems use a variety of definitions for serious mental illness. Using their own descriptions, jurisdictions counted more than 4,000 prisoners identified as seriously mentally ill and in restrictive housing. Within the 36 jurisdictions that reported on the length of time people had been in segregation, most people were held for a year or less. Twenty-five jurisdictions counted more than 3,500 individuals held more than three years. Reforming Restrictive Housing details policy changes tracking the impact of the 2016 American Correctional Association’s (ACA) Restrictive Housing Performance Based Standards. The ACA Standards call for limiting the use of isolation for pregnant women, juveniles, and seriously mentally ill individuals. This monograph also compares the responses of the 40 prison systems that answered the ASCA-Liman surveys in both 2015 and 2017. See ASCA-Liman, Aiming to Reduce Time-in-Cell (Nov. 2016), SSRN No. 2874492. The number in restrictive housing was reported to have decreased from 56,000 in 2015 to 47,000 in 2017. Looking at specific states, in more than two dozen systems, the numbers in segregation decreased. In 11 systems, the numbers went up. A related monograph, Working to Limit Restrictive Housing: Efforts in Four Jurisdictions to Make Changes, details the work of four correctional administrations to limit—and in one state abolish—holding people in cells 22 hours a day for 15 days or more.

APA to Advocate for Loan Repayment Aid to Psychiatrists in Public Settings

APA to Advocate for Loan Repayment Aid to Psychiatrists in Public Settings

Addressing Serious Violent Misconduct in Prison: Examining an Alternative Form of Restrictive Housing.

A number of scholars, civil, and human rights activists have expressed concern about the negative impact restrictive housing may have on the physical and mental well-being of inmates. Rigorous, theoretically informed outcome evaluations, however, are virtually nonexistent. Guided by theory and existing empirical evidence, this study explores the future behavioral and mental health outcomes associated with completing an alternative approach to restrictive housing in the Arizona Department of Corrections. To explore program outcomes, we use paired-sample t tests to determine whether post-program behavior is significantly different from preprogram behavior. In addition, we use cross tabulations and independent samples t tests to identify relationships between individual-level inmate and program characteristics and program outcomes. Results from this study suggest that a more therapeutic restrictive status housing program has the potential to improve the future behavior of program graduates; however, future research is needed to build upon these findings.

Programming in Restrictive Housing: Considerations for Improving Outcome Evaluations

A number of studies have identified “what works” in regard to the successful implementation of correctional programming over the past several decades. Few studies, however, have examined the complexities associated with programming in restrictive housing. Using data from a Midwestern department of corrections, we examined whether the provision of programming in restrictive housing achieved desired outcomes (e.g., reductions in inmate misconduct). The findings revealed the amount of time served in restrictive housing and confinement in different types of restrictive housing may influence estimations of a treatment effect. As a growing number of states seek to reform the use of restrictive housing, the proper implementation of cognitive-behavioral programming may increase institutional security and safety.

Checking the Math: Do Restrictive Housing and Mental Health Need Add Up to Psychological Deterioration?

The current study sought to determine whether restrictive housing leads to psychological deterioration. A growth mixture modeling analysis of clinician ratings on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale identified two classes of participants in a sample of 266 state prison inmates: A large group of prisoners whose psychological status gradually improved over the course of a year and a small group of inmates whose psychological status deteriorated over the course of a year. Inmates with a history of mental health need were significantly more likely to experience severe psychological reactions to administrative segregation (AS) than inmates with no history of mental health need, although inmates with a history of mental health need were just as likely to experience severe psychological deterioration in general population as in AS. These results indicate that psychological deterioration in mentally ill inmates may have less to do with AS than with incarceration in general.

Taking stock: A Meta-Analysis of the Predictors of Restrictive Housing

ABSTRACTTwo competing views on the use of restrictive housing have emerged in the literature. The first position has argued that restrictive housing helps make correctional institutions safer and more secure environments, largely by incapacitating violent and dangerous inmates. In contrast, a second perspective has maintained that restrictive housing not only causes serious psychological damage and increases criminal coping, but also that it has served as a mechanism for officials to punish certain groups of inmates unfairly. This study tests these competing hypotheses by meta-analyzing the literature on the predictors of placement in restrictive housing. The results of this investigation provide support for both perspectives. The implications of the study’s findings are discussed.

Individual Risk Factors Associated with Increased Levels of Restricted Housing among Detained Youth

ABSTRACTThe current study examined individual characteristics as potential risk factors associated with increased levels of restrictive housing among detained youth. Data was analyzed from 129 youth who completed measures in a survey format upon their arrival to the facility. Data also included facility records regarding the rates of Tier 2 (e.g., day room restrictions) and Tier 3 (e.g., lockdowns and restraints) restrictive housing interventions. Findings indicated that more days in detention and low levels of perceived containment were associated with increased risk for and an increased number of both Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. Findings and their implications are discussed.

From Solitary to the Streets: The Effect of Restrictive Housing on Recidivism

ABSTRACTRestrictive housing is sometimes required for the sake of safety and institutional order. However, many observers have argued that this practice is inhumane and leaves inmates at a greater risk of recidivism. This study empirically examined the effect of restrictive housing on recidivism using a cohort of released state prisoners. The results revealed that time spent in restrictive housing increased the risk of supervision revocations up to two years after release, but did not significantly increase the likelihood of rearrest or re-conviction. Thus, rule-breaking behaviors appear to continue into the community, but not necessarily continued criminal offending.

The Effects of Restrictive Housing on the Psychological Functioning of Inmates.

The use of restrictive housing as a correctional management tool has received much attention in recent years, especially as it impacts psychological functioning. While there is considerable literature advocating for the reduced use of restrictive housing, much of it is based on opinions, interview data, and testimonials. This article reviews only the empirical evidence regarding the effects of restrictive housing on psychological functioning in actual correctional settings. Results of this review indicate that only a limited number of empirical studies examine the effects of restrictive housing on mental functioning in correctional settings. Findings from these studies are mixed and are fraught with definitional, geographic, and methodological problems. These problems are identified and discussed. Also, suggestions are made for future research directions to more clearly understand the effects of restrictive housing on psychological functioning.

Reducing Institutional Disorder: Using the Inmate Risk Assessment for Segregation Placement to Triage Treatment Services at the Front End of Prison Sentences

Most correctional scholars and policy makers agree that prison authorities should use restrictive housing less, yet few studies exist to provide guidance on how to do so while also ensuring institutional order. This study advances the idea that proactively providing rehabilitative programming to inmates at the front end of prison sentences will help reduce institutional disorder. In so doing, we create and validate a risk assessment instrument to predict inmate likelihood for placement in restrictive housing during one’s commitment. The findings of this study support the predictive validity of the tool. We argue that authorities can use this assessment to make more informed and targeted programming decisions during the intake process that will help reduce institutional misconduct and the need for restrictive housing.

Practices of Freedom: Lorraine Hansberry, Freedom Writer

Practices of FreedomLorraine Hansberry, Freedom Writer Soyica Colbert (bio) In the summer of 1950, after struggling through four semesters at the University of Wisconsin, Lorraine Hansberry moved to New York City to pursue a career as a writer.1 Before arriving in NY, Hansberry had learned from her parents that freedom is a practice rather than a state of being. In 1940, Hansberry's father Carl Augustus Hansberry, an attorney and real estate investor, successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to find racially restrictive housing covenants in Chicago illegal. Carl Hansberry waged his battle for civil rights in the courts. Unfortunately, he won the battle but did not win the war. Chicago remains one of the most deeply segregated large cities in the United States due to housing and mortgage policies that work to reinforce segregation.2 Lorraine's mother, Nannie Hansberry, protected her household with a luger pistol while her husband fought for civil rights in Washington, DC. As Shatema Threadcraft argues the focus on civic rather than intimate spaces in Afro-Modern thought privileges individual masculine action as definitive of black freedom. Early on Hansberry learned, however, that freedom practices required rethinking "conceptions of black liberation from constraint and conceptions of racial equality that are most focused on black action in civic space" (Threadcraft 27). Although Hansberry participated in public activism she also pursued freedom through the private act of writing. Her writing often detailed the effect racial violence and freedom struggles have on women. Through writing, Hansberry crafted a freedom practice more expansive in nature than the legal pursuit of freedom and one that accounts for gender and racial violence. Hansberry's practices included participating in conferences and protests, giving speeches, and writing for periodicals, including the Marxist monthlies Masses and Mainstream and New Challenge, the black leftist newspaper Freedom, the lesbian magazine The Ladder, and the gay magazine One. In this essay, I theorize Hansberry's 1950s short form writing—periodicals, poems, short stories—as a black freedom "practice." By definition, practice entails routine, seeks to improve, and applies an idea and/or method. Practice enables the innovation of new political and racial roles because it enacts a vision. Hansberry's writerly practice informed how and what kind of artist-activist she became. Her daily activity of writing defines her politics and offers insight into the investments, allegiances, and desires that emerge in her later work. Hansberry's practice also elaborates a non-identitarian model of blackness produced through citations on and theorizations of black activists. The content and [End Page 157] process, or what I am calling "practice," of her early writing has been overlooked by scholars because, in the case of Hansberry, scholarship follows popular attention. Such an oversight misapprehends the critical contribution she makes to black feminism as a theory and practice and to Afro-Modern political thought. It also reveals that the difficulty in identifying her is a conceptual problem for theories of blackness that do not allow for the innovation at the heart of practice and rather seeks the consolidation central to the categories that install racial hierarchies. Repeated behaviors over time produce the appearance of gender and race as coherent categories. Deemphasizing the dissimilarities among the actors and highlighting their continuity, what performance theorist Richard Schechner calls "twice-behaved behavior" serves as the evidentiary basis for race and gender as performatives (36). As I write elsewhere, [Judith] Butler highlights two key factors in the understanding of gender as performative: anticipation and repetition. Anticipation regularizes gender (one acts in accordance with certain norms in order to disclose an anticipated gender that is conceived as essential), while repetition, or what some theorists term the performance of gender, secures the norms in accordance with which one acts. The reality of gender emerges through repeated and anticipated performances of rules and norms (embodied actions): gender is thus a question of doing rather than being. (224) Although performatives serve to categorize gender and race, they differ from mere categories because by definition they deploy and harness the power to name. Similar to performatives, practices participate in the ebb and flow of power. But unlike performatives, practices reveal the ways daily actions help to consolidate power...

Aiming to Reduce Time-in-Cell: Reports from Correctional Systems on the Numbers of Prisoners in Restricted Housing and on the Potential of Policy Changes to Bring About Reforms

A new report, jointly authored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) and the Arthur Liman Program at Yale Law School, reflects a profound change in the national discussion about the use of what correctional officials call “restrictive housing” and what is popularly known as “solitary confinement.” Aiming to Reducing Time-In-Cell? provides the only current, comprehensive data on the use of restricted housing, in which individuals are held in their cells for 22 hours or more each day, and for 15 continuous days or more at a time. The Report also documents efforts across the country to reduce the number of people in restricted housing and to reform the conditions in which isolated prisoners are held in order to improve safety for prisoners, staff, and communities at large. The 2016 Report is based on survey responses from 48 jurisdictions (the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 45 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands) that held about 96% of the nation’s prisoners convicted of a felony. That number excludes people held in most of the country’s jails (housing hundreds of thousands of people), in most of the country’s juvenile facilities, and in military and immigration facilities. Tallying the responses, the new 2016 Report found that 67,442 prisoners were held, in the fall of 2015, in prison cells for 22 hours or more for 15 continuous days or more. The percentages of prisoners in restricted housing in federal and state prisons ranged from under 1% to more than 28%. Across all the jurisdictions, the median percentage of the prison population held in restricted housing was 5.1%. How long do prisoners remain in isolation? Forty-one jurisdictions provided information about the length of stay for a total of more than 54,000 people in restricted housing. Approximately 15,725 (29%) were in restricted housing for one to three months; at the other end of the spectrum, almost 6,000 people (11%) across 31 jurisdictions had been in restricted housing for three years or more. The Report also chronicles efforts throughout the country and the world to reduce the use of restricted housing. In August of 2016, the American Correctional Association (ACA) approved new standards, calling for a variety of limits on the use of isolation, including a prohibition against placing prisoners in restricted housing on the basis of their gender identity alone. The standards also included provisions that pregnant women, prisoners under the age of 18, and prisoners with serious mental illness ought not be placed for extended periods of time in restricted housing. Further, in some jurisdictions, prison systems (sometimes prompted by legislation and litigation) have instituted rules to prevent vulnerable populations from being housed in restricted housing except under exceptional circumstances and for as short an amount of time as possible. As the Report also details, several jurisdictions described making significant revisions to the criteria for entry, so as to limit the use of restricted housing, as well as undertaking more frequent reviews to identify individuals to return to general population, thereby reducing the number of people in restricted housing by significant percentages. In short, while restricted housing once was seen as central to prisoner management, by 2016 many prison directors and organizations such as ASCA and the ACA have defined restricted housing as a practice to use only when absolutely necessary and for only as long as absolutely required.

Animal Welfare Assurance – Impacts on Cattle Production and Export Markets

Given the strong and sustained public interest in animal welfare, globally sustainable agricultural systems must include animal welfare within the areas of consideration. Animal welfare relates to an animal’s quality of life and can range from very good to very poor. A number of conceptual frameworks have been proposed for animal welfare and humane animal care. To varying degrees, these frameworks include aspects of animal health and animal behavior, with relative importance of these criteria weighted by ethics or values. Animal care standards may be dictated by legislation, but are increasingly governed through purchasing decisions by food companies and retailers. Animal welfare assessment protocols that include animal-based parameters provide farmers with benchmarking data for comparison between and within farms, as well as flexibility to modify husbandry or housing when addressing weaknesses within the farm system. Within the laboratory and on commercial farms, researchers are identifying solutions to key animal welfare issues in cattle production, including painful husbandry procedures, restrictive housing and cow comfort, calf feeding, care of the compromised cow and low stress handling.