In an article supported by Solitary Watch and published this week by The Progressive in its magazine and online, Solitary Watch Senior Writer/Editor Katie Rose Quandt exposes the incontrovertible link between solitary confinement and the epidemic numbers of suicides in U.S. prisons and jails. An excerpt appears below; read the full article on the website of The Progressive.

In April 2020, Markwhan Kitcher-Tucker, a twenty-eight-year-old man with schizophrenia, was arrested on theft charges and taken to a San Francisco County jail. Although he was behaving erratically and displayed signs of deteriorating mental health, according to court documents, he was transferred into solitary confinement in August after running into “difficulties” with staff and fellow incarcerated people. Over the ensuing months, Kitcher-Tucker spent most of his time in the solitary cell. During multiple brief stays in a secure hospital ward he would stabilize, only to decline once back in solitary. In numerous assessments, he was alternately declared competent or incompetent to stand trial.

In the jail, medical staff failed to develop a treatment plan or fulfill Kitcher-Tucker’s simple request for “someone to talk to me every day for one hour.” As his months in solitary confinement continued, he expressed suicidal thoughts and refused his medication. In late December, jail medical staff discontinued his psychiatric medication order—reducing what human contact he had with them.

On January 10, 2021, Kitcher-Tucker was found hanging by a sheet from the top bunk of his solitary cell. His parents sued the city, county, sheriff, and jail staff members. Earlier this year, the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to settle with the family for $2,880,000.

Kitcher-Tucker’s tragic story is all too common in jails and prisons, where severe mental illness and the torture of solitary confinement combine to put people at heightened risk of suicide. Although data is limited, higher rates of suicide by incarcerated people in solitary confinement have been documented in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington State, New York State, New York City, New Jersey, California, and Louisiana.

Banning or limiting the use of solitary confinement, especially for people with mental health concerns, is clearly a matter of life or death. Yet politicians—including prominent Democrats—continue to block restrictions and reforms to solitary, or fail to enforce restrictions that do exist…

High rates of death in jails and prisons have been noted with alarm by advocates, journalists, and politicians. Mortality rates in both local jails and state prisons increased throughout the 2010s. In 2019, the suicide rate in jails was more than double that of the general public, and prison deaths increased dramatically during the pandemic.

Although the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 instructs the Department of Justice (DOJ) to collect and compile data on deaths in jails and prisons around the country, many jurisdictions fail to comply, or artificially lower their death count by transferring or releasing people just before death. In the absence of reliable DOJ data, journalists, law schools, and politicians have conducted their own investigations and counts. A Congressional investigation found nearly 1,000 unreported deaths in jails and state prisons in 2021. Only three states—California, Florida, and Kansas—report data on whether individuals who died by suicide were in solitary confinement at the time.

While solitary confinement is also poorly tracked, it is estimated that more than 80,000 people were in solitary in state and federal prisons on a given day in 2019, with an additional 42,000 in solitary in local jails. Black people and other people of color—who are already disproportionately incarcerated—are further overrepresented in solitary confinement, and are often more likely to be sent to solitary than their white counterparts for the same misconduct.

What’s more, many jails and prisons frequently put entire units on “lockdown” for days or weeks on end, confining people to their cells for long periods of the day—either alone, or stuck with a cellmate who they may not get along with. These lockdowns, which are typically enacted for so-called security reasons, force many additional people into solitary-like conditions.

It is well established that solitary confinement worsens symptoms of mental illness. Even people with no history of mental illness often develop symptoms like anxiety, depression, cognitive disturbances, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The United Nations prohibits solitary confinement for people with mental illness.

Yet, without a robust social safety net, prisons and jails have become a catchall solution for people struggling with mental health issues, addiction, and poverty. And frequently, mental illness-related behavior and outbursts get people thrown into solitary.

In April 2023, Dean Hoffmann was transferred into Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI). He had a history of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, diabetes, and other mental and physical health conditions, and was classified by the state department of corrections as having the most severe category of mental illness.

But when Hoffmann arrived at WCI, the facility had just entered what would become a year-long lockdown. People were confined to their cells nearly all day, served meals out of brown paper bags, denied visits and programming, and sometimes went weeks without fresh air or exercise. Amid the lockdown restrictions, Hoffmann never received a psychological exam in WCI, and did not receive all of his prescribed mental health and diabetes medications. He began showing signs of severe anxiety, paranoia, and poor judgment. He lost significant weight and suffered from insomnia. He was allowed just two phone calls over two months.

In June, Hoffmann refused to return to his cell after a shower, telling correctional officers that his cellmate had threatened him. As punishment for disobeying the order, he was handcuffed and taken to solitary confinement, where he declined rapidly. A man in a nearby cell reportedly overheard Hoffmann tell officers he couldn’t sleep and was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. Just days later, alone in his cell, Hoffmann hanged himself.

Hoffmann’s daughter, Megan Hoffmann Kolb, shares her father’s story widely, including with legislators, hoping to open the public’s eyes to the deadly realities of incarceration and solitary confinement. In February 2024, she filed an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that the department and several staff members displayed deliberate indifference to her father’s serious mental health needs.

“We want systemic changes,” Hoffmann Kolb tells The Progressive. “We are holding these people accountable, because what they did was wrong.”

Growing evidence shows that suicides in solitary confinement, like Hoffmann’s, are concerningly common.

In February 2024, the DOJ’s Inspector General published an investigation of deaths throughout the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Of 187 investigated suicides, eighty-six (46 percent) happened in a restrictive housing setting, including solitary confinement. Two reports by the Washington State Office of the Corrections Ombuds, from June 2024 and September 2024, found that at least 176 people attempted suicide while in solitary confinement in Washington prisons over the prior ten years. Fourteen of them died by suicide.

“It’s horrible,” said one anonymous incarcerated person in a video provided by the Ombuds to a local news station. “I’ve watched people get a hold of a safety razor, slice their throats. Within days, they’re unraveling, smearing feces, banging.” One of the report’s co-authors commented that it was “eye-opening to see the number of people [in solitary] who had self-harmed or attempted suicide or died by suicide.”

These recent reports add to a growing body of evidence confirming the link between solitary confinement and suicide…

Read the full article at The Progressive.