Solitary Confinement Numbers Are Down

But don't start celebrating quite yet.

A new study by the Correctional Leaders Association and the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale University Law School estimates that between 41,000 and 48,000 people are currently being held in solitary confinement, or “isolation,” as it is called in the report, in prisons and jails across America.  Those numbers are too high, especially when the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture has called the US practice of using solitary confinement as a punishment a form of torture.  Still, as high as the numbers are, they are far lower than they were in 2014.  And there is growing support in legislatures across the country for solitary confinement reform.