Seeing Solitary home

About the Project

solitary confinement cell
Photo courtesy of the ACLU
A solitary confinement cell at Arizona State Prison, Lewis (Rast Unit), 2021

A project of the Liman Center, the Seeing Solitary digital dashboard presents data about the scope and impact of solitary confinement in prisons across the United States and some information about solitary confinement’s use around the world. This website provides access to materials from individuals held in isolation, social science data on the impact of isolation, research, and analysis of the history and use of isolation, and policies, regulations, legislation, and court judgments addressing isolation. Tables and graphs of survey responses and other tools both provide information and highlight ongoing efforts. The public has very limited access to images of solitary confinement. The photographs here come from media coverage, academic research, and introduction lawsuits related to solitary confinement. Drawn from a few prisons, the photographs illustrate conditions that characterize solitary confinement in many jurisdictions in the United States.

Seeing Solitary aims to support continuing research and public education to end the isolation of individuals as punishment. The site is also an invitation for suggestions of materials to include or update. Explore our Research Page to learn more about these organizations and to read additional research.

The development of this website was supported by a grant from the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School.

More than a decade ago, the Liman Center believed it could contribute to the effort to limit and end solitary confinement by providing information on the policies governing isolation and its use. At the time, a study by Daniel Mears counted 25,000 supermax beds nationwide, and a 2005 report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated more than 80,000 people held in solitary confinement in all U.S. prisons (supermax and otherwise). Confronting Confinement, a 2006 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, offered tools to limit the use of solitary confinement.

In 2012, the Liman Center began working with the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) (then called the Association for State Correctional Administrators, or ASCA) on a variety of projects designed to gain insight into interactions among imprisoned people, correctional agencies, communities, and courts. One study, Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty-State Survey, addressed the difficulties people encountered when visiting incarcerated people. In 2013, the Liman Center and the ASCA produced a report, Administrative Segregation, Degrees of Isolation, and Incarceration: A National Overview of State and Federal Correctional Policies, based on a review of the policies in place in forty-six states and the federal Bureau of Prisons. That report documented that correctional officials had broad discretion when deciding to put people into “administrative segregation,” which the report defined as the practice of isolating a person in a cell for “approximately 23 hours a day,” for “a non-punitive purpose,” and with “open-ended duration, close confinement, and restricted activities and social contact.” The report also concluded that few policies focused on getting people out of solitary.

Time-In-Cell, published in 2015 with data from 2014, compiled survey responses from thirty-four jurisdictions holding 74% of the U.S. prison population. Those jurisdictions reported more than 66,000 individuals in some form of restrictive housing. Time-In-Cell estimated that, in the fall of 2014, between 80,000 and 100,000 individuals were in restrictive housing in prisons across the United States. The next survey, sent in 2015, refined the definition of “restrictive housing” by asking about the practice of separating an individual from the general population and isolating that individual in a cell for twenty-two hours or more per day and for fifteen or more continuous days.

As detailed in a third report, Aiming to Reduce Time-in-Cell, published in 2016, forty-eight jurisdictions—holding 96.4% of the U.S. prison—responded to this survey and identified a total of 67,442 people held under that definition of restrictive housing. Another 2016 report, “Rethinking: Death Row: Variations in the Housing of Individuals Sentenced to Death", examined the confinement conditions of individuals sentenced to death around the country, finding that most – but not all – were routinely held in solitary confinement.

For the 2017 ASCA-Liman Survey, forty-three jurisdictions holding 80% of the country’s incarcerated population responded. That survey clarified the definition of “restrictive housing” by inquiring about people isolated in a cell for an average of twenty-two hours or more per day, for fifteen or more continuous days. The resulting report, Reforming Restrictive Housing, published in 2018, estimated that approximately 61,000 individuals were in restrictive housing. The 2017 Survey also sought demographic data, inquiring about the gender, ethnicity, and ages of people held in restrictive housing; the length of stay; and the isolation of those that the jurisdictions holding them deemed “seriously mentally ill.” Survey responses showed that people in men’s prisons were much more likely than people in women’s prisons to be in isolation, that Black people comprised a greater percentage of the restrictive housing population than they did of the total custodial population, and that people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six were more likely to be placed in restrictive housing than were older individuals.

Time-in-Cell 2019: A Snapshot of Restrictive Housing, published in 2020, included a review of state and federal proposals to limit the use of solitary confinement and identified statutes put forth in twenty-nine states and the U.S. Congress. These provisions included efforts to curtail restrictive housing, especially for pregnant prisoners, youth, and those with serious mental illness, as well as to improve data collection and reporting on when restrictive housing may be imposed.

In addition, the Liman Center and CLA provided a short monograph, Working to Limit Restrictive Housing: Efforts in Four Jurisdictions to Make Changes, that highlighted efforts by corrections departments in Colorado, Idaho, Ohio, and North Dakota to limit or end the use of solitary confinement. In 2021, the Liman Center also published Legislative Regulation of Isolation in Prison: 2018-2021, reviewing proposed statutes by 32 states and Congress.

The 2020 Time-in-Cell report also analyzed data collected from thirty-nine jurisdictions incarcerating 65% of the U.S. prison population and estimated that prisons across the United States were holding between 55,000 and 62,500 individuals in restrictive housing as of the summer of 2019. Within the thirty-two jurisdictions that reported data on the race and ethnicity of individuals in restrictive housing, the percentage of people in both men’s and women’s prisons who were Black, Native American, or Alaskan Native was higher in restrictive housing than in the total custodial population, and the same was reported for Hispanic people in men’s prisons. In both men’s and women’s prisons, the percentage of individuals between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five was higher in restrictive housing than in total custodial populations.

In August 2022, the sixth report describing the results of the 2021 survey was published as Time-in-Cell: A 2021 Snapshot of Restrictive Housing. The report estimated that, as of July 2021, between 41,000 and 48,000 people were held in isolation in U.S. prison cells. Three states reported holding no one in isolation in July 2021, two other states reported fewer than 10 people in solitary, and 10 states reported not using solitary in any of their women’s prisons. This represented a shift over the decade of survey collection; in 2014, every jurisdiction reported using solitary confinement and an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were in solitary in prisons throughout the United States. Time-in-Cell 2021 also reviewed legislative activity, finding that, between 2018 and 2020, legislators in more than twenty-five states introduced bills that would limit the use of isolation, and at least fifteen states enacted legislation. In Connecticut, the Liman Center submitted testimony in support of the PROTECT ACT to limit solitary confinement use in the state; the law was enacted in 2022

With the launch of Seeing Solitary, research from all of these reports and materials, as well as others, is now web-accessible. The reports are below.

The Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale School began in 1997 to honor one of Yale Law School’s most accomplished graduates, Arthur Liman. Throughout his distinguished career, he demonstrated how dedicated lawyers in both private practice and public life can respond to the needs of individuals and causes that might otherwise go unrepresented. The Liman Center continues the commitments of Arthur Liman by supporting work in and outside the academy dedicated to public service in the furtherance of justice. ​