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Full-Text Articles in Law
How The Ada Regulates And Restricts Solitary Confinement For People With Mental Disabilities, Margo Schlanger
How The Ada Regulates And Restricts Solitary Confinement For People With Mental Disabilities, Margo Schlanger
Other Publications
In a landmark decision two decades ago, United States District Judge Thelton Henderson emphasized the toxic effects of solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness. In Madrid v. Gomez, a case about California’s Pelican Bay prison, Judge Henderson wrote that isolated conditions in the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, while not amounting to cruel and unusual punishment for all prisoners, were unconstitutional for those “at a particularly high risk for suffering very serious or severe injury to their mental health . . . .” Vulnerable prisoners included those with pre-existing mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and brain damage. Henderson concluded that …
Solitary Confinement, Public Safety, And Recdivism, Shira E. Gordon
Solitary Confinement, Public Safety, And Recdivism, Shira E. Gordon
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
As of 2005, about 80,000 prisoners were housed in solitary confinement in jails and in state and federal prisons in the United States. Prisoners in solitary confinement are generally housed in a cell for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day with little human contact or interaction. The number of prisoners held in solitary confinement increased 40 percent between 1995 and 2000, in comparison to the growth in the total prison population of 28 percent. Concurrently, the duration of time that prisoners spend in solitary confinement also increased: nationally, most prisoners in solitary confinement spend more than five years there. The …
Dubious Delegation: Article Iii Limits On Mental Health Treatment Decisions, Adam Teitelbaum
Dubious Delegation: Article Iii Limits On Mental Health Treatment Decisions, Adam Teitelbaum
Michigan Law Review
A common condition of supervised release requires a defendant, post-incarceration, to participate in a mental health treatment program. Federal district courts often order probation officers to make certain decisions ancillary to these programs. However Article III delegation doctrine places limits on such actions. This Note addresses the constitutionality of delegating the "treatment program" decision, in which a probation officer decides which type of treatment the defendant must undergo; the choice is often between inpatient treatment and other less restrictive alternatives. The resolution of this issue ultimately depends on whether this decision constitutes a "judicial act." Finding support in lower court …