Washington’s Department of Corrections pledged to end solitary confinement as a punishment in 2021 — but isolation is still widely used across state prisons for what the agency calls “administrative” purposes.
That’s according to a 400-page June report from the Office of the Corrections Ombuds, the independent investigations office for the Department of Corrections. The report was requested by state lawmakers, who are considering ways to reduce or end solitary confinement.
The report found over 3,000 currently incarcerated individuals in state prisons who had served more than 120 days in solitary confinement or were held in solitary for more than 45 days from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. About 200 of those individuals were over 60 years old, the report found. Some people are in solitary confinement for years, said Angee Schrader, a senior corrections ombuds.
During that time period, there were 13,538 people in prison, according to Office of Financial Management data.
“That’s an enormous number of people subjected to extended isolation,” said Rachael Seevers, an attorney at Disability Rights Washington working on criminal justice policy reform. She pointed out that the United Nations considers isolation for more than 15 days a form of torture.
In 2023, the Department of Corrections pledged to reduce solitary confinement by 90% in five years and told the Standard it has “reduced the use of solitary confinement by approximately 50% since its peak in 2008.” The agency also disagrees with the Office of Corrections Ombuds’ definition of solitary confinement.
Mental health and solitary confinement
At least 176 people from 2014 to 2023 have attempted suicide while in solitary confinement at a Washington prison, according to the report. Of that number, 14 died by suicide.
Seevers noted that 56% of those who attempted or died by suicide while in segregation were either classified as having mental illness symptoms with “moderate severity” or “serious impairment” requiring intensive treatment. Another 6% were classified at an even higher level of mental health need.
“A lot of it just becomes routine. It’s not too shocking,” said Jeffrey McKee, a prisoner at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla who wrote about three suicides that happened in one week at the prison. “I can’t say it fazes me anymore.”
The report said prisoners attempted suicide using razors, swallowing objects, overdosing on medications and hanging or self-strangulation using bed sheets, shoelaces, clothing or a “suicide smock,” a piece of clothing given to people at high risk of suicide that is supposed to be harder to rip up than other clothes.
“If someone is so acute as to require a suicide smock, how long are they being unobserved?” said Seevers.
The Department of Corrections said “losing even one individual to suicide is one too many” and pointed to a number of projects to improve mental health access for prisoners, including barriers that make it more difficult for prisoners to jump to their deaths.
Defining solitary confinement
The Department of Corrections told the Standard 602 individuals were in “solitary confinement conditions” as of July 1, 2024.
But Schrader, the corrections ombuds, said solitary confinement is a “constant revolving door of people going in and out,” meaning a snapshot in time will not capture the extent of how many people spend time in solitary confinement.
The report notes the Department of Corrections defines solitary confinement as “restrictive housing where the individual is confined to a single-occupancy cell for more than 20 hours a day without meaningful human contact, out-of-cell activities, or opportunities to congregate” and acknowledges that these conditions “exist within restrictive housing areas such as…Administrative Segregation Units or other isolated settings within prisons.”
“The department doesn’t like to refer to it as solitary confinement, but I feel like that’s kind of a mincing of words,” Schrader said.
“When you use all that different language, it makes it sound different than what it is,” Schrader said. “But really, what we’re talking about is an individual who has been stripped of most of their property, who’s living in a cell by themselves, who only gets three showers a week.”
There are eight different kinds of segregation identified in the report. While maximum custody, the most restrictive form of housing, is used sparingly and involves a 12-person committee approval process, administrative segregation is commonly used for a wide variety of reasons, including for people awaiting disciplinary action, pending transfers and medical reasons.
“It appears that in the OCO report they may have been defining solitary confinement as Maximum Custody,” the Department of Corrections said.
Using administrative segregation for people awaiting disciplinary action is essentially using solitary confinement as a punishment, said Seevers, with Disability Rights Washington.
“That infraction may be upheld and it may be dismissed, but no matter what, you’ve just spent serious time in solitary,” Seevers added.
While Department of Corrections policy states people should not be in administrative segregation for more than 30 days without a clear reason, a 2021 report from the Office of Corrections Ombuds found the department routinely extends segregation placements.
Reasons people go to solitary confinement
The most common reason a person is put in solitary confinement is for refusing a housing assignment, making up 36% of initial segregation placements.
Other reasons include “threat to orderliness of facility” — which includes a broad range of reasons including COVID-19 infection, awaiting medical treatment and refusing staff instructions — contraband and violence. Violence only encompasses 4% of first placements in solitary confinement, although 11% of second placements have to do with violence, the report said.
Prisoners often refuse housing assignments because they’re concerned about their safety, Seevers and Schrader said, and will move to a housing option they’re comfortable with if given the option.
“We’ve asked — for years — for DOC to go in and look at the people who are refusing housing and actually assess what it is that those people are asking for and whether it can be done. I don’t know that they’ve done that for a lot of people,” said Seevers, who often works with clients refusing housing assignments.
McKee, who has been behind bars for over 20 years, has received several infractions for refusing housing assignments, including, he said, after his cellmate stole some of his property.
“I told [officers]: ‘My stress level is so high, my anger is so high, I’d probably beat the sh*t out of him if I saw him right now.’ The response was sending me to segregation and giving me a major [infraction] for assaulting him because attempting is the same as doing,” McKee said.
He spent 16 months in solitary confinement after that, he said, transferring between close observation areas and other restrictive units.
The Department of Corrections acknowledges the safety concern, but said people may also refuse housing assignments because they “feel safe only in restrictive housing settings” or “prefer to be assigned to or remain in restrictive housing to avoid confrontations,” especially if they’re nearing release and want to ensure they don’t get in trouble again.
“When people refuse housing, they are often willing to go to great lengths to do so, engaging in violent or disruptive acts,” the agency said. “The department works diligently with this group of individuals to mediate these transfers, to encourage forward progress to less restrictive settings, and to creatively support additional time out of cell regardless of housing location.”
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