ABSTRACT
Solitary confinement has existed in Europe since the first prisons were built there in the early 1700s and in the United States since within a few decades of when the first prisons were built there, as early as the 1790s. The physical and administrative structures governing the practice of solitary confinement, as well as the definitions of what actually constitutes solitary confinement, have changed drastically over the last few centuries. In the 1960s, a new series of court cases across the United States again revealed the pervasiveness of solitary confinement—as a tool of control imposed on misbehaving prisoners. In 2015, however, several major studies sought to reassess rates of solitary confinement use in the United States. Recently, solitary confinement, especially its use in supermax facilities such as the Pelican Bay SHU and the Arizona Special Management Unit (SMU) has come under sustained attack.
