Is Solitary Confinement Cruel?

      Is being confined indefinitely in  a solitary prison cell “cruel and unusual punishment” and does it violate a prisoner’s right to due process?

    A team of students at the University of Denver Strum School of Law and two of their professors claim the answer to both questions is yes. In 2007,  they filed a civil rights lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on behalf of a familiar name: Thomas Silverstein.

Silverstein sent me this drawing after I mailed him one of my books. Several BOP officers were angry that I gave him a copy but didn't offer them one.

     Silverstein is a major character in my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, and someone I have known since 1987. That’s when I became the first and – to date — the only reporter ever allowed to interview him in prison.

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