This report was prepared in accordance with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, to provide data on solitary confinement practices and impacts, and the recidivism rate of individuals who have experienced solitary confinement; it is organized into sections providing background, a literature review, information about National Institute of Justice-funded research, the use and placement of restrictive housing, solitary confinement’s impacts on mental health and post-restrictive housing behavior, future research projects, and recommendations for data collection on restrictive housing.
This report on restrictive housing (RH), also known as solitary confinement, administrative segregation, or disciplinary segregation, reviews the literature and data that examines RH’s effectiveness and methodological limitations. The report describes data collection efforts, including sources such as the 2019 Census of the State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities (CCF), which collects facility-level aggregate data from every federal and state prison facility every five-to-seven years, including information on operations and facilities, and the conditions of confinement. It describes National Institute of Justice (NIJ) -funded studies under the FY 2016 Research and Evaluation on Institutional Corrections solicitation, in order to understand the use of RH in correctional facilities. It also discusses the following topics: the use and placement of RH, including length of stay and demographic ratios for RH populations; impacts on mental health, noting research that demonstrates the relationship between mental illness and placement in RH, and how RH negatively impacts mental health; and impacts on post-RH behaviors, specifically focusing on misconduct during incarceration and recidivism after release. The report also discusses some recommendations for future data collection and research into the topic of restricted housing and its impacts.