Amnesty International report cites state's overuse of solitary confinement
(NEWSER) - Of all the places to commit a crime, you may want to avoid Arizona. Amnesty International today released a report blasting the state's "cruel isolation" practices. It claims that Arizona's state prisons overuse solitary confinement, with prisoners spending as long as 15 years alone in a windowless cell for 22 to 24 hours a day. According to the state's figures, 8% of its prison population is jailed in maximum-security units, most alone. What's more, Amnesty says those figures also reveal that 35% of those 3,130 inmates committed non-violent crimes. More»