The debate over solitary confinement brings us back around to a basic question about prisons: do we lock people up to correct their behavior, or only to punish them?
Roughly 100,000 people are locked up alone in small cells every day, a situation Terry Allen Kupers explores in the book Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It.
Our region is home to California's only state "supermax" prison (Pelican Bay), so this is not a remote issue. The author joins us with research into solitary confinement and its effects on the people placed into it.
