If community is a foundation of Jewish life, what does Judaism have to say about solitary confinement, the forcible separation of a person from the community?
Last fall, I began an internship with Solitary Watch, an investigative news organization dedicated to reporting on solitary confinement, and I began to learn more about the work the American Jewish community organizes around this issue.
It turns out there is a lot, though it started quite recently. Beginning in 2012, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, a coalition of 1,800 rabbis, and Uri L’Tzedek, a Modern Orthodox social justice organization, have both made the issue of solitary confinement a prominent part of their advocacy efforts.
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment where individuals spend 22 to 24 hours per day in isolated lockdown in tiny cells. Many Americans mistakenly believe that solitary confinement is used sparingly, only for the most dangerous or threatening prisoners. However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are more than 80,000 men, women and children currently in some sort of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Many have a mental illness or cognitive disability, and most have been placed there for nonviolent violations of prison rules.
The costs of solitary confinement are much higher than housing inmates in the general prison population. Mississippi recently reduced the number of prisoners it holds in solitary from 1,000 to about 150, and closed down its high-security supermax unit. According to the ACLU, the reforms are saving Mississippi’s taxpayers approximately $8 million per year.
That economic perspective on solitary confinement is important, but there is a moral perspective to consider, as well. That’s where religious communities come in.
“We’re looking to provide some moral weight to the solitary confinement conversation by applying Jewish values,” said Shlomo Bolts, a prison consultant from Uri L’Tzedek.
“Sympathy for prisoners is not the most common sentiment among the American public. People do not want to be seen as weak or soft on crime,” said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, director of T’ruah. “In the Torah, however, it clearly says that if someone asks for forgiveness three times and you don’t forgive them, then the onus is on you. In Judaism we believe in repentance and that punishments don’t go on forever.”
Uri L’Tzedek and T’ruah face the challenge of motivating American Jews to get more involved with the issue. Despite a history of involvement in a wide variety of social justice causes, the American Jewish community generally has avoided issues of prison reform.
“There is this misconception that Jews are somehow not incarcerated, yet Jews go to prison for the same reasons as everyone else,” said chaplain Gary Friedman, chairman of Jewish Prisoner Services International, an organization that provides advocacy and spiritual services to Jewish prisoners and their families.
In fact, Friedman estimates there are approximately 12,000 to 15,000 Jews in American prisons today, including some in solitary confinement.
While Uri L’Tzedek and T’ruah approach the issue of solitary confinement from a distinctly Jewish perspective, the scope of both groups’ work on the issue extends well beyond the Jewish community.
“We want to apply the Jewish values we learn to help all people,” said Bolts.
The two Jewish groups are part of a growing national movement against the use of solitary confinement.
Last June, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) led a congressional hearing on solitary confinement, the first in American history. The hearing focused on the human rights issues associated with isolation, the economic implications of solitary confinement and the psychological impact on inmates during and after their imprisonment.
T’ruah and Uri L’Tzedek contributed written testimony to the hearings. They also participated in the National Day of Fasting, an interfaith effort to raise awareness of the significance of the congressional hearing.
“Fasting serves as a way to repent and bear witness,” said Kahn-Troster. “For me to be at the congressional hearing, sitting with a group of religious leaders, fasting was a very powerful experience.”
Rachel M. Cohen is a junior at Johns Hopkins University. This essay originally appeared at newvoices.org.