The number of isolated inmates in Florida jails has more than doubled the national average

Florida more than doubles the national average of prisoners in isolationwith 10% of its prison population subject to this sanction, including young people and people with mental illness, denounced Thursday the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The organization criticized the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) for violation of confinement to about 10,000 detaineesdespite the global trend that considers this practice as "ineffective".

"Provides little or no benefit from prison and, in the worst case, it is torture, "the SPLC said.

In this sense, he called "Ban" the solitary confinement, which isolates prisoners "22 hours or more a day in an individual cell".

According to the report "Cellular isolation: inhuman, ineffective and useless", Florida has more than doubled the national average, which represents 4.5% of the total prison population of the country subjected to this sentence in 2018.

"The prisoners face this punishment"regardless of age, intellectual disability or mental illness, despite the growing recognition that isolation particularly harms these categories of people, "the report says.

Details that nearly half of those imprisoned in Florida in solitary confinement mental illnesses.

According to SPLC, the state allows children and young adults to live in solitary confinement, where they support "Long periods without exercise, education, contact with their families or rehabilitation programs or services. "

About the isolation of young people, the report notes that a survey conducted by the Federal Justice Ministry revealed that those who had been subjected to isolation even for short periods They exhibited symptoms of paranoia, anxiety and depression.

A national study also revealed that among the jailed youths who commit suicidehalf were isolated when they committed suicide and 62% were placed in solitary confinement at some point.

However, the practice continues in some states, with Florida topping the list, since it has more than a hundred young people jailed in adult prisons, a figure higher than any other state in the country .

The badysis also examines the fact that racial disparities are "generalized".

He noted that in addition to "the excess" of Afro-American in prisons, they are also subjected to the solitary confinement of their white counterparts.

While 16.9% of Floridians are African-American, 47% of Florida inmates belong to this race, as well as more than 60% of those isolated in prisons.

In the case of whites, the figures are 77.4% of Floridians, 40.1% of people in prison and 34.5% of people placed in solitary confinement.

With information from EFE