Resource: Cruel But Not Unusual The Automatic Use of Indefinite Solitary Confinement on Death Row: A Comparison of the Housing Policies of Death-Sentenced Prisoners and Other Prisoners Throughout the United States

Over the past twelve months, I have researched and compared housing policies for death-sentenced and non-death sentenced prisoners throughout the United States. I chose this topic because the death penalty and circumstances on death row have had my interest for many years. I am from the Netherlands, where the death penalty is forbidden by Protocol No. 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The use of prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement in European prisons has mostly been banned as well. My seven-year friendship with Clinton Young, a death-sentenced individual in Texas, motivated me to move to Texas to study at the University of Texas School of Law and become an attorney, to help those on death row, and to research conditions on death row. Countless times I visited death-sentenced prisoners in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas and observed the devastating effects of indefinite solitary confinement on death-sentenced prisoners, their families, and their friends. These prisoners are confined to a small cell for at least twenty-two hours a day and unable to hug their loved ones for years. These confinement conditions add inhumane treatment to the most severe and irreversible punishment that exists.