Dick Durbin: “I believe it was in April of 2009 that I picked up a New Yorker magazine and read an article that had a real impact on…”

“I believe it was in April of 2009 that I picked up a New Yorker magazine and read an article that had a real impact on me. It was an article written by Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, an amazing man. In addition to his medical responsibilities, he is a person with a very inquisitive mind and a real knack when it comes to investigating challenging issues. The article that I read in the New Yorker by Dr. Gawande examined the human impact of long-term solitary confinement and asked, ``If prolonged isolation is--as research and experience have confirmed for decades--so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?'' Dr. Gawande's article inspired me--motivated me--to begin to look into the issue of solitary confinement in prisons. I was amazed to learn that the United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement--about 100,000--than any other democratic nation in the world. So in 2012, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, I held the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement. At the hearing, we took a look at the serious fiscal impact of solitary. We learned that it costs almost three times more to keep a Federal prisoner in segregation than in the general population.…”