Cory Booker: “I wish to thank my Senate colleague from Delaware, Senator Coons, for his extraordinarily eloquent and, frankly…”

“I wish to thank my Senate colleague from Delaware, Senator Coons, for his extraordinarily eloquent and, frankly, urgently passionate voice on issues of solitary confinement, as well as for all the work he is doing on criminal justice reform as a whole. This bill that he and Senator Durbin have worked so hard on and that I am so proud to cosponsor, along with Senators Leahy and Franken, is a critically important bill when it comes to the overall reforming of our criminal justice system. Please understand, as the Senator from Delaware has said, this is currently a practice in our Federal system as well as in State prisons. It is an archaic, damaging, ineffective, and inefficient practice that actually works against the public interests--not just their financial interests but even the safety and well-being of our communities. Now, solitary confinement--many people don't know exactly what we are talking about. As Senator Coons said, it is people being kept in a prison cell for 22 to 24 hours a day with little to no outside human interactions. Senator Coons said it is a fact that on any given day, we now have 80,000 to 100,000 incarcerated people in State and Federal prisons who are being held in rooms often no bigger than a parking spot. We know that inmates placed in solitary confinement can be put there for the most minor of infractions--for literally just filing papers with the court to try to assert their constitutional rights.…”