It's time this practice was stopped. Solitary Confinement for extended periods is a form of torture. People go irretrievably insane on a very regular basis, and arguably the worst part is that it's NOT done by a Judge, it's done by prison officials, often on highly arbitrary grounds. IOW, it's not 'the worst of the worst' offenders receiving an extra-harsh sentence for an ultra-evil crime. It's people that the Warden thinks are 'uncooperative' or 'gang members', or that they simply just 'don't like', with no serious reviews being done.
Something not mentioned in these blurbs is that these cells are VERY often being filled with the mentally-ill ... so instead of getting the help they need, they're being locked into tiny cells all by themselves for years on end. Yeah, THAT'S going to end well. Not. This is done because the Wardens don't want to PAY for their costly mental health care (gotta love for-profit prisons!) these people need, so they make up some BS about how the inmate is a 'danger' to regular population, and ship 'em off to places like Pelican Bay. It's a friggin' travesty is what it is. Any Warden that has EVER done that, for monetary reasons, deserves to be arrested and imprisoned himself. That should be a CRIMINAL act.
Also, the effects of long-term solitary have also been studied VERY little, and what few studies that DO exist back up what I'm saying. Human beings are NOT built to be subjected to the type of sensory deprivation inherent in these incarceration conditions. It even often damages people's eyesight permanently, because inmates are never focusing on anything that's at a distance like a person needs to do to keep the eye muscles from atrophying. And that's the tip of the iceberg.
This is a despicable practice, not fitting of a civilized people. We need to figure out another way to keep a lid on the 'dangerous ones' aside from long-term solitary. All we're doing is damaging these people worse than they already are. When they eventually get released, they'll be far more dangerous as a result. The only ones who benefit are the for-profit prisons. Society sure as hell doesn't.