BILL TO PUT HUGE LIMITATIONS ON WHEN KIDS CAN BE PUT IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT MAKES IT PAST CA SENATE
On Tuesday, the California Senate approved SB 124, a bill to drastically limit the use of solitary confinement in state and county juvenile correctional facilities. Next, the bill will head to Assembly policy committees. If SB 124, authored by Sen. Mark Leno, makes it past the Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, California will join 19 other states that ban the use of solitary confinement as punishment for locked up kids.
“We applaud members of the Senate for their leadership in voting for SB 124 to protect our incarcerated youth from the trauma of solitary confinement,” said Alex M. Johnson, Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund-California, one of the four groups co-sponsoring the bill. (The others are the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the California Public Defenders Association, and the Youth Justice Coalition.)
Specifically, the bill would ban isolating kids except in extreme circumstances in which a kid poses a serious threat to staff or others, and when all other alternatives have not worked. The bill would also clearly define solitary confinement as “involuntary placement” in isolation away from people who are not staff or attorneys. Kids would also only stay in solitary for the least amount of time needed to handle the safety risk.
Last week, the LA County Board of Supervisors passed Supe. Sheila Kuehl’s motion to back the important bill. (Read more about that here.)
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