Solitary Confinement
Effects, Practices, and Pathways toward Reform
Edited by Jules Lobel and Peter Scharff Smith
Author Information
Edited by Jules Lobel, Bessie McKee Walthour Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School, and Peter Scharff Smith, Professor in Sociology of Law at the Institute for Criminology & Sociology of Law, the Faculty of Law, Oslo University
Jules Lobel is the Bessie Mckee Walthour Endowed Chair Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. He was President of the Center for Constitutional Rights from 2011-2017, a prominent constitutional and human rights NGO based in New York City and is still a cooperating attorney with that organization. He argued Wilkinson v. Austin in the United States Supreme Court, addressing the due process rights of Ohio prisoners held in prolonged solitary confinement in that State's supermax prison. He is currently lead counsel, on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights in Ashker v. Brown, a class action challenge to prolonged solitary confinement in California that has resulted in more than 1500 prisoners being released from solitary confinement. Peter Scharff Smith is Professor in the Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. He has studied history and social science, holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen and has also done research at the University of
Cambridge and at the Danish Institute of Human Rights. Smith has published books and articles in Danish, English and German on prisons, punishment and human rights, including works on prison history, prisoner's children and the use and effects of solitary confinement in prisons.
Contributors:
Cyrus Ahalt, Co-Director UC Criminal Justice, University of California San Francisco
Huda Akil, Gardner Quarton Distinguished University Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and co-Director of the Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (MBNI) at the University of Michigan
Joseph J. Arvay, founder of the British Columbia law firm Arvay Finlay LLP
Jamie Bennett, Governor of HMP Grendon & Springhill, HM Prison Service
Leann K. Bertsch, Director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Dolores Canales, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
Andrew Coyle, former Warden of several high security prisons in the United Kingdom; Founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies; former Professor of Prison Studies in the University of London
Craig Haney, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Program in Legal Studies, the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Louise Hawkley, Senior Research Scientist, NORC at the University of Chicago
Are Høidal, Governor, Halden Prison
Robert King, One of the Angola Three prisoners held in solitary confinement for almost twenty years in Louisiana's infamous Angola prison
Alison M. Latimer, lawyer with the law firm of Arvay Finlay LLP
Jules Lobel, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Juan E. Méndez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, the American University - Washington College of Law
Jack Morris, Former California prisoner held in solitary confinement for thirty five years
Manfred Nowak, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, Vienna University
Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, the Colorado Department of Corrections
Keramet Reiter, Assistant Professor, the Department of Criminology, Law & Society and at the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine
Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Peter Scharff Smith, Professor, Institute for Criminology & Sociology of Law, Oslo University
Sharon Shalev, Research Associate, the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
Richard J. Smeyne, Professor, Jack and Vickie Farber Institute for Neuroscience
Lieutenant Armando Sosa, Correctional Officer, Colorado Department of Corrections
Homer Venters, MD, MS, Physicians for Human Rights
Brie Williams, MD, MS and Associate Professor of Medicine, the UCSF Division of Geriatrics
Michael Zigmond, Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurobiology, the University of Pittsburgh
