In April 2020, Markwhan Kitcher-Tucker, a twenty-eight-year-old man with schizophrenia, was arrested on theft charges and taken to a San Francisco County jail. Although he was behaving erratically and displayed signs of deteriorating mental health, according to court documents, he was transferred into solitary confinement in August after running into “difficulties” with staff and fellow incarcerated people. Over the ensuing months, Kitcher-Tucker spent most of his time in the solitary cell. During multiple brief stays in a secure hospital ward he would stabilize, only to decline once back in solitary. In numerous assessments, he was alternately declared competent or incompetent to stand trial.
In the jail, medical staff failed to develop a treatment plan or fulfill Kitcher-Tucker’s simple request for “someone to talk to me every day for one hour.” As his months in solitary confinement continued, he expressed suicidal thoughts and refused his medication. In late December, jail medical staff discontinued his psychiatric medication order—reducing what human contact he had with them.
On January 10, 2021, Kitcher-Tucker was found hanging by a sheet from the top bunk of his solitary cell. His parents sued the city, county, sheriff, and jail staff members. Earlier this year, the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to settle with the family for $2,880,000.
Kitcher-Tucker’s tragic story is all too common in jails and prisons, where severe mental illness and the torture of solitary confinement combine to put people at heightened risk of suicide. Although data is limited, higher rates of suicide by incarcerated people in solitary confinement have been documented in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington State, New York State, New York City, New Jersey, California, and Louisiana.
Banning or limiting the use of solitary confinement, especially for people with mental health concerns, is clearly a matter of life or death. Yet politicians—including prominent Democrats—continue to block restrictions and reforms to solitary, or fail to enforce restrictions that do exist. Although former President Joe Biden promised in his 2020 campaign to end federal solitary confinement “with very limited exceptions,” by the end of his term, the percentage of people in federal prisons in what is called “restrictive housing” was at its highest since 2008.
In March, Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul agreed to roll back some of the state’s anti-solitary confinement policies, as part of an agreement to end an illegal “wildcat” correctional officer strike. The striking officers claimed solitary confinement is necessary to prevent prison violence. In fact, decades of research show that solitary is not an effective method of controlling incarcerated people or addressing prison violence, and facilities that reduce or eliminate solitary often see reduced hostility and violence.
Meanwhile in 2022, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom—who says he supports prison reform—vetoed legislation that would have capped solitary confinement stints in state prisons at fifteen days. And in New York City, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a December 2023 City Council bill that mandated fourteen hours of out-of-cell time in shared spaces each day in city jails. When the council overrode his veto, Adams declared a state of emergency in city jails, issuing an executive order to block the solitary reforms one day before they went into effect. Every five days since July 2024, Adams has issued an extension of the order suspending the law.
High rates of death in jails and prisons have been noted with alarm by advocates, journalists, and politicians. Mortality rates in both local jails and state prisons increased throughout the 2010s. In 2019, the suicide rate in jails was more than double that of the general public, and prison deaths increased dramatically during the pandemic.
Although the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 instructs the Department of Justice (DOJ) to collect and compile data on deaths in jails and prisons around the country, many jurisdictions fail to comply, or artificially lower their death count by transferring or releasing people just before death. In the absence of reliable DOJ data, journalists, law schools, and politicians have conducted their own investigations and counts. A Congressional investigation found nearly 1,000 unreported deaths in jails and state prisons in 2021. Only three states—California, Florida, and Kansas—report data on whether individuals who died by suicide were in solitary confinement at the time.
While solitary confinement is also poorly tracked, it is estimated that more than 80,000 people were in solitary in state and federal prisons on a given day in 2019, with an additional 42,000 in solitary in local jails. Black people and other people of color—who are already disproportionately incarcerated—are further overrepresented in solitary confinement, and are often more likely to be sent to solitary than their white counterparts for the same misconduct.
What’s more, many jails and prisons frequently put entire units on “lockdown” for days or weeks on end, confining people to their cells for long periods of the day—either alone, or stuck with a cellmate who they may not get along with. These lockdowns, which are typically enacted for so-called security reasons, force many additional people into solitary-like conditions.
It is well established that solitary confinement worsens symptoms of mental illness. Even people with no history of mental illness often develop symptoms like anxiety, depression, cognitive disturbances, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. The United Nations prohibits solitary confinement for people with mental illness.
Yet, without a robust social safety net, prisons and jails have become a catchall solution for people struggling with mental health issues, addiction, and poverty. And frequently, mental illness-related behavior and outbursts get people thrown into solitary.
In April 2023, Dean Hoffmann was transferred into Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI). He had a history of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, diabetes, and other mental and physical health conditions, and was classified by the state department of corrections as having the most severe category of mental illness.
But when Hoffmann arrived at WCI, the facility had just entered what would become a year-long lockdown. People were confined to their cells nearly all day, served meals out of brown paper bags, denied visits and programming, and sometimes went weeks without fresh air or exercise. Amid the lockdown restrictions, Hoffmann never received a psychological exam in WCI, and did not receive all of his prescribed mental health and diabetes medications. He began showing signs of severe anxiety, paranoia, and poor judgment. He lost significant weight and suffered from insomnia. He was allowed just two phone calls over two months.
In June, Hoffmann refused to return to his cell after a shower, telling correctional officers that his cellmate had threatened him. As punishment for disobeying the order, he was handcuffed and taken to solitary confinement, where he declined rapidly. A man in a nearby cell reportedly overheard Hoffmann tell officers he couldn’t sleep and was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. Just days later, alone in his cell, Hoffmann hanged himself.
Hoffmann’s daughter, Megan Hoffmann Kolb, shares her father’s story widely, including with legislators, hoping to open the public’s eyes to the deadly realities of incarceration and solitary confinement. In February 2024, she filed an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that the department and several staff members displayed deliberate indifference to her father’s serious mental health needs.
“We want systemic changes,” Hoffmann Kolb tells The Progressive. “We are holding these people accountable, because what they did was wrong.”
Growing evidence shows that suicides in solitary confinement, like Hoffmann’s, are concerningly common.
In February 2024, the DOJ’s Inspector General published an investigation of deaths throughout the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Of 187 investigated suicides, eighty-six (46 percent) happened in a restrictive housing setting, including solitary confinement. Two reports by the Washington State Office of the Corrections Ombuds, from June 2024 and September 2024, found that at least 176 people attempted suicide while in solitary confinement in Washington prisons over the prior ten years. Fourteen of them died by suicide.
“It’s horrible,” said one anonymous incarcerated person in a video provided by the Ombuds to a local news station. “I’ve watched people get a hold of a safety razor, slice their throats. Within days, they’re unraveling, smearing feces, banging.” One of the report’s co-authors commented that it was “eye-opening to see the number of people [in solitary] who had self-harmed or attempted suicide or died by suicide.”
Wisconsin Department of Corrections
In April 2023, Dean Hoffmann was transferred into Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution. Two months later, in June, Hoffmann was taken to solitary confinement where he hanged himself. Growing evidence shows that suicides in solitary confinement, like Hoffmann’s, are concerningly common.
These recent reports add to a growing body of evidence confirming the link between solitary confinement and suicide. In New York State, the rate of suicide was more than five times higher among people in solitary confinement than in the rest of the prison population between 2015 and 2019, according to an analysis by the advocacy campaign #HALTsolitary. They also found that 43 percent of suicide attempts occurred in solitary confinement units.
Going back further, a 2014 study of New York City’s jail system found that the 7.3 percent of people who spent time in solitary confinement were responsible for 45 percent of all acts of potentially fatal self-harm. And in New Jersey, a 2014 study that analyzed twenty-six prison suicides found that twenty-five happened alone in a single cell, including twenty in specialized or restricted housing. In California, a 2008 study of prison suicides found that 73 percent occurred in single cells, including 46 percent in solitary confinement cells.
Although local jails, which have more turnover, can be harder to study than prisons, two-thirds of all known suicides in Louisiana prisons and jails from 2015 to 2021 occurred in solitary confinement, according to research by Loyola University New Orleans law professor Andrea Armstrong.
Solitary confinement even increases the likelihood of suicide after release from incarceration. People who spent any time in solitary—even a day or two—were 78 percent more likely to die by suicide in the first year after release from incarceration than similar people who never spent time in solitary.
Yet when incarcerated people self-harm or express suicidal thoughts, correctional staff typically place them on suicide watch—stark, barren cells which are essentially solitary confinement.
In 2023, at least four people died by suicide in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI), a collection of seven prison buildings on a single campus. Two were in solitary at the time.
Thirty-nine-year-old Dana Leyland was suffering withdrawal symptoms while awaiting trial on drug offenses. He was sent to solitary confinement, where he told staff he planned to kill himself. Leyland hanged himself with a bedsheet in his solitary confinement cell in April 2023, just three days after he was arrested.
Elsewhere at ACI, twenty-seven-year-old Brian Rodenas was repeatedly sent to solitary, despite his known history of severe mental illness. According to family members, Rodenas spent months in solitary for nonviolent infractions like hoarding medication and disobeying orders, even after telling prison staff repeatedly that he planned to kill himself. Rodenas hanged himself with a bedsheet on May 2, just two weeks after Leyland’s death.
“My son was begging for help and no one would help him,” Elizabeth DePina, Rodenas’s mother, said at a rally at the Rhode Island state house. “He had such a good heart, how could they treat him like that?”
In July 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island filed three ongoing lawsuits on behalf of family members who lost loved ones to suicide in ACI, including the families of Leyland and Rodenas. In March, a federal judge denied the state’s attempt to dismiss the Leyland lawsuit.
“Solitary confinement is a breeding ground for suicide,” Brandon Robinson, campaign manager of Stop Torture Rhode Island and a solitary survivor, tells The Progressive. “It only takes fifteen days for sensory deprivation to kick in.” He noted that the trauma of solitary can haunt people long after they’ve returned to the general prison population. Robinson’s organization supports the Reform Solitary Confinement Act, a Rhode Island bill that would cap the length of solitary stays and ban solitary outright for vulnerable populations, among other reforms.
Rhode Island is one of many places where suicides and other deaths have been a catalyst for solitary reform efforts. New York State enacted major solitary reforms in 2021, following a yearslong campaign led in part by families who lost loved ones to suicide in solitary.
“No family should have to endure the pain and suffering that we have had to go through with the loss of our only child,” Alicia Barraza said at a 2020 press conference advocating for that legislation. Her son, Benjamin Van Zandt, who struggled with mental illness, died by suicide at the age of twenty-one in a New York solitary confinement cell.
Families also testified before New York City Council members about their loved ones who died in the Rikers Island jail complex, pushing the council to adopt the solitary reforms that were ultimately passed—and then ignored by Mayor Adams.
In Wisconsin, Hoffmann Kolb and others who have lost family members to suicide in solitary hope their stories can garner change. “My mom has been writing to every legislator since the day my dad died, including the governor,” she says. “I just don’t think our society has enough understanding of what mental health actually is. If they did, they would understand more about how torturous solitary confinement can be.”
She hopes that families “continuing to talk about it will let society know what’s happening. And also let everybody that’s impacted now—the families and the people who are still incarcerated—know that there are people on the outside who want change.”
“They’re already sentenced to prison, and that’s the punishment,” she says. “They don’t need to be tortured.”