Solitary Confinement = Official Torture

"Prisons are not hotels required to treat their inmates as pampered guests. But they are required -- by the U.S. Constitution, no less -- to treat them humanely. One of the ways that departments of correction use to manage unruly prisoners does not meet that basic requirement.

Solitary confinement is the polite way of describing official torture. The "hole" conveys a better sense of what it means to be locked up in a tiny cell, as in Pennsylvania, for 23 hours out of 24, for months if not years on end."

                                          -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial, March 23, 2013