Last week President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. On Thursday, Mr. Obama traveled to the medium-security El Reno Federal Correctional Institution near Oklahoma City to call for major reforms to the nation's criminal justice system, including a ban on isolating inmates in solitary confinement for months or years on end. We share that goal and hope the president's remarks will inspire Maryland lawmakers to redouble their efforts to abolish this cruel form of punishment in the state's prisons when the General Assembly meets in Annapolis next year.
State correctional officials have long denied that Maryland holds inmates in solitary confinement. But many of the punitive methods they do employ ā under such benign-sounding names as "administrative segregation," "disciplinary segregation" and "protective custody" ā amount to the same thing. All aim to cut off prisoners from human contact for protracted periods of time, a practice the United Nations Human Rights Council has condemned as "torture by another name.
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