Studies show long-term solitary confinement can cause mental health problems.
LIVINGSTON, Texas – In February 2024, prison officials launched a new group recreation program within the Polunsky Unit, the state’s notoriously strict death row. The trial program increases inmates’ activities outside of solitary confinement, allowing them to exercise together, watch television, play games, and practice their religion.
Until now, death row inmates in the state had been constrained to solitary confinement for 22 to 24 hours a day, leaving them with little social interaction. The decision from officials at the Polunsky Unit expresses signs of a greater nationwide prison reform movement, in which the prison system is criticized for cruel and unusual punishment.
The group recreation program was initiated by Daniel Dickerson, a top agency official within the Polunsky Unit, who sought to increase privileges for inmates who had expressed good behavior. According to the article “No shackles, no cuffs: Texas death row loosens solitary confinement for first time in years” published by the Houston Chronicle, Dickerson stated that “It definitely helped give them something to look forward to.” Inmates described the recreation group as a “community,” upheld by the collective responsibility to maintain good behavior.
Inmates were well aware that their actions could result in the cancellation of the entire program—for everyone. Dickerson noted that, “All it takes is one bad event, and that could shut it down for a long time. And they understand that because they’ve been behind those doors for so long — they know what they have to lose probably more than anybody else.”
Dickerson’s program is particularly impactful in the state of Texas, as it is the second stint at death row reform. The first period of reform came in the early 1980s, after the lawsuit Ruiz v. Estelle ruled to improve prison conditions and establish greater federal oversight.
However, increased privileges were short-lived for the condemned death row inmates, due to a “Hollywood-style death row escape in 1998,” which “prompted prison officials to move death row to a newer prison in Livingston, tossing the men in solitary, taking away their prison jobs, and eliminating their access to rehabilitative programs.”
Other states have also introduced death row reforms, including Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, South Carolina, and Virginia, where death row restrictions have been loosened. Reform has focused on reducing solitary confinement by “allowing them to spend more time out of the cell and even hold prison jobs.” In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been “dismantling his state’s death row—the nation’s largest” and “moving its residents into general population.”
These movements are gaining momentum in the United States as studies on solitary confinement and prison conditions have become increasingly publicized. The Houston Chronicle states that “long-term solitary confinement can cause memory problems, panic attacks, paranoia and psychosis.” Solitary confinement also increases the likelihood of premature death, as some inmates “turn to suicide and self-harm.”
David Fathi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, describes the movement for prison reform as an “unmistakable trend away from some of the gratuitously painful conditions that have historically been inflicted on death-sentenced prisoners.” Fathi believes that the movement has been spurred from more than just litigation. Instead, there is a realization that “as a whole, death-sentence prisoners don’t really require these restrictions.”
Craig Haney’s 2020 article in the Northwestern University Law Review studied the effects of isolated confinement for more than three decades. The study found “‘unquestionably sound’ scientific support for radically dialing back use of the practice.”
The Houston Chronicle’s article “No shackles, no cuffs: Texas death row loosens solitary confinement for first time in years” includes an interview with death row inmate Ruby Medrano, who was one of the roughly 150 prisoners selected for the group recreation program. Medrano was sentenced to die at 26 years old after “he provided the guns used in a 2003 drug-related armed robbery that left 6 dead.” His conviction fell under the law of parties, “a controversial Texas law that holds everyone involved in a crime equally responsible for its outcome.”
In the interview, Medrano described his time in solitary confinement before the implementation of Warden Dickerson’s reform, stating that it was “just dark,” and that “I would rather be in a barn with farm animals than the way it was here.” For Medrano and the other inmates of the Polunsky Unit, the new program has created a community and a source of hope. In the words of fellow inmate Robert Roberson, the program made him “feel a little bit human again” after decades in solitary confinement.
Despite the improvements to the conditions of death row, the future remains unclear for Dickerson’s reforms and programs alike. The Houston Chronicle reports that in early 2025, the prison attempted to open a second group recreation program, but later “suspended it for unclear reasons.”
