but if you put chlorine glass through, it will turn it white. but it will turn the red chalk white x you'll lose the pigment. so while the new technology is good at nailing down precisely over how bad the degradation has been. . >> maybe you've seen it in the movies. small windless cells. prisoners allowed out only an hour a day. isolation from other inmates. solitary is still a widely used pinment but now prisoners are fighting back against its use. in courts, even through hunger strike. it's the "inside story."

>> hello, i'm ray suarez. prisoners have called it a living death. the common shorthand is shoe for security housing units. using segregation as bunment or as they say keeping the other prisoners safe. shu syndrome includes paranoia, hallucination, anxiety. 200 inmates at the pelican bay facility in california have been cleared by a federal judge to bring a class action lawsuit

alleging that solitary violates their rights under the constitution. the state of california fought against allowing prisoners to have status as a class , and the federal judge's ruling could end or curtail the use of solitary confinement. >> when they're a threat to others it is within the rights of prison guards to isolate that prisoner. so high security prisons use solitary confinement as a means of protection and a way to secure the prison as a whole or punish violations of prison rules. gang members are most often segregated this way regardless of their behavior or criminal acts. prisoner are confined to their cells 22 hours a day often without a window. prisoners are remoting monitored. california's pelican state

prison is a maximum security prison where 500 inmates have been locked in solitary for more than ten years. another 78 has spent two decades confined to a 10 x 8 cell. today a federal judge allowed prisoners to join a lawsuit . arguing that solitary is cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of their eighth amendment rights. experts in bringing the lawsuit found long term solitary confinement brought psychiatric morbidity

. >> now granted the people who inhabit the nation's prisons are not the most sympathetic population. routinely heard in debates over prisoners rights you hear i'd rather worry about the victims. but we're moving away the extremely long sentences that were so much envogue these prisoners are more likely to be out in society some day, does solitary confinement even work , or is it the only tool handy. that's this story on "inside story." our guests

. >> anthony, let me start with you. most people, almost all the people watching this program have never experienced anything like it . the sun comes up, maybe you see it, maybe you don't. what is a day like solitary like? >> it starts out at 3:00 in the morning. they come through to wake you up to feed you breakfast. it macon assist of maybe one egg, one bi biscuit, and jelly. the biscuit is hard and the egg is cold. that's how your day start off. then they cut the lights on you about 5:00 in the morning. the lights stay on. if you're allowed to go out for

one hour a day. they handcuff you and you walk around like a wounded animal because there is nothing else you can do. there is no work out commitment or anything. then after that they take you back in your cell. that's your whole day. now you hope that they'll come and give a shower some time soon at least before they feed you again because you've been out there, you're sweaty. whatever. but that's up to the officer's discretion. really they don't have to give a shower more than three times a week. really that's what they do. you have this 8 x 10 cage. you have a steel bunk, and then at the top of that back wall there is a little slit that looks like a little window up there, but you can make a fist and you can't even touch it because it's that small. if you want to see anything you

have to roll up your mattress and stand up there because it's that high to see just the sky. that's the only way that it's day or night. the sun will come through that little slit. or you may be lucky to have a radio. someone may be able to purchase it for you from the outside. that's your whole day. after that you have to be creative. that's when guys start to let their minds play tricks on them. and all of a sudden you hear shouting and guys becoming depressed. all kinds of emotions setting in because there is nothing to do. you're behind four walls. just sitting there. at some point it feels like the walls are closing in on. >> you on. >> there was a study on

prisoners who spent a long time in solitary confinement. pending nervous breakdown, paranoia, fantasy and impulse control problems. you were in solitary for a long time. does that list sound familiar to you? >> i witnessed all of that. some of the things i went through myself. particularly with memory loss. i'm out here today, but i have a hard time remembering things. i have to write things down for myself because in a matter of seconds i'll forgot what it was that i was trying to think of. ptsd. i went through my bout of ptsd. i was hyper sensitive when i got out. everything drew out so many emotions i would always lose control of my emotions. loneliness. nobody knew what i was going through. i felt alone, by myself. solitary confinement doesn't do anything but break your will to live.

if you get out one day there are so many lingering effects that sometimes it's scary out here. i've been out nine and a half years and i'm still working through the issues that i had, it has been very scary at times. >> martin horn you were overseeing the confinement of a relatively large population of prisoners. as a tool what is solitary for? >> let me start off that the conditions that anthony describes are totally unacceptable. so i would say solitary confinement is nery necessary. --never necessary or justified. there are cases when prisoners need to be separated from other prisoners if there is fighting or engaged in predatory behavior you have to separate them for protection of other inmates. and when prisoners break the rules there have to be

consequences. ideally prisons must have more tools in the tool belt, but there are behaviors--i've seen inmates rape other inmates, stab other inmates, kill other inmates. first of all, there has to be a punishment for that. there is a jail inside the jail, but there should never be conditions where inmates experience the extreme depravation that was described. >> is that really the difference between segregation, that is separating somebody out from population versus putting them in a blank room, not allowing them to read or talk to anybody? >> i think the corrections officials remove a prisoner from the population the correction

official assumes a higher sense of well-being because of this debilitating effects of this isolation. especially where it's not punitive. it's long-term administrative, preventive, i suspect the case in the pelican bay case, that's what california will claim, there is no reason for the prisoner to experience those kinds of punitive effects. there is no reason why the inmate should not have a normal bed, access to television or radio if the prisoner does not have contact with other inmates, then he should have contact with staff. it becomes the obligation of the prison to bring in recreation specialists to facility higher family visiting. once the i the inmate has

served the punishment, there so no reason why he should not have access to telephone calls. there is no excuse to prevent an inmate access to daylight. and he should be given the greatest opportunity to go outside and to recognize create. >> let me turn to david at this point because it's been described as constitutional issue under the eighth amendment. what makes this more than a bad idea but something that violates their human rights? >> literally a couple of hundred years of research done on what isolation does to people. because of illness or because they were in prison. findings all over the world from different decades, different countries are incredibly

consistent. isolation, depravation of human contact damages people. often irreversebly. particularly for people who have pre-existing vulnerability. that's why we believe voluntary confinement beyond a certain point violates the eighth amendment. >> these are inmates that who have committed crimes. >> it's a misconception that solitary confinement house the worse of the worst. but the vast majority in solitary don't fit that description. in california you will be sent to solitary, it's mandatory, if you are classified as a member

or associate of a prison gang. you don't have to do anything for that to happen. it could happen based on who you have your picture taken with, the books you read. the tattoos you have. so it has nothing to do in most cases with the crime that landed the prisoner in solitary in the first case. >> we'll talk about how this kind of segregation, solitary confinement is being used today in prisons across america. is it being used in lieu of mental health treatment? this is "inside story."

>> this is "inside story." i'm ray suarez. at the pelican bay prison in

california, now home to a class action lawsuit against solitary confinement. 150 inmates have been in solitary for 10 to 20 years. we're looking at the use of administrative solitary or isolation in this program. martin horn, if we have suspicions that any one inmate has mental health problems are we able to supply as a society knowing what you know about the prisons across the country, do we supplemental health treatment to the degree that is needed for the prison population? >> i would say for the most part not. there are certainly exceptions around the country where there is high quality care and adequate care and ample care. but for the most part prisons and jails throughout the country have really been overwhelmed by the number of

people with mental illness. they were never equipped to service that need, they never caught up, and many don't understand what they need to do. this is a huge problem, one of the first things one should do before--again, let's be clear, solitaire confinement, the extreme isolation that anthony described should never be used. even before you put a person in any form of segregation you really ought to rule out mental illness, and if there is mental illness, you must treat that. oftentimes the behavior , again to go back to the issue that you raised earlier, why do people go to segregation in california, a person should not go to segregation because of their associations. the only reason to segregate a person is really their behavior. there has to be evidence of misbehavior that justifies that kind of separation.

even where that is so, it's often the case that the behavior is a symptom of the mental illness . >> martin is right. in a sense this is not the fault of prison officials. they have been left for holding the bag for society's mental health. once people get into prison they often act out in ways that annoy other prisoners and staff, so they tend to work their way into solitary confinement facilities where we find anywhere from a third to a half of prisoners in solitary confinement are suffering from mental illness. >> anthony in colorado a previous director of corrections was killed by a man who had been released from prison after a

long stretch in solitary with no treatment coming out of that. he was put right out on to the streets. are you able to function like a normal person after you've been by years for 23 hours a day? >> first of all i will say that our prison system has become a danger to our society by releasing men worse off than they were when they went in. that's a big problem. our prison system is releasing men worse off than they were when they went in because they're being housed in solitary confinement. when i was exonerated i walked out from solitary confinement the on to the streets on the same day. it was good for me that i had

such a support system around me throughout the whole ordeal that i was able to deal with it, but that's not the case for most people. when you walk out, you walk out with a lot of baggage, and on top of that they don't provide you any tools to be productive once you walk out. it's a recipe for disaster. there is no transition so a person can come out to be productive. they don't educate them or give any kind of tools to come out here and be productive citizens. all they do is set them up. they put them in solitary confinement, i mean, send them through hell and then release them. >> you were in prison for a long time. how long did it take you after coming out of solitary to feel like yourself again. >> i've been out three and a half years, astill don't feel like myself again. i still feel comfortable when i was by myself. that was not me before i was incarcerated. i still go through sleepless nights.

you don't get but two and a half to three hours of sleep at tight because of all the sleep depravation. i still deal with issues. i can't put a time frame on it. it's just that i have a good support system around me that allows me to vent when i need to vent. and is there for me when i need a shoulder to cry on. but there is no timetable. >> with we're going to take a short break right now. when we come back we'll talk about the momentum across the country taking a second look at solitary confinement . >> now inroducing, the new al jazeea america mobile news app. get our exclusive in depth, reporting when you want it. a global perspective wherever you are.

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>> welcome back to inside story. i'm ray suarez. some states have started to back away from the widespread use of solitary confinement in state prisons. the federal judge has just cleared the way of inmates from a california prison to sue for violation of their eighth amendment . anthony spent eight years in solitary confinement, part of 18 years that he spent in prison for a crime he did not commit. david, does this california case has the potential

to be binding on other courts. >> it won't be binding on just this one prison, but how other judges have ruled in cases that are factually similar. it does have the chance to make precedence in that sense. there comes a time when being oh locked in a windowless box the size of a parking space violates the eighth amendment. >> martin horn when you look across the literature, a lot of states are reconsidering , is there a momentum for the reexamination of the use of voluntary, or are there so few tools that it will stick with us even among administrators who don't want to use it? >> i think both things are true. there is no question that the people i speak to, my colleagu

colleagues, correctional administrators all over the country understand the debilitating effects of extreme isolation, and for the most part many of them in the state level, county jails are taking steps to draw the lines, for reducing the term and for including the condition. notwithstanding that there will always be some residual number of prisoners for whom i said earlier that isolation will be necessary or separation will be necessary. but extreme sensory depravation of the time that anthony described is going to be replaced. correctional administrators are going to have to make demands of

their elected officials, their legislative bodies for the funds to insure that they can both keep prisoners safe and keep them healthy and sane. >> anthony, how do you punish men who are already being punished, some of whom are pretty bad customers. what is it that should be done now that you've lived this that works. >> in situations you have to separate inmates. in any situation that's dangerous. whether it's dangerous to foreinmate or to himself. but when you do that, you have to put in steps to help them get back in population such as counseling them, find out what the problem is and then counseling them back into population. it should not be a point of no return that when go into solitary confinement, and that's it. it should be a situation where

it calms down a situation, but then once you get that person, you coach that person back into society. you coach--that's all you do, counsel and there has to be something wrong for it to be a situation any way. so find out what the situation is, find out what his mental state is. that's when you can evaluate, assess, and know exactly what you need to do with this inmate. you don't put them in a hole and leave them there until you release them back into society. that's no good. >> you were inside for a long time. as you mentioned you were exonerated and walked out of prison a free man. but what did you do to be put in segregation in the first place. >> that's the way we were housed. i was on texas death row. that's the way you're housed. 23 hours a day you're on solitary confinement. then if you do something while you're being housed, they take to you jail, which means that they take even more of whatever little privileges you have away

from you. >> so because you were on death row you were already in solitary. >> yes, that's the way they house. >> that was ten years of your life, anthony? >> i would say more than ten. but since i can't put an actual number on it, i would say more than ten, but i said 18.5 years and most of it was in solitary confinement, because that's the way you're housed. >> thank you all, fascinating conversation. that brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. thanks for joining us. the program may be over, but the conversation continues. we want to hear what you think about the issues raised on this or on any day's show. you can log on to our facebook page. you can send us your thoughts on twitter. our handle is aj inside story am or @ray suarez

news. from washington, i'm ray suarez. >> for me, and the fellow leaders to ensure we are in lock step going forward. >> united front, the president and the allies are putting the pressure on russia over ukraine. >> russia's president seized the moment and opened the talked with kiev. you are watching al jazeera live from london. three of the imprisoned journalists appear in a court. the hunt is continuing for the