Virginia prison officials say they eliminated solitary confinement. Inmates say they just gave it a new name. - Virginia Mercury

Virginia prison officials say they eliminated solitary confinement. Inmates say they just gave it a new name. 'It's all very Hannibal Lecter-ish'
Virginia Mercury by Ned Oliver
January 14, 2019

​Virginia prison officials say they’re on the leading edge of corrections reform for “operating without the use of solitary confinement.”

But Derek Cornelison, a 34-year-old inmate at Red Onion, one of the state’s two supermax prisons in Wise County, says he and dozens of other prisoners have remained isolated in tiny cells for 22 to 24 hours a day for years — a level of confinement increasingly viewed as cruel, inhumane and a violation of international human rights standards.

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