Solitary Confinement Effects, Practices, and Pathways toward Reform

Jules Lobel is the Bessie Mckee Walthour Endowed Chair Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. He was President of the Center for Constitutional Rights from 2011-2017, a prominent constitutional and human rights NGO based in New York City and is still a cooperating attorney with that organization. He argued Wilkinson v. Austin in the United States Supreme Court, addressing the due process rights of Ohio prisoners held in prolonged solitary confinement in that State's supermax prison. He is currently lead counsel, on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights in Ashker v. Brown, a class action challenge to prolonged solitary confinement in California that has resulted in more than 1500 prisoners being released from solitary confinement.

Peter Scharff Smith is Professor in the Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. He has studied history and social science, holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen and has also done research at the University of Cambridge and at the Danish Institute of Human Rights. Smith has published books and articles in Danish, English and German on prisons, punishment and human rights, including works on prison history, prisoner's children and the use and effects of solitary confinement in prisons.