Solitary confinement

===Protective custody===
{{main|Protective custody}}
Solitary confinement is used on incarcerated individuals when they are considered a danger to themselves or others. It is also used on individuals who are at high risk of being harmed by others, for example because they are [[transgender]], have served as a [[witness]] to a crime, or have been convicted of crimes such as [[child sexual abuse|child molestation]] or [[child abuse|abuse]]. This latter form of isolation is known as [[protective custody]], and can be either voluntary or involuntary. 

Though proponents of solitary have often expressed the belief that solitary confinement promotes safety in correctional facilities, there is substantial evidence that points to the contrary.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rain Tree |first1=Sara |title=Solitary Confinement and Prison Safety |url=https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SW-Fact-Sheet-4-Prison-Safety-v230228.pdf |publisher=Solitary Watch |access-date=9 July 2023 |date=2023}}</ref> In 2002, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America, chaired by [[John Joseph Gibbons]] and [[Nicholas Katzenbach]], found that "the increasing use of high-security segregation is counter-productive, often causing violence inside facilities and contributing to recidivism after release."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Confronting_Confinement.pdf |title=Confronting Confinement: A Report of The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons |date=8 June 2006 |author=John J. Gibbons |author2=Nicholas de B. Katzenbach |access-date=18 June 2011 |format=PDF <!--publisher-The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons--> |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130228043635/http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Confronting_Confinement.pdf |archive-date=28 February 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Shira E. Gordon has argued that solitary confinement "has not come close to solving the very problem it was meant to reduce: [[prison violence]]." In support of this view, Gordon cites a 2012 study showing that the rate of violence in California prisons is 20 percent higher than it was in 1989, when California's first supermax prison opened. Gordon also cites the Northern District of California court in ''Toussaint v. McCarthy'', which found that solitary confinement "increase[d] rather than decrease[d] antisocial tendencies among inmates" at [[Folsom State Prison|Folsom]] and [[San Quentin State Prison|San Quentin]] State Prisons in California.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gordon |first1=Shira E. |title=Testimony Presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights 'Reassessing Solitary Confinement II: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences' |url=https://solitarywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Shira-Gordon-solitary-confinement-submission1.pdf |access-date=28 June 2023}}</ref>