March 16, 2015  By Cara Tabachnick

Inmates in the federal prison system who suffer from mental illness are routinely kept in solitary confinement for extensive periods without proper treatment, according to the first-ever audit of the Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) segregation policies.

The 250-page-plus report, completed in December, but not made public until now, detailed numerous areas in which the BOP was failing its mentally ill inmates, but did not offer concrete solutions on how to alleviate the use of solitary confinement….

….A copy of the audit was obtained by The Crime Report. Among the most disturbing findings were:

• A large number of inmates in solitary confinement need mental health treatment, but aren’t receiving it;
• No protocol exists to identify inmates with mental illness who should be kept out of solitary confinement;
• Inmates often receive a mental health diagnosis by medical students or interns who are not trained in psychiatry. Once diagnosed, they rarely receive follow-up reassessments or proper medication;
• No reentry programs or means of tracking for inmates coming out of segregation exist.

The audit was conducted over a period of two years after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) chaired the first ever hearing on segregation in the nation’s jails and prisons before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in 2012. Read the FULL Article with links to the report here