Long‐term consequences of being placed in disciplinary segregation†

• Author: Christopher Wildeman,Lars Højsgaard Andersen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12241
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020

Received: 27 April 2018 Revised: 18 October 2019 Accepted: 16 December 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.12241

ARTICLE

Long-term consequences of being placed

in disciplinary segregation*

Christopher Wildeman1,2 Lars Højsgaard Andersen2

1Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University,and ROCKWOOL Foundation Research Unit

2ROCKWOOL Foundation Research Unit

Correspondence

Christopher Wildeman,227C Day Hall, Office

oft he ViceProvost for Research, Cornell

University,Ithaca, NY 14853.

Email:christopher.wildeman@cornell.edu

Fundinginformation

RockwoolFoundation

∗Additionalsupporting information

canbe found in the full text tab for this

article in the WileyOnline Librar y at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/

crim.2020.58.issue-3/issuetoc.

Theaut horswould like to thank the anonymous

Criminologyreviewers and Co-Editor Brian D.

Johnsonfor their helpful feedback. The authors

thank the ROCKWOOLFoundation for pro-

vidingfunding. Sara Wakefield, Chris Muller,

AndyPapachristos, and seminar participants

atCor nell University,Princeton University,

the Universityof California—Berkeley, the

Universityof Chicago, Duke University,the

Universityof North Carolina, the University of

Texas,VanderbiltUniversity, and Washington

University—St.Louis provided excellent feed-

backon an earlier draft of this ar ticle (or on a

presentation of it).

Abstract

Being placed in restrictive housing is considered one of the

most devastating experiences a human can endure, yet a

scant amount of research has been conducted to test how

this experience affects core indicators of prisoner reentry

such as employment and recidivism. In this article, we use

Danish registry data, which allow for us to link penal con-

ditions to postrelease outcomes, to show how the reentry

outcomes of individuals placed in disciplinary segregation,

which is placement in restrictive housing because of disci-

plinary infractions, compare with those sanctioned for in-

prison offenses but not placed in segregation. The results

from matched difference-in-differences analyses show that

Danish inmates placed in disciplinary segregation experi-

ence larger drops in employment and larger increases in

the risk of being convicted of a new crime in the 3 years

after release from a correctional facility than do Danish

inmates who were sanctioned for a serious offense but not

placed in disciplinary segregation as a result. Because being

placed in disciplinary segregation, and restrictive housing

more broadly, is so common, these results indicate that

restrictive housing placement may be a key moderator of

the effects of incarceration that merits more attention from

criminologists, provided the associations shown here rep-

resent causal effects and generalize.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in

any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

© 2020 The Authors. Criminology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Society of Criminology

Criminology. 2020;58:423–453. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crim 423

424 WILDEMAN AND ANDERSEN

KEYWORDS

incarceration, inequality, registry data, restrictive housing, solitary

confinement

By all accounts, being in restrictive housing1is an extreme experience. Inmates who are placed in

restrictive housing exist in solitude for all but (at most) 1 to 2 hours per dayand complete all activities,

with the possible exceptions of bathing and taking exercise, in their cells (e.g., Haney, 2018; Kapoor

& Trestman, 2016, p. 200; Mears et al., 2019).

Restrictive housing generally takes one of three forms: 1) administrativesegregation, 2) disciplinary

segregation, or 3) protective custody.Administrative segregation often maps on to modern conceptions

of the “supermax” prison (e.g., Haney, 2018; Reiter, 2016). Rather than being linked with specific dis-

ciplinary infractions that take place in prison, inmates in administrative segregation are placed there

over concerns about their capacity to cause disruption, especially violent disruption, within the com-

munity.2Although estimating exposure to restrictive housing and the share of inmates placed in dif-

ferent types of restrictive housing is inordinately difficult because of data limitations, inmates placed

in administrative segregation almost certainly experience the greatest exposure to restrictive housing,

sometimes stretching to years or even decades. They are also probably most likely to remain in prison

for the remainder of their lives. In addition to the three forms, which represent the formal versions of

restrictive housing, informal restrictive housing may also occur,in which inmates are de facto confined

in solitude yet are just not recorded or counted as such.

Long durations in restrictive housing and low reentry rates to general society may be normal out-

comes for inmates in administration segregation, but inmates placed in disciplinary segregation and

protective custody likely have shorter stays in restrictive housing and are more likely to reenter society.

Inmates in disciplinary segregation are in restrictive housing as a sanction for disciplinary infractions;

protective custody is used when inmates request isolation for protection or are perceived by officials

to need to be kept in isolation for protection.

Academic research on restrictive housing has generally taken fourforms. The first has been focused

on the ethics of restrictive housing placement, with restrictive housing—more often called “solitary

confinement “in this literature—considered to be cruel and unusual punishment that must be abolished

(e.g., Bennion, 2015; Gawande, 2009). The second, which is related but more empirical, has been

focused on the consequences of exposure to restrictive housing—often extremely long exposure in

“supermax” facilities—for the mental health of inmates. Although some working in this area have

claimed that there is definitive evidence that restrictive housing damages—or even destroys—mental

health (e.g., Haney, 2018), others have argued that the lack of appropriate data makes it difficult to

determine exactly how, if at all, restrictive housing placement affects mental health (e.g., Kapoor &

Trestman, 2016; Labrecque, 2016; Morgan et al., 2016). The third form has been focused on how

restrictive housing placement rates affect rates of violence against inmates and staff in the facility (e.g.,

Briggs, Sundt, & Castellano, 2003) and on how placement in restrictive housing affects the probability

of future infractions (e.g., Labrecque & Smith, 2019; Morris, 2016). As such, the third area of research

has been broadly aimed at how restrictive housing affects safety and security in facilities, an issue that

is obviously of the utmost importance to those working in corrections. A fourth and final area has been

focused on how placement in restrictive housing affectspostrelease outcomes, with special attention on

recidivism (e.g., Butlter, Steiner, Makarios, & Travis, 2019; Mears & Bales, 2009). Although prisoner

1We use the term “restrictive housing” rather than the terms “solitary confinement” or “the hole.”

2Of course, in-prison infractions could also play a role in placement in administrative segregation.