Ban Solitary Confinement

Karen James with Bob Joondeph, Executive Director of Disability Rights Oregon. DRO is an organization that works to uphold the legal rights of people with disabilities. Disability Rights Oregon will introduce a bill that will stop solitary confinement for persons with serious mental illness incarcerated in Oregon prisons. Although the United Nations calls it torture, 80,000 prisoners across the United States are in solitary confinement. This includes our youth, pregnant women, and people with mental illness locked in small, windowless cells with no contact for the major part of each day. The negative psychological effects of isolation are well documented.
Disability Rights Oregon http://droregon.org/
United Nations News https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40097&;Cr=torture&Cr1=%20ForceRecrawl:%200  
ODOC Managing Mental Illness in Prison http://www.oregon.gov/DOC/OMR/pages/index.aspx
ODOC Feb 2015 Legislative presentation-attachment 
SB 739 https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2015R1/Measures/Overview/SB0739