Judge Grants Injunction in Juvenile Solitary Confinement Case

Rutherford County will have to stop putting using solitary confinement as a punishment for children, at least until a lawsuit challenging the practice is resolved.

U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger granted a preliminary injunction yesterday in a case filed last year by the mother of a 15-year-old boy — a pre-trial detainee with developmental disabilities — who had been placed in isolation for 23 hours per day for five days. The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee joined the case soon after and Trauger certified a class in the suit last month, creating hundreds of possible plaintiffs. The injunction applies only to Rutherford County.

According to court documents,128 juveniles at the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center were placed in isolation from March 17, 2016, to Oct. 7, 2016, for punitive or disciplinary reasons. 

Trauger's ruling means that policy is on hold for now. 

"Being locked in a concrete cell alone for 23 hours a day with nothing but a mattress and a toilet can create lasting damage for a young person's psychological, social and physical development," says attorney Mark J. Downton, a cooperating attorney with ACLU-TN. "We are pleased that the court has recognized that subjecting young people to solitary confinement for disciplinary purposes is inhumane."

In his final year in office, then-President Barack Obama banned juvenile solitary confinement in the federal prison system and wrote that although he believed it was necessary in some instances, subjecting prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement is " an affront to our common humanity."

He cited the now-infamous case of Kalief Browder who was arrested in 2010, at the age of 16, accused of stealing a backpack, and sent to Rikers Island to await a trial that never came. He was released after three years, having spent nearly two of them in solitary confinement. In 2015, Browder committed suicide.