Only Some Correctional Staff Being Taught How to Handle Traumatized Inmates

Pennsylvania was the first state to institute the practice of confining prisoners alone in single cells. It started when a jail in Philadelphia became Eastern State Penitentiary, the country’s first state prison, in 1790. That was one year before the Eighth Amendment prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, and 223 years before the DOJ found the state’s use of solitary violated that amendment.