For this story, “solitary confinement” refers to what the state formally classifies as “restrictive housing.” While the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) says “solitary confinement” isn’t an official term, it is widely used by incarcerated people, advocates, and researchers.
Maryland used solitary confinement more in the last fiscal year than at any point in the previous six, according to the state’s annual Restrictive Housing Report.
Disciplinary segregation accounted for 9,486 placements in 2024, making up more than two-thirds of all restrictive housing. It also rose sharply, up 38% from the previous year. That rise occurred even as the state’s prison population continued to fall.
For Samuel Smalls, 49, the numbers reflect lived experience. He recently received a $185,000 settlement from DPSCS after filing a federal civil rights complaint for spending 308 days in solitary confinement.
Smalls said he couldn’t disclose the crime that sent him to prison, only that he is serving a life sentence without parole. WYPR could not find and confirm his original criminal case in Maryland Judiciary Case Search. His lawsuit focused solely on the conditions of his confinement.
But on a phone call from Jessup Correctional Institution, he spoke openly about what he endured in isolation.
“It’s sad, just sad,” he said.
According to his lawsuit, Smalls was sent to solitary for wearing jeans with pockets to court, a violation of prison rules. When the infraction was dismissed 11 days later, he should have been returned to the general population.
Instead, he remained in a cell about the size of a parking space for nearly 10 months. Most people held in restrictive housing spent 45 days or less in segregation, according to the report.
Greg Cui, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, a national civil-rights nonprofit that litigates abuses in the criminal legal system, said the prison attributed the delay to a lack of bed space, among other reasons.
For Smalls the difference between general population and solitary felt like going from life to stillness.
In the general population, he said, “you can walk to the yard, exercise, and have contact visits. None of those things are available in solitary confinement.” The colors were darker. The world shrank.
Studies show that solitary confinement causes serious physical and psychological harm. After spending 22 hours alone on weekdays, 24 on weekends, Smalls developed body aches, and even became pre-diabetic.
He added that long stretches in solitary leave people without mental-health support and unable to function once they return, to the community or to others inside prison walls.
“There’s no psychiatrists coming to spend time,” Smalls said. “How can you expect somebody to be a social being when you’ve deprived them of social contact for months and years on end?”
The 2024 restrictive housing report provides a detailed breakdown of who is held in isolation. The information is categorized by gender, race, pregnancy, and also includes mental-health status.
In a statement, a DPSCS spokesperson said the Division of Correction recently opened seven mental health housing units. He said doing so has shortened the time prisoners spend in restrictive housing.
Katie Pleiss, an Equal Justice Works fellow, also represented Smalls. She called him an “exceptional client” saying he had completed much of the legal legwork on his own.
"When I found this case last year, he had litigated it quite far,” said Pleiss. “He had affidavits from other incarcerated people, handwriting his complaint and his briefs.”
Both lawyers acknowledged the difficulty of running a prison, but said solitary confinement is often applied too harshly and broadly.
According to the report, disciplinary segregation is mostly for assault on another inmate (2,314 cases), disobeying orders (2,049), weapon-related offenses (1,707), or other disruptive acts (1,202).
“While restrictive housing placements are a necessity and frequently used tool in corrections, the Department is actively working — and seeing certain measures of success — toward reducing placements and their duration,” said Lowell Melser, a DPSCS spokesperson.
Cui argued the punishment should be used sparingly, if at all.
“Solitary confinement is akin to torture,” he said. “This is one example of using a tool that is like a sledgehammer to deal with a mundane problem. That mismatch is where unnecessary harm comes from.
”In recent years, measures to limit or ban arbitrary solitary confinement have stalled in the General Assembly, either being tabled, amended down, or failing to advance.
Smalls isn’t waiting on legislators to act. He plans to use the settlement for prison reform.
Though his future remains largely confined within prison walls, he said the settlement offers him a way to address the isolation he experienced, and that many others still do.
To learn more about how DPSCS is addressing the issue, see their statement below:
The Department has undertaken a series of initiatives to reduce reliance on restrictive housing:
- The Division of Correction has recently established seven mental health housing areas/units that have helped divert individuals who are struggling in general population from being placed onto restrictive housing, and to provide a supportive housing environment for those remaining on restrictive housing out of safety concerns. This has thus far proven successful in reducing the duration of time spent in restrictive housing.
- All Wardens have been instructed to review each of their incarcerated individuals (IIs) currently in restrictive housing for refusing a housing assignment to determine if it is necessary that they remain removed from the general population. Wardens generally have the authority to reduce sanctions for rule violations, even in cases of a guilty finding, if they believe it is in the best interest of the individual or the institution.
- For those II’s whose allegations have been confirmed and are able to be safely housed at another facility, a transfer will occur.
- If an II who can’t be safely housed with the general population at any of our facilities, the Department will consider either protective custody or working with another state to place the individual there.
- In rare instances where an II has been in restrictive housing for more than a year, the Commissioner of Correction must review their case and approve continuing the restrictive housing placement.
Further, the Department continues to focus on limiting how long individuals remain in restrictive housing by strengthening the review process around each placement. As a result, the average duration of disciplinary segregation has decreased by 46 percent since 2018; and the average duration of administrative segregation has decreased by 22.9 percent since 2018.
