Credit: Daniel Schonherr/Eyeem

Despite a growing movement to end the practice of isolating humans in tiny cells for hours and days on end, prisoners are still held in solitary confinement in prisons and jails across the United States — including children. Consider Palm Beach, Florida, where a class-action lawsuit filed in a federal district court last week on behalf of three teenage boys held in the county jail is challenging the practice of placing children in solitary confinement with disturbing allegations against the local sheriff’s department and school board.

According to a complaint filed by human rights lawyers this month, boys aged 16 and 17 are held in solitary confinement at the Palm Beach County Jail for 23 or 24 hours a day, sometimes for weeks and even months on end. They are kept in quiet, tiny cells that contain only “a combined toilet and sink, a stainless steel desk and bolted-down stool, a steel bed with a thin mattress, and an overhead fluorescent light.” The bolted metal doors have two Plexiglas windows […]

Read the Full Article