Listen now (33 mins) | Listen Now On any given day US prisons and jails hold between 80,000 and 120,000 men, women and children in solitary confinement. A significant percent of these individuals enter solitary with a mental disease and a similar percent of those held in isolation for extended periods of time develop severe psychiatric illnesses that include self amputation and suicidality. (US prisons and jails constitute the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country.) The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Juan E. Mendez, has concluded solitary confinement for more than 15 days constitutes torture. In Hell is a Very Small Place, Voices from Solitary Confinement," edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway and Sarah Shourd, 16 former and current solitary confinement inmates discuss their experience in solitary and two physicians and three professors (in law, political science and philosophy) discuss its physical and psychological effects and legal justification.