One prisoner of Kansas' El Dorado Correctional Facility, who has compared solitary confinement to the “gates of hell” is both praising and criticizing a move to limit the use of solitary confinement.
As The Topeka Capital-Journal reports, the state of Kansas has been reorganizing its largest facilities to curtail solitary confinement.
Inmates at El Dorado Correction Facility, which houses the highest number of solitary prisoners, were told in a Feb. 23 memo that the prison would be installing a second bunk to cells that once contained a single inmate.
Kenneth Leek, a prisoner in solitary confinement at the El Dorado facility, is an outspoken critic of what the Kansas Department of Corrections calls restrictive housing, so he welcomes the change but also fears that violence between rival prisoners will escalate with the addition of the second bunks.
KDOC spokesman Todd Fertig said the state’s corrections department has a robust system for assessing who an inmate should and shouldn’t be placed with.