Florida Sentinel Bulletin

   President Obama during his visit at Encino Prison last year.

   Kalief Browder, a Black 16-year-old who was arrested in 2010 and spent almost two years in solitary confinement in New York City’s Rikers Island jail before his release in 2013 and eventual suicide two years later.

President Barack Obama in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday announced that he is banning solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons, citing concerns about its harmful psychological effects.

The move comes amid a national movement demanding criminal justice reform, which was sparked by numerous high-profile police killings in recent years.

In the opinion piece, the President also said solitary confinement could no longer be used as a punishment for low-level infractions. He said the package of changes would include an expansion of treatment for mentally ill prisoners and an increase in the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells.

He said the changes would affect some 10,000 federal prisoners and stemmed from a review of the practice he directed the U.S. Justice Department to conduct last summer.

The President cited the story of Kalief Browder, a Black 16-year-old who was arrested in 2010 and spent almost two years in solitary confinement in New York City’s Rikers Island jail before his release in 2013 and eventual suicide two years later.

Solitary confinement, President Obama wrote, is “increasingly overused on people such as Kalief, with heartbreaking results — which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem.”