George Ruiz, a seventy-two-year-old inmate in California, has spent the last thirty-one years in solitary confinement, most of it in Pelican Bay State Prison. He has been held in a windowless cell, with virtually no human contact and no phone calls absent an emergency. He is let out for, at most, sixty to ninety minutes each day, during which periods he is kept in complete isolation. Ruiz has endured this inhuman treatment not for any prison misconduct, but solely because he is said to be affiliated with a Mexican gang. One expert who studied these conditions aptly termed them “social death.” ...

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