INDIANA, HARDLY a bastion of bleeding-heart liberalism, became on Wednesday the latest state to curb the use in prisons of solitary confinement, an extreme, hellish and overused punishment. It follows President Obama, who on Monday announced reforms to prisoner isolation practices in federal prisons, and it joins California and New York as one of the latest states to submit to a legal settlement requiring changes. Indiana’s move is another sign of progress in ending a national scandal: the routine overuse of a practice that is akin to torture. But it took a class-action lawsuit to prompt the decision, and even then it promises insufficient change.

US President Barack Obama has said he will ban solitary confinement as a form of punishment for juvenile and low-level offenders in federal prisons.

As of Saturday, Rev. Edward Pinkney has been "segregated" (i.e. placed in solitary confinement and isolated from other prisoners and all visitors). The reason given was so trivial, it's obviously an excuse for retribution against Rev. Pinkney for exercising his First Amendment rights. We do not yet know how long the solitary confinement will last. He had already been in 24/7 "lockdown" for bogus charges concerning telephone use and the lockdown was supposed to end Nov. 25th.