This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

All right, and next up we have Diana shouting out to the Polonski unit.

Um, Hito, it's Mamadi.

I know it sounds kind of different.

I'm very sick right now.

I've diagnosed pneumonia, I've been sick already for quite some time now.

This is the voice of a woman calling into a radio show on the Texas Station KPFA.

She has a personal message for a prison in me.

Anyway, I want to tell you Hito that Mamadi loves you.

I always think of you and of it is getting harder and harder.

I know I'm not the most surprised you're going to get mad at me, but I can't help but

feels so much love for you.

Calling into a program like this is one of the few ways for spouses and parents and children

to communicate with prisoners, especially inmates and solitary confinement.

Many prisoners in solitary have been found guilty of heinous crimes including murder, rape,

terrorism, but here's something you might not know.

Some are there because they're difficult to manage or because of bureaucratic inertia.

While judges and juries decide whether someone should go to prison, a decision that can

be appealed in court, typically it's prison officials who decide whether someone should

be in solitary confinement.

In recent years, both liberals and conservatives worried about the psychological and financial

costs of long term solitary confinement have raised questions about the practice.

...