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Good morning. The Prison Ombudsman reported yesterday that last year the number of prisoners who committed suicide while in segregation was the highest for nearly ten years. Segregation is not quite solitary confinement, but it is not very far off – prisoners can be locked up for more than 22 hours a day, with little chance for meaningful social engagement in the very short periods outside their cells, and very little to distract them within their cells. Eight prisoners died whilst in segregation in 2013-2014 – four of them were known to be ‘at risk of suicide or self-harm’. One man, segregated for his own safety after being threatened by other prisoners, asked for a book to occupy himself overnight, but was told he would have to wait until the next day. He was found hanged in the morning. At the very beginning of the Old Testament, in one of the creation stories in the book of Genesis, the writer has God declare: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone’ – and finding the other animals unsuitable as fitting companions for the man, He makes woman. Solitariness occurs again at the beginning of the New Testament, when Jesus, right at the outset of his ministry, goes to the wilderness for forty days and forty nights – to be tempted by the devil. Both stories make very clear that solitariness is regarded as irregular – it is ‘not good’ for Adam, and for Jesus it is a trial. Thomas Aquinas puts it neatly when he says that anyone who is not inclined to sociability is either worse or better than other humans – worse if he or she shuns human society, better if like the great ascetic saints, he or she can manage without it. Either way, it is not for the normal run of men and women. To put it in other terms, we are a social species and to shun or to be denied the company of others, goes against the grain. The prison service has a tough job. There is a need to contain disruptive prisoners, and to protect those who are vulnerable to violence from others. But worryingly, those who are most often subject to segregation, even long term segregation, are most often young prisoners, those with learning difficulties and mental health issues – and especially for these prisoners, segregation ought only ever to be a short term expedient to handle a difficult situation, since it is not a way of addressing their real needs. Indeed there is evidence that segregation exacerbates prisoners’ problems. Prisons have as one of their guiding principles the ideal of reforming offenders – restoring them to humanity, if you like. Subjecting prisoners to long periods of segregation, cutting them off from humanity, is unlikely to be an effective means to that end. Prisoners, like the rest of us, need to find a place in human society, for there is really no place to be human outside it.