President Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons on Monday and adopted recommendations to modify the use of the practice for adult prisoners.

Similar concern for inmates' rehabilitation underlies Obama's new rules on solitary confinement, which are in line with a Department of Justice report issuing new "guiding principles" for the use of solitary in federal prisons.

I am hopeful that state prisons-which hold far and away more prisoners than the federal system-will follow the lead of both President Obama and the ACA and move away from this expensive and psychologically damaging practice.

In his op-ed, Mr Obama noted the case of Kalief Browder, who was arrested at age 16 on suspicion of stealing a backpack.

NPQ has written about the overuse and the damaging effects of solitary confinement, including the penchant for inmates who have been confined to solitary to reoffend if released. In recent weeks, IL and OR, in response to lawsuits, have announced they will exclude seriously mentally ill inmates from solitary confinement, and last month New York state reached a five-year, $62 million settlement with the New York Civil Liberties Union in which it pledged to significantly cut the number of prisoners in solitary as well as the maximum time they could stay there.

As studies continue to show that the brains of young people are still developing well into their teenage years, the negative impact of solitary confinement on that development has been a key rationale for removing it as a punitive option. "The recommendations produced by the Department of Justice represent a momentous break with this shameful legacy, and an acknowledgement that tens of thousands of human beings should not be condemned to live in a cage, hidden in the shadows of the US criminal justice system".

The president stressed that the change would affect "some 10,000" inmates being held in federal prisons, which amounts to only 10 percent the total of 100,000 people serving time in solitary confinement across the country. The remainder are imprisoned in states that have already applied the 2012 ruling retroactively. "That is not going to make us safer".

CNN reports that the president wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he arrived to his decision of banning juvenile solitary confinement after reviewing it in detail. "It's an affront to our common humanity", Obama wrote Monday.

"We believe that when people make mistakes", he said, "They deserve the opportunity to remake their lives". He also stated that prisoners could not be placed in solitary for more than 60 days as punishment for their first offense (currently, the limit is 365 days).

Obama has made criminal justice reform a priority as he aims to cement his presidential legacy. In June of 2015, two years after his release, Browder committed suicide.