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Cancer Answers is hosted by Dr. Anees Chagpar, Associate Professor of Surgical Oncology and Director of The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and Dr. Francine Foss, Professor of Medical Oncology. The show features a guest cancer specialist who will share the most recent advances in cancer therapy and respond to listeners questions. Myths, facts and advances in cancer diagnosis and treatment are discussed, with a different focus eachweek. Nationally acclaimed specialists in various types of cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment discuss common misconceptions about the disease and respond to questions from the community.Listeners can submit questions to be answered on the program at canceranswers@yale.edu or by leaving a message at (888) 234-4YCC. As a resource, archived programs from 2006 through the present are available in both audio and written versions on the Yale Cancer Center website.

Yale Report Tries To Count People Held In Solitary Confinement

A solitary confinement cell at New York City's Rikers Island jail.
Bebeto Matthews
/
AP
A solitary confinement cell at New York City's Rikers Island jail.

A cell the size of a parking space is where more than 60,000 prisoners nationwide are being held in solitary confinement. That’s according to a study by Yale Law School and the Association of State Correctional Administrators released Wednesday. And there could be more people who were not counted because states like Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont couldn’t provide data.

This is one of the first national surveys to see who is put into solitary, how long, and why because each state has its own system for collecting data on prisoners.

Judith Resnik, an author on the study and a professor at Yale Law, says she wants to work with states to find out what kind of data they need to reduce the use of solitary confinement.

“We hope this report will help the states that are not yet collecting information to collect more information and to make it accessible digitally so that people can understand it, so that they, the states themselves, can understand who they’ve got and why they’re there.”

Resnik says the Association of Correctional Administrators, who runs the prisons, say solitary confinement is expensive, dangerous to the mental health of prisoners and dangerous for corrections officers who deal with people held in isolation.

In Connecticut, 128 people, or less than 1 percent, of the prison population is held in solitary. New York State has more than 4,000 people, or 9 percent of prisoners, held there. Maine correctional facilities did not respond to the request for data. Vermont and Rhode Island provided some data, but were limited by old record keeping systems for prisoners.

This report comes from the New England News Collaborative, eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Copyright 2016 WSHU

Cassandra Basler oversees Connecticut Public’s flagship daily news programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and coordinates breaking news coverage on the air, online and in your morning email inbox. Her reporting has aired nationally on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Here & Now.

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