All politicians want to be remembered as great leaders—extolled in history books for their contributions to society. However, all politicians also must balance their own opinions with those of the public. Given our electorally-charged environment, it’s encouraging when an elected official casts aside political calculations to engineer meaningful political and social change. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) did just that on March 26^th, when he introduced a bill that would create a blue ribbon commission in charge of conducting an 18-month review of our nation’s prisons and examining some of its heavily publicized shortcomings.

Webb has outlined various facts that pinpoint the system’s major pitfalls. For instance, the United States is home to five percent of the world’s population yet incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s documented prisoners. (Figures are obviously unavailable for secret prisoners.) Other sobering facts include the 1200 percent rise in the number of incarcerated drug offenders in the past 30 years, as well as the presence of four times as many mentally ill individuals in jail than in institutions. In the weeks since Webb’s announcement, pundits across the nation have praised him for taking such overdue action. However, one piece of the debate over federal prison policy has been conspicuously absent: the issue of long-term solitary confinement.

Atul Gawande’s insightful New Yorker piece, “Hellhole,” shed light on this institutionalized form of torture, which most Americans consider an aspect of prison life as fundamental as bad food and buzz cuts. Few of us stop to consider what isolation truly means for a human being. According to Gawande, former POWs from the Vietnam War (including Sen. John McCain) have reported that the mental suffering that accompanies solitary confinement is as torturous as physical mistreatment. In fact, EEG studies that examine neuron activity within the brain have shown that the physical deterioration related to solitary confinement is comparable to the damage seen in severe head trauma patients. Extensive psychiatric research even suggests that some individuals are prone to full-blown psychosis when placed in solitary confinement.

So why does the United States have what is probably one of the world’s largest populations of prisoners in long-term solitary confinement? According to Gawande, there are at “at least twenty-five thousand inmates in isolation in supermax prisons,” with another 50 to 80,000 in “restrictive segregation units, many of them in isolation.” Most of the rest of the Western world has actively moved away from isolation practices. The British, for example, house their most dangerous criminals “Close Supervision Centres,” where they live in individual cells within units of fewer than 10 people. Whereas many prisoners in American “supermaxes” come to see themselves as isolated combatants against society, the British system uses rehabilitation programming to foster interpersonal relationships and protect a certain degree of self-autonomy. As a result, the British have seen more stable prisoner behavior among the 30 or so individuals that are held in CSCs across the country.

Logically, solitary confinement may seem like the only realistic solution to prison violence—isolate the most dangerous criminals from the general population and they can no longer wreak havoc. Gawande, though, cites a 2003 study that debunks this belief. Rather, the violence that plagues our prisons is more likely a result of overpopulation and the lack of work and education rehabilitation programs. Senator Webb’s stated goals—reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders and targeting massive overpopulation—may work to reduce prison violence, but if Webb is serious about fundamentally changing the system, he must address the failures of solitary confinement.

Opponents of prison reform, including the vast prison-industrial complex, traditionally label such movements as naïve and led by liberals who do not understand the challenges of running a correctional facility. But these advocates of solitary confinement will have a more difficult time labeling Jim Webb, a decorated marine and former secretary of the Navy, as “Soft on Crime.”

Perhaps in 2009, with a president who has taken steps to reduce domestic torture by closing Guantanamo, the findings of Webb’s commission will be taken more seriously than previous attempts have been. The current conditions in our prisons reflect an ideology that relies on punitive rather than restorative justice—Senator Webb faces the arduous task of recalibrating this skewed value system. In his floor speech, Webb invoked the balance between “discipline and fairness,” but if the senator is going to equalize the two, long-term solitary confinement must be taken out of the equation.