Is Solitary Confinement 'Cruel and Unusual?'

Pelican Bay is California's prison for the so-called "worst of the worst." In the state's northwest corner, it's designed for inmates called too dangerous to stay in the prison population. Some reportedly are kept in windowless cells for 22 hours a day — sometimes for more than a decade. This week, a federal judge agreed to make hundreds of current and former inmates part of a class action lawsuit claiming their treatment, solitary confinement, violates the US constitution.