Solitary confinement is widely recognized as harmful to people with serious mental illness. In 2021, Colorado lawmakers passed a law intended to limit the practice in jails. Five years later, people with serious mental illness continue to be isolated for weeks at a time.
Boulder Reporting Lab and Bolts spent months investigating how and why that continues to happen, including at the Boulder County Jail, and published a two-part series on the issue. Our reporting included an analysis of state data; obtaining court documents that show how jails request judicial approval to impose extended solitary, documents that have not been previously reported; and interviews with experts as well as people with mental illness who have experienced solitary confinement inside the Boulder County Jail.
You can read our full story on why so many people with mental illness end up in isolation at the Boulder County Jail here and our full story on the use of solitary confinement in Colorado jails here. Below are five key findings from our investigation.
Gaps in the health care system funnel people with mental illness towards the jail
Most people in the Boulder County Jail have been diagnosed with a mental illness. The same is true for many other jails in Colorado.
We followed the story of E.M., whom we are not naming for privacy reasons, whose story shows how gaps in the mental health care system funnel people into jail and keep them there. When E.M. needed help, crisis response came too late, insurance limits cut her treatment short, and a mental health clinic eventually dropped her when she needed her medication.
After a psychiatric break, she was arrested and booked into the Boulder County Jail, where a judge found her incompetent to stand trial. A process intended to ensure people with mental illness understand their legal rights contributed to her staying in jail for nearly two years on charges that were later dropped.
Hospitals are turning people away, leaving jails with nowhere to send them
Starting in July 2023, the law required jails to get a court order from a judge to hold someone in solitary confinement for more than 15 days in a 30-day period. As part of their petition, officials needed to show that they tried to place the person in a less restrictive environment, such as a hospital bed.
But jails said hospitals routinely refuse to accept people in custody or discharge them within hours. Boulder County Jail Division Chief Jeff Goetz described a cascading phone tree of rejections. “It can take days,” he said.
As a result, jails continue to rely on solitary confinement, often with the stated purpose of protecting people from one another or preventing someone from harming themselves.
Judges almost always approve requests for isolation
The requirement that jails get judicial approval before isolating someone was intended to form a key safeguard against the practice.
But court records obtained under Colorado’s open records law show that counties have filed at least 61 such petitions since the provision took effect. Boulder County filed 42 of them. In only two cases statewide did a judge deny a petition. In one Boulder County instance, after an initial denial, the jail filed a second petition the following day and the same judge approved it.
The number of petitions sought by jails, reported here for the first time, also reveals how common it is for jails to rely on a practice known to cause harm to people with mental illness.
The data is riddled with gaps
Tracking how often people are placed in solitary confinement was an obstacle. Open records requests frequently bounced between sheriff’s offices, county attorneys and courts. The Colorado Judicial Branch said its systems cannot extract data on restrictive housing petitions. The state’s own dataset was missing figures from several jails, including those in Denver and Douglas counties. And because jails are not required to make public the affidavits they submit to justify extended isolation, there is no systematic accounting for why people are isolated for weeks at a time or what alternatives, if any, were attempted.
State data collected by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice also suggest the court records capture only a fraction of what’s actually happening. Those figures show that jails placed people with mental illness and other vulnerable people in solitary for more than 15 days on at least 315 occasions between July 2023, when the provision requiring a court order took effect, and March 2025. Because jails only need court approval once someone exceeds 15 days in a 30-day period, shorter stints, or repeated stays separated by brief breaks, may never appear in court records.
Isolation is linked to lasting harm
Personal accounts from inside the Boulder County Jail show what prolonged solitary confinement can do to someone with serious mental illness.
Before the law took effect, Ryan Partridge, a Boulder resident diagnosed with schizophrenia, spent 33 days in solitary confinement before eventually rupturing his eyes in an attempt to remove them while he said he was delusional, causing permanent blindness. Tanya Unger, a former reporter and CU Boulder lecturer diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, said her time in isolation induced an episode of psychosis that worsened her mental health.
Jennifer, who asked that her last name not be published, said she was denied toilet paper, soap and menstrual products during roughly two months in isolation. She said the conditions led to infections requiring antibiotics. While experiencing psychosis, she stopped eating because she believed officers were trying to poison her, which she said led to a hospital trip for liver failure and a heart attack.
“It’s kind of strange how they put you in isolation when you need people the most,” Jennifer said.
