Professor O’Donnell’s work reframes scholarly debates about prolonged solitary confinement, the abolition of which is an imperative for prison systems around the world. It provides prisoners in isolation with a set of tools to help them cope with an intrinsically destructive experience. It was relied upon in the High Court to block the extradition of a terror suspect to the United States on the grounds that if it went ahead he would be held in isolation and this would constitute inhuman and degrading treatment. It contributed to a change in the law relating to solitary confinement, aligning Ir
