Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner and has been cited as an additional measure of protection for the inmate. This form of punishment is also given for violations of prison regulations. It is also used as a form of protective custody and to prevent in the case of suicide, restriction from items that could disrupt the prisoners health.

Solitary confinement is colloquially referred to in American English as "the hotbox", "the hole", "lockdown", "punk city", "SCU" (Solitary Confinement Unit), "AdSeg" (Administrative Segregation), the "SHU" (pronounced "shoe") – an acronym for "special housing unit" or "security housing unit", or "the pound"; in British English as "the block" or "the cooler"; and in Canada it is known as the Special Handling Unit.

Historical controversy

Unit (housing)

A unit is a measure of housing equivalent to the living quarters of one household.

In common speech in Australia and New Zealand, the word "unit", when referring to housing, usually means either: an apartment, (where a group of apartments is contained in one or more multi-storied buildings (an 'apartment block')); or a villa unit or home unit, where a group of dwellings is in one or more single storey buildings, usually arranged around a driveway. In this usage, a unit is a self-contained suite of rooms, usually of modest scale, which may be attached, semi-detached or detached, within a group of similar dwellings. Used in the Australian and New Zealand urban planning and development industry, unit is also a synonym for dwelling, as in, "This development has 22 units per hectare".
A single room unit is more commonly referred to as a studio flat or bedsitter, otherwise known as a Single Room Occupancy or SRO in North America. It can be hard to discern precisely what attributes distinguish some multi-dwelling developments as units from those referred to as flats or apartments, though everyday usage suggests there is a class dimension to the term.