Although the Oklahoma Department of Corrections moved 33 death row inmates into a new unit after discussions with the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU still believes the inmates’ constitutional rights are being violated, The Frontier reports.

The ACLU argues that the inmates are still technically being held in solitary confinement as well as being denied religious services.

The ACLU had complained to the state about what the group believed were constitutional violations on death row, such as solitary confinement, a decade-long lack of religious services and the fact that anyone sentenced to death was automatically considered a maximum security inmate regardless of their intake assessment.

Death row inmates had access to group religious services until 2009, said the ACLU’s Megan Lambert when the services were halted. A decade later they are still not being conducted.

“It was usually something like six to 10 guys, they’d be handcuffed, but they had enough slack so that they could hold bibles or a prayer book,” she said. “They would pray and sing together, have discussions or lectures, with different groups coming in to hold services.”

Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Brown said the state moved death row prisoners out of single cells proactively, and that “solitary confinement is a discussion among many in the corrections industry across the nation.”

Some death row inmates in Oklahoma remain in a single cell. Lambert said that even the double-celled inmates still meet the technical definition of solitary confinement. “Solitary means 22-24 hours in a cell, so that can absolutely include people held in double cells … despite the changes, the fundamental constitutional issues have not changed,” she said.

This month the ACLU reached a settlement with Pennsylvania, allowing death row prisoners there to be incarcerated in the same way general population inmates are held.

See Also: Solitary Confinement Increases in New York State, The Crime Report, Oct 29, 2019