A 70-year-old British serial killer, Robert Mawdsley, holds the world record for the most time spent in solitary confinement. Mawdsley has been locked up for nearly 50 years and has spent the last 45 years alone in a glass prison cell in West Yorkshire after murdering three inmates. He was first imprisoned at the age of 21 in 1974 for killing a child predator, John Farrell, and was later sent to a high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool, where he killed another inmate. Mawdsley was then transferred to Wakefield prison in 1978, where he killed two more inmates, leading to his placement in solitary confinement.
The killer has been living in a custom-built 18-foot by 15-foot glass cage cell, complete with bulletproof windows, a concrete bed, and a table and chair made of compressed cardboard. Despite claims of “no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system” by the Ministry of Justice, Mawdsley’s nephew, Gavin Mawdsley, believes that his uncle would continue to harm child sex offenders in prison if he was not isolated. He stated, “[If you] put him with rapists and pedophiles, I know because he told us, he is going to kill as many pedophiles as he can.” However, he also made it clear that he does not condone what his uncle did, but believes the people Mawdsley killed were “really bad people.”
It was previously believed that Albert Woodfox, a former inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, held the world record for solitary confinement at 43 years. However, Mawdsley has now surpassed this record by spending 45 years in solitary confinement. Landmarks like this justify the necessary precautions and complex reality of criminal justice.