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In prison cells across North Carolina, government officials are meting out punishment that human rights experts say amounts to torture. For more than 13 years, the state kept inmate Jason Swain in solitary confinement - a punishment that research shows often causes and exacerbates mental illness. Swain, who suffers from bipolar depression, repeatedly swallowed razors and ripped open his surgical incisions. The Observer found he was just one of seven N.C. inmates who had spent more than a decade in solitary. Even 16-year-olds are confined to solitary in North Carolina - before they're convicted of crimes.