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A report released Thursday by Electronic Frontier Foundation researcher Dave Maas shows that South Carolina's Department of Corrections considers "creating and/or assisting with a social networking site" while in prison an offense akin to committing a violent crime against another prisoner or officer.

Prisoners found to post on Facebook in South Carolina's system can face losing privileges such as visitation rights and telephone access, and many receive solitary confinement sentences, state documents show.

Punishments are doled out separately for each day that an inmate posts on a social networking site, such as Facebook or Twitter. That means posting once on Monday and once again on Wednesday counts as two individual violations, but posting 50 times on a single day counts as just one violation.

Over the past three years, 432 disciplinary cases have been brought against 397 South Carolina inmates for using social networks (mostly Facebook). Of those disciplined prisoners, 40 received more than two years in solitary confinement, and 16 were sentenced to more than a decade alone in a cell.

One inmate, Tyheem Henry, received a 37-year solitary confinement sentence for posting on Facebook 38 times. He also lost 74 years worth of phone, visitation and canteen rights.

Of the three prisoners who received more than two decades of solitary confinement, none will be able to serve their full punishment -- their sentences are all up before 2025.

They likely wouldn't have spent all that time in solitary confinement anyway. As a result of such long sentences, the South Carolina Department of Corrections has been forced to suspend punishments due to a lack of solitary confinement cells.

Just last week, the state began to roll back its use of solitary confinement as punishment for social media use. It will eventually cap time alone at 60 days -- and inmates can be let out early with good behavior.

South Carolina Corrections Department Director Bryan P. Stirling said he's dialing back, because he recognizes the severity of the punishment. He asserts that inmates don't deserve social media access. And even if they did, officers have too few resources to monitor Facebook usage to make sure inmates aren't stirring up trouble. So, he must equate unmonitored social media use via contraband cell phones as a potential threat to people's safety.

"Any hole in the system -- and social media is a hole into the system -- is a way for them to continue their criminal ways," he said. "There needs to be a punishment that's worse than, 'No candy for you today,' or, 'You won't see your mother.' There has to be something more severe than that."

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Punishment for using Facebook in prison: Solitary confinement