Kalief Browder, a 16 year old who was arrested for a robbery he did not commit. He spent three years in jail with no conviction. James Brown an impoverished day laborer, charged with murder and waited eight and a half years for his case to go to trial. Meanwhile waiting for his trial, his alibi witness had died of kidney disease. Kalief nor James could afford bail, so they had to suffer in jail for a crime they did not convict.
According to Bassett, 50% of suicides occur inside solitary confinmenet (419). Not to mention, inmates are sometimes physically abused by the guards in power. Through the Solitary Nation documentary, it is seen that guards sometimes have to use bigger forces like a toxic gas to get an inmate out of their cell. While it makes sense that guards have to do it for their own protection, there needs to be thought about why inmates do the things they do. When inmates suffer from their mental illnesses, they begin to lose their sense of reality as well as sense of right and wrong.
The documentary, “Kids Locked in Solitary Confinement” depicts the toll that solitary confinement can have on the juvenile population. Approximately, 27% of adolescents in Riskers Island are in solitary confinement. The majority of which have not yet been convicted of a crime. However, these juveniles are in jail because they cannot afford to post bail. Supporters of solitary confinement believe that the segregation juveniles experience is not equivalent to the segregation in the federal system.
Kalief Browder was only 16 when he was sent to Rikers Island, one of the cruelest juvenile prisons in the nation, for being accused of stealing a backpack but with no evidence to support. He spent around two years in solitary confinement which drove him to attempt suicide many times. He was abused every day by inmates and prison guards for no reason at all. In his three years he was waiting for a trial which should not have taken longer than six months to complete. His mother spoke out to the public, waiting for his justice to be repaid every day and for her sons return.
Eight hundred days… eight hundred days in solitary confinement, for stealing a backpack. No, not stealing a backpack, he was never proven guilty. In fact, there was never even a trail over this stolen backpack. Eight hundred days of solitary confinement for a sixteen-year-old who never committed the crime. This sixteen-year-old’s name is Kalief Browder.
There is no doubt that Kalief Browder needs some type of justice, especially for his family and friends. Kalief Browder was just a 16 year old in the Bronx that was wrongfully accused of a stealing a backpack while he was on probation for a previous petty crime. Therefore, he arrested and when he got the amount of bail he quickly found out that he and his family could not pay for it. After not being able to pay for bail, he was sent to a federal prison named Rikers Island for this petty crime, in which he was never charged with. He was sent to a federal juvenile correction center with a bunch of actual criminals that did more than just be accused of stealing a backpack.
Fathi, Director of ACLU National Prison Project talks about how it’s proven that solitary confinement leaves long lasting psychological and emotional harm. Someone with no prior history of mental illness will develop psychological symptoms if left in solitary confinement for too long. Whether someone does or does not suffer from mental illness, solitary confinement ultimately harms the person and is not a good way to take care of them. Another solution is drug courts which provides a sentencing alternative of treatment and supervision for people who have a substance abuse problem or if they have a mental disorder. Expert, John Roman, who is a research associate, suggests that having more drug courts is a good idea and will help bring the crime rate down.
Major Ethical Issues of Solitary Confinement Solitary confinement can affect a person’s physical and mental health simply because it deprives an individual of their need to interact with others on a daily basis. Solitary confinement, which is used to restrain violent and volatile inmates from the general prison population, is done in increments ranging from several months to years. In an article retrieved from the American Psychological Association, ‘Alone, in ‘the Hole’’, the author states that, “for most of the 20th century, prisoners' stays in solitary confinement were relatively short.” This was the standing rule, in which inmates visited what is known as ‘the hole’, for several weeks to months. As time went by, the average length of stay
This quote underscores the failure of the prison system to address the mental health needs of incarcerated individuals. The statistics about the high rates of mental illness among prisoners emphasizes the lack of mental health care in prisons. The reliance on physical force and solitary confinement as means of managing behavior further worsen mental
Some individuals find solace in being alone; however, imagine being alone in a concrete cell for months or even years? Isolated from the entire world into a small box seems intimidating, but this tactic is used throughout the US prison system. Solitary confinement is as a disciplinary action on the prisoners to ensure their safety and serve as punishment. This issue has raised both ethical and practical questions on its usage through US prisons because of its benefits and drawbacks. Isolated and cramped, for the next months or years, in a small area where the prisoner would sleep and eat is implemented into the prison systems.
In conclusion, the practice of solitary confinement must be put at the center of attention and reestablished with the given reform principles. As it stands now, the practice of solitary confinement is a punishment with irreversible consequences that provides no real purpose of rehabilitation for an inmate. Inmates that are subjected to solitary confinement are physiological and physically tortured. Inmates are put into solitary confinement and are later released into society with long term mental health issues, in which they return to prison as recidivists. Metaphorically speaking, prison officials are placing inmates into solitary confinement and are essentially throwing away the key.
Solitary confinement should be abolished all across the United States because of the severe negative effects it has on prisoners. A negative effect of solitary confinement that can occur is that a prisoner can become depressed and suicidal. In a popular case in New York, a sixteen year old boy named Kalief Browder, spent over three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. After he was arrested in 2010, he spent more than 1,000 days in Rikers waiting for a trial that was never given to him.
Given these inconsistencies, mass imprisonment has introduced the criminalization of minority racial status, behavioral well-being issue, and destitution. Additional frustrating, the procedure of imprisonment worsens drawback and vulnerabilities among these as of now minimized gatherings (Clear, 2007; Roberts, 2004; Sampson and Loeffler, 2010). Once detained, a man 's entrance to the routine method for a citizenry that advance distance from wrongdoing is for all time disturbed (Reverse social work 's disregard of justice-included adults: The crossing point and a plan, 2012). At present, there are more than 40,000 state and neighborhood statutes that boycott individuals with histories of detainment from access to instruction, livelihood, lodging, and other social and wellbeing administrations accessible to the overall population (Legal Action Center, 2009). Kids with detained guardians will probably have behavioral and passionate issues and are six times more prone to be imprisoned sometime down the road.
If we ever hope to come together and promote equality as a society, how must we do so if we suppress the needs of those with suppressed rights? To amend the issues that we have created, there must be stricter regulations around solitary confinement as it is a cause of unnecessary suicides, robs citizens of their basic rights, and brings down our intersectionality as a collective society here in Canada. Lately, the number of solitary confinement prompted suicides have skyrocketed, and have been on a steep incline for nine years, with no plans for amendment. A study at Cambridge University has determined that 63% of suicides in federal prisons take place while the inmate is in solitary confinement. "Shalev, Sharon, A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement (2008)."
In my honest opinion solitary confinement in the U.S. is not justified and only does more harm than good. Not only is it a rash punishment, but it is one of the worst kinds of psychological tortures that could be inflicted upon an inmate. Human beings are undoubtedly social creatures and without the mere contact of another person the mind decays and ultimately leads a person to anger, anxiety, and hopelessness. Psychologists also claim that solitary confinement and isolation in general also cause depression or the loss of ability to have any "feelings", cognitive disturbances, such as confused thought processes and disorientation, perceptual distortions, such as hypersensitivity to noises and smells, distortions of sensations, and hallucinations affecting all five senses, as well as paranoia and psychosis which often times involve schizophrenic type symptoms, and finally, the worst of all symptoms, being self-harm such as self-mutilation, cutting and even suicide attempts.
