Imagine being in the comfort of your bedroom—your own private space. Your room, the place where you sleep, relax, and can be yourself with no judgment from others. Now imagine that your room suddenly shrinks and becomes your entire house in one. This new space will be where you have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and use the bathroom. Your new and improved room is dull and doesn’t receive sunshine from windows because it is completely closed in between four naked—forget about color and decorations. Your room is no longer a warm and safe environment, but a nightmare. Inside your space, every movement will be watched, and you won’t ever be alone again. Not bad enough yet? Your new room is now where you will spend 23 full hours of your day, lucky you—you …show more content…
In the nineteenth century, Quakers and Calvinists started this practice to punish criminals instead of using other methods like hanging (Warnes). Solitary confinement is when an inmate is isolated from the general population in a relatively small cell and is deprived from any human contact. Inmates in isolation spend most of their day—23 hours to be exact—locked away. They are given one hour to go outside and exercise; however, once there, they meet yet another small cage. When meal time comes around, inmates are given their food tray through a small opening in their door. Furthermore, inmates can shower about twice a week, but they have to be accompanied by a few guards. Solitary confinement is used for a variety of reasons. Primarily, it is used to keep prisoners and prison staff safe from dangerous inmates who kill, start fights, or assault someone. It is also used as a form of protection for inmates themselves. Sometimes, segregation is used as a form of dealing with difficult inmates who upset guards and break minor rules. While segregation is seen as a good practice within prisons, it can have detrimental effects on its