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Solitary Confinement In Atul Gawande 'Hellhole'

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In Atul Gawande “ HellHole” essay they talked about the experiences and effects of people who were previously in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement can be best explained as the process of removing an individual and isolating them from their environment and socialization. Atul Gawande is specifically talking about prisoners of war and incarcerated people and how their experience was and that process. The essay talked about how people are put in isolation which caused them to act out of their character. Goffman would argue that effects of solitary confinement are exactly what total institutions can do to a person's. Goffman would explain how total institutions disrupt people's routines and who they are. PRison as a total institution reduces …show more content…

Staveill started to develop destructive habits in solitary confinement. I believe Mead would also add to Goffman and the idea of total institutions while being in solitary confinement is that it disrupts the process of “I” and “me”. Mead argues that we gain our sense of self through our interaction with others. This is very important to look at because in Solitary confinement people are isolated and what we can assume based on mead's theory of how we come to know who we are is that solitary confinement is doing more harm to the individual rather than helping them because they lose their sense of self. In the essay, it is evident that this occurs. PEople who are isolated said that they experienced hallucinations, tried hurting themselves and felt a disconnect to reality. Which brings in an interesting question is that even though these guards see that solitary confinement is hurting prisoners and is not working why do they do it? I would suggest that Goffman would say that people are dehumanized when they are

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Guenther discusses the effects of solitary confinement such as “They experience intense anxiety, paranoia, depression, memory loss, hallucinations and other perceptual distortions” (1). But doesn’t provide enough reasons as to why U.S prisons should become a rehabilitation place to help those get back into the society they were once in. she only establishments that solitary confinement and prisons are not good to inmates because they caused them to develop psychological problems. What I mean is that, the entirety of the article and her arguments gives the sense that, that’s the purpose of what she is trying to achieve here, making prisons a rehabilitation place instead of something else. But the thing is why should prisons become a rehabilitation center, Guenther claims that “Given that 95 percent of all inmates are eventually released into the public, and that many of these will be released without any form of transition or therapy, solitary confinement is a problem that potentially affects every one of us.”

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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.

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They have no control over their ‘front’ as they would always be performing, even daily tasks like sleeping and eating in the presence of their inmates and supervisors, they are never truly alone. “The barrier that total institutions place between the inmate and the wider world marks the first curtailment of self…membership automatically disrupts role scheduling, since the inmate’s separation from the wider world lasts around the clock and may continue for years” (Goffman, 1961: 14). Therefore their role in society diminishes and what once was an individual identity is replaced with a devalued self-image. Stigma “the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance” (Goffman, 1963: 9) is another concept of Goffman’s where individuals are stigmatised by society for being different and not fitting into the ‘normal’ category. In his book ‘Stigma’ the first chapter describes the three types of stigma, the first stigma of physique “abominations of the body – the various physical deformities” (Goffman, 1963: 14), second, stigma of character attributes “blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherousness and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example, mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicide attempts, and radical political behaviour” (1963: 14), and lastly stigma of group identity “the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family” (1963: 14).

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