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Solitary Confinement In Prison Essay

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The conditions of jails in the Unites States are no longer suitable for living but instead inmates need to survive to get through the day. Locked into these restricting jail cells they can’t escape from the heat, inedible food, violence, solitary confinement, and horrible conditions around them. The worst system in the US is the Rikers Island jail in New York City, and state prisons in Alabama, Arizona and Texas. The Marshall Project exposes the cruel environment that inmates had to endure while in jail. All the jails have something in common, and it is the cruelty prisons would make prisoners go through.

There are many ways prisons abuse inmates when they are “misbehaving” for example solitary confinement is one of them. What is known as …show more content…

Along with the long sentences and the harsh conditions of jail, one is bound to have mental conditions get worse or created. The abuse that prisoners receive from guards is not from a few bad guards but instead it’s a large number of guards. For example, the Standford Prison Experiment is a great example that anyone can become abusive guard even if they’re “good kids” from Standford, but then it is easy to imagine normal guards turning bad quickly. The experiment shows that the abuse of incarcerated people is not a result of bad guards but instead is inherent to the prison environment (Fichtelberg, 2020, p.296). Only if they improved the prison environment it can improve overall. People who are put into solitary confinement are already emotional and mentally disturbed to start off with (Fichtelberg, 2020, p.309). Instead of the prison system putting people who already have mental health issues in solitary confinement, they should be helped, not put into solitary confinement which can cause more disruptive behaviors or worsen conditions of mental health. The system should decriminalize mental illness, meaning instead of punishing, they should help or treat it. In one prison in Texas reached 110 degrees without air-conditioning in the cells. For them to get out of the heat they need to lose access to better services like getting a job and education to get out of the prison and move to a higher security prison where the only cooled cells are solitary (Lartey, 2023). So many opportunities are lost due to the harsh conditions, but why are there harsh conditions in prisons in the first

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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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Under article 8 of the Bill of Human Rights it states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (The Eighth Amendment).” Placing a mentally ill inmate inside four walls away from any social interaction and medical attention is in fact cruel. As said by a federal judge, putting a mentally ill person in segregation is the “equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe (Wallace 11).” A mentally ill person needs help, not a poor environment in which they won’t get any better. Not only does solitary confinement mess with the mind, but it inflicts inmates to self-harm in any way possible.

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Craig Haney’s article Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement illustrates the complications faced in solitary confinement emphasizing the rise in mental health challenges imposed. Particular attention is paid to the escalation in the nature of mental health-related issues, including the negative psychological effects of imprisonment. Haney discusses these increasingly widespread and specialized units that bring forward the issues presented taking into account the notion of isolation and the association of the high percentage of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses. The article briefly assesses the recent case law concerning the difficulty of mentally ill prisoners, suggesting that the majority of broader psychological problems have been overlooked by the courts.

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Solitary confinement, in my opinion, is cruel and unusual punishment. If there was not a mental-health crisis in America, and there was in fact a rehabilitation-focused prison system, solitary confinement would be greatly reduced and used much more sparingly. What is the point of driving people to madness by putting them in isolation? It would be so much cheaper for tax payers to change the system to a more effective one that actually reduces

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The documentary solitary nation demonstrates the effects of solitary confinement on the prisoner’s health. There are several problems associated with using segregation as a punishment, however, the main problem is the effects to the mental health of the inmates. The documentary illustrate that some prisoner lost their sanity in solitary confinement. One example is what happened to the prisoner Adam Brulotte, at the beginning of his solitary confinement time he was optimistic and have plans to improve himself by reading books and think about his future, but only after twenty five days he started to lose his mind and become unstable, threaten to cut himself, pushes feces under the door and flooded the unit. This behavior clearly indicates segregation bad affects to the mental health of the inmates.

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Jaime Mata CRIJ 2313.03 Correctional Systems and Practices Article review Date submitted: February 4, 2017 Word count: 850-1,500 Kurki and Morris (2001) examine the spread of Supermax prisons and the problems that plague them in the article titled The Purposes, Practices, and Problems of Supermax Prisons. The National Institute of Corrections defines a Supermax as a highly restrictive unit or facility used to isolate those who are considered more of threat than the general prison population (id, p. 388). Though the goals of a Supermax prison are clearly stated they face scrutiny due to their vast amount of problems some of which interfere with what most consider basic rights and morals. This article review provides insight into the use of Solitary confinement as a punishment in correctional facilities.

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Furthermore, the failure to address mental health needs within the prison system exacerbates these issues. The Equal Justice Initiative reveals that more than half of all Americans in prison or jail have a mental illness. Prison officials often fail to provide correct treatment, resorting to physical force and solitary confinement, which can worsen mental health problems. The Equal Justice Initiative reveals, “More than half of all Americans in prison or jail have a mental illness. Prison officials often fail to provide appropriate treatment for people whose behavior is difficult to manage, instead resorting to physical force and solitary confinement, which can aggravate mental health problems.”

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Inmates are constantly violated by cellmates and prison guards, both physically and sexually. Violence is often associated with prison gangs and interpersonal conflict. Prison guards are bribable and all kinds of contrabands including weapon, drug, liquor, tobacco and cell phone can be found in inmates’ hands. Crime within the fence is rampant, only counting those with violent act, 5.8 million reports were made in 2014. If the prison is really what it claims to be, shouldn’t prisoners be serving their time with regret and learning to be obedient?

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Solitary confinement has so many harsh conditions that negatively affect these prisoners. The practice of solitary confinement should be put to an end due to the long term damage it causes to one’s physical and mental health. The rooms that are used for solitary confinement are made very uniquely in order for these prisoners to feel trapped, isolated, and alone. They are put in dangerous conditions which may not look dangerous to the naked eye, but do actually damage these inmates. The prison cells that are used for solitary confinement are extremely concerning.

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Inmates in confinement have no contact with any human beings other than the guards, and this often leads to extreme mental health problems. Additionally, many inmates do not receive proper medical treatment and are left with severe physical health complications. One example of these health problems is presented in an excerpt from the American Law Yearbook from 2017. In this excerpt, the authors say, “Those held in solitary confinement are often subject to physical torture, including different types of restraints. Prisoners report that they also endure nonphysical torture, such as sensory deprivation, forced insomnia, permanent bright lighting, and extreme temperature.”

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Solitary confinement is, “Living in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. You get tour meals through a slot, you do not see other inmates, and you never touch or get near another human being”(Stevenson 129). Solitary confinement is a punishment not fit for humans. Humans need social interaction to live. We have established how messed up solitary confinement is, but how do we fix it?

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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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In order to do this they need to make new centers to help prisoners inside better themselves. In Alabama prisons may soon shut down 14 of its prisons for overcrowding, neglect, and violence in the state’s correction systems. In the prison St. Clair Holman in Alabama the prison system makes prisoners act different. There is no safety, security or supervision. “We have people being killed, sexually assaulted, raped, stabbed on daily basis at St. Clair, Holman, and multiple facilities; it’s a systemwide problem,” said Charlotte Morrison, a senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which represents Alabama prisoner.”

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