Solitary Confinement In Prison

It’s pretty easy to just think about solitary confinement and automatically decide that people who are sent there probably deserve it. What people don’t know is that the true horrors of the secure housing units, or SHU’s, are hidden by the comforting words spoken by the ones that are sending the prisoners there. They state that these facilities are for the protection of the guards and other inmates and to stop the growing prison gangs throughout the United States. Prison officials also try to assure people that the inmates receive mental health checks very frequently. What they don’t tell people is that a majority of the prisoners that are sent to solitary confinement are ones that have mental illnesses or that may be difficult, but are still manageable. This means that some guards abuse their power of

Arrigo and Jennifer Leslie Bullock explain in detail how much damage solitary confinement can really do to someone’s mind. They emphasize the vulnerability of prisoners who were sent to the SHU that had preexisting mental illness. As stated in many different articles, “Behavior stemming from psychiatric illness is often used as justification to place prisoners in solitary confinement” (Arrigo and Bullock). This means that people that are imprisoned with a preexisting mental illness walk into the supermax units with a disadvantage. They are more likely to be sent to the SHU because of how they act. Also, “many incarcerates suffer from debilitating and undiagnosed psychiatric disorders for which they receive no treatment” (Arrigo and Bullock). It’s pretty hard to imagine that there are actual places in the United states that cause psychiatric illness and then refuse to provide treatment for it. This clearly shows that solitary confinement is an inhumane act executed by power-hungry officials that show very little mercy towards inmates of Supermax