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The positive impact of solitary confinement
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Solitary confinement in the us
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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.
Imagine being trapped in a damp, dark, cage as a form of punishment for something that seems completely out of your grasp. Prisons were understaffed and as barbaric as it gets the people charged with crimes were whipped. The primary cause for their creation was to keep the crooks from harming any people right? Everyone in solitary confinement is treated the same way but not everyone came for the same reason. In fact, mentally ill people were considered to be harsh maniacs which did not receive treatment for a long time.
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.
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
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.
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
Criminals on death row will be placed in solitary confinement. This usually consists of twenty-three hours a day, alone in a small cell, with the only human interaction being with the jailer letting the criminal out for their one hour of exercise. Since the average time spent on death row is approximately ten years, the daily solitary confinement can have detrimental psychological effects on the prisoners. These effects, called Death Row Syndrome, include symptoms such as, depression, paranoia, hallucinations, self mutilation, thoughts of suicide, and stress (Harrison, 6-7). Prisoners also experience psychological stress and mental suffering from not knowing when their execution date will be.
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.
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
Though solitary confinement goal is not to deteriorate inmate’s mental health, it does. Some effects of being in solitary confinement are hallucinations, paranoia, increased risk of suicide/self-harm, and PTSD. As the documentary goes om, Adam starts to lose it. He gets agitated and violent, being frustrated with the prison. This part of the documentary was extremely important to me.
He points to the most tragic repercussion of solitary confinement: the correlation between time spent in isolation and suicide. Lindsay Hayes has studied youth suicide in confinement settings extensively. He confirms
olitary confinement, in 40 states have super-maximum security (“supermax”) facilities specifically used to hold people in long-term confinement. States such as Colorado consistently uses excessive confinement that dehumanize one’s well-being. The inmates are basically put in cages and they don’t really have the freedom to have any free time. They have a 15 minute shower three times a week. “ Mental Health clinicians visited at least once a month, and a librarian delivered books and magazines once a week.
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.
For society to understand the negative effects of solitary confinement further research must be conducted. If changes were to be made, then the change should begin with research regarding those confined in solitude. What I gathered was not sufficient to know the exact number of inmates isolated in solitude confinement. If accurate numbers were to be provided, then I’d be able to know how big of a problem suicide is amongst those inmates. Most importantly, having in accurate count of how many prisoners, female or male, make up the solitary confinement population would give me a clear picture of who is experiencing the most cases of suicide and which population is most prone to suicide.
