Solitary Confinement Pros And Cons

Solitary confinement is the act of housing a convict for 22-23 hours a day in an isolated cell, completely free from any human contact for an extended period of time. Going from days to possibly decades while sitting in these cells. There are more than 80,000 men, women, and children in solitary confinement in prisons across the United States according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Not including thousands more in jails, juvenile facilities, immigration detention centers and military prisons. After experiencing confinement some inmates suffer from negative mental health effects that can possibly lead to suicide. Solitary confinement should be abolished all across the United States because of the severe negative effects it has on prisoners. A negative effect of solitary confinement that can occur is that a prisoner can become depressed and suicidal. In a popular case in New York, a sixteen year old boy named Kalief Browder, spent over three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. After he was arrested in 2010, he spent more than 1,000 days in Rikers waiting for a trial that was never given to him. All throughout that time, he had spent almost two years in solitary

In 1992, several prisoners of war were released after being contained in detention camps in the former country of Yugoslavia. Upon their arrival, they were examined using EEG-like tests. Several months afterwards the recordings revealed brain abnormalities; the most severe cases were found in prisoners who had either received head trauma that was strong enough to leave them unconscious, or prisoners who were placed in “solitary confinement.” This suggests that as these prisoners were, according to the article, “without sustained social interaction,” they became mentally unstable thus leaving them in a state where they find themselves “trembling sometimes for no