More handpicked essays just for you.
The positive impact of solitary confinement
Solitary confinement effects on mental health essay
Essays on solitary confinement
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The positive impact of solitary confinement
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.
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.
I think one of the main goals of incarceration should be rehabilitation. This is why I am against solitary confinement because seg is not rehabilitating these inmates and even worsens them in some cases. Rehabilitation is supposed to be helping restore health and goodness into a life and essentially teaching an individual how to act properly in society. Solitary confinement is doing the opposite by isolating individuals so they lose social skills, develop mental health issues, and even make some individuals more angry, violent, or harmful because they are deprived of needs. Deterrence is also something I think solitary confinement doesn’t necessarily help with.
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.
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
Graves recalled that he remembers hearing loud piercing screams from inmates losing their minds and the feeling of isolation can dehumanize themselves. A person will eventually completely lose their emotions and become a shell of a person they once was. Graves noted, that there should be a reform on how solitary confinement should addressed when there is a need to separate a dangerous prisoner from the general population. He believes that there should be a system of policies and regulations that should be carried out in court before putting an inmate into solitary confinement. He claims that the majority of inmates in solitary confinement observes their lives is hopeless and
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
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
In the nineteenth century, Quakers and Calvinists started this practice to punish criminals instead of using other methods like hanging (Warnes). Solitary confinement is when an inmate is isolated from the general population in a relatively small cell and is deprived from any human contact. Inmates in isolation spend most of their day—23 hours to be exact—locked away. They are given one hour to go outside and exercise; however, once there, they meet yet another small cage. When meal time comes around, inmates are given their food tray through a small opening in their door.
The world will always have criminals, some of whom continue to be defiant towards humanity-these people will have to be punished, however, it is unambiguous that solitary confinement is an inhumane way of dealing with a difficult person. Now, what Hard Rock went through was horrid and the good news is nobody has to be tortured the way he was. The bad news is that people are continuing to be tortured with solitary confinement. The fact that solitary confinement is still legal is baffling.
Stanford Prison Experiment As I read, watched the videos, and observed the experiment that took place, I realized that any study that has to do with putting someone out of there comfort zone and or their normal state of mind can put humans at risk. Anything that effects someone physically always effects them emotionally and/or psychologically. Also other experiment’s that can put humans at risk are experiment’s that takes someone back to a time of profound thoughts, to a time when they were probably suffering as a child. Taking someone back to the time of innocence can really put humans at risk. In the study the guards treated the prisoners with cruel and unfair punishments which brought the prisoners into a defenseless slave state mindset.
Some common symptoms associated with isolation are insomnia, a lack of appetite, and trembling. These can escalate to heart palpitations, which is a tell-tale sign that the punishment has gone too far. Despite these warnings, the incline in suicides tells us that changes in our current laws need to happen to force preventative measures onto staff in federal prisons. A study occurred in 1951 at McGill University in which a paid group of voluntary graduate students stayed in a confinement room, to conduct a study on sensory deprivation. The plan was to observe these students for 6 weeks, nevertheless not one of the students lasted for more than 7 days.
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.
Imagine you were going about your day when suddenly you are grabbed by officers and put in a dark room. The room is bare with only concrete walls to keep you company. There are no windows, no phones, no contact with the outside world. You are not allowed to step a foot outside this gloomy windowless crammed box that seems to pass off as a room. You don’t know whether you will be released in a few days, a week, a month, a year, or decades.
