Solitary Confinement Sparknotes

In this documentary, we see the lives of multiple men who are spending time of their prison sentence in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement means being locked up for 22-24 hours a day, with limited interaction with other people. In fact, about 80,000 men, women, and children spend time in solitary confinement while serving out their sentence. (Solitary confinement facts. (2016). There are also many reasons why people are in solitary confinement. Reasons such as violence, fighting, and contraband. There are many effects that solitary confinement has on a person. For example, Adam. Adam has just arrived at solitary confinement and is confident he can last. He plans to work out, reading, and writing to pass the time. He does not understand

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. Most of these men have mental disorders. From depression, anxiety, or PTSD it affects them every day. For your average person, you could see a therapist or get medication. For men and women, their form of treatment is being dumped into solitary confinement because their disorders are too much or too expensive to deal with. These people sit in solitary confinement with mental disorders and insufficient help. They are limited to the things they get to do, things they read, and who they talk to. The inmates themselves think that sitting in solitary “creates monster” and

The first thing they could do is start with the mental health. They could try and raise their budget, or focus it more on mental health. In fact from 2007- 2011 only 14% of budgets were spent on mental health care (State Prison Health Care Spending - The Pew Charitable Trusts). If the budget is raised, the could have therapy programs, vocational programs, and better access to medications. We could also reward good behavior. It is proven that if you get rewarded for good behavior, you will behave more often. If a prisoner goes months without acting out, he/she could get more time outside or get another book to read. Big steps like programs and little steps like rewards could greatly benefit inmates, even easing them into lesser security areas. This topic relates heavily back to the course. It relates because a lot of the careers we may choose to take, involve dealing with prisoners, helping people after prison, mental health, and substance abuse. We learn early the reason people commit crime or act out in prisons. From bad neighborhoods to mental disorders, there is always a reason someone does the things they do. Maybe in the future, we can reform the prison system into a better function place, and help people instead of hurt