A Look Into The World Of Solitary Confinement Essay

Many researchers have found that long periods of time in solitary confinement can have negative mental effects on inmates. This is due to long-term confinement because it consists of not only prolonged deprivation of social interaction but also sensory deprivation (Haney, 2003). Medical ethics are also in question about the effects of long term confinement. Medical professionals have to handle a particularly difficult situation because they are required to provide medical assistance to these inmates that may be facing psychological issues. This is a problem because medical professionals are aware that solitary confinement has negative effects on the well-being and mental state of these individuals (Shalev, 2011).

Solitary confinement has had a long history in the American prison system. America is the first country to adapt solitary confinement into the prison regiment. Pennsylvania had the first special housing units for inmates or “SHU”. When Europeans came to America to look at the new model for prisons in Pennsylvania they wrote reports describing to the European parliament on how prisoners were treated like caged animals. Many of them quickly realized that this was not what prisons were set out to accomplish. The purpose of a prison is to rehabilitate criminals and bring them back into society as an individual that has the best mental tools and skills to make their respective communities better. Putting inmates in solitary confinement for more than 48 hours can only lead to awful emotional pain and mental problems which can result in self-destructive behavior to regain the self-control that is being deprived through this process of isolation and expulsion.

Solitary confinement is occasionally used in most prison systems as a means to maintain prison order. Mainly for disciplinary punishment, or as a place to put inmates that are at escape risk, or a risk to themselves and prison order. Sometimes inmates that are sex offenders voluntarily choose solitary as a means of protection from other prisoners. Sometimes solitary can be used to hold pretrial detainees to prevent them from messing with witness, so they can’t try and force a confession. For 23 hours a day inmates are confined to the barren environment that is their cell with high surveillance (Smith, Peter Scharff, 2006.) Inmates have no social contact. Visits and phone calls are infrequent and highly restricted. Visits sometime only take place via video screens. The physical contact one experiences is limited to the interaction with prison guards, weather it be putting on restraints or taking them off.

Solitary confinement is a penitentiary punishment developed in which each inmate is held in isolation from other inmates or any human contact, with the exception of correctional staff. Solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is usually twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, with a sentence extending from days to years. This form of incarceration is used as a form of punishment for the inmate, commonly for violation of correctional rules. There has been some debate to wheatear solitary confinement should be accepted as an adequate form of punishment. Society views solitary confinement as a form of cruelty, while others see it as a form of safety for other inmate with in the correctional facility. Solitary confinement is an acceptable form of punishment.

Solitary confinement can cause mental distress to inmates. Solitary confinement causes problems with people’s heads, lives, and in some occasions makes the world more dangerous. The barbaric conditions of solitary confinement may cause or worsen depression, paranoia and anger. Scientist say if you ever go in solitary you will be damaged by it. If you survive it, it has impact on you. Solitary confinement is a big discussion all around the world, because of all these mental health issues. Inmates have nothing to do but just sit there. The barbaric condition only worsens men and women, they are lonely and drenched with depression in their heads. If there wasn’t solitary there would be less angry inmates walking out of the cells and going into the real world. Nikki Jenkins went straight out of solitary to be a free man, within a few weeks

Prisoners are locked behinds cells confined in a small space without windows for 22 to 23 hours per day. Cells are illuminated by artificial light with no means for prisoners to control the brightness. These lights remain on all day so inmates have difficulty-distinguishing day from night (Arrigo and Bullock, 2008). At times the prisoner may be confined the whole day if they decide to misbehave. Interaction with other human beings is strictly prohibited. The only contact prisoners have is through a closed-circuit television to talk to their visitors or when correctional officers placed handcuffs and other restraints (Pizarro and Narag, 2008). From the extreme isolation, such inmates tend to fear

A 2014 U.S. National Research Council reports discovered that in 2012, around one-fourth of the world's whole detained populace was housed in the United States. On a normal, 1 in every 100 Americans are in detainment facilities (Freudenberg, Daniels, Crum, Perkins, & Richie, 2005). One correctional facility practice has come under contemplation in recent years because of the separation of prisoners into special management for the purposes of severe punishment. It is commonly known as solitary confinement, segregation, isolation, and special management. This practice frequently involves sending prisoners in small, confined (precisely a box) for months, or even years. Long-haul detainment as an option apparently is more sympathetic sentence for detainees who have carried out terrible wrongdoings, and may not be considerably more caring than capital punishment. Turns out that keeping prisoners imprisoned in isolation for long-haul sentences can have genuinely harmful impacts on prisoners.

The United States of America began experimenting with solitary confinement more than 200 years ago. It is said that the pioneers of solitary confinement were activist reformers who believed that silence and solitude would induce repentance and motivate prisoners to live a devout socially responsible life. With 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, the United States incarcerates people more than any other nation. From 1995

While solitary confinement is one of the most effective ways of keeping todays prisoners from conflict and communication, it is also the most detrimental to their health. According to NPR the reason for most solitary confinement units in America “is to control the prison gangs (NPR, 2011).” But that is not always the case. Sometimes putting a gang member in solitary reduces the shock and awe effect that it is supposed to have, when they start losing their minds. The prisoners kept in solitary confinement show more psychotic symptoms than that of a normal prisoner, including a higher suicide rate. Once a prisoner’s mental capacity to understand why he is in prison and why he is being punished is gone, there is no reason to keep said

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Solitary Confinement is the confinement of a prisoner in a cell or other place which he or she is completely isolated from any and everyone. Merriam Webster also states that even some prisoners are held from 22.5 to 24 hours a day. Solitary confinement is sometimes referred to as isolation, segregation, separation, and cellular confinements so that it seems different from solitary confinement or too make it sound like a less harsh punishment. Solitary Confinement is a huge controversy in today’s society, although some might of forgot due to the fact that there’s an orange oompa loompa celebrity as our president, but this has been a problem since it was introduced in 1829. “In 1829, the first experiment in solitary confinement was at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It was based on a Quaker belief that prisoners isolated in stone cells with only a Bible would use the time to repent, pray and find introspection.”(Timeline on NPR.org) A large population of people believe that solitary confinement is a violation against anyone 's human rights. On the other side of this argument, some people believe it is a necessary form of punishment and that it does not violate anyone’s human or constitutional rights. In my personal opinion, Solitary confinement violates both the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article five of the Declaration of Human Rights. I don’t understand how isolating someone for that

Finally, solitary confinement may also be supported by the fact that it isolates violent prisoners and ensures the safety of other inmates. Indeed, the number one priority of the prison should be to keep their inmates safe. As stated in Gary Deland’s essay, prisoners’ interactions with other inmates can be severely controlled strictly by placing one in solitary confinement. There is no more effective way to prevent violence than by taking out the perpetrator from the situation.

Solitary Confinement: A Utilitarian’s Perspective The United States prison system has many flaws that need to be addressed but for the sake of the length of this essay I will only address one. Solitary confinement is the practice of locking inmates in cells roughly six foot by nine foot for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day. These cells have a bed, toilet, and sink within them and, for the most part, are windowless. Inmates in solitary confinement are allowed zero human interaction other than their escort by two armed guards to their “yard” activity one hour a day.

Solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment in American prisons since the early 1800s. Solitary confinement is a form of restrictive housing that removes prisoners from general population and places them into cells smaller than an average bedroom. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in the cell and are allotted one hour per day outside their cell for exercise. They are fed through a hatch in the front of the cell and are sometimes allowed books and other minimal forms of entertainment. In the United States, solitary confinement has proven to be an ineffective form of rehabilitation when compared to more humane alternatives; additionally, solitary confinement directly violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution

Since the early 1800s, the United States has relied on a method of punishment barely known to any other country, solitary confinement (Cole). Despite this method once being thought of as the breakthrough in the prison system, history has proved differently. Solitary confinement was once used in a short period of time to fix a prisoners behavior, but is now used as a long term method that shows to prove absolutely nothing. Spending 22-24 hours a day in a small room containing practically nothing has proved to fix nothing in a person except further insanity. One cannot rid himself of insanity in a room that causes them to go insane. Solitary confinement is a flawed and unnecessary method of punishment that should be prohibited in the prison

Since the introduction of solitary confinement and the construction of super-max prison there has an on going debate on whether using these punishment is violating the 8th amendment and also explaining all the health risk caused by solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is when a prisoner is held in a cell alone and they spend between 22.5 and 24 hours a day. Prisoners have no contact with other inmates and guards are also have limited contact with inmates. Solitary confinement was first introduced in the mid-nineteenth century and it was believed that it would help reform prisoners. The ideology behind solitary confinement and super-max prisons was that prisoners would be locked up alone and left with nothing but their Bible and this would allow the prisoner to reflect on his actions and wrong doings and eventually reform into a law-abiding citizen. But soon after solitary confinement was put into place it became clear that solitary confinement did not meet there goal of reforming individuals but evidence proved it caused harmed to the prisoners physical and mental health. Besides being harmful to prisoner’s physical and mental health it was also very expensive to run super-max prisons. Many began to question whether it was morally and ethically correct to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods of time at once. When solitary confinement was first introduced it was used as a short-term punishment for prisoner who committed severe offenses in prison.