Arguments Against Solitary Confinement

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).

Four concrete walls, a steel bed, and a sink to soak the unclean clothes in as well as an insignificantly compact restroom. Welcome to solitary confinement where the lights always stay on and there’s always room for just one, you. When we think about solitary confinement we probably think of a killer or rapist getting what they deserve. What we don’t see is another human life being psychologically destroyed. Some of these prisoners have been in solitary confinement from a couple of years to decades. It is true that these are not honorable or peace keeping men, but a human life being tortured by solitude is a torture no one deserves.

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 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

What if something that is supposed to be keeping society safe is actually doing more harm than good? As it turns out, that might be the case with the solitary confinement of prisoners. For multiple days at a time prisoners are locked into a lonely cell as small as a bathroom stall, going days without any human contact or communication. While solitary confinement is expensive to taxpayers, it is costing even more in social terms, as it can debilitate inmates and cause serious mental harm in forms of anxiety, paranoia, and even hallucinations beyond their life behind bars. The argument ‘On the Edge of Humane’ by Keramet Reiter argues that the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement

According to “Solitary Confinement: Common Misconceptions and Emerging Safe Alternatives” by Alison Shames, Jessa Wilcox, and Ram Subramanian on the Vera Institute of Justice, solitary confinement is often sentenced to “fulfill a prison’s or jail’s top priority: the safety of its staff and the incarcerated people under their care.” (Shames, Wilcox, & Subramanian, 2015). However, most inmates that are placed in solitary confinement are

Over the last couple of decades, prison systems have adopted the use of solitary confinement as a means of punishment and have progressively depended on it to help maintain obedience and discipline inside the prison structure. Solitary confinement is a form of incarceration in which a prisoner is isolated in a cell for multiple hours, days, or weeks with limited to no human contact. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the United States represents only 5% of the world's population yet houses 20% of the world’s prisoners (ACLU). Two of the biggest problems with our modern day criminal justice system is the overwhelming number of people that are incarcerated in the United States and the overwhelming number of convicts who return

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

What is solitary confinement? It is the practice of isolating prisoners in a small cell for 23 hours out of a day. These prisoners spend anywhere from 30 days to 30 years in solitary confinement, with very little human contact. The cells that they are confined to are 80 square feet and they may or may not have a window. One hour out of the day is set aside for exercise.

Many Inmates locked in solitary are taking by their emotions, which can affect the way they think and act while in solitary confinement and in the real world. Many inmates are knowing to become aggressive after being locked in solitary, because they allowed their emotions of seeing society not treating them fairly take over. Rarely, some inmates lose their will to live after being locked in solitary for even a week. “"Solitary confinement does one thing, it breaks a man’s will to live and he ends up deteriorating. He’s never the same person again," said

Solitary confinement is isolation from other inmates as a punishment for when you fight or get in trouble in prison. People Say that Solitary confinement is like being in a prison inside a prison, and that the second prison is the prison of your mind. “The worst scars are left in your mind,” they say. The prisoners that already have mental issues are put in solitary confinement more than non mentally challenged inmates. More than them simply because they have the issues and they can’t “act right” but how are they supposed to act right if they don’t know what acting right is.

Solitary confinement, often, is used as a form of torture as it is an exposure to mental distress. Often when inmates are placed in such isolation, they begin to experience “panic attacks. Illusions and hallucinations, obsessional thoughts, random violence and self-harm, and overt paranoia,” (Fordham R., 2011). Clinical researchers Ray Patterson and Kerry Hughes reported that the higher suicide rates can be attributed to “heightened levels of ‘environmental stress’ that are generated by the isolation, punitive sanctions, severely restricted living conditions,” (Fordham,

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

Solitary confinement, sometimes referred to as segregation, is a cruel and archaic practice that has no place in today’s society. In fact, placing people in solitary confinement was initially discontinued in the 1890s. Supreme Court Justice of the time Samuel Freeman Miller is on record saying, “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed”. However, despite this Solitary Confinement was still reinstated during the 1980s ‘War on Crime’.