Drawbacks of 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 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.

When there is a mentally ill prisoner, should they suffer? Solitary confinement does this to prisoners all Solitary confinement means isolating prisoners in a separate cell as a form of punishment, worsening the prisoner’s mental health around the world. Mentally ill inmates have many factors of poor treatment in prisons worsening their health rather than helping them. Solitary Confinement remains an ineffective method of punishment for prisoners causing prisoners mental distress, many different forms of neglect, leading them to suicide, and worsening their mental wellbeing.

Solitary Confinement has been used as a punishment, to keep the prisons secure. However, with the changing of opinions from a few decades ago, to present time, more people want less solitary confinement used. With also corrections policies changing over time has also changed the dynamic of how a younger person could be charged and sentenced, compared to an older person who is not a juvenile could be put into solitary confinement. More facts about the use of Solitary Confinement, the policy is up for debate. Starting with do I agree with the New York Times, The Living Death 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

There is no objection that should someone commit a crime, they must also pay the subsequent consequences, whether it be a fine, a prison sentence or even both. At times, especially in the prisons, even these punishments are not enough and thus an extra step is taken to ensure the misbehaved party does not repeat their error again. Inmates may be placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of times, ranging from weeks to even decades. With absolutely no human interaction, a holding cell smaller than a horse’s stable, and deprivation of basic human rights and senses, solitary confinement is the wrong way to rehabilitate prisoners since it is ethically wrong, very costly and detrimental to inmate health, both physical and mental.

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

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

Solitary Confinement can actually cause mental health issues. People can literally go insane because of no interaction with people and being in isolation all the time. Some people get so bad that they have to be take and put in a straight jacket in a padded room. For 23 hours a day inmates are kept in a room a little smaller than a horse stable, and the only time they have to get out is when it’s time for them to be outside. Some prisons don’t even do that. All they do is give them food through a little whole in the door. (Front

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 is a big problem for criminals, for some end up being chronically ill, in which the criminal justice system should reform against this punishment. Research shows that “solitary confinement has been around since the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century”. It has been used for those who are imprisoned and break the rules inside. The little area you are put in called solitary confinement is locked down for 23 hours and you are only let out for a hour a day to have rec time and are able to shower, while inside “you do not have any reading materials, have no one to talk to, and are confined in a small space”. For many juveniles who are put in solitary confinement they