Long Term Confinement In Prisons

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

It is a victory not only for prison reform activists and prisoners across the state, but for psychologists as well. The growing body of psychological research and evidence about the detrimental effects of long-term isolation is now enshrined with

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

Solitary confinement is viewed as one of the best punishments for prisoners’ bad behavior in order to protect the rest of the inmates. Solitary confinement has proven to have the reverse effects in terms of a person’s psychological state. Solitary confinement means that the prisoners do not have normal stimulus and human communication which has its toll on the prisoners. Prisoners who are in solitary confinement only have themselves and the acoustics of their squared prison cell which tends to drive many to hallucinate, act violently, or commit suicide.

A comprehensive understanding of solitary confinement, the kingpin of extreme treatment of prisoners, can be obtained through a brief overview of solitary confinement, including its definition, why it is used, and who it is applied to. In simple terms, solitary confinement entails the separating of one particular inmate from the rest of prison population. On a more technical note, “Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating people in closed cells for 22-24 hours a day, virtually free of human contact, for periods of time ranging from days to decades”(SolitaryWatch). There two types of segregation: “The first, known as disciplinary segregation, is leveled as punishment when inmates break the rules” and “administrative segregation, which

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 isn’t all it’s made out to be. Altho it is a punishment it’s a humane way of inmates serving out their time. Solitary confinement isn’t at all what people say it is, it teaches prisoners to behave, and it proves to be a safe environment for the inmates through a place called the ‘blue room’.

After reading the article, textbook, and watching the films, I believe that solitary confinement should exist in our prison system up to a certain extent. While research has been conducted that concludes solitary confinement disrupts the normal pattern of human behavior; it does not make sense to me that a prisoner could be violent, or destructive and not receive a punishment for his or her actions. For example, if an inmate has assaulted other inmates or jail personnel on multiple occasions, they should not be allowed to remain in the general prison population since they have repeatedly disrupted the safety of the prison. Violent outbursts that occur in prison should not go unnoticed or unpunished. However, if an inmate engages in a minor

Solitary confinement has been used for decades by prisons across the United States. “Although the U.S. only holds 5% of the world’s population, it holds approximately 25% of the world’s prisoners” (Devereaux, 2012, pg. 7). According to our text, “an estimate of at least 80,000 inmates in 38 states and federal prisons are held in solitary confinement. These inmates are being held for various reasons, including breaking rules, posing a security risk, or being a gang member” (Bohm & Haley, 2014, p. 388).

     The idea of sentencing a criminal for a period of time in a prison isn't working, so prisons should focus more on changing their rehabilitation programs. Life in prison should be like the outside world as much as possible, given the fact of imprisonment. Prisoners would be less prepared if the prison environment is artificial and abnormal compared to the outside world they will have to encounter later on. A prisoner also needs to keep family ties. Research in

The topic I am exploring is the effects of long-term incarceration on prisoner’s mental and psychological state. Many individuals believe that long- term incarceration and the conditions of prisons have negatively affected inmates psychologically and mentally. It has been discovered that post-traumatic stress disorders and anxiety is shared between those who have been in prison for a long period or those who are adapted to prison life. (Garcia) Incarceration was created to help the prisoners reimburse themselves and learn from their mistake, instead incarceration has the power to corrupt prisoners mentally and can follow the individuals after being released preventing them to live a normal steady life.

Prison is a place of confinement where people are legally detenated for a crime and/or are awaiting trial. Detention in no way should mean mistreatment. After reading the Shook, Gaucher and Vivar articles, it is clear that the prison system goes beyond just sentencing individuals for the crimes they have committed. It ends up brutally mistreating those confined, whether it is through the prison itself or the state paid staff.

When the average person thinks of jails and prisons, they typically think of horrible criminals being locked up in order to protect the rest of society. They think justice has been served, and those who did the crime are now doing the time. But what goes on inside a prison, and inside the minds of the inmates? What about after those offenders have served their time, and are now being released back into the general public? People don’t really think about how prison affects a person’s mentality, or how incarceration impacts both relationships the inmate currently has, or ones that will develop in the future. Although it isn’t something most people think of first, incarceration is an experience that can have a negative psychological impact on a person for quite some time.