Pros And Cons Of Solitary Confinement In Prisons

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 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

There has been cases that brings the question is the U.S. prisons have violated human rights such as when looking at the The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (SITE).” “Excessive force” by prison guards constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In a very important Supreme Court case called Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992), the Court found a violation of the Eighth Amendment when prison officials punched and kicked a prisoner, leaving him with minor bruises, swelling of his face and mouth, and loose teeth. The Court held that a guard’s use of force violates the Eighth Amendment when it is not applied

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

Solitary confinement in the prison system is far too common in this country. Bohm and Haley (2017) note that 15 consecutive days spent in solitary confinement is considered to be cruel and/or torturesome as reported by a UN Special Rapporteur. These 15 days are also the point at which psychological damage occurs and is also irreversible. So if 15 days has been identified as cruelty and likely irreversible to one’s mental stability, then why do prison systems continue to place inmates in solitary confinement for

The statistics on this topic are very elusive, but we know that approximately twenty thousand inmates are in solitary confinement in America‘s supermax prison, and thousands upon thousands of others are held in isolation in other smaller prisons and jails. In the early 1800’s, a new style of prison rolled around. It was called the penitentiary (Eastern State) and the idea base of this facility was to hold prisoners in solitary and reform them, not to punish them. Back nearly two hundred years ago, this makes plenty of sense, but why is America stuck two hundred years in the past? Why are we putting the human mind in an environment where the entire foundation of the brain begins to lose all understanding? Solitary confinement is for both the safety of the prisoner, and as punishment when rules have been broken. If prisoners such as rapists and murderers are terrified of this small little cell does that not say something? An estimated 20% of all inmates in the nation‘s prison and jails are seriously mentally ill, and the use of a solitary confinement system only makes this worse. In the punishment of wrongdoing and of violence, prisoners are thrown into solitary without a second glance. When we take into understandings that people with severe mental illnesses do not always know right from wrong, they tend to be the high population of those in solitary confinements. Once thrown into this small cell, prisoners are looked at like next to nothing, they are treated terribly, having only one hour a day to be placed in an even smaller cage like contraption and see the outdoors. With conditions like these, one statistic that is most often published, seventy percent of solitary prisoners commit suicide. Twenty three hours a day, seven days a week for weeks and months on end, these prisoners

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

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 concept of solitary confinement in itself is absolutely inhumane because being subjected to it has long lasting effects. In 2015, after serving a three-year sentence for supposedly stealing a backpack, a 22-year-old Kalief Browder committed suicide. What drove him to suicide was the damaging effects from prolonged isolation (two years to be exact) and the constant beatings he received at the hands of correctional officers and fellow inmates (“Kalief Browder, held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide”). We cannot lose another life because of solitary confinement, now is the time to eliminate solitary confinement and invest in more humane methods of

“The prisoner was thought to consider himself dead to all without the prison walls.” Although it may lock up some of the most intimidating and precarious criminals, Solitary Confinement is cruel and unusual punishment because it is unnecessary torture, psychologically unhealthy and provides for inhumane living conditions.

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

Under the eighth amendment, cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden, however, that law stopped absolutely nothing. Inside the walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary, every action had a consequence. In the winter, if inmates were to misbehave they would get chained to the wall and have buckets of cold water thrown on them. In the summer they would get chained to a chair for days. It is bad enough most of the people in Eastern State were in solitary confinement, let alone getting strapped to a chair for days. If they continued to misbehave, an iron gag was placed over the mouth of the prisoner (Griest). The prisoners at Eastern State Penitentiary were clearly subject to cruel and unusual punishment. By the time Eastern State closed its doors in 1971, it was widely seen as a failure.