Research Paper On Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement is a mandated arrangement set up by courts or prisons which seek to punish inmates by the use of isolated confinement. Specifically, solitary confinement can be defined as confinement in which inmates that are held in a single cell for up to twenty-three hours a day without any contact with the exception of prison staff (Shalev, 2011). There are several other terms which refer to solitary confinement such as, administrative segregation, supermax facilities (this is due to the fact that supermax facilities only have solitary confinement), the hotbox, the hole, and the security housing unit (SHU). Solitary confinement is a place where most inmates would prefer not to go.

Greg Dobbs is a journalist, professional public speaker, and ABC News correspondent. Dobbs argues in agreeance of keeping solitary confinements in the prison systems for way of punishment. He first talks about Rick Raemisch’s, Department of Correction boss, experience as he stayed in solitary confinement for twenty hours at the Colorado Prison. Dobbs quoted Raemisch when he said, “I sat with my mind”. Raemisch brought a lot of attention to the evil side of solitary confinement says Dobbs. He then reminds the reader that convicted criminals

"Supermax" is short for "super-maximum security." It is a place designed to house violent prisoners or prisoners who might threaten the security of the guards or other prisoners. Some prisons that are not designed as supermax prisons have "control units" in which conditions are similar. The theory is that solitary confinement and sensory deprivation will bring about behavior modifications.

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.

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

As these facilities were designed to isolate the disruptive from everyone else, including guards and other prisoners for their own safety. As Pizarro adds “The prisons of today are intended to punish offenders, to prevent them from committing new offenses, and to deter others from engaging in criminal behavior. Within this context, a new managerial style in corrections developed” Pizarro makes a good point, Punishment , detention and deterrence are the top three that the United State prison system focuses on. Although, As the United States focuses most of its energy on punishment and that's just one piece that contributes to crime detection but, when having rehabilitation as their last priority on the list it has led for The U.S. to have high recidivism rates meaning the chances of relapsing to old criminal behavior. Not only is it justifiable that it is a violation to human rights there has also been studies that support that solitary confinement increases violence which results for those incarcerated that are then released in the future to be more likely to come back to prison since they can't connect with the real

Very recently there has been a movement to eliminate the use of solitary confinement for juveniles. In 2016, President Obama issued a memorandum banning the use of solitary confinement for juveniles in the federal prison system. A bill has been introduced in Congress this year to codify that memorandum into law. Because there are very few ways in which juveniles can interact with the federal criminal

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?

The reasons that Stop Solitary for Kids believe that there is a need for social action is because of the research that proves that solitary confinement causes mental illness spike the rates of suicide and it does not fix the problem of the youth misbehaving but has the opposite effect. The reason why an inmate would be placed into solitary

Insomnia, paranoia, uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear are just some of the effects that a prisoner can experience after being placed in solitary confinement. I think the government should ban solitary confinement because it causes mental pain and suffering.

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

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

Regarding juvenile solitary confinement I do agree that it should be used but only in extreme cases such as one inmate physically assaulting another inmate or guard however I don't think it should be up to anyone to mess with someone else’s mental psyche for petty misbehavior especially if the goal is to reform them into productive members of society for the future. I do however believe that there should be some sort of punishment for those minor and petty misbehaviors while in prison some ideas that I have about suitable punishments that you can include are taking away commissary, reducing visiting hours or just taking them away altogether for a period of time because solitary confinement can cause many mental disorders such as anxiety, schizophrenia, and depression because they are minors their brains aren't fully developed so putting them in solitude at such a young age can cause them to attain the mental orders that I have stated above which can cause them to go back to prison more often in the future going back to the article Michael Kemp stated “It’s like if you put a grasshopper in a cup and then you place a top on it and it keeps on jumping and it keeps on jumping and it keep on hitting the top, keep on hitting the top, so when you take the top off, the grasshopper not going to jump out the top of the cup because it’s going to be so used to hitting the top of the cup, and it’s like that’s

It was in a brainstorming situation that I discovered the topic of discussion I wanted to hear a convincing opposition against. I knew that choosing something more controversial would garner a greater opposition, but at the same time, I wanted to avoid topics that seemed almost too commonplace in assignments like this. With that in mind, I decided to hear out the opposition against my view of the inhumanity of solitary confinement. The person with whom I discussed, who will be referred to as Person X for the purposes of this write-up, believed that in certain situations, solitary confinement was a just punishment. We had this discussion waiting for our Microbiology class to begin. Bringing up random topics of discussion is not something unusual within the scope of my character, and so rather than wait for an opportunity that would not present itself, I simply asked Person X for his/her opinion on solitary confinement as a justified punishment for convicted criminals. To give the discussion some direction and so that I could better understand Person X’s point of view I asked some questions. The two most important I found being: “Why do you feel that it’s okay to punish people like that in some cases but not in others?” and “How long is too long?”. I found these questions particularly helpful in understanding Person X’s position because I noticed that he/she didn’t completely agree with either one side. He/she was intent on making a point based on conditionality. Although I