Solitary Confinement Is The United States State Penitentiary

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.

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 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 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

Solitary Confinement has become an issue in the United States Prisons. Inmates can be placed in solitary confinement not only for violent acts, but also for acts such as possessing contraband, using drugs, ignoring orders or using profanity. Most inmates in solitary confinement are placed in isolated cells for 23 hours per day. Many of these cells are illuminated only be artificial light and offer no exposure to natural daylight.

Solitary confinement in America is becoming a big issue with the way humans are treated such as higher rates of insanity, higher risk for self-harm, inhumane treatment, no outside contact or contact with other beings and also this special unit is becoming over used across America. Solitary confinement or ad seg is the disciplinary unit in most prisons where the inmates are housed when those inmates get in serious trouble or those individuals are being protected from other inmates in the jail. This special unit in the jail is referred to as the ‘hole’, special housing, restricted housing and also administrated segregation to the jail staff. Ad seg is a single man jail cell usually 10 x 10 with one bed, a toilet and sometimes a little

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

There was a range of different topics that caught my attention especially the ones evolving domestic violence. I am interning at Next Door Solutions which is a domestic violence resource for survivors in San Jose. Although, I wanted to stray away from my norm so I have chosen to do it on banning solitary confinement on youth. Solitary confinement is used on adults and juvenile when the prisoner is considered a danger to themselves or others. Typically they are placed in solitary confinement when the inmate fights with others, gets an infraction, and is a form of punishment. Solitary confinement separates the prisoner from the general population and puts them in a cell by themselves and main purpose is for the prisoner to feel isolated. They

First in Solitary confinement a prisoner is normally isolated in a small room the size of a king size bed for 23 hours a day and kept away from other prisoners. It’s a cruel punishment that started in the 1800s and was started to make solitary confinement prisoners to reflect and read the bible but even they decided it was too cruel. Some say this should be a

The reason prisoners are placed in solitary confinement is because they are considered to be too dangerous to be in general population because they either threatened another inmate or an officer. They can also be in solitary for their own protection if they are mentally unstable or to keep them from trouble, or they can also be placed as punishment for disruptive behavior.

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

Since the introduction of solitary confinement and the construction of super-max prison there has an on going debate on whether using these punishment is violating the 8th amendment and also explaining all the health risk caused by solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is when a prisoner is held in a cell alone and they spend between 22.5 and 24 hours a day. Prisoners have no contact with other inmates and guards are also have limited contact with inmates. Solitary confinement was first introduced in the mid-nineteenth century and it was believed that it would help reform prisoners. The ideology behind solitary confinement and super-max prisons was that prisoners would be locked up alone and left with nothing but their Bible and this would allow the prisoner to reflect on his actions and wrong doings and eventually reform into a law-abiding citizen. But soon after solitary confinement was put into place it became clear that solitary confinement did not meet there goal of reforming individuals but evidence proved it caused harmed to the prisoners physical and mental health. Besides being harmful to prisoner’s physical and mental health it was also very expensive to run super-max prisons. Many began to question whether it was morally and ethically correct to keep prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods of time at once. When solitary confinement was first introduced it was used as a short-term punishment for prisoner who committed severe offenses in prison.

Locked up, boxed off, silence, loneliness, those are some of the many feelings and realities faced by prisoners who are hidden away in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is where prisoners are brought to be punished, they are separated from the main population and thrown into a small empty room, with a locked door and a tiny window that opens up for guards to slide the food into the room. The inmates here are isolated from nearly all forms of human stimulation and get out at most one hour per day. This is the harsh life some prisoners face. The question is though, are their sufferings for the greater good of society and other prisoners, or is the practice of solitary confinement immoral and does it pose a human rights risk to society that is a detriment to society, rather than a benefit?t For this I will explore John Stuart Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle to argue for why I am against the current use of solitary confinement, as I believe with current implementation there are more cons than positives to the practice.

Some may argue that consecutive 6-month solitary confinement sentences is allowable if the sentences are for separate charges or the inmate consistently poses a threat to the prison staff and other inmates. However, extensive solitary confinement often causes serious psychological harm to the inmates. Therefore, spending a full year in solitary confinement should be considered cruel and unusual.