Over the years there have been discussions about whether or not the use of solitary confinement is violating the 8th amendment and is actually making an individual worse overall mentally. Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an inmate is isolated from any human contact, often with the exception of members of prison staff, for 22–24 hours a day, with a sentence ranging from days to decades (Solitary confinement facts, 2018). If an individual is placed in a solitary confinement cell, their rights of visitation, books, and others are very limited. The reason that the use of solitary confinement is considered a violation of the 8th amendment is that some people believe that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment …show more content…
This prison had cells that were 8 by 12 feet, and prisoners were kept in them for 23 hours of the day. When the prisoner was given their hour of exercise inside of another small area, they were not able to have any contact with other inmates or outside world. The officers would use a small slot in the door to give the inmates their food, and there was the very minimum light that came from a small window in the cell (Kupers, 2017). The reasoning that this prison was first started was to hopefully rehabilitate an inmate through the use of being isolated from everyone else. The use of isolation was supposed to give the prisoner time to think about the crime they committed. Shortly after the Philadelphia prison started, a second prison that used solitary confinement as a form of punishment opened. The Auburn Prison of New York gave the nation another view of solitary confinement. It was said to not be as harsh as Philadelphia but it was still considered a tough punishment. When a prisoner would be around another inmate or guard, they had to be …show more content…
Over the years, people have been working to stop solitary confinement by calling it “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” and that it is a violation of the humans' eighth amendment rights. The idea of the eighth amendment is to protect any citizen from the use of cruel punishment no matter what the circumstances are. Cruel and unusual punishment is “punishment as would amount to torture or barbarity, any cruel and degrading punishment not known to the Common Law, or any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community.” John McCain made a statement about his time he spent in a Vietnamese solitary confinement saying that “It’s an awful thing, solitary. It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment (Bond, 2012).” The reason that it has become a big deal within the community is that the use of solitary confinement can affect the mental, physical and social factors of an
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.
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 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.
The most valued documents in modern American society tend also to be the most heavily debated. For instance, interpretations of the United States Constitution tend to be rooted in one of two firmly entrenched beliefs;while the first camp believes it to be set in stone, the second his convinced that the United States Constitution is by nature a perpetually evolving document, meant to reflect the desires and needs of the people. Even amongst those in the same camp, disagreements abound; those believing that the Constitution is set in stone are divided on issues such as the eighth amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. It is difficult to reach a consensus on what, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. For example, the concept of waterboarding is championed by many as a ‘humane’ form of torture which causes no physical harm. However, it was deemed a cruel and unusual punishment due to the sensations of drowning and symptoms of mental illness which it produced in its victims. It can therefore be inferred that physical injury is not the only factor to be considered in whether or not a practice is to be deemed inhumane; factors such as mental wellbeing and fitness of punishment must also be considered. This leads one to ponder how the concept of solitary confinement could possibly even be considered when it so clearly violates the protections which the eighth amendment provides.
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
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?
Such treatment was deemed cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional, violating inmates' 8th Amendment rights. Now, only prisoners who commit serious in-prison offenses (violence, possessing weapons or narcotics, or attempting to escape) will be sent to solitary confinement, and for a limited period of
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
Solitary Confinement has been a practice, dating all the way back to 1787 with the idea that when inmates would be left alone in silence, they would show regret and become more remorseful. In 2005, the sentence still thrived with nearly 82,000 men and women were in solitary confinement in federal adult prisons with the title of “restricted housing.” This statistic doesn’t even include jails or immigration facilities. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the rate of confinement for juveniles skyrocketed to the point where we define that time as an epidemic. In that time, there became definitions of a “super predator,” defining it as teenagers who are fatherless, Godless, and jobless and don’t have anything better to do than to terrorize their community. In
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
The horrors of solitary confinement. One man named Gabriel Eber who was a prison inmate at East Mississippi Correctional Facility retells the horrors of solitary stating “Men are kept in small, unsanitary isolation cells with scant human attention for months and years. Self-mutilation and suicide attempts are not uncommon (Rienzi, 2015)”. There are thousands of inmates who spend 23 hours a day, in a windowless cell alone without human interaction. One account from Kate Edwards who runs an advocacy group known as “Wisdom” in one of New York State’s correctional facilities states “They would change in disturbing ways”, “They became unkempt, less able to focus. As the weeks went by, they would look more and more distressed. I was watching them disintegrate. (Lueders, 2015)”. The reality is that inmates that are locked away from 23 hours a day for weeks or even years, facing severe repercussions that ultimately do more harm than good. Inmates are locked away and having no interaction at all and nothing to do. “They face crushing depression and anxiety. They scream and cry. They slash and bite their own flesh. They smear feces on the wall. They try to kill themselves with pens, paperclips, bed sheets, with metal from
Solitary confinement can actually be worse for the mentally ill. Many of the inmates that are subjected to solitary confinement “have serious mental illness, and the conditions of solitary confinement can exacerbate their symptoms or provoke recurrence.”(Metzner). Solitary confinement worsens the effects of mental illness which can be very dangerous to the prisoner and the few people that they get any human contact with. Solitary confinement is considered torture by the U.N. “The U.N. Convention Against Torture defines torture as any state-sanctioned act “by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” for information, punishment, intimidation, or for a reason based on discrimination”(“Solitary Confinement Facts.”) which solitary confinement clearly falls under especially with people with mental illness. Solitary confinements is a human rights violation which no one should be subjected to especially people with mental illness. Sometimes prisoners are not treated properly, in fact “roughly 60 percent of the inmates whose solitary cases were reviewed had serious underdiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses.”(Eilperin). Prisoners with mental illnesses did not get treatment and this can be very dangerous to not only the prisoner themselves but
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.