Summary Of Hellhole By Atul Gawande

Many researchers have found that long periods of time in solitary confinement can have negative mental effects on inmates. This is due to long-term confinement because it consists of not only prolonged deprivation of social interaction but also sensory deprivation (Haney, 2003). Medical ethics are also in question about the effects of long term confinement. Medical professionals have to handle a particularly difficult situation because they are required to provide medical assistance to these inmates that may be facing psychological issues. This is a problem because medical professionals are aware that solitary confinement has negative effects on the well-being and mental state of these individuals (Shalev, 2011).

Inmates have been placed here for both short and long term sentences. Segregation has a significant impact on inmates with preexisting mental illnesses. According to Arrigo and Bullock?s (2008) research, ?the extreme isolation that was characteristics of the early prisons?ultimately resulted in serious physical and psychological consequences for convicts.? The SHU has become the way prisons control troublesome inmates. Solitary inmates are only out of their cells for weekly showers and recreation time, but they are still heavily restrained. These inmates have no contact with the general population including dining and religious gatherings. This method of isolation leaves no remove for communication with other

Terry Kupers says “What we’ve found is a series of symptoms almost universally. They are so common that it something of a syndrome.” “I’m afraid were talking about permanent damage.” Not only are these men and women being held without any social contact, but are also under constant surveillance with fluorescent lights never shutting off. Our human brain is ill adapt for such conditions. Being kept in these “special housing” rooms no bigger than bathroom sized restrooms these inmates experience a large number of mental and physical trauma. Having social interaction is a must as a positive impact on our brains releases a molecule called the growth factor. Neuroscientist Huda Akil said “Depriving people of that is physically depriving the brain of its nourishment, without any social interaction some people hallucinate or

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

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

Haney. Majority of these people are in solitary which means they sit in a little cell with no windows for more than twenty-three hours a day. They get no phone calls or get to see visitors face to face. When they are let into the prison population they don't make it successful because they have been desensitized to human interaction. Human interaction is how they survive in prison anyhow. The psychologist did a random sample from the regular population versus the individuals serving their sentence in solitary and asked if they felt like they would do self harm or suffer from depression. The results showed that individuals in solitary just about doubled the regular inmates from feeling depressed and feeling suicidal. In Goode's article Solitary Confinement: Punished for Life Dr. Haney said," some prisoners became so disoriented they questioned their own existence". Majority of the inmates in solitary have been there for over a decade. The inmates in solitary are a few of the ones scheduled for their resentencing of their third strike convictions. They shared with the psychologist that they feel scared to leave solitary confinement because they aren't sure how to interact with people anymore or their families will even care. An inmate was quoted in Goode's article saying," If you put a parakeet in a cage for years and you take it

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

Isolation has rarely been viewed as a positive thing. When people think of someone or something that is isolated, words like “lonely” and “outcast” may come to mind. Even in corrective facilities, such as prisons or asylums, isolation (or solitary confinement) is deemed as a punishment. A study was conducted in a hospital to determine possible psychological and/or physical problems isolation may cause for patients and Abad, Fearday, and Safdar found that, “The majority showed a negative impact on patient mental well-being and behaviour, including higher scores for depression, anxiety and anger

Solitary confinement is isolation from other inmates as a punishment for when you fight or get in trouble in prison. People Say that Solitary confinement is like being in a prison inside a prison, and that the second prison is the prison of your mind. “The worst scars are left in your mind,” they say. The prisoners that already have mental issues are put in solitary confinement more than non mentally challenged inmates. More than them simply because they have the issues and they can’t “act right” but how are they supposed to act right if they don’t know what acting right is.

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

This study represents a parallel to the behavior found in incarcerated humans. Jails cause the same psychological side effects as prisons, to a smaller degree, in the effects of being en-caged, however, the overall standard of living in jails is much higher. There is a decent relationship between the guards and the jailers. The jailers are allowed to interact with the same people on their 'block' between "lockdown" times. Lock-down is when the jailers are confined to their cells, usually at night and for a short while in the day, during a change of shift. This method allows inmates to play cards, watch TV together and at very least walk around something else besides their cell. The prison system, however, usually remains in lockdown all the time, although they can speak to each other, they usually can't see each other without a mirror. Observing these two methods, and what little problems there are in jails as opposed to prisons leads me to believe that if you treat a human being like a human being they will act like a human being. If you lock them in a cage all day they may as well act like an animal. (Prison Activist Resource Center, 1-3)

When most people think of the basic necessities for a human, they might tend to think of food, water, clothing, or shelter. While it is true that a human needs these things an often overlooked component to survival is relationships with other humans. Every human being needs to have some type of social interaction and a meaningful activity to have a sense of worth. In the real world when that social interaction is taken away people, such as when a person is placed in solitary confinement, can cause a person to act strangely. Likewise, isolation in novels can be viewed as a powerful force that can drive characters to do actions that they would not have considered doing under normal