The Effectiveness Of Supermax Prisons And Extreme Solitary Confinement

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

Maximum and Supermax prison is designed for full attention to security and surveillance. In these institutions, the inmate’s lives are organized into a militaristic approach to control the inmate’s movements, by limiting/eliminating situations that could lead to a breakdown in discipline like escaping, harming themselves, others and/or prison staff. The facilities have concrete walls that stand 20 - 30 feet high and have been sunk deep into the ground to prevent prisoners from tunneling. The fences are electrically charged and lined with barbed wire. Unlike medium and minimum facilities which can have multiple occupants to a room, max and supermax facilities can only contain one occupant because these inmates pose a threat to other inmates.

The strictest of prison facilities is the high or maximum security institution. Within its walls are some of the most severe criminals who have committed some of the most heinous acts. This final type of institution is comprised of reinforced fences and walls. Prisoners are contained in solitary cells and their movements are controlled and monitored extremely closely. Because of the severity of the crimes committed by the convicted individuals that are incarcerated in these maximum security facilities, there is an extremely high ratio of staff to inmates (Prison Types General Information, 2012).

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

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.

"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.

Solitary confinement is a penitentiary punishment developed in which each inmate is held in isolation from other inmates or any human contact, with the exception of correctional staff. Solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is usually twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, with a sentence extending from days to years. This form of incarceration is used as a form of punishment for the inmate, commonly for violation of correctional rules. There has been some debate to wheatear solitary confinement should be accepted as an adequate form of punishment. Society views solitary confinement as a form of cruelty, while others see it as a form of safety for other inmate with in the correctional facility. Solitary confinement is an acceptable form of punishment.

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.

Safety is one of the biggest pros of a supermax prison. “Increasing prison safety is one of the most widely cited goals in the literature…For example, two-thirds (36) of departments of corrections in a National Institute of Corrections (1997) survey considered management of violent inmates a main reason for creating supermax prisons. As one respondent in our study explained, “by locking up the riskiest inmates, there is greater safety in the prison environment. This is the most general reason for having these types of units”. (Mears and Watson 242) A supermax prison is designed to separate extremely violent and disruptive prisoners from others, for the safety of other inmates as well as the safety of staff in the prison. “More than 90 percent of wardens said they agreed or strongly agreed that

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?

There is no objection that should someone commit a crime, they must also pay the subsequent consequences, whether it be a fine, a prison sentence or even both. At times, especially in the prisons, even these punishments are not enough and thus an extra step is taken to ensure the misbehaved party does not repeat their error again. Inmates may be placed in solitary confinement for extended periods of times, ranging from weeks to even decades. With absolutely no human interaction, a holding cell smaller than a horse’s stable, and deprivation of basic human rights and senses, solitary confinement is the wrong way to rehabilitate prisoners since it is ethically wrong, very costly and detrimental to inmate health, both physical and mental.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

In their observation of the Auburn Prison in New York, they found that the use of solitary confinement and subjecting the inmates to complete isolation had serious negative results, in which Beaumont and Tocqueville noted that solitary confinement did not reform and rather killed (Panzarella & Vona, pg 287). As a result, solitary confinement lost much of its popularity over the next couple of decades and later reemerged with the establishment of supermax prisons in the late nineteenth century. Supermax prisons, which is short for maximum security prisons hold the most dangerous convicts using the methods of isolation and solitary confinement to primarily control and direct them. Inmates in maximum security prisons are held in isolated cells for years or even decades as they serve their sentence. In her University of Michigan Journal of law Review, Solitary Confinement, Public Safety, and Recidivism, Prisoner Rights advocate Shira Gordon states, “Unlike the nineteenth century, correctional administrators in modern prisons do not implement solitary confinement for rehabilitative purposes. The goals of modern solitary confinement are simply to incapacitate and assert control over prisoners: the warden and

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.