The Efforts Of Solitary Confinement Essay

It was also found by O’Keefe et al. (2013) that the Colorado Department of Corrections has a total of 19,279 inmates for state and private prisons including solitary confinement. They also found that Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) has 756 beds available for inmates who are sent to this confinement facility. The rise in the use of solitary confinement raises major questions about the prisoner’s mental health as well as how ethical solitary confinement really is.

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

There have been various studies conducted over the past few decades that show the devastating consequences of the use of solitary confinement in prisons. Studies show that the method of solitary confinement has the potential to lead to severe psychological effects on prison inmates. To address the consequences of solitary confinement in the U.S. federal prison system, President Obama directed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch as well as the Justice Department to review and analyze the overuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Six months later, on January 25th, 2016, President Obama officially announced that he is adapting the recommendations proposed by the Attorney General and the Justice Department to reform the federal prison system.

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.

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 Pennsylvania system constructed in the early 1800s used extreme isolation to deter future crime inspired solitary confinement. In the twentieth century, inmates in solitary confinement would stay for short periods. According to Craig, people would stay in secure housing units for a couple of days or weeks (Weir, 54). Nowadays solitary confinement has become very popular. Inmates are being sent to solitary confinement for indefinite periods of time ranging from weeks to years. An Urban Institute survey of self-identified supermax wardens reported 44 states with at least one facility relatively housing 25,000 prisoners (Arrigo and Bullock, 2008). Additionally, it is believed that as prisons are being overpopulated, the numbers are increasing throughout the years.

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

Author Amy Bennett has recently noticed the increasing media presence on solitary confinement and the abuses found in the U.S. prison system. She noticed that states have been rethinking the practice of solitary confinement with the most notable one being New York and the investigation of Rikers Island. She talked about solitary confinement and how it relates to torture. “Despite the reforms underway at Rikers, there are still those over 18 years of age who will experience the torture of solitary confinement, many of them mentally ill. Still others will become mentally ill as a result of solitary confinement.”(Bennett, 2016) She is saying that isolation can cause one to become mentally ill even though it is under reform.

Does solitary confinement cause severe mental issues? Are the mentally ill allowed to be put in solitary confinement? How bad can the mental issues possibly get if you don’t have a mental issue before being put in solitary confinement? All of these are questions some people ask, but really don’t care enough to dig deeper. What if your loved one or even you were to be put in solitary confinement? Wouldn’t you want to know what it was, wouldn’t you want to know what the affects of this punishment are?

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

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

   West Virginia state prisons have a maximum capacity of 2,154 inmates; currently they house 2,363 inmates, and more remain in City and County lockups to manage the overflow (West Virginia Blue Book). Home Confinement solves this problem. Reduction of the prison population should be reason enough to institute home confinement, but other reasons do exist. Would you like lower taxes? Home confinement costs much less than incarceration. Do you favor less crime? For certain types of criminals, home confinement has a better rehabilitation rate. Home confinement also differs from incarceration by the fact that it allows the confined person to contribute to society. For all of these