The United States Practices Solitary Confinement

The use of solitary confinement in the United States prisons systems is higher than that of any

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

Solitary confinement in the prison system is far too common in this country. Bohm and Haley (2017) note that 15 consecutive days spent in solitary confinement is considered to be cruel and/or torturesome as reported by a UN Special Rapporteur. These 15 days are also the point at which psychological damage occurs and is also irreversible. So if 15 days has been identified as cruelty and likely irreversible to one’s mental stability, then why do prison systems continue to place inmates in solitary confinement for

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

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

Many people believe that solitary confinement is justified given the magnitude of certain crimes. Utilitarianism, an ideology most commonly used by policymakers to defend solitary confinement, rationalizes isolation by suggesting that the purpose of all legislation “is to augment the total happiness of the community; and therefore, in the first place, to exclude, as far as may be, every thing that tends to subtract from that happiness: in other words, to exclude mischief...”; however, the same principles of utility also suggest that “...if [punishment] ought at all to be admitted, it ought only to be admitted in so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil” (qtd. in Isdale). Solitary confinement, however, proves to be so unnecessarily

Once an inmate is place on solitary confinement, the only social interaction they have is with two armed guards as they are escorted to the “yard” or their one hour of activity. I emphasize “yard” because the area for activity for inmates under isolation is hardly able to be considered a yard. It is barely bigger than their cell and many times it is completely enclosed with fencing from the walls to the ceiling. This isolation from humans and the outside world has sever effects on inmates. Prisoners in solitary confinement have increased rates of self mutilation and suicide.

Ironically, most prisoners housed in solitary confinement are not the “worst of the worst,” or the most dangerous or violent (Gordon, 2014), in fact I could not find any evidence to support the theory that solitary confinement makes prisons safer or that it deters violence within the prison. The studies I did read about showed that solitary confinement may actually be doing the opposite it may be increasing the violence in prisons. Colorado, Maine, and Mississippi have all reduced the numbers of prisoners in solitary confinement without an increase in prison violence (Gordon, 2014).

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

For centuries solitary confinement has been around. According to de Merriam Webster Dictionary solitary confinement is: “the state of being kept alone in a prison cell away from other prisoners”. This method is used as a disciplinary action for prisoners who commit devastating crimes, put other people’s lives in danger, or for the protection of oneself. Being under solitary confinement requires to be kept 23 hours on a cell per day during the period of time estimated depending of the gravity of your fault. This means staying alone by you, not interacting with society.

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.

Solitary confinement has been viewed as a form of “segregation”, however over the past two centuries, this dangerous activity has been proclaimed as a form of torture by International Human Rights. The American Red Cross has conveyed its concern with the United States Prison systems and the skyrocketing legal challenges it has faced in the past 20 years. By using the information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, researchers approximated in 2011 that over 80,000 prisoners are held in some form of solitary confinement unit; this includes regulatory segregation, disciplinary segregation and protective custody—all forms of housing involving significant use of social isolation. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, the largest law enforcement agency