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Solitary confinement case studies and critical review
Essays on solitary confinement
Essays on solitary confinement
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Solitary confinement borders cruel and unusual punishment due to its association to extreme mental illnesses of its prisoners. Studies have shown healthy people obtaining mental illnesses after being confined for a short period of time. For most people this association, as well as its high cost to maintain the use of solitary confinement, is enough to stop the use of this style of incarseration and closing strictly solitary prisons. Others believe that restoring rehabilitating activities and medical attention for prisoners is more preferable than closing the prisons, because the prison is the prime employer of the small towns they were built in.
Visual and auditory hallucinations, insomnia and paranoia, uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear, PTSD, depression, and anxiety are associated with solitary confinement. The prisoner can generate irritation of routine noises, like the closing and opening of their cell doors. This irritation provokes them to be violent and makes them more of a danger to security and other inmates. Contracting these violent behaviors while in solitary confinement is called Special Housing Unit (SHU) syndrome. The majority of the symptoms of SHU syndrome are found in people who have had a major event happened that has caused a big change in their life, more often a life-threatening situation that happened to them while in prison.
The prisoners that are confined in there for protection may have been assaulted by another prisoner or cell mate and lash out from fear or anger, or have serious thoughts of harming thereselves afterwards. In 2001 Human Rights Watch reported that “Victims of prison rape commonly report nightmares, deep depression, shame, loss of self-esteem, self-hatred, and considering or attempt...
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"Prisoners' Rights." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 3 Oct. 2003. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .
"Solitary Confinement." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 7 Sept. 2010. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
"Solitary Is Cruel And Unusual." Scientific American 309.2 (2013): 10.MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
"Update: Prisoners' Rights." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .
"Update: Juvenile Justice." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 14 Dec. 2006. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .
Pell v. Procunier is a significant case in corrections as it confirms that denying media interviews with inmates does not violate the inmates’ or journalists’ constitutional rights, as long other means of communication, such as mail and visitation, are permitted. This case controlled the First Amendment rights of the inmates and the media, but the court justified it because it reduced the rights
In the case of Sandin v. Conner, DeMont Conner, an inmate at a maximum security correctional facility in Hawaii, was subjected to a strip search in 1987. During the search he directed angry and foul language at the officer. Conner was charged with high misconduct and sentenced to 30 days of segregation by the adjustment committee. Conner was not allowed to present witnesses in his defense. Conner completed the 30-day segregation sentence, after which he requested a review of his case. Upon review, prison administration found no evidence to support the misconduct claim. The State District Court backed the decision, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Sandin had a liberty interest in remaining free from disciplinary segregation. This case is significant because it confronts the question of which constitutional rights individuals retain when they are incarcerated. In Sandin v. Conner, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that prisoners have a right to due process only when “atypical and significant deprivation” has occurred. Prisons must now be vigilant in protecting the rights of inmates. It is a delicate matter in the sense that, when an individual enters prison, their rights to liberty are by and large being forfeited. The rights in question are important to prisoners because prisons are closed environments where by nature their freedoms are already very limited. They need a well-defined set of rights so that prisons do not unduly infringe on their liberty. Without court intervention, prison administrators would likely not have allowed this particular right, as it adds another layer of bureaucracy that can be seen as interfering with the efficiency of their job. Also, it could lead to a glut of prisoners claiming violations of their rights under the court ruling.
Solitary Confinement is a type of isolation in prison which a prisoner is segregated from the general population of the prison and any human contact besides the prison employees. These prisons are separated from the general population to protect others and themselves from hurting anyone in the prison. These prisoners are deprived of social interaction, treatments, psychologist, family visits, education, job training, work, religious programming and many other services prisoners might need during the sentence of their imprisonment. There are roughly 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement but 25,000 are in long term and supermax prisons. According to the Constitution, “The Eighth Amendment [...] prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment”(US Const. amend. VIII). Solitary confinement is suppose to be the last straw for inmates to be in. If they don 't follow it, they can be on death row. Taxpayers pay roughly $75,000 to $85,000 to keep prisoners in solitary confinement. That is 3 times higher than the normal prisons that taxpayers pay for them to be in prison. Solitary confinement was established in 1829 in Philadelphia for experimentation because officials believed it was a way for
Feinberg, J. “ The Nature and Value of Rights.” Journal of Value Inquiry 4(1970): 243
Yet, solitary confinement is still considered necessary in order to maintain control within the prison and among inmates. Solitary confinement is seen as an effective method in protecting specific prisoners and altering violent/aggressive disobedient behaviors, (Maria A. Luise, Solitary Confinement: Legal and Psychological Considerations, 15 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 301, 324 (1989) p. 301). There is some discrepancy among researchers as to the varying effects on inmates who have undergone an extensive solitary confinement stay. Most researchers find that inmates who had no previous form of mental illness suffer far less than those who do, yet most if not all of these individuals still experience some difficulties with concentration and memory, agitation, irritability, and will have issues tolerating external stimuli, (Stuart Grassian, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, 22 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol’y 325 (2006) p. 332). Although these detrimental psychiatric repercussions of solitary confinement currently appear, several researches have made suggestions as to how these may be avoided. These requirements being that
Mauer, Marc. 1999. The Race to Incarcerate. New York: The New Press National Research Council. 1993.
The Justice Gap (2012) [online] “Privatising prisons a step too far”, Available at: http://thejusticegap.com/News/privatising-prisons-a-step-too-far/ [last accessed on 10th November]
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 an article by NPR.org the reason for most solitary confinement units in America “is to control the prison gangs (NPR, 2011).” Sometimes putting a gang member in solitary confinement reduces the effect that confinement is supposed to have when the confined inmate starts losing their mind. 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 or she is in prison and why they are being punished is gone, there is no reason to keep said prisoner in solitary confinement. Once your ability to understand punishment is gone the consequences of your actions lose value and become irrelevant.
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 system.
"Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789." The Avalon Project. Yale Law School, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.
Despite these repulsive behaviors, the most common vile behavior seen throughout the documentary is the inmates covering their windows with blood from cutting themselves with razor blades. Convicts execute these self-harming habits for countless reasons. Despite these unsettling, eye opening situations, the most disturbing aspect of the film is hearing prisoners discuss their experiences in isolation and how it has negatively affected them psychologically. This typically results in a prisoner cutting themselves, bleeding all over their cell and covering themselves in their own blood. Inmates propose that being placed in isolation hinders their ability to be re-integrated into society once they finish serving their sentence. However, the detainee’s bad behavior in the isolation unit simply leads to their isolation sentencing time being increased. This results in more detrimental behavior of the inmates and an increasing amount of self-harm conduct. Although the warden of the prison is aware of the effect isolation has on the prisoners, he continues to use segregation as a source of punishment for offenders who misbehave and to ensure correctional officers and other inmates are safe from dangerous
Solitary confinement is a mandated arrangement set up by courts or prisons which seek to punish inmates by the use of isolated confinement. Specifically, solitary confinement can be defined as confinement in which inmates that are held in a single cell for up to twenty-three hours a day without any contact with the exception of prison staff (Shalev, 2011). There are several other terms which refer to solitary confinement such as, administrative segregation, supermax facilities (this is due to the fact that supermax facilities only have solitary confinement), the hotbox, the hole, and the security housing unit (SHU). Solitary confinement is a place where most inmates would prefer not to go. There are many reasons for this.
The effects of prolonged isolation for inmates in confinement cells are obsessive-compulsive tendencies, paranoia, anger-management issues, and severe anxiety (Sifferlin, Alexandra). Along with the basic concepts such as food, water, and shelter, there are two other basics that Dr. Terry Kupers states are required for human wellbeing: “social interaction and meaningful activity. By doing things we learn who we are and we learn our worth as a person. The two things solitary confinement does are make people solitary and idle” (Sifferlin, Alexandra). Isolation and confinement remove prisoners’ ability to perform significant tasks and act as a part of society. This dehumanizes the inmates because they are no longer able to understand their role as a human being. One inmate, Jeanne DiMola, spent a year in solitary confinement and expressed her thoughts while in the cell: “I felt sorry I was born … Most of all I felt sorry that there wasn 't a road to kill myself because every day was worse than the last" (Rodhan, Maya). In DiMola’s opinion, a death penalty more than likely would have felt more humane than the isolation she experienced. Another prisoner, Damon Thibodeaux, stated, “Life in solitary is made all the worse because it 's a hopeless existence … It is torture
If an inmate continues to be violent, the result is a longer time in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is inhumane and should be called torture. Putting and keeping an individual in solitary confinement puts them at a very serious risk of developing a mental illness, which may not be recoverable. Solitary confinement causes many effects that range in severity; it is not something that inmates should be subjected to, though. Inmates/offenders entering the prison system need to be screened for mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Contemporary Readings in Law & Social Justice, 5(2), 454-460.