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The Science of Solitary Confinement
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Joseph Stromberg writes in Smithsonian Magazine that while the practice of solitary confinement is being discontinued in most countries, it's become increasingly routine within the American prison system. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 81,000 prisoners are in some form of solitary confinement nationwide. Once employed largely as a short-term punishment, it's now regularly used as way of disciplining prisoners indefinitely, isolating them during ongoing investigations, coercing them into cooperating with interrogations and even separating them from perceived threats within the prison population at their request.
Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed, devoid of stimuli (some are allowed in a yard or indoor area for an hour or less daily), and are denied physical contact on visits from friends and family ... A majority of those surveyed experienced symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression, while 41 percent reported hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal thoughts...
But the real problem is that solitary confinement is ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained achieving the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society. Rick Raemisch, the new director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, voluntarily spent twenty hours in solitary confinement in one of his prisons and wrote an op-ed about his experience in The New York Times. 'If we can't eliminate solitary confinement, at least we can strive to greatly reduce its use,' wrote Raemisch."
Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed, devoid of stimuli (some are allowed in a yard or indoor area for an hour or less daily), and are denied physical contact on visits from friends and family ... A majority of those surveyed experienced symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression, while 41 percent reported hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal thoughts...
But the real problem is that solitary confinement is ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained achieving the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society. Rick Raemisch, the new director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, voluntarily spent twenty hours in solitary confinement in one of his prisons and wrote an op-ed about his experience in The New York Times. 'If we can't eliminate solitary confinement, at least we can strive to greatly reduce its use,' wrote Raemisch."
How sad the USA has become.
Teach them meditation.
This is what happens when you have a society that is more interested in punishing people than reforming. It's as if to say "We don't believe you'll ever change, or are capable of changing so we're going to crush you instead." All you have to do is read a forum on any news story relating to a crime to get a realistic view on how people view "corrections" should be carried out.... and we call other countries barbaric.
Were taken directly from the dark ages, and were never designed or intended to rehabilitate but to satisfy the victims desire for revenge. And of course wield the power of the state and show how much worse it can be when you don't conform
It's called "retributive justice," and ideally it isn't supposed to be personal, but until human judges are replaced with computer software, it will always be personal.
Would it be so bad if the only role of justice were to protect society while rehabilitating the offender? Some murderers might get out after only a year if they are properly rehabilitated, and serial kleptomaniacs may stay locked away forever, but at least prisons would be a nicer place for them if they weren't meant to be a form of punishment. I think this would do wonders for eliminating crime.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yeah, I like making sweeping generalizations about tens of thousands of people that I've never met to justify horrific and inhumane treatment too.
Oh wait no I don't because I'm not a piece of shit.
I agree that solitary confinement can be a horrifying thing that could be abused. For some perspective of the numbers, though (unless everyone has king-sized beds and likes the analogies in the summary), that is 8.6 sq. m., and here in Paris, you can legally rent apartments that are as small as 9 sq. m.
At some point - I think we need to be realistic about our goals. Is everyone really able to be rehabilitated? If the answer is no, then maybe the best you can do is to try to keep them from hurting someone else. As much as I dislike the death penalty, I can't help but feel that it actually might be more humane than solitary confinement for even relatively short (in prison term terms) durations.
I think what the director did is a great first step. Too bad that every judge, prosecutor, and correctional officer does not get the same experience before they have the power to send someone to such a hell hole.
those who have attacked others or have shown to have colluded in harming people outside the prison system?
a lot of these people are bad people and deserve what they get and will never be normal
And somehow making them less normal is a good thing?
The facts are, despite your hyperbole, that there are quite a few prisoners who literally have nothing to lose because they are in for life, and will use any opportunity to attack and/or kill guards or other prisoners. That is a fact. It's cruel to those other prisoners and guards to allow those individuals to remain in the general population. In fact, it's inhumane and horrific for THEM when they have to worry about Joe Psycopath and the shiv he made from a piece of rolled up newspaper. Where is your concern for them?
I think your response is way more dangerous than the original comment. The trouble with stupid people is they don't know they are stupid.
Some of them are violent prisoners, certainly, but a large portion are not. It's frequently used as punishment for nonviolent criminals, and also for 'protection' of inmates who are likely to be harmed by other inmates.
It's also, as the article points out, essentially torture. Do we want that even for violent offenders? I don't. I also don't want to take the risk of torturing somebody who was wrongfully convicted. As far as 'never being normal' -- well, even populations of violent offenders can have low recidivism rates.
Instead of just locking them up and throwing away the key. Why not force them to make the system better?
Sure prision is not supposed to be a bed of roses it is punishment. However, for some this is their home. This is where they live. They live with I mean *real scum* Randolph.
What about the short timers? When they get out their life in some cases will be drastically worse than before. For some it will be about the same as before. Why should they not come out better than when they went in?
Forced education of the basic R's would be a good start. Nearly 60-70% of our incarcerated population can not read. What hopes of a job do you have if you can not even do that? Gangs and rapes should not be the first thing people think of when being sent to prison. Some of the people going in have serious drug usage problems, mental health issues, etc. We need multitudes of programs to help these people. Even though our first reaction is lock them up and throw away the key and if the hole isnt deep enough have them keep digging.
The health of a prisoner is the responsibility of the state. Allowing damage, including mental illness, to an inmate should be criminal. The use of solitary confinement is not acceptable. Denial of the basics such as free to read books, access to media and films, poor food quality are all modes of torture and are not part of a prison sentence.
Yes, inmates are often bad people. But the catch is that prison workers, cops, the people that accuse, the people in the justice system and the typical tax payer are alos usually really bad people.
they can be isolated safely without the extremes of solitary confinement being locked in a tiny box and not being allowed any type of communication is not for the safety of other prisoners its vindictive
The US prison system is about profit first, punishment second, making an example third, more profit fourth, more punishment fifth, other things, and then maybe sometime much later down the line rehabilitation. They spend more money on laundry security than they do on conscious efforts to rehabiltate prisoners for re-entry into society.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Hyperbole? What hyperbole? You show me how solitary confinement reduces harm to both bystanders and inmates better than other, less barbaric methods of rehabilitation and I'll consider not viewing such methods and the people who advocate them with disgust.
they can be isolated safely without the extremes of solitary confinement
We all eagerly await your detailed plan for their isolation.
You know what? Sometimes you reap what you sow.
And then again, per the article, there are some inmates that request it. Frankly, I'd likely ask for it too, rather than be in general population with all those animals.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
how would an anonymous IM work, wouldn't the person sending it need to know who's recieving the message and vice versa?
How does keeping them in solitary keep people outside of the prison safe?
What purpose does confinement for 23 hours per day serve?
Is it just torture? Locking them away isn't good enough so we need to add something extra?
Why aren't they allowed physical contact with family? Are they afraid that the family will be harmed, or is it just more cruel punishment for the family as well as the prisoner?
Whenever I see documentaries about US prisons I just wonder why all that shit goes on there.
Most people who talk about prison say "Oh you gonna be raeped" and "don't drop the soap" like they're proud of the shitholes they call correctional institutions.
There are entire series about how you aren't safe in prison unless you join a gang, then they wonder why gang violence is such a problem in prison.
Maybe if prison wasn't such a hellhole people wouldn't come out worse than they went in. Then you get people with all their theories on punishment needing pain and whatever, and that the death penalty should be painful.
I'm sure everyone is laughing until they get falsely accused of rape (50% in the US) and then get some sweet butt-love.
You should not lose sleep over this. For a start these numbers have been pumped by a half-baked media system to get people like you excited, but mainly because, at least in part, most of these people had some level of choice. Worry first about those who are killed and imprisoned for no reason at all, then try to save the damned.
physical separation doesn't require a total lack of human contact or external stimuli.
One solution would be to rearrange the cells in new prisons to allow them to communicate with a small group of other prisoners even while isolated. Perhaps if they were placed in such a way as to allow them to physically interact at even a distant level so they can play cards or board games.
The current system is complete isolation but it may not be necessary. Just high isolation may be enough to keep the danger level down but the mental health of the prisoners up.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
those who have attacked others or have shown to have colluded in harming people outside the prison system?
a lot of these people are bad people and deserve what they get and will never be normal
That statement evaluates to 'true' (one way of getting assigned to a supermax, or tossed in the hole, is shivving a few guards or doing something suggestive of a little of the old ultraviolence); but it's one of those 'true' statements that verges on a falsehood by omission: You aren't going to get a ticket to Florence ADX or anything without showing some character; but in 'mixed' prisons that have a general population and some isolation cells people can, and do, end up doing long solitary stints more or less at the power and merely pleasure of correctional staff. If the wrong person is in the wrong mood, there really isn't a 'floor' below which your infraction can't earn you a trip to solitary, nor, once inside, is there any real bother with 'process' similar.
Like getting sent to the principal's office, only with harrowingly high odds of psychiatric morbidity(including behaviors punishable by.....you guessed it More Solitary!, like self mutilation, a laundry list of alarming neuropsychological effects, extremely high suicide rates(despite conditions designed to make this quite difficult). Happy times.
I'm not generally accused of being a bleeding heart; but I'd be perfectly willing to argue that anyone willing to inflict prolonged solitary confinement, rather than actually-competent execution(unfortunately, this excludes most of the methods we use on humans, for some insane reason) is guilty of naivete at best, and overt sadism at worst.
It's... generally a bad sign... when a procedure is considered nasty enough that you aren't allowed to do it to lab rodents without specific justification and an IRB signoff on your protocol and that aspect specifically...
Hey, guess what? We're animals out here too. If we did a better job of treating prisoners for the conditions that led to them getting incarcerated, jails wouldn't be as bad to be in.
Everyone kind of intuitively knows the difference between "maximum security" and "minimum security" prisons isn't really about how likely you are to escape, but how harshly you're being punished, and how much violence you should expect to receive. We don't even pretend those descriptions are actually accurate.
Prisoners should be treated humanely. I get that. What I would like to know is how many prisoners who were released after being confined in solitary for a long period of time are repeat offenders. I suspect that, given the horrible conditions of solitary, most of them would do anything to avoid going back to prison. If that is true, then it really is an effective rehabilitation technique, and ultimately reduces crime.
Yeah, I like making sweeping generalizations about tens of thousands of people that I've never met to justify horrific and inhumane treatment too.
Unless the prisoners were being imprisoned in North Korea or China or Sudan or any of those fascist countries, most of the prisoners who were incarcerated in (more civilized) countries such as the United States of America were there because they have committed crimes.
Not that all of them deserve to be treated inhumanely but we gotta understand that most of them do pose a real harm to the society at large.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I just did five years in Federal prison and did two stretches in the SHU (basically solitary), totaling about two months. First time was for drawing on a paper food service hat. Second time was for being a smartass to the prison shrink.
Me, I didn't mind it so much. Peace and quiet (though occasionally you get a screamer on the range). Got some reading done. Meditated.
But you only get to make one call every thirty days. No coffee, no commissary. The cops keep the place cold like a meat locker. Lights never go off.
It's not for violent criminals. You get sucker punched or stomped and you go to the SHU for 30 days for an "investigation". You file a grievence against a staff member and you go in for a 90-day "investigation". You get the flu or scabies and you're in there for two weeks: quarantine.
The really violent people end up on a USP or AD-Max in Florence, CO.
I didn't mind the SHU because I enjoy a bit of solitude now and then. But in California, there are guys who've spent decades in the hole. That totally fucks you up.
-k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Why should they not come out better than when they went in?
Forced education of the basic R's would be a good start. Nearly 60-70% of our incarcerated population can not read
Bullshit.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs94/9410...
They say that about 70% have some problems with complex or lengthy texts -- mostly as a result of them entering prison as a person who likely lacked an education to begin with. Nowhere will you find anything credible that says 70% are illiterate.
begintoread.com is propaganda.
You can see here: ...that while prison rates are bad, they're not significantly worse than anything else. ...and still only measures people deficient -- not outright illiterate. At mostly, only 25% of specific prison groups by ethnicity have difficulty reading documents. ...and in some cases, their literacy level is HIGHER than outside prison.
http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/...
Society needs revenge for certain crimes, for the sake of all our mental health. When we see evil people going unpunished, or even rewarded, it depresses us. Can you provide any rationale for why we should care so much about the comfort of a serial killer? Try to do so without appealing to some mystical, absolutist morality. Good luck.
Note: we're talking about serious crimes here. Non-violent offenders shouldn't be facing prison time at all, let alone solitary.
I think you're a bad person for wishing harm on others. Do you deserve whatever you get?
Exactly right. It is the way it is because American people are more interested in exacting revenge than rehabbing the offender. Nevermind that taking away somebody's freedom while they are being rehabbed is a punishment in and of itself.
We unfortunately allow psychopaths and sociopaths to control our prisons. We should be disqualifying anyone who wishes to harm their charges.
Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed.
Apparently, the definition of "not much larger" is flexible enough to accommodate "almost twice as large". A standard King bed is about 42 square feet.
But human contact and external stimuli in a physical separation situation would required a greater cost. Spending more on prisons is not high on anyone's radar but the ACLU.
Here is Human Rights Watch's discussion of how ethnic gangs teach white prisoners tolerance:
The benefits of this therapy have been documented by the government's study of the phenomenon:
Imagine the homophobia to which the world would be subjected if it weren't for the sexual awakening offered by the government's integration of angry white males with the rest of society.
Seastead this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Read the book. It's short and totally worth the time.
It's not that we can't, it's just that we won't. Violent prisoners who attack other prisoners should be segregated and isolated, but other than that I see no reason to put someone in solitary.
If we stopped incarcerating hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders guilty of victimless crimes like drug possession, we could afford to humanely house the actual criminals.
Yeah, but the moment society closes the doors out of vindictiveness, it's pulled out all the control rods. Unfortunately, the road from being considered law abiding citizen to 'unemployable criminal' grows shorter every day. Once that point is reached, there's no longer any reason to care about anyone else's rules or artificial limitations. There's nothing more to lose.
So we should better increase the real harm they will do on the society at large by treating them in a way that makes it nearly impossible for them to ever fit into society again?
Quite often they cannot. Many of these prisoners use any interaction in any way with guards or other prisoners to become violent.
Seriously, there's quite a few TV shows about life in prison. It's depressing but instructive to watch. Many of these shows are more documentaries than entertainment.
And one of the things you can take away from these shows is, never underestimate how evil and cruel psychopaths can be, ESPECIALLY those on death row.
Solitary confinement reduces the harm done to others to pretty much zero, because the prisoner is physically isolated and thus incapable of causing trouble. What other method are speaking of that can guarantee that?
1. Remove a danger to society
2. Acting as a deterrent
3. As a punitive measure (strongly related to item #2)
4. To provide rehabilitation
To date, analysis[1] has shown that never in the verifiable recorded history of crime and punishment, has any prison, anywhere, ever had a non-negligible impact on recidivism rates. Some pre-established percentage of people continue to commit crimes after a jail sentence, regardless of changes to enable rehabilitation. Education, trade skills, access to medicine & counselors, 'nice' quarters, access to games and exercise, work release programs, etc - no appreciable impact.
Even punishments like public shaming (very big in medieval times) have no impact on the average number of individuals willing to commit the crime again. Even torture (short of permanent harm) has no real lasting impact, though it does often result in the individuals using more effort to reduce the risks of getting caught.
In short, prisons do not rehabilitate prisoners, and they never have.[2] [3]
Pretending they they do, or can and then making screeching noises when they fail - or worse, throwing money at them so they can try yet another fad get-lawful-quick program is just irrational. Blaming the system for not working as one expects only shows the value of those expectations.
Here's the takeaway: The only things prisons are good for is removing a danger from society and providing a punitive threat as a deterrent - and even that last one has only limited impact.
For those interested in constructive comments, the fix is obvious and simple; spend that money on fixing those parts of society that give rise to crime. Focus on education, focus on a two-parent household, focus on employable skills, and so on.
[1] - oy. Google it, read some books, and take a few criminal justice classes. Personally, I'd start with this book, http://www.amazon.com/CRIMINAL... because it's a fascinating read, but your mileage may vary.
[2] - though there's nothing to say they couldn't eventually. Maybe cryogenically freeze them and subliminally imprint upon them the desire to knit when they're stressed? Could work.
[3] - Technically, life in prison works, in that they don't commit any more crimes, but the important point to note is that rehabilitation programs STILL have no impact on this rate. So it doesn't count either.
It's also, as the article points out, essentially torture. Do we want that even for violent offenders? I don't.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H. L. Mencken
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for men of good conscience to do nothing." - Thomas Jefferson
I could go on, but I shouldn't have to.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
By definition it does. You can either put them in a huge room by themselves or a small room by themselves, but some people will use any human contact AT ALL to try to become violent.
Can you come up with a plan not involving solitary confinement where a prisoner is physically unable to throw feces at you as you deliver their food?
There are some prisoners who are put in solitary because they literally use every opportunity they can to throw their own feces at people. Some say that is because they are in solitary and were driven to do this, but for others they were put in solitary BECAUSE they do this. The sad practicalities of prison make it very difficult to isolate these types of individuals without putting them in solitary.
Couldn't they just give him an Xbox? Some of us voluntarily spend 20-23 hours a day in a dark room with no human contact in an area no larger then a king sized bed.....
Unless the prisoners were being imprisoned in North Korea or China or Sudan or any of those fascist countries, most of the prisoners who were incarcerated in (more civilized) countries such as the United States of America were there because they have committed crimes..
You make a laughably ridiculous assumption: that the courts and criminal justice process actually work fairly. The overwhelming majority of prisoners in the US took a plea bargain that takes them straight to a guilty verdict and prison whether they did the crime or not because it takes real money and good lawyers to defend a criminal charge - let alone win and get off. This is one reason the prisons are full of blacks and people from underprivileged backgrounds: they cannot afford a real defense even if they are innocent. Police and prosecutors rely on this to avoid supporting their case (real or not) in a trial. It also takes enormous personal resources and courage to withstand the strain of a lengthy criminal trial. The stress is unbelievable, some people just want to plead guilty and get it over with. The system fails.
Don't forget also prisoners with politically related crimes.
[citation needed]
So maybe we shouldn't create situations where members of society have nothing to lose? It's bad enough that such situations might arise in the world at large -- we certainly don't have to create them as a matter of law.
So you're just suggesting once someone gets put in solitary, they're kept there until they die, without ever seeing another human ever again? The fuck kind of person are you?
If we stopped incarcerating hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders guilty of victimless crimes like drug possession, we could afford to humanely house the actual criminals.
Wrong. It is not "hundreds of thousands". It is millions. About three million Americans are incarcerated, ~1% of the population. The majority were arrested for non-violent offenses, mostly involving drugs.
Sure. Take a prisoner who continually collects his own feces in his room, and throws it at every guard who walks by, on a regular basis, or continually tosses it at other inmates. Now, maybe you don't care about the guard who has to deal with this every day.
Putting said prisoner in solitary reduces his ability to throw feces at people all the time. You can roll your eyes, but reality is that there are prisoners who do this, and real, live, people who have to, wait for it, put up with this shit. They have to clean themselves up, they have to clean up others, and then they eventually have to clean up the inmate, who will likely throw his most recently collected batch of feces at them again. This happens, it's real.
For said prisoner, sometimes the only option is to put them in a room where the only person they can throw feces on is themselves.
Nice hypothetical. Got any evidence that's what actually happens?
It's torture because some organization has defined it as such. I disagree that it is torture. If the practical choice is between putting a crazy violent person in a room where the only person he can hurt is himself, and letting that crazy violent person into the prison population where the only person he can randomly hurt with a shiv made from a newspaper is EVERY OTHER INMATE AN GUARD, I will choose the former, even if it drives said crazy person even crazier. Choosing otherwise is unethical, because it negates the human value of the other inmates and guards, and says that the right of this one person to not be driven crazy is MORE IMPORTANT than the rights of other prisoners and guards to be free from random violent attacks.
some people will use any human contact AT ALL to try to become violent.
Sure, some people will. But no where near 80,000 people. If such high rates of solitary confinement were really necessary, then can you explain why no other country in the world has rates anywhere near as high?
But who am I kidding... they don't put people in SC for safety, they do it because they equally, sadistic fucks. They just have the weapons and the advantage.
Were taken directly from the dark ages, and were never designed or intended to rehabilitate but to ... wield the power of the state and show how much worse it can be when you don't conform. FULL STOP!
... but maybe I'm an outlier.
Also, when was prison in the US ever about rehabilitation?
The amount of damage done seems to follow a curve, and everybody responds to it differently. Some people like yourself handle it relatively well, others don't. What really determines how badly you get messed up, though, is time. Every study and every story I've read about this is in agreement - for a lot of people even a week is too much, and it's all downhill from there. The damage worsens and can even become permanent with increasing time in isolation.
Given the overwhelming evidence that solitary confinement is destructive to the health of most - not all, but most - inmates subjected to it and how arbitrarily it's used, especially for nonviolent offenses, I'd rather see it done away with to whatever extent is practical.
I also don't want to take the risk of torturing somebody who was wrongfully convicted.
I don't want to torture anyone. Period. It permanently mentally mutilates both victim and perpetrator. Just say no.
Don't even get me started on torture light...
TCAP-Abort
Spoken like a true bleeding heart who's life has never been touched by one of these pieces of shit that end up in solitary. I will grant that there are always those that are in there because of fucked up prison guards or circumstances beyond their control and this vexes me too. But some of these assholes are simply wild animals that are far to dangerous to have any sort of contact with. They can never be fixed. They will always work to only their advantage and all the better if it is at the severe cost to another. They made their choices to continue to pray on others, even when in confinement, and this is the easiest way to deal with them. Is it a perfect system, no! Far from it to be sure and I think getting worse. Can it be fixed by more liberal policies, I think not. We need to fix the underlying social issues driving the mentality of our legal and penal systems. We also must attend to the issues dealt with by the growing segment of our population falling below the poverty line and giving up on the dream of becoming a productive and prosperous part of the middle class. So I guess that my views make me a piece of shit too. But unlike you I have had first hand interaction with some of these animals so I have a bit of a tempered view. Personally I think that you should put your money where your mouth is and counsel these guys. Also I think that they should be released into your neighborhood so you can continue to do your good works and prove "pieces of shit" like us wrong!
I was expecting to be modded troll on these.
I carry the vastly unpopular opinion that it's primarily a choice to end up prison, a choice that culminates in a LONG, LONG series of bad decisions. Further, ending up in lengthy stretches in solitary is generally the result of further awful decisions.
Almost anyone can avoid going to JAIL, let alone prison, let alone solitary confinement.
Man the fuck up, do the right thing, and stop being a waste of oxygen.
The idea of prison was originally that a criminal forfeited their right to live.
In the case of capital punishment, the person's life was ended outright, but the idea of imprisonment was that the lesser punishments were achieved by depriving a person of part of the rest of their life. If you spent X number of years in prison, then X fewer years of your life were available to you. In principle, a prisoner should have no opportunity of spending any of their time in prison constructively, and all confinement should be solitary.
That is why there is a certain intuitive appeal to solitary confinement as a punishment.
Unfortunately, it turns out that solitary confinement is actual torture, is counter-productive, and diminishes those implementing the prison system.
No-one has found a perfect way to punish and rehabilitate (both legitimate goals).
While I agree that people who reach a certain point in the penal system have nothing left to lose, I disagree that it's getting easier and easier to get there.
Do you know how hard it is to actually go to jail for more than 48 hours?
Add in paying rent of $3000/month for the privilege, and you've just described most of Manhattan.
But there's a whole other discussion here on the culture, environment and profound lack of mental healthcare that breeds the violence that breeds this type of violence. Unfortunately, it's a discussion America doesn't seem willing to have.
a lot of these people are bad people and deserve what they get and will never be normal
Ask yourself why it is we don't just kill them and be done with it, and you'll have an answer as to why we shouldn't do solitary confinement.
66 This is one reason the prisons are full of blacks and people from underprivileged backgrounds: they cannot afford a real defense even if they are innocent. 99
It's an end run around the Thirteenth Amendment.
So maybe you should stop planting people who already have problems into crazy-incubators? Because the harvest might be quite bitter.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This. It is a choice, however, prison, for obvious reasons, are full of actual real live psychopaths and sociopaths. Of course most folks in prison aren't either of these, but an inordinate amount are. One can argue that this is a mental illness or a human condition or whatever, but for various reasons the social controls outside have not had an effect of stopping these folks from committing crimes against others. It's simply foolish to believe that the controls in prison will do the same. For some folks, sadly, solitary is the only way to handle it.
nt
We unfortunately allow psychopaths and sociopaths to control our prisons. We should be disqualifying anyone who wishes to harm their charges.
Are you referring the the inmate gang leaders, the guards, or the "tough on crime" politicians?
It is a torture technique that works slowly. It is used exactly as such in the US prison system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Because they don't have as many violent criminals; they don't have facilities set up for solitary; they don't have as many criminals in general.
However, I do believe it's overused here in the US. But I'm mainly opposed to the folks who want to get rid of it in all cases, and there seems to be quite a few.
You can see this on any one of dozens of prison documentaries where they interview guards about their experiences with inmates. It's not rocket science.
And subjecting them to long-term torture is acceptable how? Lifelong imprisonment is exceedingly cruel in itself and doing it in solitary confinement is hell on earth. Killing them would be merciful in comparison. Also note that these people very likely belong into a mental hospital, not a prison.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yeah, but the moment society closes the doors out of vindictiveness, it's pulled out all the control rods. Unfortunately, the road from being considered law abiding citizen to 'unemployable criminal' grows shorter every day. Once that point is reached, there's no longer any reason to care about anyone else's rules or artificial limitations. There's nothing more to lose.
The summary also says that some prisoners prefer it.
Of course it also says this:
But the real problem is that solitary confinement is ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained achieving the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society.
And that sentence points out the major failure with TFS, and TFA, and your assertions above.
Nobody believes the goal is to rehabilitate any more. A couple hundred years of recidivism statistics has totally washed that nonsense off the slate.
Most of the hard core prisoners will never re-enter society. They are in there precisely to protect society from THEM, not the other way around.
By the time you get a 20 year sentence in this lenient justice system, you have already proven yourself a recidivist.
They are never going to be model citizens. Society has nothing to gain by playing the rehabilitation with these people any more.
If they can't get along in the general population, and require solitary, what makes you think the goal is to re-introduce them to society?
(And never mind quoting what it says in the prison system enabling statutes, and the wishful thinking that goes into calling the
prison systems "department of corrections". Nobody believes that any more)
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Solitary slowly drives these guys insane. It doesn't seem to be permanent, but being cooped up like that does terrible things to the human brain. IMO this all started decades ago with a regression to "get tough on crime" practices. So, now rather than giving prisoners true outlets to reform themselves and develop talents and options for their release, we've got guys with nothing to do and nothing to lose who know that their best bet post-incarceration is getting better at being a criminal. And, gang violence and activity is a great way to get promoted.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes
This signature is false.
So what? Most of those don't end up in solitary confinement. They do their time, then go right back to doing their drugs.
Its the murders rapists etc that end up in solitary.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The solution is VERY simple: all the liberal, back-slapping, self-congratulating idiots who think that criminals are, in fact, 'victims', should be made to LIVE with them when they are released. The rest of us (the majority) who don't want criminals anywhere near us nor our families, and who don't want to pay taxes to pay for their sorry asses to live IN our societies (i.e. we pay for their housing, because they are losers who can't get jobs, and don't want jobs, we pay for their food, their clothes, their electricity, their water, for their vile offspring to go to schools with OUR children, etc.), can NOT associate with them, and we can live in a virtually crime free society.
Oh no! Somebody suggested something that the TV didn't tell us to think about, it's scary!
The Quakers built a prison in the 1800's that is in Pennsylvania that housed everyone in solitary confinement with only a bible so they could get in touch with god and fix their souls or some other bullshit they made up. After sometime had passed, they came to conclusion that this was not the way humans were meant to live, be, exist, etc. and closed down that part, as the prisoners went mad, suicidal to the extreme. You would have thought we would have learned then, and hell, maybe we did. We learned how to be more sadistic, brutal and evil in how we deal with our fellow man. Torture is now enhanced interrogation. Slavery is now Liberty. We have become that which will consume us.
They could be confined to a conventional cell rather than locked away with no contact. Just as safe, far less cruel and mentally damaging.
If safety was actually the issue, they would do just that. The fact is, there's a certain type of person who enjoys hurting people who can't fight back.
I'd call it torture. Do it to your dog and people will say you are torturing it.
Solitary Confinement is Torture:
The devastating psychological and physical effects of prolonged solitary confinement are well documented by social scientists: prolonged solitary confinement causes prisoners significant mental harm and places them at grave risk of even more devastating future psychological harm.
Researchers have demonstrated that prolonged solitary confinement causes a persistent and heightened state of anxiety and nervousness, headaches, insomnia, lethargy or chronic tiredness, nightmares, heart palpitations, and fear of impending nervous breakdowns. Other documented effects include obsessive ruminations, confused thought processes, an oversensitivity to stimuli, irrational anger, social withdrawal, hallucinations, violent fantasies, emotional flatness, mood swings, chronic depression, feelings of overall deterioration, as well as suicidal ideation
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
You don't know what "it" is. You hear it described and you are unmoved because you don't fully understand it. I don't rush to judgement (and neither should you) because I don't fully understand just how much of a torture solitary confinement is to the human mind. The punishment should fit the crime and neither you nor I understand what this really is, so how can we know if it's appropriate for someone who was "violent"? There are people who study this for a living telling us that it is one horrific and traumatic experience and is tantamount to torture. Mind your words least you condone torture for a prisoner. I don't care what they've done, they're still human beings.
It's called a cell. I'm fairly sure they have a few of those in prison already.
Well then, YOU live with all these 'victims' when they are released from prison. YOU and your insane, liberal family, and all your insane liberal friends, can all LIVE with these parasites, who destroy our societies, and expect US to work extra hours every day, to pay taxes, to keep their sorry asses alive, while they contribute nothing to OUR lives! That's 'fair' in your insane world, isn't it...
You do realise that 95% of people, at least, would prefer to live in a criminal free society, right? So YOU and the other insane five percent can set up your own country, and ALL the criminals who are released can go and live in it, and YOU and your pathetic five percent can work all day to support these parasites, while they commit crimes against you and your family on a daily basis.
Sound good to you?
You ignorant cretin. You can't even THINK things through before commenting, can you...
Plexiglass?
I have a question, from a logical (and perhaps heartless) perspective
If the system has determined that a prisoner is 100% beyond redemption as a functioning member of society, if all methods of medication, therapy, rehabilitation and punishment have failed, why are we keeping them alive? If someone needs to spend some time in solitary to cool their head for a day, fine. That's what it's for. But it sounds like the system is basically giving up on these inmates, and is just stuffing them in a hole until they die on their own. A form a torture even worse than death, from the sound of it.
I'm not trying to advocate "kill them all," or any such drastic behavior. I just hope that seeing the drastic option might cause us to take a second look at the 80,000 guys we've got locked up in permanent solitary. Maybe some of them aren't really beyond redemption, and don't deserve to be forgotten about and left to rot.
This signature is false.
While I agree that people who reach a certain point in the penal system have nothing left to lose, I disagree that it's getting easier and easier to get there.
Do you know how hard it is to actually go to jail for more than 48 hours?
No, I don't, why don't you tell us, and maybe you should include an explanation of how you know all this. Be sure to document your assertions with links to unbiased research supporting your hypothesis.
Apparently the prisoners do not get TV/Books in the cell, nor can they see what all the noise around their cell is. Fixing solitary does not mean allowing physical access.
Books/newspapers or TV would go a long way. A computer with internet would be even better. Plexiglass door and a curtain would also help a lot.
If a person is afraid for their own safety from other inmates, he should not have to choose between total isolation and physical harm. Similarly, mentally unstable should also not be punished with isolation - that just makes their mental situation worse. Even as punishment, I would think that someone locked up for more than a week should get at least a book to read.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
Solitary confinement is not a punishment, it is a reward. I have not interest in interacting with the other people.
some people will use any human contact AT ALL to try to become violent.
Sure, some people will. But no where near 80,000 people. If such high rates of solitary confinement were really necessary, then can you explain why no other country in the world has rates anywhere near as high?
First, you are making an assertion you can't back up with hard facts.
Second, at least some other countries just stand you up for a firing squad if you misbehave in prison.
Also some other countries (Norks) still allow "work camps", entire towns of slave labor.
Then there is gangs. Our own, and the Mexicans.
Do you suppose Norway has gangs, or Saudi Arabia?
Our official policy is to let a problem get so bad that only stern measures are left, because preventative action is not allowed. As someone up thread says, you really have to try to get into prison, and once there you really have to try to get into solitary confinement. Nobody slips on a banana and falls into prison. It takes hard work and long term dedication to get there.
And in spite of one best efforts to go to jail and stay there, people like you come around wanting setting them free to do it all over again.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If the practical choice is between..
Except its not. Not even a little bit.
You can do "solitary confinement" without it being 4 concrete walls, a steel door, and a chamber pot. You can give them a window so they can watch the world outside. You can give them a TV, You can give them some means to make a phone call.
With a bit of technology (not much more than kinect, you can let them play video games, browse the internet, play words with freinds, etc etc all with the computer and anything else they might turn into a shiv sitting safely on the other side of some bullet proof glass.
Clearly we can do better than a concrete box. So why is that the only solution you were even willing to consider?
Reform of the individual is an important part of why we put people in prison.
Nobody believes that any more.
Not even the corrections departments make any effort to reform, because 100 years of trying has taught them
that it doesn't work.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Man down, Little bitch, and stop beating your bitch tits, like we didn't notice. The Innocence Project greatly disagrees, and even just femnazis alone are making it easier all the time. The Blue Line of Just-Us is also in high form, nowadays.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
If the numbers being used in this thread are right, 80,000 out of 3,000,000 prisoners is 2.67%. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable percentage that you could expect to be psychopathic out of a population that is already, by definition, at least somewhat sociopathic.
(Even people in jail for minor drug offenses could be defined as mildly sociopathic, since they chose to break a law--even if you think that law shouldn't be in force.)
Not everything in the world is subjective, and nobody owes you any explanation.
What makes them think this little tidbit will have any effect on the US penal system which is designed to stay in business by providing your average crooks with more business contacts and an even greater hate for 'the system'.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The psychopaths and sociopaths that control prisons are the inmates.
The only thing they don't control is the keys.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm not interested in treating prisoners better. The conditions that led to them getting incarcerated was them choosing to break the law. I don't think prison exists to be therapeutic, or to rehabilitate. It's there to keep sociopaths and psycopaths away from the rest of us. If they learn their lesson and get released and stop breaking the law, that's a nice side effect, but not the point of prison.
Should we massage them like Kobe cows?
If that's the only option short of solitary confinement as practiced in US prison, I suspect you haven't put much thought into the problem.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A PC version of the sociopath. It's rarely documented since it's what the State actually wants. The failure of empathy is ironically a badge of righteousness in this context. Smear the queer's perfectly fine for acceptable targets. Criminalization generally works as a programmed trigger to dehumanize, though most are already dehumanized to prevent backlash (white women >> black women >>>> white men > black men). Remember how executions used to be grand entertainment?
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
If only we could find some sort of material you can see through but blocks solid matter. Some strange alien tech from area 51 perhaps?
It seems almost as if you are willfully avoiding the simple and obvious ssoultion to perpetuate an excuse to abuse people till they go insane.
That or you have a real obsession with feces. Toilet training accident?
What a shithole of a country...
What a strange assertion to make. The assertion itself basically says there is no (non-anecdotal) evidence supporting the assertion.
How on earth did you come to this conclusion?
"indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained"
How about the indelible mark left on the victims and the rest of the population that must consider the threats?
If :
- our prisons were more of a deterrent than a badge of honor among thugs
- there were stiffer consequence than the afforded street cred
- true victim restitution could be realized
Then:
- we might have fewer folks getting themselves in situations requiring lock up
- we might work harder to insure the innocent are not locked up
- we could overturn some of the silly laws that over complicate the judicial process
Just say'n...
Its the murders rapists etc that end up in solitary.
No. It is the mentally ill that end up in solitary.
You are the sum of all the things you've ever been, but who you are now and who you have the potential to become is way way way more important to me than who you used to be. People change and grow, not even shouting distance from usually, but often enough to make it really rewarding.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And there are 80000 prisoners that throw feces through bars?
Not quite. We have known cases of people being exonerated after taking a plea bargain when exculpatory evidence comes out. It is inherently difficult to figure out exactly how many innocent people are jailed, but we can put a floor on it and the floor is above 0.
Random example I found in two minutes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.... After being released, he secretly recorded a confession from his "victim".
They've done studies like this one (http://www.scpr.org/blogs/news/2012/06/13/6603/plea-bargainings-innocence-problem/) which show, when accused of a "crime" they didn't commit and offered a choice between a bad option and an investigation that could lead to a potentially-worse option, around half the people took the bargain. Obviously, the case here isn't the same as "5 years in jail and a life of minimum wage jobs vs. flip a coin, heads gets you life in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, tails gets you a shot at a sports career".
FTS:
(emphasis mine)
Well, shiver me timbers. Who ever would have expected that? /sarcasm
Seriously though? Whoever thought solitary could possibly 'rehabilitate' anyone, or that it could have any benefit outside of pure punishment for punishment's sake?
The mind reels.
That may not help as much as you think. I suggest looking into the Stanford prison experiment by Philip Zimbardo in the 70s
This story and comments remind me of a Short Story by Anton Chekov. The story was called "The Bet". It is worth reading if you are interested in this subject.
I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
Yes, 80,000 prisoners throw feces. All 80,000 of them.
The only governments following this train of thought happen to be the ones with the higher crime rates. Funny how that works eh?
Did you just say that ~43% of Americans are mildly sociopathic? Because that's the number that has tried pot, which is still illegal everywhere in the US (federally). If you think everyone around you is a sociopath, you might want to shift your attention inward.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
There's no reason why it should either be "the torture of solitary confinement" or "the torture of prison rape". One person per cell, one person per shower, most of the problem solved.
The science of punishment is like the science of evolution: there's been consensus for an incredible amount of time, but the US still likes to think their viewpoint has weight behind it.
You obviously have no clue how harsh the sentencing is now a heads with all the tough n crime bills, nearly anything from simple burglary ca. Net you 20 years now
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0619.htm
Manufacture or sale of narcotic, hallucinogen, amphetamine, or at least 1 kg marijuana by non-dependent person - 25 year maximum.
You may not have noticed that the US has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. This is because slavery is such a grand idea that it had to be reinstituted via the prison industrial complex -- a complex that economizes on things like occupancy rates per cell.
Seastead this.
Watch Lockup... a lot of the prisoners in solitary are there because the prison system thinks they are gang members, or were tossed into protective custody because they would be meat for the stronger prisoners.
So, by your standards, someone who is elderly, has a mental illness, or just is in a group that the local prison doesn't like should get the same punishment as someone who attacks the guards?
No wonder why the system is so fscked up in America. Only people who benefit are the private prison corporation stockholders.
Who needs solitary confinement? No one ever listens or talks to me. I'm all alone in the middle of a crowd. I even get rebuffed for trying to say hello to people I've met before.
Hallucinations are awesome: I always have time to listen to me!
the prisons are full of blacks and people from underprivileged backgrounds
Would you mind educate us what do you mean by "underprivileged", background or otherwise?
I mean, I've seen this word "underprivileged" thrown everywhere, as if it's something that can ensure one to win an argument or such.
Why are the "blacks" "underprivileged" while others, including the Asians (such as I am) are not?
I arrived in America with nothing, yes, with not even the ability of understanding English, and yet, through the decades of struggle I've at least achieved to gain the things that I have (knowledge, skills, financial rewards).
Was I "underprivileged" when I landed on America? Was I ever included in the "underprivileged" lineup, per your definition ?
Why then when I, and many many hundreds of thousands of immigrants (even those who migrated from Africa) could climb up the social ladder while the "indigenous" blacks can't ? Or is it because they lack the incentive to do so ?
Stop throwing around that "underprivileged" word as if it's the one thing people will buy into. I for one, do not, and will never buy into that kind of bullshit.
One's life is under one's mastership - and if one refused to master his/her own life, don't you tell me that they are "underprivileged" because they gave up before the struggle begins.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sometimes unjustifiable bullshit is just unjustifiable. Solitary confinement is torture. Prolonged solitary confinement destroys the mind.
You would too, if your other choice was being beaten and raped every day. Doesn't change the fact that solitary == torture.
King sized is 60"X78" = 32.5sqft. So actually it is more like 2.5 king sized beds. It is also a heck of a lot larger than the cubicle I spend half my waking hours in.
By definition, that's a sad lack of imagination you have. Place their cells next to, other inmates. Zero physical interaction, but they can talk to one another. Radio or TV mounted on the ceiling behind plexiglass. Books. Newspapers. Finger paints.
Human beings are social animals. Depriving someone from social interaction is therefore inhumane.
The problem is it isn't just used as punishment for crimes. It is being used as a way to protect inmates and as a way to coerce cooperation in investigations. They think you might know something about a gang: bam your in solitary until you testify. To bad about the 5th. To bad if you happen to not know anything or don't want to get shanked.
yes, those individuals should be flogged and/or caned instead. There's no reason to waste money on their food & housing.
It's not a high rate it is about 1% of the prison population some of which are there for their own protection and some of which are just there temporarily for punishment. I bet more than 1% of students get sent to the principals office every day.
Does flinging poo explain all 81,000 people in solitary today? Even half of them?
I refer now to Toy Story 3 and the reset Buzz Lightyear's guard routine - do anything out of line and you go to "the box." There's a reason that skit resonates with people, it's all too real - the control freak's fantasy of what to do with their prisoners.
And, no, those weren't Lincoln Logs in the sandbox...
Nobody slips on a banana and falls into prison. It takes hard work and long term dedication to get there.
Or, you can just piss off a cop - you know, give him an excuse to charge you with attempted vehicular manslaughter for pissing him off and then driving near him.
Think that doesn't happen? Try it and tell me how you do.
Next, tell me how most cops are great people and don't get into the profession just to throw their weight around and pay back injustices dealt to them. I agree - _most_ cops are great people. Now go piss off one who isn't - there are still plenty of them out there.
It's also, as the article points out, essentially torture. Do we want that even for violent offenders? I don't.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H. L. Mencken
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for men of good conscience to do nothing." - Thomas Jefferson
I could go on, but I shouldn't have to.
However we're talking about people who have been judged by a jury of their peers.
But prisoners don't get thrown into solitary without a good reason (well mostly, I'll accept that some jailers are corrupt). It's normally because they've attacked a guard, been in a riot or killed someone whilst inside. I believe that jails should be rehabilitation first and punishment last but when a violent or potentially violent prisoner does something particularly bad, they do need to be punished in a way that would discourage the behaviour in the future.
Solitary is a sad necessity of any prison.
However I also dont have an issue with TV's in prisons. It's the carrot and the stick argument. Prisoner A keeps his nose down, does his assigned work and gets TV privileges. Prisoner B does not, so no TV for him. However Prisoner C attacks a guard, this requires a greater response than simply revoking TV privileges.
The world is not black and white. Whilst the ideals of the quotes you posted are something to strive towards, we still have to deal with the realities of violent criminals.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
i went to jail once for 49 hours, but it turned out to be a dream and I woke up and everything was ok.
Can you come up with a plan not involving solitary confinement where a prisoner is physically unable to throw feces at you as you deliver their food?
Dear God are you not qualified to be on this site. That is an engineering problem, and not even a difficult one at that.
... issues like "dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression". The US RDA for vitamin D for adults is several times too low, and people in solitary confinement indoors are unlikely to be getting enough sunlight to make up the difference. The isolation itself is no doubt harmful to many people too, but the vitamin D aspect could at least be addressed easily even within the current system. The nutrition issue is even larger; see for example:
http://www.psychologytoday.com...
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
http://www.naturalnews.com/039...
And environmental toxins contribute too:
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
Ironically, corporations get to repent by "restorative justice" (paying reparations or fixing what was broken) while real people are hit with "punitive justice".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
US prison population stats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"In 2008 approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was behind bars, or being monitored (probation and parole). In 2008 the breakdown for adults under correctional control was as follows: one out of 18 men, one in 89 women, one in 11 African-Americans (9.2 percent), one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent), and one in 45 Caucasians (2.2 percent). Crime rates have increased by about 25 percent from 1988 to 2008.[18] In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "war on drugs." Violent crime and property crime have declined since the early 1990s.[19]"
Recent incarcerations for drone protesters, but presumably not in solitary:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.syracuse.com/news/i...
http://www.veteransforpeace.or...
What a difference a nun can make even in prison:
"84-year-old nun sentenced for her anti-nuclear activism"
http://www.catholic.org/nation...
"Rice said she learned in prison to see her fellow inmates, not as perpetrators but as "victims" of a system that gave them few options. Walli says that like Rice, he spends long hours talking to inmates to "instill the idea that human life is sacred. "They know that they are the human fallout and the victims of the profiteering by the elite and top leaders of the corporations that are contracted to make the nuclear weapons. It's (the money) denied to human services that should be the priority of any government," Rice said. "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No, psychology is much more complicated than rocket science.
I'm interested in a system that minimizes crime. If that makes people who want revenge less happy, so be it. If it doesn't that's also okay.
We all know that there are some people in prison who don't deserve it. A vast majority of them, though, have earned it. By the time they enter prison for the first time, they've generally earned it several times over.
Those who wind up in solitary for aggression? (or conspiracy to violence, etc) They deserve it, almost every time.
To those trying to get specific innocent people out of the system, I wish them luck. I really do. To those who act as watchdogs, I am interested in what they have to say. To those who badmouth the system to give themselves a chance to feel self-righteous? It's a waste of their time and mine.
Thinking only in extremes is one of the biggest flaws of the human condition.
We need to learn how to draw more lines, and choose a middle ground.
The idea is to break people and turn them into dependants of their families as a form of social control to make it more difficult to revolt. It's the sort of thing warlords do when they cannot quite justify killing prisoners but what to impede rivals. Of course some idiots in politics in the developed world do not understand this and copy it wholesale just because they think it's a good way to get votes by being "strong" enough to kick a lot of people when they are down. It backfires because it's a drain on the economy to make sure that a lot of people will never be productive again - however if you want to widen a class gap, don't care about the economy and have less morals than a weasel it may not sound all that bad at all.
Ah - this is where you are looking for a situation where you can show off your understanding of "jail" as a local technical term in your own state instead of the dictionary definition everyone else here is using of being locked somewhere up by a government appointed authority.
Good luck in finding someone who cares.
When someone gets "life in prison" or 10 years in jail....that indicates how long it will take for that person to be rehabilitated? I'm sorry, but how can anyone feel sorry for someone in jail? Solitary confinement is sounding like good punishment to me for their crimes. I would think being locked in a cell could make someone think about suicide, would save taxpayer money if that did.
Interesting that you are using something rare to try to justify something very common - however it tells us nothing at all about the topic and merely that you have an agenda to push and are prepared to get up to underhanded tricks to do it.
How about we have a mature discussion about a topic for once instead of some sort of high school debating game with all the teacher imposed rules removed?
It should be about information instead of ego trips.
Actually no - they want to break people and then spit them out so their family members have to take care of them instead of getting up to mischief. Some people never grew out of medieval ideas and some of those get to run things on occasion. If it gives them a feeling of personal power they'll fuck up just about anything - so even when it means a much greater welfare bill for the state to churn out large numbers of unemployable people they still keep on doing it.
The funny thing is what you are apologising for is exactly the sort of thing that led to a revolt in America against Europeans. Your penal system is descending into Dickensian squalor.
So what's the name of this strawman and what about the other few hundred thousand who are not that person?
Nice bit of false scatological outrage. I'm sure you are proud. Do you do other comedy or just devils advocate trolling? Care to do a "Charles Manson was misunderstood" act next?
Where I live the "good reason" for being put into solitary confinement is owning a motorbike.
It's one of those "tough on law and order things" designed as a vote buying exercise.
We're not talking about "quite a few". We're talking about 80,000 at levels per capita that no other country on earth does. We don't conduct science and research to make ourselves feel fuzzy. We do it to point out that a huge amount of those people are not in for life, and will be released at some point, so why would we be complicit in inflicting mental instability on them given that it would be in our self interest to ensure they're not crazy when then are released? The whole point of raising the alarm on this is that it's being used on people who do not pose imminent physical threats and dangers to others. It's right there in the summary, and the article - nobody is suggesting that solitary confinement isn't required, but it's weapons grade stupid (if a profitable business model for jails) to turn humans into worse humans. We figured out a long time ago that it's more more beneficial for US to rehabilitate those who we can, so if you're okay with using punishments and detainment that cause people do become more of a danger to society when they're let out than when they're let in, you're not even making a case for self interest.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Which is not at all what the article is saying. It's saying that solitary confinement is being used on many more people than those "some folks." You're not making an argument any more than me saying, "Well, some folks should be killed, so why would we care how many folks are being killed?"
"Old man yells at systemd"
You have been amazingly busy on this topic with some unusual bits of cherry picking and devils advocate work. Are we seeing a paid by the post PR agency "social media worker" hard at work or is there some other motivation in play?
It looks like your very long string of posts may have a more interesting story that the actual article you have attached so many comments to. Please don't leave us guessing, enlighten us as to why you went to such lengths in some of those posts. What is it that justifies them?
If it's merely a troll game then you've won - you've offended me, got my attention and got some replies - initially taking you seriously.
No, you are using life sentences as your strawman and appear to be hoping people don't notice that you are using a rare example and pretending it is common.
Why are you so busy on this topic? I was curious when I found I was replying to the same person a couple of times and then very curious when you seemed to be in well over a dozen threads. Should a PR company hire you as a "social media worker" or are you already doing that job by posting so many comments on so many threads here?
I think you need to take a hard look at that belief and compare it with the general knowlege you would have picked up by now.
Why not ship these prisoners to an island? Seriously.
You're spiting your own face just to stick it to them. Societies can't function when large percentages of the population are running around with nothing to lose. Of course rehabilitation didn't work. The current system denies the possibility.
They may never be 'model' citizens (whatever that is), but if the system denies them reasonable opportunities to go straight once their term is up, then it is complicit in their return to crime.
Every single prisoner, including petty theft, should be in solitary confinement. That's because prisoners try to sodomize and murder each other and such acts committed in prisons is the sole legal responsibility of the gov't that runs or leases the prison, thus resulting in multi-million dollar settlements, lavishly funded by taxpayer money. It is cheaper to let prisoners interact only via telepresence with LCD screens and Kinect-like things.
Forcing the populace to have some kind of a "schuldkult" towards criminal individuals, classes and races is an attempt to demoilish the solid moral foundation of christian kingdoms. The USA stands strong because President Jackson once proclaim the Great Nation is founded on three unambigiously positive stances: respect of the Flag and motherhood and the practice of capital punishment. Remove any of those three legs and the chair topples.
> this lenient justice system
Now there's a statement. If the US justice system is lenient, can you point me at one that is not ?
The US incarcaration rate is 750/100000, in western europe its 100/100000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
The US jails a larger proportion of its population than sizeable nation ever. In that respect it's the least free country in the course of human history due to its extraordinarily non-lenient justice system.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I found the book "In the Belly of the Beast" very enlightening on solitary confinement.
One impression one gets from it is that given sufficient time in prison, many initially sane people may end up suffering from mental illness. At which point they become all the more "eligible" to solitary confinement.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
but when it fucks up how does one take revenge on the system?
Locking up the drug users, besides being a gross violation of liberty, wastes money that could otherwise be free to deal with the real hard cases and crazies.
In that case, it sounds like prison is the wrong place for them. They belong in some sort of controlled mental health facility.
Do you know how hard it is to actually go to jail for more than 48 hours?
I know a couple people who spent 72 hours in jail for standing in front of the fence in front of the White House. They were arrested for blocking the sidewalk.
I think what he actually ended up saying is that the legislatures are sociopathic.
Don't know how they derive the "80,000" in solitary number... I know from personal experience that an awful lot of inmates get put into "solitary" or the "special housing unit" while awaiting for a bunk to free up in general pop. I waited 3 weeks in the SHU for a bunk, with no contact with the outside world for that time, after being transferred... my GF got a box of my clothes/belongings with no other info, and thought I was dead, as when she called the BOP she was told they could give her no info as she was not "real" family. Family called and was told I was "in transit" with no other explanation. I personally didn't mind the time... I did fun things like count the number of openings in a screen... try sketching accurate pictures of the block walls (i.e. correct numbers of bricks depicted), and read a novel a day when I could grab them off the library cart which came by every 4 days (through the "bean hole" in the solid door). Sometimes, all the library cart had was Spanish language soap opera magazines... that's like porn in prison!
23 hours a day in an 80 sq. ft. cell? Sounds like working at EA!
Sure - the jury of their peers. Or the plea bargain they were arm-twisted into taking to dodge a lengthy trial that would destroy them financially or emotionally. And yes - some are put in solitary because they are horrific people. Others, however, for simply talking back (see the post above from someone put in solitary for just that), or for their own protection because of the beatings/rapes they are subjected to on a daily basis. 80,000 people in solitary? Only ~3,500 are on a life sentence, so that means ~76,500 are going to re-enter society messed up in the head because the system can only decide between "unfettered general population" and "stuck in a hole". Those people are not going to readjust to society as well as they could be, furthering the issue. As long as you think all solitary confinement is justified, you won't see the problem.
Put em in large clear locked hamster balls and they can roll around on the yard and can't hurt others much!
He's saying that the 80,000 out of a total 3,000,000 equals 2.67% might be a reasonable amount of sociopaths/psychopaths to expect from the population of people who end up in jail.
Your 43% is referring to people who might land in jail, i.e part of the 3,000,000 who are mostly not sociopath/psychopaths.
So really, the words you're trying to put in his mouth are: "Did you just say that 1.15% of Americans are mildly sociopathic?" (43% x 2.67% = or 1.15%)
Lenient?! Aaron Swartz was facing up to 50 years in prison. Assholes like you are part of the reason he is dead.
If you knowingly broke the law, with the full knowledge that the consequences for (getting caught) doing so include jail time -- why SHOULDN'T you go to jail? Don't like it? CHANGE THE LAW.
Just people who are trying to assert something as true, and expecting those around them to believe them.
Idiots who want to hear themselves talk can do whatever they like.
Hmmm... about 1% of the American population (3 million people as stated above) are incarcerated. Of those 3 million, about 81,000 are in solitary confinement, which works out to be about 2-3% of a population that has already been identified as "not willing to follow the rules". That group of 81,000 people works out to roughly 0.025% of the American population are perceived to be "violent enough to warrant segregation from the rest of the population". Even with lumping in those that are put in solitary for their own protection, or for ridiculous things like drawing on a paper food worker hat (listed above), that remains a miniscule portion of our population.
Nature vs Nurture
The USA has a much higher violent crime rate than could be explained by genetics. These violent people are the creation of a failing society. You reap what you sow.
I know others have already gotten this point in, but I can't help but express my disgust with your description of our justice system as lenient.
Either we have the most draconian "justice" system in the world, or Americans are significantly more criminal than anyone else in the world. Citation.
Bonus: If you go back to the pre-Reagan glory days, you'll notice that our incarceration rate wasn't nearly as ridiculous. This suggests that either Americans aren't inherently worse than anyone else or that Reagan brings out the worst in everyone. Or our "justice" system was replaced by a prison system.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Fuck guards.
A former friend of mine is a corrections officer. I say former because nowadays, he's a fucking dick. See, he used to be cool. An easygoing fat dude working at a pizza place. At some point, that changed. He hit the gym something fierce and went from rotund to ripped in no time. Before I knew it, he was working at a local prison. Telling stories of abusing the shit out of [insert various racial slurs here] with fellow COs simply for the amusement of it. Perhaps he was a rotten asshole on the inside all along. Perhaps being around dickhead COs 40+ hours a week rubbed off on him. Either way, it's clear to me that the culture among prison staff is not something I'd want to be a part of.
And because of all that, I'd take anything "guards" say on video with a grain of salt. Their Blue Code of Silence is even worse than cops'.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Sometimes you reap what you sow.
And conversely, sometimes you rip what you sew.
No, really, that's all I got. Sorry.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Oh, boy, way to leap to conclusions.
Please supply a citation that shows that Americans are NOT significantly more criminal. Your own citation tends to suggest that we ARE more criminal than others.
In which cultures on your citation have rampant gangs, massive drug smuggling, and REPEATED school shootings, armed bank robberies?
We are more criminal because we can get away with it.
Our justice system still has Juries last time I checked.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You're playing with words. Yes, we have juries. Yes, the people in our jails are convicted of committing "crime".
My point, since you've obviously missed it, is that we criminalize more behaviors and our sentencing is more extreme. That people end up (and stay) in prison for victimless crimes like drug smuggling only further backs up my claim.
The fact that you bring up school shootings just goes to show that you have no idea what you're talking about. School shootings account for a statistically insignificant amount of crime. You might as well talk about hammer attacks (which, incidentally, kill orders of magnitude more people every year than do school shootings).
Stop worshiping the talking heads on your television screen and look at the fucking numbers, man. If you honestly think real crime is more widespread (and laws more poorly enforced) here than, say, in Cuba, or Russia, or China, or Papua New Guinea (!!!), then you are ignorant of reality.
You live in one of the safest countries on Earth by any metric, at one of the safest points in time in history. To complain about a lenient justice system is comically wrong.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
However we're talking about people who have been judged by a jury of their peers.
No we're not. We're talking about people who may have been judged by a jury of their peers. They also may have accepted a plea bargain.
Cynical Idealist
You live in one of the safest countries on Earth by any metric, at one of the safest points in time in history.
So the justice system is working then?
K, thanks, bye.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sure, just like it would be working better still if we just jailed every last man, woman, and child.
And for the record, it's spelled ktnxbai.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Does that count as Solitary though?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Solitary confinement, as practised in the US penal system, is not just physical isolation. It's a total deprivation of any stimuli for the entire duration of the prisoner's stay in it. You can keep a prisoner from causing trouble without going to such lengths.
I was a bit hazy on the details, so I did what you suggested and saw some solid evidence that Zimbardo's experiment was flawed in method, execution, and conclusion. Given that the 2006 BBC Prison Study refutes most of the Stanford experiment's conclusions, I'd say the GP's original argument -- that anyone wishing harm on their charges should be disqualified from doing so -- still stands.
have any say on this?
Casteism
Yeah, I like making sweeping generalizations about tens of thousands of people that I've never met to justify horrific and inhumane treatment too.
Oh wait no I don't because I'm not a piece of shit.
==
You said it, not me,
Piece of Shit applies to the prison guards and staff. One would become a guard if one seeks power, no matter how minimal, and if one enjoys cruelty.
Yes, more prison guards are pieces of shit than are the prisoners.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
This has been bothering me for a long time. The justice system is opaque by design. The prison system is literally a black box, no pun intended. It's high time we threw open the doors of these cesspools and let the citizens see what forms of torture are commonplace in our own institutions of rehabilitation. Let the purging begin!!!
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
First, I find your lack of self-awareness disturbing.
Second, that line of reasoning is as as moranic now as when I heard a Republican say (circa 2004) that if gays didn't like gay marriage bans they should move to Saudi Arabia. Someone, somewhere always has it worse off than you, so STFU.
None of which chances the fact that the United States has the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of population and as a percentage of population. Even compared to the red herring, I mean Saudi Arabia, of choice.