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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."
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.
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.
You should stop. Just stop. Clearly you don't know anything about the topic at hand and you are making a fool of yourself.
Reforming them s always better. Even if they don't get out of prison, having them be a calm member is safer and healthier.
There are people in for life that have nothing to do with safety.
Why you think being in for life means they'll do anything for kicks is baffling. Maybe you're the type of person who attacks people for kicks?
What you are talking about is a tiny percentage of those currently being held in solitary.
If someone is always attacking people, they have mental issues and should be treated as such.
"In fact, often the threat of solitary is the ONLY thing that keeps some prisoners from doing this."
Fact? what fact? you're ass?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually it does.
W can look at the US's own history for this.
Through the 70s, prisons were corrective. they where nicer, people were treated humanly, and they had program so when the person got out, they had opportunities.
Recidivism rate were low.
Then Reagan era republicans started pushing hard for privatization of prisons.
Which lead to those company pushing for longer sentences and the BS 3 strike laws. They are also the reason for the myth of 'Advocate Judges'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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...
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
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".