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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.
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 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?
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 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
here in Paris, you can legally rent apartments that are as small as 9 sq. m.
And you can leave them whenever you want. In fact, the basic expectation when renting an apartment like that is that you won't be spending any significant amounts of time in it beyond sleeping (which is actually an incredibly expensive way to live).
Trapping someone in an environment that confined with no outside contact is torture, plain and simple. The human mind isn't evolved to look at a flat grey wall for 23 hours a day.
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.
There's always been a debate in American society concerning justice...why do we put people in prison? To rehabilitate them? To punish them? To protect people in the outside world from them?
In some ways it can be argued that all three are useful as arguments.
But at the end of the day, in the real world, away from these sorts of philosophical arguments, there are real prisoners in for a stint with a hope to get out someday, and guards (who are free, with real outside lives) and then there are psychopaths. The facts are that there are SOME people whose only admitted goal in life is to cause as much harm to others as possible, because they enjoy it.
It is inhumane to the rest of the prison population and guards to keep these people near others. That is why you put them in solitary.
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.
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.
We unfortunately allow psychopaths and sociopaths to control our prisons. We should be disqualifying anyone who wishes to harm their charges.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Nice hypothetical. Got any evidence that's what actually happens?
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?
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).
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.
Plexiglass?
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
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.
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.
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?
Its the murders rapists etc that end up in solitary.
No. It is the mentally ill that end up in solitary.
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".
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.
... 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.
> 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.