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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.
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.
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.
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.
physical separation doesn't require a total lack of human contact or external stimuli.
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
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/...
We unfortunately allow psychopaths and sociopaths to control our prisons. We should be disqualifying anyone who wishes to harm their charges.
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.
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.....
Quite the opposite, actually. The quest for revenge is detrimental to one's mental health.
Because we're supposed to be better than serial killers, we're supposed to be humane individuals. Because maybe we got the wrong guy, and it's worse to torture the wrong guy than to just lock up the wrong guy (though that's still very very bad). Because if we're going to imprison that serial killer with other people, people who are not serial killers and will eventually return to society, it's important how that serial killer acts towards fellow inmates. Because if we're interested in how to keep people from turning into serial killers, it's important to study that serial killer, to interview them in an atmosphere of some trust.
No jail time for burglars, then? Or car thieves or bank robbers who bust in after closing time? Interesting.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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?
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.
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
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.
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".
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.
No, psychology is much more complicated than rocket science.