Discussing the numerous shortcomings of the United States’ broken prison system can quickly become overwhelming. The laundry list of grievances is depressing: fees that ensure prisoners leave incarceration in debt; a privatized prison system that emphasizes numbers, not rehabilitation; crowded prisons full of people serving for non-violent offenses due to out-of-date drug laws; perversely skewed incarceration rates among minorities, mainly African- American men.
And now, we get to add the widespread, autocratic use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment. Yay. Release the balloons.
A survey published in August from the Yale Law School found that about 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners were being held in solitary confinement in prisons across the country in the fall of 2014. Solitary confinement is defined as the isolation of an incarcerated person in a jail cell for 22 to 24 hours of the day. Routinely, prisoners spend more than two weeks in solitary confinement.
The use of solitary confinement is overwhelmingly used as a measure of “prison administration,” where the use of the punishment is solely to separate the prisoner from the general population or to punish for an offense. A real problem though, is that these punishments are arbitrarily handed out.
In the Justice Department’s 2014 report on the Riker’s Island Adolescent Detention Center, it was found that solitary confinement had been enforced on individuals for such minor offenses as yelling, reacting too slowly to a guard’s orders, and even failure to pick up a fork off the mess hall floor. This same study found that at any given point in time, a quarter of adolescents in the detention center may be in solitary confinement.
In 2014, the United Nations’ Committee Against Torture released a sourcebook from the findings of the Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment that stated solitary confinement “must be absolutely prohibited…and may even constitute torture.”
What does this United Nations report have to say about the use of solitary confinement on adolescents?
“With regards to minors, the United Nations General Assembly… have declared that solitary confinement must be strictly prohibited.” Essentially, the widespread problem across American punitive institutions of throwing minors into solitary confinement has been declared as torture by the United Nations.
Though it is not as if it’s any better for adults. From that same United Nations report, “Research…has established that solitary confinement can cause mental illnesses, including a syndrome described as “prison psychosis,” which manifests in symptoms including anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, paranoia and psychosis, and can lead to self-harm.” Moreover, “scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible.”
The power dynamic between prison officials and prisoners can be exploited in solitary confinement, as well. Due to the inherent isolation and lack of secondary witnesses, prisoners are vulnerable to further human rights abuses.
While the lasting effects of solitary confinement are truly horrible on their own, it is arguable that the worst aspect of it is that it replaces rehabilitative activities that the prisoner could otherwise be engaged in. Group activities, outside exercise, reading, and even leisure time have all been proven time and time again to aid prisoners in their path to rehabilitation.
Solitary confinement does the exact opposite. Isolating prisoners has lasting, damaging mental and societal effects on the incarcerated, adding more and more dirt to the uphill climb convicts have towards integrating back into society upon release. Fines are frequently added into a prisoner’s debt upon their placement into solitary confinement, sometimes as much as $25 dollars a day, which may or may not be rescinded once they are released back into the general prison population. This is a spectacular recipe for high recidivism rates.
Of all of the problems within America’s prison systems- and there are a lot -there are none as detrimental to the overall health and rehabilitation chances of prisoners as solitary confinement. It is a backwards practice that is outdated and torturous, and not only suffers the incarcerated, but American society as a whole.
