Solitary Confinement Is Cruel and Ineffective

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Robert_Sock said:
As a psychologist, and somebody who thrives in complete silence and solitude, I believe solitary confinements may be difficult at first but has the potential of changing the person for the better.
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Experts say it is especially difficult and harmful to children.
 
InigoMontoya said:
It’s true our current prison system is unsustainable and not working. Comparing recidivism rates or even incarceration rates paints America in a very poor light. It’s also true that we focus far more on punishment than rehabilitation, if anything it is an afterthought and subject to significant political budget cuts. When educational rehabilitation programs are offered to inmates, there’s often a backlash from the public and the prison staff about how prisoners are obtaining free education that they’re denied access to.

Prison staff can not arbitrarily place someone in long term solitary confinement. There are policies and procedures which include special hearings where the inmate can even represent himself before stretches of solitary confinement. Very few ever see real long term solitary confinement, and those are usually maximum security prisoners with known strategic threat group affiliation and a long history of violence on both inmates and guards.
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I worked in the prison system for many years as a social worker. Most of the rehabilitative efforts on the social work side of things were ineffective for several reasons. The major one being the use of a cookie cutter approach to delivering rehabilitative services. The next being very little follow up once an inmate is released.

You are spot on about prison staff not being able to “set up” an inmate for failure. In the system I worked in (a state prison system) there is quite a bit of oversight of those who are placed in segregation.

I believe solitary confinement is a horrible ways to treat any inmate. There are ways to safely manage even the most unmanageable inmates. The use of segregation is a far better method. It keeps staff & other inmates safe from a person but yet allows for the stimulation the mind needs to stay sane.
 
Tomdstone said:
“Isolating inmates inflicts permanent mental harm…Some 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons,… But new research suggests that solitary confinement creates more violence both inside and outside prison walls.”
scientificamerican.com/article/solitary-confinement-cruel-ineffective-unusual/
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Tom, how often does the US sentence prisoners to Solitary confinement for the duration of lengthy sentences?

And what about in the case of children?
 
Rau said:
Tom, how often does the US sentence prisoners to Solitary confinement for the duration of lengthy sentences?
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I don’t have the exact number but Albert Woodfox was kept in solitary confinement for 43 years. IMHO, for the Americans to keep a man in solitary confinement for 43 years is inhumane torture.
solitarywatch.com/
 
JoeFreedom said:
To be honest, I’m not against solitary confinement, for the many reasons expressed above by those who are for it. If you did something criminal/illegal, then punishment is the answer. Punishment is not meant to rehabilitate nor is supposed to be fun. If you are a danger to other prisoners now that you are locked up, you not only deserve your original punishment of being locked away, but it but it is necessary that you be confined alone.

As for those who turn “insane”, I think that if you are going to murder little children or do some other sort of terrible crime, you aren’t all there in the first place, so your sanity is already diminished. And who is to say that God does not test these people, who rightly deserve to be locked away, have failed their tests at becoming less violent? He gives everyone free will and theirs accordingly was enough to reasonably be put into solitary confinement.
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Uh, I think prison is meant to reform the person, knowing they will one day re-join the population…is it a good idea to make that person MORE violent, MORE prone to break laws. NO, that only ensures they will re-offend, but I have a feeling, that is what the desired outcome is in the US, they have to ensure enough people will break laws so they can fill all these new prisons being built all over the place.

If people were truly reformed and learned their lesson, they would get out and live a normal life, get a job, go to school to further themselves, so they dont have to resort to criminal behavior, but if you look at the numbers/ current laws, they do not want people reformed, they want BODIES filling cells, this = MONEY.
 
Humans are social critters. God created us to need each other . As He said, it is not good for man to be alone (Gen. 1:18).
 
Tomdstone said:
I don’t have the exact number but Albert Woodfox was kept in solitary confinement for 43 years. IMHO, for the Americans to keep a man in solitary confinement for 43 years is inhumane torture.
solitarywatch.com/
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St. John Paul made a statement about us being able to safely incarcerate people. If we were to limit the means of doing so, would you rather see this reversed and people like this executed?
 
Horton said:
The use of segregation is a far better method. It keeps staff & other inmates safe from a person but yet allows for the stimulation the mind needs to stay sane.
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That is better, except it doesn’t always work, if by segregation you mean open single cells. Perhaps there could be some re-design that would accomplish both safety and interaction. I don’t know.

FYI - In my solitary cells, I allow the mayhem of conversation, yelling, playing games and general conversation because I understand this downside to isolation. As long as everyone shuts up at bedtime, and keeps it below screaming and banging, I do not believe it good to discourage such socialization…usually.
 
pnewton said:
FYI - In my solitary cells, I allow the mayhem of conversation, yelling, playing games and general conversation because I understand this downside to isolation. As long as everyone shuts up at bedtime, and keeps it below screaming and banging, I do not believe it good to discourage such socialization…usually.
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That is definitely better than complete isolation. Undoubtedly it’s a huge benefit to the inmates to still be able to have some human interaction.
 
pnewton said:
St. John Paul made a statement about us being able to safely incarcerate people. If we were to limit the means of doing so, would you rather see this reversed and people like this executed?
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I am opposed to prolonged periods of solitary confinement, especially for children.
 
Tomdstone said:
I am opposed to prolonged periods of solitary confinement, especially for children.
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I do not know how children came into this conversation, but For adults, I just can’t agree absolutely. There are too many cases where my value for life trumps comfort. Yes, dehumanizing anyone must be minimalize, but death is the ultimate dehumanization. Above a poster gave a compromise alternative that works for most of those confined in solitary, but not all. Perhaps there are choices I do not see.
 
Exiled_Child said:
Palestinian children are routinely tortured this way in Israel. It breaks them.

theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/22/palestinian-children-detained-jail-israel

dci-palestine.org/rising_numbers_of_palestinian_children_subjected_to_solitary_confinement

rt.com/news/158556-israel-palestinian-children-confinement/
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Ah. I thought you meant in the United States as part of either our penal or mental health systems. I’m not downplaying human rights violations committed abroad, but I don’t think that’s what the topic of this thread is about.
 
AKDee said:
Ah. I thought you meant in the United States as part of either our penal or mental health systems. I’m not downplaying human rights violations committed abroad, but I don’t think that’s what the topic of this thread is about.
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Oh, I didn’t realize the thread was limited to only the United States. I would be surprised if children were tortured that way in the U.S., although it’s apparently widespread among adult convicts.

I experimented pretty extensively with sensory deprivation tanks in my early twenties, and I really enjoyed it. I think solitary-type people might be better equipped to handle solitary confinement, but that’s only a guess. We’re social animals and all, but I just have a hard time grasping why this is considered torture.🤷 It seems like it would have more to do with lack of sunlight than anything else.
 
pnewton said:
That’s a new one on me. I assume you are not referring to playpens.
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If you would read what I posted in #24, you would see:
Kids in Solitary Confinement: America’s Official Child Abuse

“The title of this post is the title of our most recent piece for The Guardian. It draws on a new report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, titled Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States. The report is a shocking and powerful document, and should not be missed. Our piece on it follows.”
solitarywatch.com/2012/10/11/kids-in-solitary-confinement-americas-official-child-abuse/
 
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