Solitary Confinement
and why it should be abolished
It can be argued that when used correctly, solitary confinement is a good thing, a beneficial thing, a helpful thing. It could keep uncooperative prisoners at bay so they do not harm themselves or others around them, and it could protect a prisoner who is receiving threats and harassments from fellow inmates and therefore feels unsafe. It is argued that when used correctly, solitary confinement can serve as a way to protect individuals. But the thing is, because of the mistreatment and misuse of solitary confinement, so many people suffer. Giving a prisoner 90 more days in solitary confinement simply because he was trading magazines with another prisoner is not just punishment. Locking human beings away in a cell for over twenty hours a day is not just punishment. Treating people as if they were less than what they are, living, breathing, feeling beings, is not just punishment: it’s torture. Solitary confinement is not and never has been used for containing prisoners for a limited period of time who are acting as an immediate threat to themselves or those around them. Because of this, it must be eliminated entirely from the prison system as we know it.
The implementation of solitary confinement can be traced back further, but it became more common around the early nineteenth century; the reason for the sudden commonality in such a cruel punishment was because of the rise in penitentiaries. By the 1950s, the psychological health of isolation cell occupants came into question, and by the 1970s, solitary confinement use seemed to be on the downhill slide. By unfortunately the use of supermax prisons in the 1980s caused a spike in isolation inmates. The American solitary confinement practices as we know them began when two prison guards were killed in a penitentiary in Illinois. The entire prison was put in lockdown and never came out. Because solitary confinement became popularized while supermax prisons were on the rise, the psychological effects that inmates were facing were once again in question. If a detainment strategy must be questioned on multiple occasions of its effect on one’s psychological help, the next question that should be asked is if the detainment strategy is sound, especially when it isn’t “violent” criminals being detained, but instead mentally ill, gay and transgender, those awaiting trial, and those placed there because traditional cells were full and then somehow end up there for good.
The image above depicts what a solitary confinement cell looked like in the 1850s. You will see a bed, a sink, a toilet, and a loom used for work during the day. The cell is small, cramped, and furnished so the occupant only has to leave the cell to shower. To this day, inmates are confined to their cell for over 20 hours a day, sometimes only leaving to shower and workout, which sometimes has to be done in shackles. The argument could be made that solitary confinement has worsened as time has progressed, because technology and advancement have made great strides in all aspects of our world, thus including the harshness of isolation cells, but this isn’t the case. The cells in the 1850s aren’t much different from the cells today (minus the loom of course) proving confinement units have always been cruel and unusual punishment. So what does a isolation cell look like today?
Much like a cell from the 1850s, you see a bed, a toilet, and a sink. Small right? Not just the picture, the actual cell; consider the size of the picture a metaphor for the actual size of the cell and the amount of freedom one is given when placed into it. As I mentioned earlier, the psychological effects of being placed inside of an cell smaller than a horse stable were called into question after prisoners were coming out of isolation psychologically damaged and unable to function in society. The way the brain works, when you are not in contact with anyone for an extended period of time, the region of your brain that controls stress and anxiety increases, and the region that narrates sensory cues decreases.
One of the most remarkable effects of chronic social isolation, as in the extreme case of solitary confinement, is the decrease in the size of the hippocampus, the brain region related to learning, memory, and spatial awareness. The sustained stress of extreme isolation leads to a loss of hippocampal plasticity, a decrease in the formation of new neurons, and the eventual failure in hippocampal function. On the other hand, the amygdala increases its activity in response to isolation. This area mediates fear and anxiety, symptoms enhanced in prisoners in solitary confinement.
The body begins to mentally shut down when not adequately stimulated, such as when prison guards become too busy to take an inmate out for the one hour of outside time allotted. The biological clock that can be found within all of us begins to deteriorate, leading to sensory deprivation. One prisoner housed in an isolation unit in California claims to having not seen a tree in over a decade, which can lead to further loss of what is real. Aforementioned prisoner made this statement:
They can either break you or make you and if it breaks you, you’re just gonna be broken physically and mentally.
So what happens after? A prisoner who has spent time in solitary confinement, whether it be for weeks, months, years, or in some cases decades, has been released and must now face the world; a world full of people, sounds, emotions, noise, interaction. How does one go from spending so much time alone to never truly being alone again? Some don’t. Some prisoners commit suicide not long after tasting freedom, because they can’t handle existing in society where they are no longer able to process things as they once did. Others revert back to committing crimes, ones serious enough to lead to incarceration. Some prisoners make it out alive, so to speak. One man who spent nearly a decade in isolation found it difficult to be in large groups of people, because he couldn’t take people bumping shoulders with him. Although the effects of solitary confinement after release are not the same in extremity, they are all detrimental and can be avoided if solitary confinement were eliminated completely.
I understand that something must be established to handle criminals who are threatening to hurt themselves, the guards, or fellow inmates, but it should never be something that undermines the basic needs of a human being (i.e. interacting with others, having access to books, etc.) Do I know what this “something” is? I sadly do not, but I do know something must be done. Solitary confinement may have been meant for something other than the evil and abandonment it created, but seeing that it has caused nothing but serious damage to the minds, bodies, and souls of its victims, a re-examination of how we contain “serious” offenders should take place; a place for rehabilitation, growth and learning should be considered to take the place of the horrible creature that is solitary confinement. The way I see it, if something can be fixed, fix it, even if the final solution can’t be seen, because it is worse to live in a problem than it is start the process of change.
