You guys should read this:
““Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow wrote. They became permanently withdrawn, and they lived as outcasts—regularly set upon, as if inviting abuse.”
“In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that solitary confinement is bad for people.
I don’t suppose there is any evidence anywhere that living in a barely controlled environment full of psychotic prisoners is bad for people? If they care about what’s good for them they should try to stay out of prison in the first place. But being convicted of a crime shouldn’t become a sentence to a Lord of the Flies situation with hardcore criminals.
‘There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that solitary confinement is bad for people.”
I am not trying to be harsh, but to keep prisoners physically safe.
Personally I don’t want any other prisoners at liberty to mess with me. I don’t mind seeing them, talking to them, whatever, but I don’t want them having access to my body.