Posted on 06/04/2012 10:29:30 AM PDT by presidio9
At New York City’s Rikers Island Detention Center, where I worked as a chaplain for 23 years until 2007, the solitary confinement unit was called the “bing.” When I asked a prison captain what the term meant, he explained, “When some prisoners come here, their minds go ‘bing.’ ”
Indeed, when I would make visits, walking cell by cell, I was overwhelmed by the lethargy and depression of the inmates.
The damaging effects of isolation are not unique to Rikers inmates. Decades of studies prove that solitary confinement causes severe and lasting harm.
Dr. Stuart Grassian, a nationally recognized expert, reported perceptual distortions among the common symptoms described by the hundreds of prisoners he evaluated in solitary confinement.
He highlighted this symptom as especially concerning because perceptual distortions, in which objects shrink or appear to “melt,” are more commonly associated with neurological illnesses, especially seizure disorders and brain tumors, than with psychiatric illness alone.
Dr. Craig Haney, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found extraordinarily high rates of symptoms of psychological trauma among prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement in his systematic analysis of prisoners held in supermax prison.
More than four out of five of those evaluated suffered from feelings of anxiety and nervousness, headaches and the like, and over half complained of nightmares, heart palpitations and fear of impending nervous breakdowns. Nearly half suffered from hallucinations and a quarter experienced suicidal ideation.
When I worked at Rikers, some prisoners held in solitary experienced this heightened risk of suicide. In fact, responsible inmates were trained to act as Suicide Prevention Aides. Through small glass openings, they monitored the activities of those in isolation cells and reported any self-destructive behavior to the unit officer.
I can imagine the response of some reading confronting these facts: So what? These are convicted criminals. Many are violent offenders. They deserve it.
That’s not how our system is supposed to work. We have prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.
We value our shared decency and humanity.
I understand the need to maintain order and safety in prison. But holding people in isolation until they are mentally broken is not acceptable. And it’s actually no safer for guards and other inmates.
Over the past three decades, numerous state and federal prisons have made long-term solitary confinement a default management tool, subjecting prisoners to conditions of extreme isolation not as a response to violent behavior but rather as a routine practice for minor rule infractions, and for “their own protection.”
Some prisons consist of nothing but single-cell isolation units. Nationwide, an estimated 80,000 persons are kept in these inhumane conditions, sometimes for months and years on end.
Recently, the number of inmates held in “punitive segregation” at Rikers has increased dramatically; today, more than 900 inmates there are being held in their cells for 23 hours per day.
The widespread imposition of solitary confinement
should trouble everyone. Prisoners with mental health disorders suffer debilitating trauma, and studies indicate that prisoners released directly from solitary confinement to society have significantly higher rates of recidivism.
If all that weren’t bad enough, the cost per inmate of solitary confinement far exceeds other types of imprisonment. Indeed, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn recently announced a proposal to close a notorious supermax facility in order to save over $20 million annually.
A handful of other states have adopted measures to rein in the practice, and their outcomes demonstrate there are more efficient, effective and humane alternatives to solitary confinement. For example, Maine’s corrections commissioner, Joseph Ponte, who ushered in reforms leading to a 70% reduction in Maine’s solitary confinement population in 2011, says that “the more data we’re pulling is showing that what we’re doing now is safer than what we were doing before.”
Mississippi’s prison system also had an infamous segregation unit, referred to as Unit 32. As a result of litigation,
the state transferred many of those inmates to the general prison population.
The number of violent incidents requiring guards to use force to restrain prisoners plummeted. Unit 32 was eventually closed.
Every human being has inherent God-given dignity, a quality that does not disappear behind prison gates. Recognizing that prolonged solitary confinement is a cruel form of punishment, people of faith and conscience must work to abolish this indefensible practice.
Yes, it does sound inflated.
Excluding local jails and juvenile jails, there are about 1,600,000 people in jail.
1 in 20 are in isolation???
I work daily to help this country maintain its constitutional freedoms. Sorry solitary doesn’t fit the category of a violation. We live in an age where criminals are given too much power and way too many privileges. I can’t go to college for free like so many of our criminals do. I don’t get many of the things that criminals do. I am supposed to feel sorry for some duffs who has ended up going to Stony Lonesome? Not at all. I will focus my energies and my sympathies on those who have not been violent offenders
You’re quite right! And, as the old adage goes, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!”
By that logic, anything that occurs in prison cannot be "cruel or unsual," because it's "punishment." That flies in the face of the 8th amendment, which prohibits crule and unusual punishment (clearly implying that punishment can be cruel and unusual).
No you’re just mis-comprehending simple reality. Time alone is NOT cruel and unusual punishment, it’s just punishment, regular old every day not cruel not unusual and often RICHLY deserved. It’s not flying in the face of anything except the whining we constantly get out of prisoners that everything is cruel and unusual, everything of course except what they did to get there. Solitary used to be the default, it’s a good method of punishment, if we had the space it should be the default again. It helps prevent all the other problems of prison like rape and trading methods to churn out “better” criminals.
Most research and observation, some dating back from the 1800's, differs with your conclusion.
Unless you consider a torturous, permanent and negative brain alteration to be a Ccnstitutional punishment, that is.
Solitary confinement has existed since time immemorial. If armchair academics “feel” compelled to alter that staus, they should work, tirelessly, to enact legislation forbidding it!
'Time' is not cruel and unusual. Solitary is. This article explores the effects in greater detail in a reader-friendly manner.
This is a less reader-friendly (but more footnoted and scholarly) scientific treatise on same.
I'm for that.
I agree. It sounds inflated to me too.
Sorry I’m not buying this whiny BS. If it’s so over the top then where are the lawsuits to make it stop. I mean really, this is a criminal justice system that’s lost suits declaring serving food the prisoners don’t like as cruel and unusual, yet this solitary has never been challenged. It’s just more BS from prisoners thinking all punishment is cruel and unusual, screw them. Solitary for everybody, worked well once.
Inmates are kept in segregation for long periods of time because they remain combative and continue to flagrantly disobey the rules. They all usually give in after finally realizing that they can’t win. Maybe the inmate should act like a man instead of crying about punishment he knows he deserved.
Excellent and spot on. I’m a big believer in the death penalty, but here in Illinois our justice system, if you can call it that, is an utter failure. Our AG is the daughter of our House Speaker. You likely know the reputation of Illinois corruption. She can’t find anyone to prosecute.
We’d better be careful as conservatives not to forget that government fails, cops carry throw guns, and justice isn’t blind.
When confronted by those who will not consider, or even read, evidence, I have learned that it is best to disengage.
So, let us seperate to different camps: You to those in favor of violating the 8th Amendment, and we who are against that.
There’s lots of “research” out there, especially psychiatric “research” that has no basis in reality. But here in reality one thing we know is that long before one of these guys winds up in solitary they’ve already shown plenty of anti-social possibly even sociopathic behavior, yet we’re supposed to believe it’s the solitary that made them nuts.
This is not a violation of the 8th amendment. that’s just more of that whiny BS. It fails on all tests, it’s been around far too long to be unusual, and it’s not cruel. It’s a simple, often deserved, punishment. Here’s the REAL two camp:
you in those that favor coddling criminals and believing every spurious claim they make about every punishment they face being cruel and unusual
and those of us that understand they’re criminals thus known to be socially maladjusted liars and there is nothing cruel or unusual about solitary confinement
Again, I've presented facts and evidence, and you have waved your arms wildly in return.
Tijeras, at the beginning of this thread, mentioned he's been in the system and he's SEEN this.
Tijeras -- if you care to -- take it away. I'm done with the dude.
Good evening discotu,
Prolonged solitary, or even limited solitary can cause what we called, when I was in corrections, “isolation psychosis” (granted it’s not a technical term). Inmates isolated for relatively brief periods developed more aggressive behavior.
Not all inmates in solitary are there because they present a danger to the prison population. Given that correctional officers are hassled, overworked, and (not without reason) adversaries to the inmates, individuals are stuck in isolation because it’s easy and the officer can do it. There are no saints in prison, on either side.
An inmate in solitary, either deservedly or not, is not in the position to be rehabilitated. And there are many in prison who can, and probably would like to be rehabilitated. If anything, isolation sets back the possibility of an inmate becoming a member of society again.
Just my 2 cents.
You presented articles that lack any real reason to believe them. They aren’t facts, they’re articles. They don’t address simple important issues the two biggest being:
were these people even sane to start with
If it’s that damaging where are the lawsuits to stop it
It’s really not that tough, categories of punishment have been banned on Constitutional grounds before. If it’s as open and shut a case as you make it out to be then these people should be bringing it to court instead of Wired.
Prisons don’t rehabilitate people. As one profiler was fond of quipping “the problem with rehabilitation is it assumes they were ever habilitated in the first place”. The recidivism rate is through the roof.
As for “isolation psychosis” so what. They’re criminals, they already can’t handle society, most of them show some form or another of psychosis, then some get locked up in solitary and are, supposed, more nuts.
It’s not cruel, it’s not unusual. If it is then somebody should prove it in court and it will end.
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