Solitary confinement is the act of confining an individual in a small cell for 22 to 24 hours per day. Notably, human beings are social creatures who need regular contact with other human beings to maintain their well-being, sanity, and good health. Denying an individual contact with others can cause some serious irreversible psychological damage in a few days. Solitary confinement costs the lives of most inmates that result from increased suicide attempts and self-harm. It is estimated that approximately 40 percent of prison suicides take place in solitary. Additionally, solitary confinement does not serve the sole purpose of rehabilitation but greatly reduces the chances of a prisoner to successfully reintegrate into society. It is imperative to abolish solitary confinement and find a suitable alternative that guarantees the safety of staff and inmate in prison.
In the US, the Commission on Safety and Abuse is one of the bodies that govern the abolition of solitary confinement. According to the Commission on Safety and Abuse, the rise in the use of high-security is unproductive and frequently causes violence within the prisons. The Commission further state that solitary confinement causes some form of psychological torture with measurable effects on inmates. The arguments presented by the commission conquer with my thought on solitary confinement. To start with, solitary confinement is a threat to the safety of the public. Around 80,000 prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the US with Pennsylvania state prisons contributing to around 2,500 of prisoners (Guenther, 2013). Most of the prisoners in these prisons rarely have access to mental health care. They are forced to live in unfavorable conditions which increase the likelihood of suicide, violence towards others and self-harm. This danger ripples outward when these types of prisoners are released to society. They become violent to people which creates instability in communities. Besides, solitary confinement practice is significantly more expensive as compared to regular prison housing and depending on it as a mean of repression and intimidation has caused many people to suffer in torturous conditions.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Secondly, solitary confinement is detrimental to the health of the inmate. The physiological consequences experienced from solitary include acute headaches, increased pulse, and weight loss as well as digestion problems. Some of the psychological consequences of solitary include confusion, memory loss, depression, violent reactions, and suicidal tendencies. According to Reiter (2016), solitary confinement causes specific psychiatric syndromes such as panic attacks, perceptual distortions, concentration and memory, and impulse control problems. He further asserts that individuals with average intelligence and good healthy personality functioning can withstand the deprivation of isolation but those with psychopathic functioning are always at risk of severe psychopathologic reactions to such isolation. More so, solitary confinement legality has been challenged because of conception change surrounding the practice. Most of the legal discussion concerning solitary confinement has focused on whether the practice constitutes unusual or cruel punishment. As much as the international law discourages solitary confinements, solitary confinement opponents have been unsuccessful at challenging it in the US legal system.
From my personal perspective, solitary confinement has become a paramount weapon in a war on prisoners that is affecting our parents, brothers, families, and friends. The solitary confinement torture is a crime and a threat to the safety of the public and must be abolished completely. The rampant use of solitary confinement in most prisons ought to be stopped to create a society that respects the right of individual and values rehabilitation. It is important for the government to adopt other correctional alternatives to replace solitary confinement. Some feasible alternatives include the therapeutic community or a cottage system and the clinical alternative to punitive segregation in New York that can provide medication, therapeutic activities, and counselling.
References
Guenther, L. (2013). Solitary confinement: Social death and its afterlives . University of Minnesota Press.
Reiter, K. (2016). 23/7: Pelican Bay prison and the rise of long-term solitary confinement . Yale University Press.
