The Spread of Solitary Confinement
Prison can be a hell within itself. When being restrained in a building with no friends or family, it seems as if it could not get worse. But it could. Within prison, solitary confinement takes on that role. For weeks, months, or years, prisoners can be isolated from all stimuli and human contact. There is no goal in putting prisoners in solitary. There are no positives, for it does not reform. Simply put, solitary confinement breaks down the minds of prisoners, often rendering them helpless, hopeless, or dead.
It has not always been so. Prior to the turn of the century, the most a prisoner would have to stay in solitary would be a few weeks tops. Now, solitary is where some prisoners serve their entire sentences. This came to be from the rise of “supermax” prisons, where prisoners spend 23 to 24 hours of their days locked in single cells. The point of these prisons is to isolate individuals that might be overly dangerous to themselves, other prisoners, or the prison staff. Ever since an escalation in prisoner violence during the 1970s and 1980s, these “supermax” prisons have grown popular to try and stem the violence.
Understanding the psychological effects of solitary confinement has been hard for both individuals and researchers. One of the most famous studies trying to emulate its effects was done at McGill University in 1951 when a group of graduate students was asked to stay in a room that contained only a bed while wearing goggles, headphones, and gloves to severely deprive them of all senses. While the study was supposed to last six weeks, no student could endure over a week. Near the end of the study, most of the subjects could not think clearly, while some were to the point of having severe hallucinations.
After being in solitary confinement for 24 years, one prisoner said, “I got a 15-minutes phone call when my father died. I realized I have family I don’t really know anymore, or even their voices.” Another said, “If you put a parakeet in a cage for years and you take it out, it will die. So I stay in my cage.” After years alone, most prisoners lose any sense of who they are, what their former lives were, what personalities they used to have. Most of their time is either spent not thinking or focusing completely on not going insane.
By the system trying to make these prisoners less dangerous to others, they become more dangerous to themselves. One in five suicides in prison are committed by inmates in solitary confinement, while those in solitary account for only 5% of the male prison population. This reaction to social deprivation is common even in tests done on animals. When University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow enclosed monkeys in a pit without any escape or social interaction, he said they were, “profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.” Even after being released, they had severe trouble in social interaction and caring for their own young.
There is also a strong racial bias for who goes to solitary and who does not. While black males make up 40% of the prison population, they account for 45% of male prisoners in solitary. For women, the bias goes even further, where only 24% of women prisoners are black and yet account for 41% of those in solitary. This is largely due to there being no laws that stipulate what actions call for solitary as discipline. Prisoners have been sent to solitary confinement for offenses as small as gambling, being unsanitary, or possessing money. While the Justice Department has warned prisons against the use of solitary, it is still handed out in a subjective manner.
Solitary confinement is the wrong solution to the prison system’s many problems. Tens of thousands of prisoners endure the daily torture of social and sensory deprivation because of prisons’ attempt to reduce violence. Long-term solitary confinement only produces mental health issues and a higher recidivism rate, let alone making the prisoners more likely to commit the same kind of violent acts that put them there in the first place. When prison gets so out of hand that they need to create their own prison within, it becomes time for a reform of the prison system.
