...On Solitary Confinement An Exploration Of An Age-Old Method of Punishment Solitary confinement is defined as the isolation of inmates and limiting their human contact in prison. From its birth in the late 1700s to its more widespread usage in recent history, solitary confinement has grown to be a considerable tool in the arsenal of the United States prison system’s methods of controlling its enormous prison population, shown by an increase in the construction of “Supermax” prisons, maximum-security prisons with units specifically designated to isolate inmates. With solitary confinement’s recent uptick in usage throughout the United States on both the federal and state level, questions have arisen about its implementation, its effects on the prison population, and its ethical implications. With it becoming apparent that solitary confinement will continue to play a large role in the United States correction system in the future, it is important to explore the answers to these questions. In this essay, we will explore these questions in order to understand solitary confinement more fully. History Defined fully as, “…confinement of a prisoner alone in a cell for all or nearly all of the day, with minimal environmental stimulation and minimal opportunity for social interaction,” (trauma of psychological torture 113) solitary confinement strives to eliminate the stimulus of senses such as sight, touch, and hearing, with the elimination of stimulus and social interaction...
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...1101-64 30 September 2013 The Alcatraz of the Rockies In 1990, John Jay Powers was sentenced to time in prison for robbing a bank. While there, he witnessed the murder of another inmate and began suffering from post-traumatic stress. In 2001, after a brief escape attempt, he was transferred to Administrative Maximum (ADX) Florence, the federal government's only supermax facility, where inmates are housed in conditions of such extreme isolation. The prison is known as ADX Florence, Florence ADMAX, Supermax, and, not so fondly, as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" (Marcus). Before entering ADX, Powers had no history or symptoms of mental illness, but since being installed there, he has become deranged and has engaged in numerous acts of self-mutilation, including biting off his finger, and trying to kill himself on several occasions (“Reports on and from”). To give people an idea of why a previously sane person would lapse into madness at ADX, they would need look no further than the circumstances of their confinement. ADX was designed to ensure the total isolation of all its prisoners, who are held in cells about the size of an average bathroom. The cells have thick, concrete soundproof walls, a door with bars and a second door made of solid steel. The only possible means of communicating with other humans is to yell into the toilet bowl and hope that someone may hear. The inmates are kept in their cells twenty four hours of the day for two days each week (“Inside the World’s”). On...
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...prisoners. Given the accumulated knowledge that the scientific community now has on the long-term effects of solitary confinement, it is clear that this practice raises ethical and practical questions. It will, in the next ten to twenty years, force various states and the federal government to choose whether they want to continue with an inhumane practice that could leave communities with a new danger that has been wholly caused by incarceration policies that some might consider barbaric. In order to understand the situation, one must have a background on the current situation with solitary confinement. It remains a popular practice across the United States, as prisoners are held in prison units that are conveniently coined “maximum security.” Prisoners can be sent to maximum security – or “Supermax” – units for a number of...
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...No Man Should be an Island: A Literature Review on the Effects of Prisoners in Long-term Solitary Confinement Mary Blanchard Argosy University Abstract This literature review examines the effects of short and long-term solitary confinement on individuals, especially those segregated in prisons and so-called "Supermax" facilities. The hypothesis is that while short-term confinement does not appear to cause serious harm, long-term confinement is detrimental to prisoners, particularly to those who are mentally ill. The evidence concludes there is a correlation between long-term isolation and psychological and physiological problems. The articles cover the history of solitary confinement, the wax, and wane of the practice, life in Special Housing Units, the constitutionality, and recidivism. Additionally, there are suggestions for improving confinement when it is necessary, as well as reducing the use as much as possible by limiting it to the "worst-of-the-worst" offenders. keywords: solitary confinement, "Supermax", Special Housing Units, mentally ill, recidivism, "worst-of-the-worst" No Man Should be an Island: A Literature Review on the Effects of Prisoners in Long-term Solitary Confinement Inroduction From the Iron Maiden and the Rack to Waterboarding and Sensory Deprivation, thoughts of these practices can make the most stoic person shudder. What many do not imagine is that the most harmful form of torture is also the simplest to apply. This "corrective...
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...treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary. I argue that the language of dehumanization fails to describe the harm of solitary confinement because it remains complicit with a hierarchical opposition between human and nonhuman animal that rebounds against prisoners, especially those who have been racialized and/or sexualized as less than human. Humanist discourse neglects the sense in which both human and nonhuman animals are affective, corporeal beings who rely upon the support of others for their own capacity to orient themselves within a mutually-perceived world. Drawing on the testimony of inmates in solitary confinement, and situating this testimony in relation to the political and scientific history of US incarceration practices, I develop a post-humanist critique of solitary confinement. Keywords: Solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, intercorporeal Malebranche would not have beaten a stone as he beat his dog, saying that the dog didn’t suffer. Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 166 Certain carceral practices are often condemned – both by prisoners and by their legal or political advocates – on the grounds that they violate human dignity by treating people like nonhuman animals. For example, in the 1995 Eighth Amendment case, Madrid v Gomez, the treatment of prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay Supermax Penitentiary is consistently compared to the treatment of nonhuman animals.i Some inmates were “hog-tied” with their hands and feet bound together...
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...There are two types of facilities that incarcerate offenders. Prisons tend to be the long term placement of an offender who is serving more than a year for their sentence. There are different security levels for prisons as well as gender specific locations. Jails are limited to those who are sentenced to less than a year. They also house those waiting transportation as well as witnesses to ensure they attend a court hearing. There are a few levels of security within prisons. They include minimum and medium security, close security, maximum security, supermax, and federal prisons. Minimum and medium security prisons have multiple inmates sleeping in a locked dormitory style setting with communal showers and toilets. The minimum security prison will have a single fence, watched by guards, while the medium security facility is equipped with a double fence which is patrolled. A close security prison is controlled from a remote control station and has one or two person cells, which include their own toilet and sink. Correction programs and work assignments will allow the prisoners to leave their cell, as well as the common area or exercise yard. The boundary is patrolled by a watchtower as well as two fences with an electric fence dividing the two. Depending on the location, some maximum security prisons force prisoners in their cells for 23 hours a day with no contact between the prisoners. The cells are controlled with sliding doors controlled from...
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...Plan to Improve Correctional Facilities Patricia Saylor Dexter Levin Corrections November 10, 2013 In general, rehabilitation programs have been effective in reducing recidivism among prison convicts since they are mostly focused on treating the criminal causing behavior of prisoners by eliminating completely the factors or circumstances that drive them to commit criminal acts. Criminologists such as Martinson who conducted research on the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs such as educational, community based and transcendental programs noted that rehabilitative programs had a higher efficacy when they were oriented towards providing treatment to prison convicts so as to reduce recidivism. Martinson noted that both the educational and transcendental rehabilitative programs were designed to provide prisoners with life skills that they could use to manage their criminal causing behavior as well as equip them with technical skills that would improve the quality of their lives (Prison conditions, 2013). Rehabilitative programs that are focused on the principles of effective intervention are able to target the known factors of recidivism thereby necessitating change and also enabling the incorporation of cognitive or behavioral treatments to reinforce the behavior of the criminal offender by eliminating criminal thinking patterns. Principles of effective intervention ensure that rehabilitative programs are able to take into account the various characteristics of offenders...
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...History of the United States Prison Marshall Keese Introduction to Criminal Justice CRJ-100-201103 05/14/2011 Instructor: Andrew Blank History of the United States Prison Introduction This research paper is on the history of the prison in America. How it came to be in its present state? Things I will be writing about in this paper are the early history of the prison history in England. I will be talking about early American prisons, the goal of rehabilitation, prison labor, changes in the prison system, rehab programs, population, housing and prison organization we will hit briefly on all those aspects of the history of prisons. The reasoning behind this paper is because many people do not know why prison are the way they are now. In order to know why we have prisons the way we have them today you have to know where they came from. The main findings from my paper are from the internet. Articles that I read for this are Towards a Fair and Balanced Assessment of Supermax Prisons by Daniel P. Mears and Jamie Watson. The textbook Twelfth Edition Introduction to Criminal Justice Author Larry Siegel Chapter 16. Prison Reform in Pennsylvania by Norman Johnston P.H.D Board member Emeritus of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Wikipedia. The short History of Prison by the Howard League for Penal Reform. These articles helped me to understand how we have the prison system today. I found that...
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...The cost of the US prison system has almost quadrupled in the past 2 decades, as seen in a survey by Vera institute, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit center for justice policy and practice. The survey referenced above included 40 states where the price of incarceration has skyrocketed to an unignorable $33,495,070 for imprisoning persons. Prison costs are now the 2nd largest cost to the US taxpayer, behind Medicaid (Vera). In a study conducted by Professor Donald Black, an instructor at the university of Iowa’s department of psychology, it was found that 20% of prisoners have antisocial personality disorder or ASPD, consequently this data shows a large amount of prison costs can be attributed to those with ASPD. However, in comparison...
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...is an important issue within the criminal justice and prison systems as it disproportionately affects those who are imprisoned. Stohr and Walsh (2012) suggest one factor that has contributed to the growing number of mental health issues within the prison population in America where government attempted to move towards half way houses and outpatient facilities instead of mental health hospitals. Yet failures to this deinstitutionalisation movement led to jails and prisons becoming the go to places for mental health patients. The situation in UK prisons is similar as mental disorder was found in 37% of sentenced male prisoners, 63% of men on remand, 57% of sentenced women prisoners and 76% of women remand prisoners (Birmingham,...
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...A1) Identify the link between imprisonment and suicide [10] Imprisonment very often has negative effects on offenders, in some cases they turn into victims of abuse themselves. Prison causes psychological distress, through overcrowding and bullying. This can lead to offenders self-harming and in many cases it can lead to suicide, which is more common in prison than the general population. Deaths in prison can be given various rulings by the coroner such as suicide (the prisoner had the intention to kill themselves), death by misadventure (accidental death) which in some instances can be self-harm gone wrong, and open verdicts. Dooley et al wanted to examine the unnatural deaths that occurred in prisons in England and Wales from 1972 and 1987. This research was in the form of a content analysis of prison department personal papers of prisoners’ records. Dooley compared verdicts of suicide with verdicts of unnatural causes or death by misadventure rulings. The research found that 300 suicides occurred in the time frame, 52 of which were due to self-inflicted harm gone wrong. There was little difference between the suicide group and the group that had self-harmed. However there were some real differences. For example, it was found that the prisoners who committed suicide were more likely to do so at night (this is so there is a less likely chance of them being caught in the act) and that the self-harm gone wrong group were more likely to be found during the daytime (this...
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...In today's society, the prisons of America appear to cause more problems than assistance. The country penal system is expensive, overcrowded, and some argue that it is ineffective as well as inefficient. The cost to build, staff, and support these facilities increases dramatically each year. Prisons, which were created to be humane correctional facilities, are currently filled with violence, hostility, and a communal fear. These institutions are meant to control crime by deterrence, incapacitating criminals. This may protect society from potentially dangerous individuals, but these institutions' level of accomplishment is askew. The financial burden attached to the building, maintaining, and staffing of prisons constantly plagues the penal system. During the late 1960s, New York built prisons at a price of $2 million each. Since then, prices have risen dramatically. In 1990, each prisoner required $15,496 to support (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”). A prison containing 2,000 inmates amounts to over $31 million to operate on an annual basis. The United States spends an estimated $60 billion each year on corrections (Prisons in the United States). The operation price is synonymous with the level of security, ranging from the supermax, containing serial killers, to the minimum security, containing drug offenders. Violence is not confined to outside prison walls. In 2005 alone, federal and state prisons reported 885 incidents of sexual violence. Of the aforementioned...
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...RACISM IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM By Nichole Griffith Advised by Professor Chris Bickel SOC 461, 462 Senior Project Social Sciences Department College of Liberal Arts CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY June, 2012 © 2012 Nichole Griffith Table of Contents Research Proposal ............................................................................................................................1 Annotated Bibliography ...................................................................................................................2 Outline..............................................................................................................................................6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................7 Research ..........................................................................................................................................8 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................29 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................31 Research Proposal The goal of my research is to expose the racism in the criminal justice system that is so hidden. I want to show how racism contributes to the huge number...
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