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 causing psychological damage to its subject. It has a long history of use in the United States.

Its first documented use was at Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia (http://law.jrank.org/pages/11192/Walnut-Street-Prison.html), instituted after the Walnut Street Jail built specific cells to house individual inmates in isolation. Quakers pushed for Philadelphia to institute this solitary confinement in an effort to induce a period of reflection for the crimes that they committed. The Quakers believed that this would in turn rehabilitate inmates and reform them from their deviancy. However, Philadelphia eventually scrapped the prison and its method of enforcing punishment, as city officials found them to not be very effective in reforming inmates.
Even though it had not been found effective in Philadelphia, it would not be the last time communities in the United States employed solitary confinement as a method of punishment. Another key historical example of solitary confinement’s use in the United States was the construction of the notorious Alcatraz prison in 1934 in San Francisco Bay, with its many cells built for isolation. In these cells, the prison housed prisoners that broke rules, were violent, or were a nuisance. These prisoners were kept in isolation for a few days up to years. Furthermore some prisoners were sent to a special cell designed to further isolate prisoners from not only human contact but also other sense stimuli such as light and sound. This cell was called “The Hole,” where inmates were housed in total darkness and stripped of their clothes. These methods of isolation served as deterrence for prisoners in Alcatraz, as even the most violent of prisoners feared “The Hole”. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5579901)

Modern Usage

The catalyst to growth of solitary confinement in prisons was the construction of Supermax prisons in modern times. These prisons were created specifically to house the “worst of the worst” inmates insolation. Pelican Bay in California was one of the first of such prisons built in the United States, constructed in 1989. There, prisoners are kept in isolation for up to 23 hours a day. Inmates eat and exercise in these cells with limited contact with other humans. (http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2003/review_brook_janfeb2003.msp) Another infamous prison would be Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay institutes solitary confinement to a more severe degree, with scholars calling it, “…in some respects is more restrictive than many “Supermax” prisons in the United States.” (Locked up alone 1) Many inmates are held without being tried in cells in which they have no contact with the outside world, unable to receive visitation besides an occasional visit by a lawyer or humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross. Says one critic of the prison: “…conditions at Guantanamo have reportedly caused the mental health of many prisoners to deteriorate.” ( locked up alone 2)

Prevalence To put the scale of solitary confinement’s usage in perspective, today more than 80,000 inmates are in solitary confinement throughout forty-four state prisons and the federal prison system (http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fact-sheet-the-high-cost-of-solitary-confinement.pdf). The number of inmates in isolation and number of Supermax prisons rose dramatically in the early 1990’s. (http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/prison/stop_solitary_briefing_paper.pdf) The conditions that led to the uptick in the construction of supermax prisons was the growing concern over inmate violence against prison guards which led to the conclusion that solitary confinement and isolation would be a preventative measure against violence. (supermax rise effect)

Subjects Inmates are not specifically sentenced to serve their sentence in solitary confinement when first convicted of a crime. Rather, the decision to place the prisoner into solitary confinement is an administrative decision. “In most jurisdictions, admission into a Supermax facility or unit does not depend on a formal disciplinary hearing but is rather based on the criminal and behavioral history of an inmate while incarcerated. (Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, 1992; Riveland, 1999) Factors that lead to a “dangerous” classification can vary. An inmate can be placed into solitary confinement under the suspicion of being a gang leader or threatening the operations of the prison (Supermax-Rise-Errect.) Furthermore, breaking rules of the prison such as selling drugs or fighting can lead to a prisoner being moved to an isolation cell. There is no common structure to the duration of an inmates length of time in isolation, and “only 23 jurisdictions have written criteria under which inmates can earn transfer from Supermax prisons (National Institute of Corrections, 1997).”

Conditions

Conditions in solitary confinement vary. Conditions in some supermax prisons can include some stimulus such as a television or radio in the cell. Furthermore, some supermax prisons have libraries where inmates can check out books to read in their cells. Furthermore, availability of exercise where the inmate is taken outside his or her cell allows for some variety of experiences that is unlike the majority of their time spent in isolation. (locked up alone 22) However, on the extreme negative side, conditions exist such as in the Security Housing Unit in Pelican Bay State Prison where inmates spend, “…up to twenty-two hours a day confined to eighty square foot cells. There [are] no outside windows.” In addition, opportunities to exercise are followed by invasive strip-searches. Furthermore, conditions within Guantanamo Bay are even more extreme. Inmates in Guantanamo are held insolation with no contact to the outside. No visitation rights or communication with family is allowed. Also, the inmate’s only social interaction is with interrogators or through periodic visits from their lawyer. (locked up alone 2)
Effects
The usage of solitary confinement has been shown to produce a wide variety of negative effects on prison inmates, mainly psychological. Extended periods of isolation can lead to, “…a range of mental health problems, ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis.” (locked up alone 20) These symptoms are a direct result of being locked up with little stimulation or social contact. Even inmates with no prior mental illness can be driven mad. Such facts are backed up by a federal court analysis of Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit which found that, “…many if not most, inmates in the SHU experience some degree of psychological trauma in reaction to their extreme social isolation and the severely restricted environmental stimulation in the SHU.” (locked up alone 21) In addition, the court came to a conclusion that the lack of socialization and stimulation, “pressed the outer bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate”. (locked up alone 21) The lack of stimulation from solitary confinement can have bad effects after even a short stay in isolation. Inmates fall into a, “fog in which alertness attention and concentration all become impaired.” (Trauma of psychological torture 115) Furthermore, the mere absence to stimulus can impair the inmate to become irritated by even minor stimulus available, such as a dripping faucet. All of these issues with solitary confinement are compounded when an inmate has a preexisting psychological disorder. Prisoners with attention deficit disorder or other neurological disorder can be severely affected by the lack of stimulus. These individuals can fall into delirium, characterized with hallucinations, incoherence, dissociation, and paranoia (trauma of psychological torture 116).
In addition, inmates subjected to solitary confinement can lose the ability to fully rest or sleep. Inmates also lose the ability to escape negative stimulation, becoming fixated on minor occurrences. This can lead to passivity where the inmate believes he has no control of his own environment and feels helpless. (Trauma of psychological torture 117) The effects caused by solitary confinement also can linger after an inmate is removed from solitary confinement. EEG studies show a shift in brain function towards delirium, and they continue to show up on the test after the release from solitary confinement.
These effects also can contribute to an increased risk of suicide: “In addition to increased psychiatric symptoms generally, suicide rates and incidents of self‐harm are much higher for prisoners in solitary confinement. In California, for example, although less than 10% of the state’s prison population was held in isolation units in 2004, those units accounted for 73% of all suicides.” (Stop solitary 4) For many, Suicide is the only way to escape the durable psychological pain caused solitary confinement.
The Cost of Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement has a huge cost financially when compared to the cost of housing prisoners in common. Nationally, it is estimated to cost seventy-five thousand dollars per year to house an inmate in specific isolation cells—almost triple the amount to house a common inmate for a year. (Solitary-confinement-faq-short-version)
However, the cost is not only a large financial blow to society, but a social one as well. Inmates housed in isolation and released can be different from how they entered prison. “If these inmates have been abused, treated violently, and confined in dehumanizing conditions that threaten their mental health, then they may leave prison angry, dangerous, and far less capable of leading law-abiding lives than when they entered prison.” (Supermax rise erect 261) The released individual can harbor problems that can have a continued detrimental effect on society, such as further social deviancy or required continued social assistance. In effect, the released inmate who has been subjected to solitary confinement has a greatly diminished ability to assimilate into society. It can also lead to a rise in recidivism, i.e. where the former inmate has a heightened risk reentering prison. This is supported by “preliminary research in California suggests that the rates of return to prison are at least 20% higher for solitary confinement prisoners” (stop solitary 7)
The cost of solitary confinement is not only limited to the inmates and society at large, but also has a negative affect on the guards who watch over the inmates. Guards are more likely to exhibit aggressive tendencies, described by “excessive force and abuses of power” (stop solitary 4) In addition guards can become apathetic to daily abuse of the prisoners and can develop psychological issues of their own.
Does Solitary Confinement Violate Human rights?
Solitary confinement as a form of punishment has many adverse affects on inmates. AS described throughout this paper, it is used to house violent and unruly inmates and to serve as a general deterrence against deviant behavior in prison. Simply put, prisoners hope to avoid being moved into isolation. However, extreme isolation fits the characteristics of torture defined in the United Nations convention against torture:
“For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” (UN)
Conclusion
Solitary confinement as a form of punishment has various detrimental effects on those subjected to it. It leads to an increased rate of psychological problems attributed to the lack of stimulation, which can lead to hallucinations and paranoia. Furthermore, it also increases the risk of suicide and self-harm. Isolation also fits the characteristics of torture defined by the United Nations. Furthermore, Solitary confinement has a high financial cost, in addition to its large social cost. It does not rehabilitate the inmate, but puts the inmate in a worse position in that they arrived. The lack of oversight on who is located in isolation leads to exploitation and increased usage of solitary confinement. The growing abundance of supermax prisons creates an uneasy future for the American prison system in which solitary confinement has an ever-increasing roll.