George Orwell once wrote: "The object of torture is torture."
In February, the Federal Bureau of Prisons began conducting an examination of solitary confinement in all federal prisons in the United States. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) requested the review upon statistics revealing more than 50 percent of all prison suicides are committed by individuals kept in isolation.
America has the most prisoners in the world. The same nation that holds 5 percent of the world's population holds 25 percent of the world's prisoners; the federal prison system includes approximately 215,000 inmates, and in 2010, over 11,000 of them were held in "special housing." That's not including state prisons.
According to The Washington Post, there is estimated to be more than 105,000 inmates held in isolation in all types of prisons throughout the United States.
In a syndicated op-ed column, George Will pointed out that when Charles Dickens visited the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia - more than 170 years ago - where a stringent system of solitude was administered, his observation was:
"I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay."
Prisoners in isolation are kept in small cells without access to windows and natural light for 23 hours a day - every day. The amount of these people who eventually decide that not living is better than living like that reflects the severe and corrosive psychological impact the institution of solitary confinement has on an individual.
Yet it is the current ruling of the Supreme Court that holds this form of treatment does not violate the Eighth Amendment - inflicting "cruel and unusual punishment."
Another term for prisons - in our modern (politically correct) vernacular - is "correctional facilities." There seems to be something ironic about depriving human contact to individuals the government is attempting to re-assimilate back into society.
To maintain the belief that these prisoners are undergoing a process that can restore them to normality is absurd. The notion of rehabilitation seems to be perplexingly distant from this line of "correctional thinking."
Donald Hebb, a professor of psychology at McGill University, conducted experiments in 2008 on the effects of isolation on the mind. The series of tests demonstrated the treatment rendered the human subjects disoriented and despondent. Their cognitive faculties became impaired, and for some, the sensory effects included hallucination. In other words, isolation drastically altered the way their minds functioned.
Solitary confinement facilitates a prisoner's descent into madness and the United States is presiding over this phenomenon systematically - with thousands of inmates scheduled to one day re-enter mainstream society. Is this the state of mind you want for someone who could potentially be sitting next to you in a class?
With the exception of the prisoners who have committed truly heinous crimes - and whose criminal and/or violent nature is incorrigible - the use of solitary confinement needs to be reconsidered. It makes sense for an inmate to be kept in seclusion for the purpose of protecting other inmates - if he or she poses an intemperate physical threat to them. But for those who need to be prepared for reintegration in our neighborhoods and communities, it makes little sense.
CBS News has reported that Colorado, Georgia and Maine have recently begun reducing the amount of inmates kept in isolation since the review began.
We're hoping federal prisons will follow in their footsteps.
For the majority of the inmates experiencing what is proven to trigger psychiatric problems and induce excruciating mental agony, solitary confinement is as useful for rehabilitation as fighting is for peace. With federal dollars going toward inmates being kept in isolation costing considerably more than average inmates, the question that should remain on taxpayers' minds is: "The object of solitary confinement is...?"
Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
