Americas Solitary Confinement Problem

Brandon Kovach
Everett Community College

Author Note:
This paper was prepared for Political Science 202, taught by Professor Horn.
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 1

What do you think would happen if you were locked in a small room with only a toilet

and a bed for three months? Whatever the case may be this is happening to prisoners all over

America and is called solitary confinement. Unlike a normal cell that you would find in a prison

with steel bars and some bucks, solitary cells are rooms that are usually only seven by eleven feet

wide, no windows, a concreate slab with a stiff mattress, a small sink, and a single light that

always stays on no matter the time of day. Nowadays prisons that use these cells will lock people

up for a few weeks to even months where inmates are only let out every few days for a few hours

in an equally small yard. According to many studies, the effects of leaving a person in a room

like this for long periods of time will most often cause permanent physical and mental

disabilities. It is incredible that despite these facts solitary confinement is still used in many

American prisons today. The use of solitary confinement in American prisons is unjustified

because many prisoners are transferred without an official statement from the court and it has

been proven to cause physiological damage after a long period. This method of imprisonment

violates the eight amendment by subjecting inmates to unhealthy enclosed environments and

destroys the possibility of rehabilitation.

Solitary Confinement has been around for decades, even before the founding of the

United States. Although, most prisons in the 1700s were normal cells, guarded by men close by.

It wasnt till around the early 1800s that a prison in Philadelphia added a new block of cells that

were built for isolation and no human contact. According to Casella and Ridgeway, their book

talks about how the group that created the separation cells were called Philadelphia Society for

Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. This was a group of Quakers that at the time believed

that prison was a place for redemption. The Casella and Ridgeway states that this group created

the cells because, The individuals held in these cells were not put to work, but were left alone in
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 2

their cells to contemplate their crimes and, if all went as planned, become penitentthus the

name of the new block, Penitentiary House. So this meant that solitary confinement cells started

out as a way for people to rethink their bad choices in life. Although, after many years of using

this system, prison officers saw that they would release some of these prisoners, but would then

see them end back in prison for committing another felony (Casella, Ridgeway, 2016). So

prisons at the time kept switching between the use of solitary confinement and not using it until

around the 1950s when it became a more efficient way of keeping criminals because of amount

of prisoners that were being locked up. Unfortunately, after many years of it being in use,

phycologists are now showing evidence about how this kind of containment of prisoners can

cause serious mental damage.

As you could imagen, being locked in a room for a week is not only bad for your body

but can cause a lot of damage to your brain. Many studies conclude that long periods of solitary

confinement drastically raises chance of these prisoners coming out with permanent mental

damage. Even for shorter periods of time, this method of imprisonment can cause severe

psychological issues in almost anyone. One of these studies comes from Grassian called

Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement. According to his study, even the physiologically

resilient inmates suffer severe mental pain, especially after experiencing a prolonged amount of

confinement (Grassian, 2006, pg. 353). Although, as for the regular prisoner, the effects can be

overwhelmingly destructive. Some of these effects include the inability to tolerate ordinary

sounds, hallucinations, frequent panic attacks, difficulties thinking and remembering, and even

problems with impulse control (Grassian, 2006, pg. 335). Some of the symptoms make these

peoples lives harder, but there are still a lot of cases where these effects can make them more

harmful to others. Grassian even says, Many of the prisoners who are housed in long-term
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 3

solitary confinement are undoubtedly a danger to the community and a danger to the corrections

officers charged with their custody (2006, pg. 354). This means that solitary confinement causes

a lot of permanent damage to those who are locked up, but it also poses a danger to our country

and its people.

Not only does locking a prisoner in an enclosed cell bad for the persons healthy, it can

also be can be dangerous for the people around them and in the community. A lot of the

symptoms that long time solitary confinement prisoners usually deal with things like uneasiness

and panic attacks as well as paranoia and deterioration of memory. These symptoms make it

harder for them to be safely be controlled in the prison environments and makes them even more

unpredictable. According to an article written by Metzner and Fellner on the mental effects of

solitary confinement, they state that, They [prisoners] may exhibit bizarre, annoying, or

dangerous behavior and have higher rates of disciplinary infractions than other prisoners (2010,

pg. 105). This means that the effects of solitary confinement may be just a consequence of their

behavior, but in fact it also makes them more dangerous when they are around others. This

process of protecting the prisoners from each other and from the harm of the public is only

making it worse because when they are around other prisoners or are released, they are more

likely to commit subsequent violent acts. Even as professionals who help diagnose these people,

Metzner and Fellner say that they do not support the use of solitary confinement because it

neither helps prisoners serve their time or keep the community safe (2010, pg. 107). Despite this

fact, some people argue that these convicts were put in prisons for a good reason so why should

they care about the mental health of criminals?

There are a lot of laws regarding how the justice system works and events that led up to

the sentencing a person to prison, but it all boils down to the fact that the system is in place to
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 4

punish those who disobey the law. Almost everyone who ends up in prison is there because they

deserve it. So this begs the question if the people in prison are such bad people why should we

care about their mental health? First of all, it is their right as a prisoner to correct their actions

and repent from what they have done, so they can live a normal life. There is no point for a

prison system to detain people for a few months to years, just to then let them go and repeat the

crimes that they have committed. That would mean the whole prison system is useless and we

are just paying to provide housing for criminals. The use of Solitary confinement only solidifies

this possibility. When prisoners are trying to survive and cope with the mental problems that this

confinement can cause, they are unable to focus on why they are there in the first place and how

they will become better. Secondly, like stated before, solitary can actually reverse this process

because some of the mental disabilities that it causes over long periods of time can make the

prisoner more likely to assault someone or make irrational choices. So we should care about

what happens to the people in our prisons because that is where our tax dollars are going and it

can ultimately create more people who are violent or have an unpredictable behavior. Although,

ultimately it is these tax dollars that are driving the creation of these solitary cell maximum

prisons.

So studies have shown that solitary confinement is bad for the mental health of people

kept in isolation, but what exactly are the conditions like in American prisons that would cause

these symptoms? Well in an article from Goode called Solitary Confinement: Solitary for Life,

she talks about the Pelican Bay S.H.U. prison facility in California. She says that the prison was

designed for the least amount of human interaction with doors that open electronically and

intercoms for officers to communicate with the prisoners (Goode, 2015). Of course, all of these

are good for the guards because it keeps them safe from these very dangerous men, but the issue
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 5

is that once these prisoners are put in their cells they dont get to interact with anyone for days

and even for weeks. Not to mention that the rooms in this prison are only 7.6 feet by 11.6 feet

boxes made from thick concrete (Goode, 2015). Other than a very small sink, toilet, and a

mattress the prisoners get nothing else and especially in this prison because the cells dont even

have windows. This feature can be especially harmful to the body since the cells only has a

single light that stays on all day and night which gives the prisoners no way of telling time. Only

after three days a person can lose track of time which starts to mess up their bodies natural

progressions like the digestive cycle and the introductions of hormones at different times of the

day. There are prisons like Pelican Bay all over the United States that is continually locking

people up in harmful cells and sometimes without a good reason.

More and more prisoners are being relocated from normal cells to segregation cells even

if they werent sentenced by the court for that punishment. To learn more about this, we need to

look into why prisoners are put in these cells to begin with. According to the article by Heffernan

and Wood called, The Wrong Box: Our Prisons' Use of Solitary Confinement is Inhumane, it

talks about how solitary confinement is used in a lot of American prison complexes (Heffernan,

Wood, 2015). They say, Beginning in the 1990s, large numbers of inmates started getting put in

solitary not for things they did but for things that others might do to them (Heffernan, Wood,

2015). What this is saying is that prisoners are being kept in solitary confinement for their safety

from other prisoners like gang members, or transgender people. At first this sounds like a good

idea, but what ends up happening is that these prisoners usually spend a very long time or even

the rest of their sentences in solitary confinement. That means that these people who are usually

already have mental disabilities are kept from normal human interaction even though they didnt

do anything to deserve that level of punishment. Another reason why prisoners are put into
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 6

solitary confinement without an official sentence is because they pose a threat to the people

around them. In this case separation for a little while is the best way help avoid this problem, but

they shouldnt be put into solitary cells especially for a long period of time because cruel and

could increase the likelihood that they will act out violently do to mental damage. In the end

prisoners are being put into these solitary cells for protection from others and themselves for

reasons which are unjustifiable and is not the best solution to keeping everyone safe

Like discussed before prison is basically a small community filled with people who have

broken the law. As you would expect this means that some of the prisoners dont like to follow

the rules putting the lives of the correction staff and even other prisoners in danger. Of course in

most American prisons these dangerous people are put into segregation units, but this is not a

good way to punish prisoners. If prisons shouldnt use solitary confinement to punish

misbehaving prisoners than how can you punish someone who is already being punished? Well

according to the article, Beyond the Supermax Administrative Segregation, it discusses

Mississippis experience rethinking how it safely keeps its prisoners while cutting back their use

of segregation cells. One of the things they did was divide the prison into levels where each one

corresponded to how many privileges the inmates got because of good behavior (Kupers, 2009).

The article specifically states that, After a large proportion of prisoners were transferred to

general population within Unit 32 (necessitating the physical conversion of pods and buildings),

the number of incidents requiring use of force plummeted (e.g., spraying a prisoner with

immobilizing gas or taking down a recalcitrant prisoner). This meant that by keeping good

behaving prisoners together and constantly moving around the prisoners greatly decreased the

need for segregation even in the first place. On top of this prisons have added privilege systems

in which inmates get things like sports equipment, TVs, and better work studies for good
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 7

behavior. This way the prison highly discourages bad behavior and promises to make their life a

little bit worse if they misbehave without forcing them to receive permanent mental damage from

solitary confinement.

There are many people who would ask if prison officials dont have the option to lock

people in secure segregated cells then how should prisons be ran to ensure that everyone is safe

and improves the working conditions for the correctional officers? This is exactly what the

Michigan Department of Corrects were asking after dealing with a lawsuit for a prisoner that

died in their solitary cell (Maurice, 2016). After a series of meetings on the matter, they came up

with a six stage process that the inmates Could move up to a low security status. What they came

up with to keep the peace was a set of privileges for each level. For example, at the Alger prison

the stage two inmates would get a basketball and other recreational equipment, step three a TV,

step four they got one 15-minute call per month and two calls per month at stage five (Maurice,

2016). According to the staff in the facility, At Alger, the staff found it could reverse this

process simply by giving prisoners a reason not to be violent. Lastly, in order to go up a stage

the prisoners have to participate with good behavior, but can also write essays about the crimes

theyve committed and what they are doing to better themselves (Maurice, 2016). This process is

much better than solitary confinement because it promotes positive interaction between prisoners

and especially allows the inmates themselves choose how hard they want they life in the prison

to be. Also by using a privilege system it encourages prisoners to stay on good behavior instead

of locking them up and hoping that when they are around others they dont commit any acts of

violence. The progression that the Alger prison complex, and many other prisons like it is a

promising solution to our problem of locking people in solitary cells.

Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 8

Despite the alternative methods that can be used in prisons, there are still many people

and especially officers who are scared for their own safety because they have to deal with these

people every day. Even with a system of privileges there are still prisoners who will act violently

to other prisoners and correction staff and without segregation cells nobody seems to be safe.

Well fortunately, there are other ways that prison staff can contain those who dont follow the

rules. One of these solutions is to separate these prisoners from each other not in solitary cells

but standard ones with more room to talk with people. The issue with solitary confinement cells

is that it cuts off human interaction and brain stimulation all together. It turns out that according

to Martin in his article titled, State prisons rethink solitary confinement, that Washington is

one of the states that has found great success in moving away from the use of solitary

confinement. Martin states that because Washingtons changed to emphasis rehabilitation more

the amount of violence in these prisons has also gone down (Martin, 2013). There programs

encourage prisoners to take part in group therapy and to participate in work study because it

boosts confidence. The article also says that another reason Washington is moving away from

solitary confinement is because keeping a prisoner in one of these cells is three times more

expensive than keeping a prisoner in a normal cell (Martin, 2013). So, by instituting temporary

separation in normal cells and focusing on rehabilitation can not only improve the lives of the

prisoners but also makes the correctional staffs jobs much safer and more interactive.

As discussed before, solitary confinement is a cruel form of punishment and should be

considered by the court to violate the eighth amendment. The eight amendment reads,

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual

punishments inflicted. The use of solitary confinement directly conflicts with the last part of

that statement that said prisoners shall not be subjected to any form of cruel and unusual
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 9

punishments. According to the article Dignity and the Eighth Amendment: A New Approach to

Challenging Solitary Confinement by Rovner, it states that the courts look at two things when

determining whether something is considered a cruel and unusual punishment (Rovner, 2015).

The first is that the challenging party must show that the punishment is serious in that it either

deprives prisoners of basic human needs or provides substantial risk for serious harm. The

second part is that prison officials must show deliberate indifference to the use of the punishment

when knowing about the risks of harm (Rovner, 2015). Of course, the words cruel and unusual

are not very specific in meaning so the courts must determine according to the time and culture

whether a punishment is considered to provide serious harm and have a general indifference

between enforcement personnel. With all of this considered the courts should rule against the

use of solitary confinement because it displays a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

The court system has a set of rules to define how it judges whether the use of some form

of punishment is cruel and unusual or not. According to their definition, solitary confinement

definitely violates the law of the eighth amendment. To begin with, the court must see that

solitary confinement deprives prisoners of basic human needs and provides serious harm. As the

studies cited earlier solitary confinement has been proven to cause serious mental harm to the

victims who are left allow for even up to a week. According Solitary Watch and their article on

how solitary confinement relates to the law says that cases in the supreme court have ruled to

keep solitary cells because, The Eighth Amendment simply does not guarantee that inmates will

not suffer some psychological effects from incarceration or segregation (2011). What it should

guarantee is protection against serious permanent mental damage that solitary confinement has

been proven to cause. The courts also require that officers must show an indifference toward the

use of a punishment to violate the eighth amendment. This is definitely the case in our prisons
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 10

because people are often put into solitary confinement for their protection even if theyve never

done anything to deserve it. The correctional staff and prison officers do this even with the

knowledge of the damage that is done. Luckily, there are better ways of protecting people in our

prisons that doesnt involve locking someone up in a segregation cell and become more unstable.

So the courts have determined what violates the law and according to it the use of solitary

confinement in prisons is unconstitutional and should be put to a stop.

Its hard to imagine that weve gotten to this point where people are locked in very small

rooms with only a small mattress, toilet and a sink for months and even sometimes years. Sadly,

this is what is happening in prisons all around the U.S. The supreme court should permanently

put a stop to the use of solitary confinement because it is unconstitutional and deprives prisoners

of basic human rights. One major reason being, that studies from expert psychologists agree that

locking people in these small cells causes brain damage that can make the prisoner become even

more violent or unpredictable. What usually happens in these prisons are prisoners who have

done nothing wrong are locked up for their own safety. This is a bad use of solitary confinement

because these people are often left in the cell for months which doesnt help the prisoners to

learn from their mistakes. There have also been other systems used in prisons around the U.S.

that have shown improvements in prisoners rehabilitation and less assaults toward other

prisoners and prison staff. This shows that prisons can be run more effectively without the use of

segregation cells. Although, per the ruling of the eight amendment, the supreme court should put

a stop to this because it violates our law. As Americans, it is our right and duty to speak up to the

supreme court to rule against the use of solitary confinement in American prisons.
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 11

Annotated Bibliography

Casella, J. Ridgeway, J. (February 2016). Introduction to Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices
from Solitary Confinement. The New Press. Retrieved from:
https://longreads.com/2016/02/09/a-brief-history-of-solitary-confinement/

This website posted the introduction to a book about the history of American prisons and
especially solitary confinement. It talks about how prisons in the early 1900s was all
about rehabilitating inmates, but after a bunch of deaths caused by inmates, states started
to stop focusing on it and just enforced stronger punishment so that they would obey.

Fact Sheet: Solitary Confinement and the Law. (2011). Solitary Watch. Retrieved from:
http://solitarywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/fact-sheet-solitary-confinement-
and-the-law.pdf

This article shows how solitary confinement relates to the law and past decisions by the
supreme court. Solitary has proven to cause mental damage, but it also mentions that the
courts says that the eight amendment doesnt guarantee mental safety. Although, the
courts did say that the officers used it indifferently regardless of its effects.

Goode, E. (2015, August 3). Solitary Confinement: Punished for Life. The New York Times.
Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/health/solitary-confinement-
mental-illness.html

This newspaper article dives into some of the effects of solitary confinement and also
looks at interviews of people who have under gone years of being separated from the
world. The inmates they interviewed showed greater signs of a mental breakdown and
emotional instability compared to those who are put in normal cells.

Grassian, S. (2006). Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement. Washington University Journal

of Law & Policy, 22(1), 325-383.
http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=law_journal
_law_policy
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 12

This study takes an in depth look at the physiological damage that solitary confinement
can cause. It says that even people who are more resilient to be confined still leave with
physiological pain and some damage. It goes as far to say that solitary confinement can
even cause violent people to become even more uncontrollable. This is a scholarly source
because the author is a studied expert in the field of phycology and lists many reference
for his study.

Heffernan, T., & Wood, G. (2015, April 20). The wrong box: our prisons' use of solitary
confinement is inhumane. Gale Group. Retrieved from:
http://ic.galegroup.com.ezproxy.everettcc.edu/ic/ovic/MagazinesDetailsPage/Magazines
DetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Magazines&currPage=
&scanId=&query=&source=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=
view&catId=&u=ever87615&limiter=&display-
query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%
7CA408649499&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary

In this article the author gives information about how solitary confinement works in
American prisons and how what started as a short-term punishment for unruly prisoners
turned into a sentence for even some obedient inmates. It also mentions that a lot of the
strong advocates for the use of isolation are guards who are in charge of keeping violent
people under control.

Kupers, T., Dronet, T., Austin, J., Kelly, L., Cartier, W., Morris, S., McBride, K. (2009).
Beyond Supermax Administrative Segregation: Mississippis Experience Rethinking
Prison Classification and Creating Alternative Mental Health Programs. Criminal Justice
and Behavior OnlineFirst. 1-14. doi: 10.1177/0093854809341938. Retrieved from:
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/images/asset_upload_file359_41136.pdf

This article gives a detailed report about the reform that Mississippi made in their prisons
when they were faced with a law suit for a man dying in solitary confinement. They
implemented a classification system to keep the peace in the prison. As prisoners behaved
they moved up to a new level where they had more freedom and were considered a lower
security risk. This helped get rid of violence in the prisons because all the dangerous
people were kept in greater security and the lower risk could have more freedom. This
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 13

evaluation is a scholarly source because it was written by people who first hand
experienced the change. They also listed credible sources as reference to their claims.

Martin, J. (2013, January 7). State prisons rethink solitary confinement. The Seattle Times.
Retrieved from: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/state-prisons-rethink-solitary-
confinement/

This article informs about the movement away from solitary confinement in
Washingtons prisons. It discusses their focus on rehabilitation programs because they
know that these prisoners will be released into the general population again. They have
also found that this new focus has decreased violence in prisons as well.

Maurice, C. (2016, January 7). Stepping Down from Solitary Confinement. The Atlantic.
Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/solitary-
confinement-reform/422565/

This article reports on a prison complex in Michigan that started a program that would
take inmates out of solitary sells and slowly reintroduce them to regular cells and
eventually full rehabilitation. The program includes 6 stages that inmates have to go
through to get out. With each stage the prisoners get perks like a TV in the cell.

Metzner, J., & Fellner, J. (2010). Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A
Challenge for Medical Ethics. Analysis and Commentary, 38(1), 104-108.
http://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/38/1/104.full.pdf

This article discusses the use of solitary confinement in American prisons and the
psychological implications of using the system. It argues that people should take a
position against the use of solitary confinement because it harms the people who are
confined and doesnt help in the process of rehabilitation for these subjects. This analysis
is a scholarly source because the authors are experts in their fields and list many credible
references to back up their claims.

Rovner, L. (September, 2015). Dignity and the Eighth Amendment: A New Approach to
Challenging Solitary Confinement. American Constitution Society. Retrieved from:
https://www.acslaw.org/sites/default/files/Dignity_and_the_Eighth_Amendment.pdf
Americas Solitary Confinement Problem 14

This document discusses how solitary confinement relates to the eight amendment and
other alternatives used in American prisons than solitary confinement. One of the systems
that it talks about is providing incentives to prisoners. This means that more behaving
prisoners may get recreational equipment or a phone call. This strategy keeps the
prisoners in check and gives them a reason to obey. This is a scholarly source the because
the author wrote this article it in here field of study that she is very familiar with. She also
has a wide list of references that she uses to back up her claims.