Solitary Confinement Effects

Solitary Confinement and its Detrimental Effects
Solitary confinement, a tortuous punishment dating back to 1829, is much alive and still in use in prisons around the world. Prisoners that are put into solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours in a small closet sized room with little to no contact with other human beings and no way to exercise their minds. In these poor conditions, prisoners find it easy to lose a grip on reality; they suffer from a wide range of things including, insomnia, distortion of perception, hallucinations, and PTSD even after being released. Even though countless studies have proven the detrimental effects of solitary confinement, not much has been done to prohibit its usage in the United States.
According to the
Some of these prisoners are placed into confinement due to minor things like talking back to a guard, while other are put in there purely because they have gang affiliations. Something like having been in a gang at some point can land a person in solitary confinement for their whole sentence, which in some cases is decades. The fritless way prisoners are thrown into solitary confinement, as well as the lack of time limits for how long a prisoner can spend in solitary are not the biggest problems; solitary confinement has proven time after time to have harmful psychological, physical, and motor effects that follow prisoners even after they are released.
In an article titled “The Horrors of Solitary Confinement”, author Bill Lueders goes into depth on how altering solitary confinement can be for prisoners. Kate Edwards observes prisoners in solitary conditions to view and document the changes and effects that came with it. What she got for her study was that prisoners in solitary confinement “would start to change in disturbing ways” and that “They became unkempt, less able to focus. As the weeks went by, they would look more and more distressed.”. Humans are social creatures who rely on the interaction of
The usage of it as a punishment in prisons is inhumane and cruel and shows how the prison system has failed it’s prisoners and citizens. Instead of providing help and assisting prisoners in bettering themselves when they are released, the prisoner system beats them down until they do not even recognise themselves as human. It causes prolonged psychology damage, as well as damage to the motor cortex, ultimately affecting communication and interactions. Sometimes prisoners fall into depression and suffer with suicidal thoughts; some even taking their lives in their cell. This damage can follow these prisoners throughout life, leaving them with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and at times, at complete loss for who they were before. Solitary confinement would have been best left in 1829, and should not be implemented in prisons around the world