Picture living inside a 6-by-8-foot cell, where there is no light or windows. Inside lies a flimsy mattress, accompanied by a dirty sink and toilet. The walls are covered in human feces, and meals are received through a steel door slot. You are restricted from rehabilitative, educational, and medical services and denied any form of human contact. Imagine spending 23 hours daily in this cell for days, months, or even years before being released. This is what life is like for individuals in solitary confinement. The inhumane practice is a prison system where individuals are isolated in single cells with little or no meaningful social or physical contact. There is a growing consensus that incarcerated individuals’ solitary confinement is inhumane, ineffective, and unethical. The practice of solitary confinement creates damaging physical, mental, and psychological effects on the human brain and body and should be abolished in America’s penal system.
People subjected to solitary confinement experience increased instances of depression, paranoia, psychosis, and anxiety. This is even more damaging for juveniles whose brains are not fully developed and for incarcerated adults that already have mental health issues. Research has shown that juveniles are less equipped to handle the stress of solitary confinement than adults, putting them at a greater risk of psychological damage. This is evident in the case of sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder, who spent three years in New York’s notorious Rikers Island Prison while awaiting trial for a crime he never committed. When Kalief was seventeen, his first extended stay in solitary confinement was over 300 days, even though the maximum an inmate could be held was 90 days.
The United Nations defines any period longer than fifteen days in solitary confinement as “torture.” Kalief spent two of those three years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end life several times. Six months after his release from Rikers Island in 2013, Kalief attempted suicide again and entered several psychiatric hospitals. After years of suffering from depression and paranoia from long-term isolation, Kalief took his own life in June of 2015 at the age of 22. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners suffer each year in silence in solitary confinement. We must fight against inhumane practices like solitary confinement and abolish it for good in our criminal justice system.
Citations:
Martin, Michel. “’Time: The Kalief Browder Story’ Depicts Issues with Solitary Confinement.” NPR, NPR, 4 Mar. 2017, www.npr.org/2017/03/04/518527689/time-the-kalief-browder-story-depicts-issues-with-solitary-confinem….“Solitary Confinement: Inhumane, Ineffective, and Wasteful.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 4 Apr. 2019, www.splcenter.org/20190404/solitary-confinement-inhumane-ineffective-and-wasteful.
