Imagine being held in a concrete cell for 23 hours of every day in your life. Imagine having no contact with humans on any meaningful level – not even being allowed to have a photograph of a loved one or even being able to make routine phone calls. Imagine have little to no exposure to a natural light source of any kind, of having a calendar being the only evidence of time passing at all. What you have just imagined is the definition of solitary confinement, a correctional procedure that is used throughout United States prisons and is continually growing in force.
In the last two decades alone, there has been a considerable upswing in using solitary confinement as a reliable source of prison management. In fact, there has been so much focus on using this as a correctional procedure that the country has even begun to witness the building of what is known as "supermax prisons" for the sole purpose of having prisoners being held in severe isolation, sometimes even for decades. This is in direct violation of human nature, because simply put, human beings are social creatures. Not just in that we depend on one another, but that without consistent social interaction, it is difficult to be defined as a "human" at all.
This was confirmed by a study that was completed by a professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. During this study, there were randomly selected inmates at supermax prisons that were interviewed, observed and studied. What were the findings? After a considerable amount of time in isolation these people lost much of their humanity and were unable to organize their own living and fell into serious emotional distraught, apathy and severe depression.
This has not been something that has been quietly accepted. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has argued that by using this correction system that they are not only jeopardizing public safety but that the foundation of solitary confinement is fundamentally inhumane. On the economical side of things, they argue that it is a waste of tax money. In many instances, the European Court of Human Rights agrees and in 2010, they stated that supermax prisons violated international human rights law.
Unfortunately, this warning and the arguments of the ACLU has done nothing to slow the growth of these prisons across the country. Throughout the 1990s, many were constructed throughout the country and now there are many than 30 states, along with the federal government, that are operating a facility of this nature. Not every single one of these facilities operates under the same laws and guidelines, however, almost every person who calls these facilities home has been convicted of a violent crime, usually in relation to a gang or some violation of law while in prison.
Those who advocate for these types of facilities argue that they allow for a stringent type of discipline that can play a huge role in limiting the amount of violence that occurs in prisons. This, however, does not always apply directly in real life and the issue is much larger than that. Over the past three decades, the country has exponentially grown its incarceration rate, but has done little to provide more prison space – in fact, the country has 5% of the world's population behind bars. There has also been a continued decline in the work and education programs that were once a staple of our country's prisons due to the belief that these were pointless and that rehabilitation should be forgotten. This has led to an unprecedented overcrowding that is combined with idle hands – a formula for violence.
