re: #175 Justanotherhuman

Now, solitary confinement is being considered “torture” by some. But hasn’t that person traded their freedom for confinement in the first place by committing crimes? There is a reason most prisoners are put into solitary confinement, and it’s normally because they have acted anti-socially or even are in danger themselves from other prisoners.

This really isn’t always the case. It’s often used for punishment, too.

Solitary confinement is a “last resort” punishment to remove a prisoner from the general population, although it must be used sometimes for the prisoner’s own protection from other inmates or those on suicide watch (and even that is not total isolation, it’s generally done in a separate wing). OTOH, if solitary is simply being used on a whim by incompetents running these prisons, they should be investigated. I think we’ve learned that in too many cases those who abuse their power in prisons exist, and should be stopped. But that’s not the argument here.

The real question is “Does solitary improve anything?”

Prisons also have a duty to protect those who might be in danger from others; they are responsible for their physical well-being as well as being the place people wind up paying for their crimes. Prisons must protect the vulnerable from physical attacks, rape and all kinds of criminal activities from other prisoners and short of assigning a personal guard, an impossibility, they are restricted in their movements out of necessity. The article make a great assumption that those in solitary are all suffering some sort of mental abuse, a great leap. And it’s not always mental illness that causes behavior problems, either, at least that’s not what we think at this time.

Solitary is demonstrably harmful to mental health. Do you think you wouldn’t suffer from solitary?

Prison is not supposed to be the Hilton, and solitude is not “torture”. 7Most prisoners are already damaged psychologically when they are incarcerated and yes, there should be more mental health care. But if society at large can’t take care of the folks left on the outside and we keep filling up the prisons, how are we to provide the kind of on-going therapy and assistance to those who have already resorted to criminal behavior?

We can take care of folks left on the outside, and of criminals too, we just don’t.

But are Brooks and Digby projecting their own fears onto people who, for the most part, and unless otherwise proved, deserve to be where they are, paying for their criminal activities?

Is the point of prison to make them pay, to punish them, or to rehabilitate them?

Would those criminals be as humane to their own victims in the first place and would they offer their victims the same “human empathy” Brooks & Digby want for those prisoners? Would Brooks and Digby accept being locked up with many of these folks? Would they even live in the same neighborhood if they knew them personally? Probably not.

This line of logic is that we should treat criminals the way criminals treat others. I don’t see the appeal of that line of logic.

Our prison systems are a complete mess, we do not safeguard prisoners, solitary is often used as a punishment, and we completely fail prisoners in our duty to rehabilitate them.