Minchew1

Ethan Minchew

Professor Cassel

English 107

5 May 2019

Solitary Confinement

Have you ever wondered what it would be like in solitary confinement? Well some would

say, don’t. There are numerous reports out there saying how solitary confinement does more

harm than good. As you are trapped in a 6x10 cell with nothing but a bed and a toilet. You can

read books but you wont be let out to watch TV or anything. You’re in this cell for 23 hours a

day and in some cases, 24 hours. You have an hour of recreation time but that’s in a small cage

in the yard. You have no interactions with other prisoners and every time you leave your cell,

your shackled up and accompanied by two guards. This doesn’t sound so fun but imagine

spending years living like this.

A perfect example would be Kalief Browder. He was 16 years old when he was arrested

for stealing a book bag. So he was sent to Rikers Island where he was held awaiting trial. During

that time, he ran into some issues and landed into solitary confinement. Now before he was

arrested, he was going though some mental illness problems. Locking him in a small cell all day

with no interactions wasn’t a good idea. He was later let out of solitary confinement but then was

sent back because he was in a friend’s cell without permission. He then was sent back to solitary

confinement. From there he told the guards that he was hearing voices, but they told him it was

just the voices of the other inmates in the cells next to him. Kalief didn’t believe them, but he

had a hard time falling a sleep that night. After a few months he was let out.
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(In the video below, you can see Browder’s hard time in prison)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYgP2s_TZzg&has_verified=1

As you can see from that video, Kalief suffered a hard time in prison let alone solitary

confinement. He was then sent to solitary confinement for the remainder of his stay at Rikers. He

spent a total of two years out of the three he spent there. He was basically held at Rikers for three

years without a trial and was let out because they dropped the case of him stealing a backpack,

he still claimed he was innocent. After he was let out, he stayed with his mom. You would think

that he would have had it better after him being let out, but that wasn’t the case. The two years in

solitary confinement took a toll on Kalief. His mother said that he stayed up in his room all day

and avoided groups of people, almost like he was recreating his stay in solitary confinement. It

was said that the prolonged stay in solitary confinement took a tool on his mental health. As

stated before, he already suffered some mental illness before being arrested but while in solitary

confinement, it just made it worse. One day Kalief threw his TV out the window and claimed

“They were watching him”. At the age of 22 years old, Kalief pushed his air conditioning unit

out his window then tied a wire around his neck and jumped out feet first and hung himself. His

mom heard the commotion of the air conditioning unit hitting the ground and walked outside

where she found her son hanging there. In this tragic example, we can say for sure that solitary

confinement did more harm than good. Another case is Jermaine Gotham who as 16 when he

was sent to the “block”. He was arrested with the charges of burglary, kidnapping, and robbery.

He was written up for entering another inmates cell and got 60 days in solitary confinement. He

remembers the slam of the door that reminded him of being in a tomb. He also remembers

begging the officers to open the cell, that lasted for hours as he peered through the little window
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on the door. He remembers seeing the little gleam of light come thought the window as he sat in

the dark cell. In June, he got another 200 days in solitary for blocking the cell lock with paper,

Jermaine has a low IQ which adds to his behavior. He was later sentenced to 8 years in prisons

and still racks up infractions. He was last known to be in a restrictive housing unit and has spent

more than three hundred days in solitary.

In 1829, the first solitary confinement experiment is conducted at a Philadelphia state

penitentiary. It was based on the beliefs that the inmates locked in these cells with a bible would

repent and pray. However it had the opposite effect as inmates went insane and could no longer

function in society or committed suicide. Then in 1934, the government opened Alcatraz in San

Francisco bay. This prison housed the countries worst criminals. There was a unit call “D Block”

that was the solitary confinement hallway. There was a special cell there called “The Hole”

which was worse that solitary confinement as inmates in the hole were naked. There was also no

sunlight as there were no windows at all, just four solid concreate walls. There was nothing in

this room, no bed or anything, just a whole in the ground. There was also a small hole in the door

where guards stuck bread and water through it. These conditions where worse than the solitary

confinement cells as you were clothed, was fed properly but had no interactions with other

inmates and rarely let out of their cells. Inmates generally spend a few days in solitary

confinement but some spent years in it. In 1983, two corrections officers are murdered in two

separate incidents at a Illinois prison. From there the warden put the prison in a “forever

lockdown”. This as the first prison to adopt the 23 hour isolation cell time. There was no more

communal time and no more programs they could attend. Soon after, few more states adopted

this idea. Then in 1989, California built the “first” supermax prison. They didn’t build a

cafeteria, shops, nor a prison yard as the prisoners would spend time in a concreate cell that had a
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bar roof, outside. A federal judge finds the conditions at Pelican Bay in California “on the edge

of humanly tolerable”. That was in 1995, he issues that they needed to maybe change some of

their procedures.

There have been many issues with solitary confinement. Some say that it does more harm

than good. In some scenarios, they are right as there are studies out there claiming how solitary

confinement isn’t good on the inmate. Inmates are human too and they at least deserve fair

treatment. Psychologist claim that we are social creatures. We crave interactions with others and

solitary confinement takes those interactions away. That’s why some inmates go insane and talk

to themselves as they had no one to talk to while locked up.

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Greg Marcantel was a former cop and currently the secratery of corrections for New

Mexico. He decided to go undercover at a level 6 prison and get a first hand experience on

solitary confinement. He decided to do this because he wanted to reform the states use of solitary

because most of these guys are going back onto our streets, worse than they came. Frederico

Munoz was in the same block as Greg. Munoz has gang ties and has two murders on his record

so he spent the last ten years in solitary. He says it’s terrible as your stuck in a cell all day. He

also said that making a routine eases it. He exercises and reads a lot. Him and a few others in his

block use a fishing line with a piece of paper attached to communicate. They slide it across the

block and under doors to communicate. So he would tie it to a pencil or something and slide it

under his door and across the hall to his neighbors. From there they attach a piece of paper to it

and tug on it. That’s how they communicate. Everytime an inmate it taken out to the yard, they

have to go though a strip search for any weapons they may have. 24 hours into a 48 hour stay,

the secretary start to feel the effects of solitary. He starts to feel the walls coming in on him and

has a hard time breathing. He tries to get through it by working out but you can only do so much

of that. The secretary believes that solitary shoudld be used but rarely in most cases. However he

believes that there is evil in this world and that solitary is a way to prevent that evil from

harming other inmates and his staff. Now after his stay he did pick a few prisoners from level 6

confinement yo be relased back to general population which meant they got to see other inmates

for the first time in years.

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There is also another problem, putting mentally ill inmates into solitary confinement.

Some prisons actually put mentally ill patients into solitary confinement because they have acted

out in some sort of way. So when they’re sent to solitary confinement for a few days, they end up

racking up more time in there as they act out. Being put into a room for 23-24 hours a day makes

their mental state deteriorate. Causing them to exhibit bizarre or dangerous behavior. That’s how

they rack up infractions because prison officials treat them no different than regular prisoners.

There have been civil cases where they challenged putting an inmate with serious mental illness

into solitary. According to a federal judge, putting a mentally ill prisoner into solitary is like

putting an “asthmatic into a place with little air”. Many organizations and the UN have

concluded that prolonged stays in solitary confinement may amount to torture or fall under the

8th amendment for cruel and unusual punishments.

Ethically, prison physicians shouldn’t condone putting the mentally ill into solitary. They

struggle as they have bare resources and a heavy caseload that limit their services. We can say

they’re doing the best they can however in most cases, they’re resigning which adds more fuel to

the fire as that’s one less physician helping out. When health care officials go and do their rounds

but don’t say anything about locking the mentally ill away then are they really helping?

Shouldn’t they be doing whatever is best for their patient? Most prisons don’t have the time nor

the money to help mentally ill patients so they just give them pills and lock them away which

doesn’t help. Another problem is how solitary confinement cuts off support groups, therefore

they don’t have the proper counseling. Some physicians feel as if they need to be loyal to the

prisons as they are their employers. They also feel like guest in the house of correction which

deters them from speaking out about these practices. So ethically, should correction physicians
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be bound to speak out about these practices of putting the mentally ill into solitary, as it

deteriorates their mental condition.

Justice Anthony M Kennedy is a critic on the topic of solitary confinement. He

commented saying it “drove men mad” at his Harvard Law speech. He attacked the practice in a

2015 opinion related piece, stating “Years on end in isolation exacts a terrible price”, while

naming the common side effects. Anxiety, hallucinations, withdrawal, panic, self-mutilation and

suicide thoughts and behavior. At the end he invited lawyers to file appeals, challenging

constitutionally of prolonged stays in solitary confinement. However the supreme court has

turned down all appeals to them relating to this subject. Luckily most of them agree that

prisoners have a right to exercise as that goes under the 8th amendment.

In conclusion, the evidence shown above shows us how solitary can be more harmful

than good. The first hand experiences by kalief and Jermaine show us how damaging it can be.

Then we go onto the history of solitary and the first experiment drove people to suicide or to the

point they couldn’t be released back to society. Yet we still kept the practice and transformed it

over time. Alcatraz had a cell with nothing but a drain in the ground for the naked inmates to use

the bathroom. We’re also stuck on an issue with putting the mentally ill into solitary

confinement. Seeing as there is studies that show it deteriorates their mental state even more.

There is also the question, should correction physicians be ethically bound to speak out about

putting the mentally ill into solitary as they know it doesn’t help. Judging from the pieces of

evidence we can say that prisoners can be sent to solitary for anything and it does effect their

behavior but in a negative way. Luckily there are groups out there trying to change the system

for the better.

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Works Cited

Armstrong, Lisa, and Lisa Armstrong. “A Teen-Ager in Solitary Confinement.” The New Yorker,

The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2017, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-teen-ager-in-

solitary-confinement.

Liptak, Adam. “Will the Supreme Court Scrutinize Solitary Confinement? One Justice Offers a

Map.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 May 2018,

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/us/politics/supreme-court-solitary-confinement-

exercise.html?module=inline.

Metzner, Jeffrey L., and Jamie Fellner. “Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S.

Prisons: A Challengefor Medical Ethics.” Journal of the American Academy of

Psychiatry and the Law, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

Online, 1 Mar. 2010, jaapl.org/content/38/1/104.

Schwirtz, Michael, and Michael Winerip. “Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years

Without Trial, Commits Suicide.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 June

2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-

3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html.

Sullivan, Laura. “Timeline: Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons.” NPR, NPR, 26 July 2006,

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5579901.