Positive and Negative Implications of Solitary Confinement (Research Paper Sample)

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Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement has been used for hundreds of years. It is enacted for inmates who commit serious offences, endanger other people's life, or need protection for themselves. Solitary confinement is the isolation of a convict for a period of time, usually 23 to 24 hours each day. Prisoners are placed in such solitary units for a variety of reasons, including punishment while being under interrogation, behavior change when suspected of gang activity, and retaliation for political activism (American). Solitary confinement is known by several distinct names in different parts of the country. Isolation, control units, high security prisons, bureaucratic segregation, information protection, or perpetual lockdown are all terms used to describe solitary confinement of inmates (American). These people who are kept in solitary confinement have little contact with the public. Isolation is humanitarian since it safeguards other inmates, the put in prison individual, and ensures that justice is served. Some believe that seclusion should be abolished in the United States due to its dehumanization, while others believe that the security it provides is important.
There has been a lot of debate on how solitary confinement is cruel method for confinement since it produces psychological problems. These inmates are by themselves for 23 to 24 hours every day. Except for the guards, they have no physical contact with anyone. Convicts are notorious for committing heinous crimes, such as murder. They most probably have a mental condition that would cause them to kill someone, yet solitary confinement raises the risk of mental disease. If the inmate does not already have a mental disorder, they will almost certainly develop one after a long period of absence. Extreme isolation has long been known as a form of punishment that causes irreparable mental injury (Schuessler). This raises the question if solitary confinement is viewed as a mechanism for protection against the other inmates or the confined prisoners, and is it better for their own safety?
Solitary confinement violates core ideals that underpin modern democratic societies, by forcing of inmates to spend all of their days imprisoned in a solitary cell with little interaction is considered cruel and unusual punishment. Solitary confinement has become a ubiquitous practice and element in western prisons and jails that fluctuates in use, often undergoing waves of intensification according to epochal exigencies and state of politics, since its inception prior to the birth of the contemporary jail system (Shalev 352). It was originally used in a systematic manner in the mid-nineteenth century, with the goal of strictly isolating criminals from the outside world.
Criminal behavior was portrayed as a contagious but curable ailment in early nineteenth-century debates on crime and law, thus if a criminal was secluded with just the Bible with their own guilt, they would turn inward, make amendments, and rehabilitate themselves into "law-abiding citizens" (Evans, 213). However, it was later discovered that putting criminals in solitary confinement did not genuinely change them. They were also expensive to operate and manage, and there was little proof that solitary confinement was any more beneficial than other types of prison.